Anyone looking to be simultaneously challenged and stimulated need look no further.  Keren Katz's The Academic Hour is a highly idiosyncratic tale of love and romance amidst an academy that is conjured as much as represented, more subjective experience than objective reality; interiorizations of external reality; trying to show how it feels more than how it happened.  

The latest Now is here and it looks like another winner!  120 pages of great comics from North America and Europe  – and perhaps elsewhere, as well (not sure) – all making their North American debuts, regardless.  Arguably the greatest value in comics going.  The fact that both of the first two issues have sold out is certainly a strong point in favor of this argument. Don't miss out on this one!

Yes, it's the new Now!  Another 128 page anthology of short comics edited by Eric Reynolds.  Quite a wide variety of approaches are on hand this issue.  You might not like every story, but every issue of Now presents a wide-ranging mix of talent that includes some of today's top names side-by-side with relative unkonwns, all taking artistic chances and working to explore the expressive terrain of comics.