New at Vice today, it's an instant Johnny Ryan classic.

...or rather, Jacob Covey's lovely cover design thereof. The area on the left will be faux cloth, while the right side will be uncoated paper — much like our Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse books. 500 Portraits should be available in about 3 months, give or take a couple weeks.

Back in stock in a new and improved (colored endpapers, slightly better printing) second edition:

Set to Sea
by Drew Weing

144-page black & white 5.5" x 6.25" hardcover • $16.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-368-2

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The central character is a big lug and an aspiring poet who runs up tabs at the local bars by day and haunts the docks by night, writing paeans to the seafaring life. When he gets shanghaied aboard a clipper bound for Hong Kong, he finds the sailor’s life a bit rougher than his romantic nautical fantasies. He helps rebuff a pirate assault, survives a gunshot to the eye, and learns to live — and love — a Conradian life on the sea, all the while writing poetry about pirates, bad food, unceremonial funerals, foreign ports, and unexpected epiphanies. By the end of his life, he’s found satisfaction in living a life of adventure and finding a receptive and appreciative readership. What more could one ask for?

This is Drew Weing’s debut graphic novel, after honing his craft with numerous, lovingly produced self-published comic stories. Drawn in an elaborate crosshatched style that falls somewhere between Gustave Doré engravings and E. C. Segar’s Popeye, Set to Sea is part rollicking adventure, part maritime ballad told in visual rhyme. Every page is a single panel, every panel is a stunning illustration, every illustration a part of a larger whole that tells a story in the deft language of cartooning.

Recipient of the Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize Honor Award

An ALA 2011 Top 10 Great Graphic Novel for Teens

One of Booklist's Top 10 Youth Graphic Novels for 2010

Ranked #5 on New York Magazine's Top Ten Comics of 2010

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship:

Mome Vol. 22 - Fall 2011
by various artists; edited by Eric Reynolds

240-page full-color 7" x 9" softcover • $19.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-395-8

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Special double-sized FINAL issue! After 6 years and over 2500 pages of comics, MOME heads into the sunset with an all-star, jam-packed farewell bonanza. Several past MOME favorites return for the swan song, including Kurt Wolfgang, Tom Kaczynski, Joe Kimball, Eleanor Davis, Anders Nilsen, Tim Hensley, Paul Hornschemeier, Gabrielle Bell, and Zak Sally (those covers!). Meanwhile, several newcomers get in just under the wire: Jesse Moynihan, Malachi Ward, James Romberger, Nick Drnaso, Joseph Lambert, Nick Thorburn, Victor Kerlow, and Ignatz Award-winners Jim Rugg and Chuck Forsman! Recent MOME favorites also return, such as Sergio Ponchione, Steven Weissman, Sara Edward-Corbett, Laura Park, Josh Simmons (plus collaborators The Partridge in the Pear Tree and Wendy Chin), Derek Van Gieson (with collaborator Michael Jada), Tim Lane, Nate Neal, Lilli Carré, T. Edward Bak, Dash Shaw, Ted Stearn and Noah Van Sciver. Over 30 artists in all, including a surprise contributor we don't want to give away!

SALE! Today through Friday September 2, 2011, save 30% OFF all single back issues of Mome (or save big with our 5- and 10-issue bundles), PLUS save 30% off an amazing selection of books by Mome contributors!

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship:

Like a Sniper Lining Up His Shot
by Jacques Tardi; based on the novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette

104-page black & white 7.5" x 10.75" hardcover • $18.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-448-1

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Martin Terrier, ice-cold mercenary-turned-contract-killer, has his future all mapped out: He has just executed what he intends to be his final job and is ready to move on to the next phase of his life, which involves discreet retirement accompanied by a long-lost girlfriend. But Terrier’s employers are emphatically not pleased with his decision, old enemies begin to re-emerge, and soon Terrier is forced to once again ply his brutal trade.

Five years after West Coast Blues, his acclaimed adaptation of Jean-Patrick Manchette’s Le Petit bleu de la côte ouest (a.k.a. Three to Kill), Jacques Tardi returns to the world of guns, crime, betrayal and bloodshed with this stunning, grisly, and remarkably faithful interpretation of Manchette’s last completed crime thriller. Manchette himself claimed to have written the novel in an attempt to emulate the ultraviolent, hellbent-for-leather, pitch-black ambiance of Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly, and Tardi matches him bullet for bullet and blow for blow. As The Village Voice noted of the original novel (La Position du tireur couché, released in English under the title The Prone Gunman by City Lights in 2001), “Thirty pages before the finale, it’s hard not to wonder how the book could possibly end... But the book does end, in circumstances far worse than you might easily imagine, on a note of extraordinary bleakness.”

