Founding mother of shojo manga, Moto Hagio finally gets an English language collection!  This hardcover volume contains ten tales spanning three decades, and contains some of her very best work, including the novella, "Iguana Girl," which Trina Robbins, in her tubthumping forward, calls a "brilliant tour de force."  A Drunken Dream also includes an introductory essay by shojo evangelist Matt Thorn on "The Magnificent Forty-Niners," the generation of female manga artists who revolutionized girls comics in the 1970s, as well as a quite substantial interview with Hagio, also conducted by Thorn.  Anyone interested in the history of shojo manga pretty much has no choice but to check this one out, and we think that anyone looking for emotionally powerful yet delicately nuanced comics will find their time spent here rewarded.  Fantagraphics has made this easy, by providing this massive 31-page preview.   Be sure to take advantage of this, we're confident that you'll find it worth your while.

Taking place in the semi-fantastic setting of "a German boys' boarding school sometime in the mid-20th Century", The Heart of Thomas is a complex tale of love between boys that starts right off with the suicide of the titular character.  This massive 524 page shojo epic from one of the founding mothers of the genre was originally serialized in the pages of Shojo Comicsover the entirety of 1974, and then went on to be collected in a successful series of trade paperbacks that were the recipients of widespread interest and acclaim.  Arguably the first fully realized, multi-levelled, novel length work in the shojo genre, The Heart of Thomas had a transformative impact on the form.  It now finally receives it's first authorized English translation (by Matt Thorn) in this hefty hardcover edition from Fantagraphics.

The second – and final – volume in Hagio's science fiction epic has arrived.

We posted a few spread on Instagram, HERE.