Kus! mono #11: This Year Is Next Year's Last Year by Christopher Sperandio

This Year Is Next Year's Last Year takes classic old school public domain comics – that look like they're largely from the 1950s, but maybe also some from the '40s and/or early 60s – and remixes them in all their newsprint saturated four-color glory in high quality scans repurposed via newly created (by Mr. Sperandio, we can only assume) text approriately rendered in a digital recreation of Leroy Lettering (or a close approximation therof) to create a caustic comics satire of the sad state of affairs that is the USA today. Everything is printed just right and really...

Here is a one of a kind item. It is a real challenge to describe just how different it is. Ronald Wimberly has long been a student of Japanese culture and æsthetics – among much else – and has leveraged that experience into this multi-levelled, ultimately unclassifiable work (and that unclassifiability is very much part of its significance). Wimberly has the chops to code switch between a host of stylistic practices both visual and linguistic, encompassing classical Japanese forms and practices, European high culture, American academia (which is represented here by several essays by recognized scholars writing on Wimberly's work that are...

FROM THE ARCHIVES

A run of nine consecutive volumes of Ranma 1/2 by one and only Rumiko Takahashi. Ranma 1/2 is a true classic manga series, whose influence on subsequent shoojo manga is hard to overstate. It also offers a wealth of humorous observations on gender norms and gender construction, to boot!

We came across this run in the archives; all new and unread. If there's anyone who picked up the first volume and is ready to read more, this is a perfect opportunity to do so!

When we learned that New York Review Comics was planning a new edition of two of Vaughn-James's other major works from the 1970s (Elephant and The Projector), we felt it was high time to bring this work, which we've been selling the shop for quite awhile(whenever we can get our hands on some copies!),to the attention of our online customers. Originally published in 1975, asa hardcover edition of 1500 copies by Toronto'sCoach House Press, The Cage was reissued in 2013, againby Coach House, in a softcover edition. Vaughn-James had a unique approach to, as well asa clearly prescientvision of, long form visually-centered narrative. Among his...

WIth Halcyon: Hermeneutics, or "The New Cartoon Utopia, Ron Rege, Jr. channels the Skibber Bee Bye vibe into a hybridic (schizophrenic?) enhanced/virtual reality // back to nature future via the hyper-connected computer/gaming saturated present and in the process continues to build his unique brand of visionary comics. This foray into the fantastic realms takes the physical form of a 112 page, giant-size (10+" x 12+"), full (flat) color, laminated hardcover volume. Angels and devils (who may be one and the same?) and other celestial beings of the spirit realm dash and dart about the cosmos, both inner and outer – and while doing so,...

One of the best – perhaps the best, and almost without doubt, the most painfully sad – graphic memoir ever penned. The urtext of adolescent alienation. An undisputed masterpiece. Recommended to all serious comics readers as well as anyone who needs help in facing up to painful and unhappy memories.

Now back in iprint!

(Book Four in the New Edition of the collected Love and Rockets) Yes! The next two volumes in the fantastic new packaging of the One True Classic of Modern American Comics have arrived ahead of schedule. We can hardly believe it, but are pleased to report that these two are, if possible, even more wonderful than the first two. Human Diastrophism contains the entirety of the graphic novel of that name along with many other classic shorter works including "Chelo's Burden."

BACK IN PRINT!

BACK IN PRINT AT LAST! This is the big book that has it all! Originally serialized in Biggu Komiku in 1970-71, and a personal favorite of the artist, manga founding-father Osamu Tezuka, Ode to Kirihito is a unique effort, in more than one respect. Weighing in at a mammoth 822 pages, Ode is the first of Tezuka's works to incorporate adult themed gekiga (see Tatsumi's Abandon the Old in Tokyo) elements. Perhaps paradoxically, it is also a work that while dealing with the darker sides of human nature simultaneously deals with Christian (Kirihito is a pun on the Japanese pronunciation of Christ, Kirisuto) themes -- specifically of overcoming...

edited by Ivan Brunetti It's too early to say for certain, but this follow-up to Brunetti's already classic 2006 anthology, also published by Yale University Press, might just be even better than its precursor. One thing's for certain: Brunetti has held onto -- and further refined -- his editorial vision of arranging the work contained in this volume in an organic sequence, deftly managing to map out the similarities between artists so that each piece flows smoothly into into the other, creating an amazing sense of an innate connectivity between all areas of comics here on display. This book is a powerful ally in the struggle to bring the...

In the full color pages of Inappropriate, her latest hardcover collection from Uncivilized Books, Gabrielle Bell delves into the porous borderland between fact and fantasy, a land populated by daydreams,conjectures, anxieties, obsessions, recollections, ruminations, self-doubts,self-incriminations and much more, all clearly communicated in her ever more confidently created comics.And then there is the collection's standout piece, "The original, true, biographical versionof Little Red Riding Hood," which sets the tale in an ahistorical New York City. Inappropriate isBell's best collection to date. Here, she has broken through to a more...