Believe it or not, it's been over twenty years since the publication of Understanding Comics, which established the breakthrough realization that the most effective way to truly explain how comics work is in comics form. Now, at last, we have the next iteration of this understanding: that the most effective way to explain how comics presented here as consciously thinking and writing and, of course, reading — in a free flowing combination of images and text — are changing the way we represent our world and understand ourselves is also in comics form. Unflattening, just published by Harvard University Press, is the book form of Sousanis's...

With the arrival of this, the second issueof the series, it becomes clear that the first was but a prologue. Here, in the 88 full color pages ofUnsmooth #2: BUM, E.S. Glenn opens up new portals and reveals previouslyunseen dimensions of what will henceforth be known as the Unsmooth Multiverse. Enmeshed within an encompassing framework of ligne claire bande dessinée, readers will encounter mechamanga (along with a snatch of horror hentai)– plus sub-titled anime videos – New Yorker cartoons (and anold school Penguin paperback), cartooned modern art (along with some graffiti),some classical, newspaper Sunday-pagestrips,photobooth strips,and...

Yes, it has finally come to pass: Ed the Happy Clown is back in print in book form for the first time in decades, in what is likely to be the definitive edition. This is the ground breaking work that both put Chester Brown on the map and broadened the horizons of comics in the 1980s, causing a seismic shift in its landscape and charting a new direction away from heroic fantasy through a methodology that, in hindsight, can be seen to be – at least in some respects – a deconstruction of the psychological as well as epistemological underpinnings of that genre, which has since become dominated by corporate entertainment behemoths. Ed the Happy...

Pénélope Bagieu's Brazen is a collection of 29 comics biographies originally created for the Frenchnewspaper, Le Monde. Employing a clear concise line and limited but playfulcolor palette, for the most part within a well thought out nine-panel grid layout, Bagieu's work is eminently readable, and one finishes this 300 page volume ready for more.

Each of these pithy bios is informative and fun,pullingoff the coveted accomplishment of entertaining while educating. In other words, they're great comics! And, as an added bonus, each bio is topped off with a celebratory double-page splash illustration. All wrapped up in a great package for a...

Move over, Dennis the Menace – Akissi is back! Here, in the frantic, fun-filled, full color pages of More Tales of Mischief, Akissi romps through 20 all-new tales, all created on a standard template of splash page followed by five pages each laid out using a six panel grid – except for two Double-Size Specials that run for twelve pages total. Here we have vital tales of growing up in Côte d'Ivoire (that's the Ivory Coast, located in west Africa, for all you Anglophones out there) – that are more or less based on the childhood experiences of Marguerite Abouet – that really capture the zaniness of a kids perspective on the world that – as...

YES! The book that announced Ben Katchor's special genius to the world, Cheap Novelties is at long last back in print in this fabulous hardcover edition from Drawn & Quarterly that will go quite nicely on the shelf next to Katchor's other great works, such as Julius Knpl, Real Estate Photographer, The Beauty Supply District, and The Cardboard Valise.

Golden Boyis an exuberant portrayal of the early, formative years of the object of thePeanutscharacter, Schroeder’s obsession, the German composer, Ludwig van Beethoven. Originally published in Germany in 2020, it has now been released in North America in an English translation by Nika Knight that well captures the spirit and style of the original German. This attractive, 192 page, full color, hardcover edition comes to us courtesy of Fantagraphics Books. It is by turns fascinating, fun, insightful, entertaining and altogether hugely enjoyable.

Mikael Ross, whose previous work from Fantagraphics,The Thuddisplayed a highly developed level...

Comics may not just be for kids anymore, but, of course, they still are especially well suited for stimulating the construction of neural pathways involved in decoding text, images and linking them together in chains of meaning – aka learning! – all of which are crucial to developing kids' minds. Even more importantly, many kids are naturally drawn to comics and quite a few actually enjoy making them. What better way to keep kids out of trouble and get them in touch with their creative side than encouraging them to make their own comics? And that's exactly what Comics: Easy as ABC aims to do. Penned by noted comics educator and author of...

Yes! 382 pages of comics selected from the next-to-impossible-to-find first fifty issues of King-Cat Comics (currently published under the title King-Cat Comics and Stories) by the long suffering self-publishing champ, John Porcellino. King-Cat Comics is an ideal illustration of the existentialist project that brings order and meaning to a life lived in an inherently absurb world. Beginning in May of 1989, Porcellino put pen to paper and declared that he would have no rules dictating what he would produce, only that it would be true to his artistic instincts and that it would all be called King-Cat Comics. As the years passed, King-Cat...

Year of the Rabbit is an effective and affecting memoir of life in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge during the years 1975 to 1980. While most North Americans who were alive during the Vietnam War are at least dimly aware that something bad happened in Cambodia after American forces largely left Southeast Asia at the conclusion of the Vietnam War, few are aware of the details, or have an understanding of what life was like for Cambodians themselves after the Communist Party of Cambodia – the Khmer Rouge – or, as readers of this book will learn, Angkar, which is how the Khmer Rouge referred to themselves during the early years of their rule –...