Boasting a new format and design, The Comics Journal #288 has arrived to enlighten, entertain and irritate comics connoisseurs in all the ways you’ve come to know and love, bringing you comics, commentary and of course the judgement of experts! Check it out:

• Interviews with some of the year’s most interesting cartoonists, including Exit Wounds author Rutu Modan, I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets: The Comics of Fletcher Hanks editor Paul Karasik, Alice in Sunderland author Bryan Talbot, The Salon creator Nick Bertozzi, Stop Forgetting to Remember cartoonist Peter Kuper, and Percy Gloom author Cathy Malkasian
• Picks for the best comics of the past year by Tony Millionaire, Dan Nadel, Paul Gravett, Paul Karasik, Kristy Valenti, R.C. Harvey, Noah Berlatsky and a host of other critics and cartoonists
• In this issue’s comics section, a complete serial from June Tarpé Mills’ classic WWII-era adventure strip, Miss Fury (whose glamorous, panther-skin-suited star was the first super heroine created by a female cartoonist), plus an appreciation of its creator by cartoonist and historian Trina Robbins
• Reviews of Winsor McCay’s Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, Jason Shiga’s Bookhunter, the final issue of Terry Moore’s Strangers in Paradise, and many other notable recent comics and graphic novels
• Tom Crippen’s look at the life and career of Marvel Comics architect Stan Lee
• R.C. Harvey on edgy content (or the lack thereof) in today’s newspaper strips

As always, we’ve got excerpts from the new issue on the TCJ website, including extracts of Joe Sacco’s interview with Rutu Modan and Michael Dean’s conversation with Paul Karasik, as well as the introduction and index to our big year-in-review section.

2009 Eisner Award Nominee: Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism

• View a Preview Slideshow on Flickr

"The first of the reformatted issues... [is] a nice-looking package. In addition to the shrinkage in overall size that makes the long-running magazine look more like a literary journal, it seems like there's a paper upgrade, and the squat pages seem more amenable to holding comics art at a flattering proportion. Best of all, the box of text [on the cover] is on a sticker that can be removed. That's pretty cool." – The Comics Reporter

Online Reviews:
Occasional Superheroine

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