Yes, true believers all knew that this day would one day come, and now it has finally arrived: The Holy Grail of underground/alternative comics has been carefully collected in a single hardcover volume of high resolution scans. Here we have replicas of the original Hairy Who art/comic books, each of which served double-duty as an exhibition catalogue for the four group shows of the work of the Chicago Imagists that were presented under the umbrella of The Hairy Who. Here, with this volume, us mere mortals can at long last gaze upon these long lost (into the tightly locked collections of the few, fortunate cognoscenti that managed to get...

What came to be know as "The Marvel Age of Comics" begins HEREin the "pre-superhero" Marvel comics created, primarilyby Jack Kirby and secondarily by Steve Ditko (and tertiarily by Don Heck), with the inking assists of Dick Ayers, George Bell and others, andwith Stan Lee and Larry Leiber filling out the scripts. These comics provided form and color to the unconsciouscold war anxieties that lurked benearth the surface of every sentient American during the years – 1957 - 1962 –that led up to the Cuban Missle Crisis, allowing readers to finally face their fears, and, eventually, after getting to know them through the comics collected here, at...

Fans of the classic Barks ten-pagers from Walt Disney's Comics & Stories will rejoice upon opening this volume, for the table of contents reveals that in addition to it's title track, "The Ghost Sheriff of Last Gasp," this volume consists almost entirely of these works, nineteen in all (!), spanning from the close of 1953 all the way through middle of 1955, making for a collection that is bulging with the finest slapstick comedy comics you'll find anywhere and featuring all the characters in the Barks pantheon: Huey, Dewey and Louie, Uncle Scrooge, Gladstone Gander, Daisy Duck, Gyro Gearlooseand more. This volume is rounded out with...

It's here: the deluxe full color, 112 page, horizontally formatted hardcover collection of Michael DeForge's internet work,Ant Comic. A high intensity allegory rendered in dazzling full color and employing DeForge's personal cartooning language to great advantage,Ant Colonyis a wholly original work that is not to be missed. In the words of no less a comics authority than Jaime Hernandez, "DeForge is one of those rare comics naturals andAnt Colonyproves it."

It's here! This year's comics message from Jaime and Beto, akaLove and Rockets: New Stories #6. As readers of this space are no doubt already aware, this year Fantagraphics is celebrating thirty years of publishing Love and Rockets (at this point it's actually 31 years, but the celebration shows no sign of letting up). This issuereflects (refracts?) a bit of this hurly burly in that in contains two dozen inter-related tales! The wait is over, now it's time to settle into an easy chair with a reading light and be transported to the Perfect Sphere of True Comics, with the Hernandez brothers as your guide. See you there!

Twenty-five years ago, inRaw, Volume 2, Number 1, Richard McGuire published a six-page work, titled "Here"*, and comics have never been the same since. Now, McGuire has expanded his revelation into a full length work, that, while it may be considered to fulfill the definition of graphic novel, is clearly something more besides. Years in the making,Hereis a meditation on time and its passage through place that employs the power of comics to concisely and powerfully convey their inextricable relation. ReadingHere, one is quickly gripped by a feeling of the uncanny. The realization that the precise spatial coordinates occupied by the room...

The long awaited follow up toAbandoned Carshas arrived.The Lonesome Gois a giant oversize volume packed with more carefully placed ink lines than any book this side ofBlack Hole.Taking a hint from theLegend of Duluoz, St. Louis resident and Washington University lecturer, Tim Lane takes a turn down aLost Highway on aSavage Night, whereA Good Man Is Hard to Findand a sprawling chaos of comics ensues, recorded employing a visual lexicon that is partCharles Biroand partCharles Burnsand shines a light onthose parts of the American psyche that are usually left festering in the dark, allin the service of creating an acutely observed and fully...

Perfect timing! Dark Horse has just published The Life and TImes of Martha Washington in the 21st Century,which collects the complete Martha Washingtonsaga by Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons. Created over a period of twenty years starting in the late 80s with Give Me Liberty, this story is set in an early 21st century America that is splitting at the seams and headed towards civil war. Sound familiar? Now's your chance to see what today looked like from the vantage point of a quarter century (or so) back. All 560 pages of the saga are here + a 40 page scrapbook of preliminary sketches, thumbnail layouts, promo posters and more, making for a...