The Cartoon Picayune
<<•>>  edited by Josh Kramer  <<•>>  
Lo-Fi comics journalism with a personal touch returns with the Summer 2013 issue of The Cartoon Picayune (#5 for those who are keeping track).  This time around the theme is  "Hard Work" and its contents includes:  "Sex Workers of the World, Unite!" by Andy Warner; "The Radium Girls" by Emi Gennis; "Feeding the Meter" by editor Josh Kramer; and "Seoul Grind" by Erik Thurman.  Read all about it, here.

Despondent fans of the long gone and largely forgotten comics that focused on mysteries and legends, like Adventures into The Unknown, House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Journey into Mystery, Mysteries of Unexplained Worlds, Strange Tales, Tales of Suspense, Tales to Astonish, Unknown Worlds, and the many others that were for decades a central part of the comics firmament finally have a reason to rejoice!  Unknown Origins & Untimely Ends is an awe-inspiring anthology jam-packed with tales of the inexplicable.  The 32 stories by as many creators that fill this 180 page volume are each strange and unsettling in their own unique fashion and together make for an intensely engrossing read; no duds here!  Editor, Emi Gemmis has done a terrific job in assembling a wide ranging variety of talented artists, each with their own distinct style.  Contributors come from all over, from as close as Pittsburgh, PA (Nate McDonough) and as far away as South Australia (Owen Heitmann), and count among their ranks Evangelos Androutsopoulos, Sam Alden, Melinda Tracy Boyce, Box Brown, Nikki DeSautelle, Julia Gfrörer, Andy Glass, Jenn Woodall, and almost two dozen more.  We can pretty much guarantee that these tales – which the introduction states are "all true... (even if) many are also unbelievable" – will have readers heading to the internet more than once in an attempt to assuage the gnawing mystery eating away at their inherent rationality, and feeling a (perhaps unwanted) kinship with Shakespeare's Hamlet, who succinctly summed it all up when he said –

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
- Hamlet (Act 1, Scene 5)  

152 pages of comics of all sorts from all over.  Worth a look!

The Nib comes to print!  Edited by Matt Bors & Co., the first issue offers readers 112 crisply printed, full color pages on... death!  Highlights of this issue include: an interview-in-comics-form with Barbara Ehrenreich by Editor-in-Chief, Bors; "Who Wants to Live Forever: Silicon Valley Tries to Disrupt Death" by Andy Warner; "Thinking Outside the Casket" by Josh Neufeld; "As Before, So Behind: A Memoir of Losing a Child" by Ted Closson (which is what it says it is and a tough read); and plenty more besides, including contributions by Gerardo Alba, Vanesa Del Rey; Rachel Dukes, Emi Gennis, Julia Gfrörer, John Martz, Isabella Rotman, Sophie Yanow, an archive curated by Warren Bernard, and much, much more. This issue is packed!  Not a square inch is wasted.  Like time is to life, page space is to comics, and here, in this issue devoted to the terminus of life in death, which reveals its limits, this first issue of The Nib, crams in as much comics as it possibly can into the space allotted, perhaps as a way to suggest to us that we do the same with our lives. 

BACK IN STOCK!