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship:

The Hidden
by Richard Sala

136-page full-color 8.25" x 8.25" hardcover • $19.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-386-6

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Is this the end of the world? How did it happen? Why did it happen? There is one man who knows...

Take a walk with the dazed survivors of a mysterious worldwide catastrophe. They are bound for a place, somewhere in the desert, where a terrible truth awaits them.

Richard Sala's books are "deliriously entertaining" (Rue Morgue Magazine), "cinematic and cheerfully over-the-top" (The New York Times Book Review), containing "brilliantly atmospheric art, full of shadows and spikes." (Booklist)

"To read a Richard Sala comic is an experience both jarring and fun. Good for a rainy day or a stormy night." – Publishers Weekly

Bonus Contest: Order The Hidden by August 31, 2011 and you'll be entered in a random drawing to win a copy of the limited-edition, signed and numbered print shown here! We ended up with one extra copy left over after we gave them away with purchase of the book at Comic-Con (where the book was a sellout), so one lucky mail-order customer will get our last one. (This includes people who pre-ordered the book.) Good luck!

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "...Shimura Takako tells this story in such a gentle, unobtrusive way, one might believe that this story flows naturally – as if it simply spun itself from nature and is the way it is supposed to be. I think Matt Thorn’s tidy translation, which goes down the mental gullet with such smoothness, is a big reason for how readable this is. Wandering Son is not flashy or aggressive, nor does it pander or try to be hip and stylish. Takako draws the reader in so quietly that some may be surprised to find themselves on a journey of discovery and exploration with these characters. It’s like seeing preadolescence for the first time or seeing it again through fresh eyes and a new perspective.... If only more comic books were so evocative and so clear in their storytelling like Wandering Son, an ideal comic book. Ages 8 to 80 will like Wandering Son. [Grade] A" – Leroy Douresseaux, I Reads You

• Review: "Of the three books collected in this volume [What I Did], Hey, Wait... is a really evocative portrait of how childhood experiences can affect one throughout his entire life, and The Iron Wagon (which adapts an early-twentieth-century Norwegian novel) is a pretty good murder mystery that makes good use of Jason's deadpan style, but it's the middle entry, Sshhhh!, that really sticks with me, immediately jumping to the top of my favorites among the cartoonist's works.... It's sad, wonderful, exhilarating work, a great example of how amazing Jason is at what he does, and how nobody else can do it like him." – Matthew J. Brady, Warren Peace Sings the Blues

• Review: "The plot often takes a sharp turn towards the absurd and downright crazy, but eventually the story always comes back to our heroine. Adele Blanc-Sec takes no crap... It’s really nice to see such a strong female character at the centre of all this mayhem, and her character really pulls the book together.... Tardi’s artwork is great to look at; his panels are vibrant and full of life. In his hands Paris 1911 is a busy metropolitan city still hanging on to its 18^th century spirit and facade.... The first volume of The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec left me with more questions than answers, and volume 2’s release date of November seems all to far away! I look forward to reading more of Adele Blanc-Sec’s adventures." – Will Pond, Good Comic Books

• Review: "Glenn Ganges — the protagonist of the first volume of the series Ganges — is a dreamer, an eccentric, a loving husband, but first and foremost a restless man. Meaningless details do not give rest to him, he makes a mountain out of a molehill, and his fantasies replace the reality. Five stories under one cover are the five pieces of a day in the life of Ganges.... I’d like to meet this Ganges." – Ray Garraty, Endless Falls Up

• Interview: Fantagraphics Summer 2011 intern Ao Meng chats with Mome contributor Jesse Moynihan for his school paper, The Daily Texan

• Commentary (Audio): The Collected Comics Library podcast host Chris Marshall discusses our upcoming EC Comics Library series

• Conflict of Interest: Our own Eric Buckler shares details of our latest Pogo update in his "Indie Comics Digest" column for The Snipe

Portland and environs! If you've been planning on buying any of our books — or any comics, period — this coming Monday and Tuesday, August 29-30, is the time and Floating World Comics is the place to do it. They're having a benefit sale with 100% of the proceeds being donated to Dylan Williams's medical care. My good colleague Tom Devlin at D&Q explains in succinct and eloquent fashion why you should care about Dylan if you care about comics at all.

Noah Van Sciver is selling some framed drawings to raise rent money. Get in on the ground floor now before we publish his Abe Lincoln graphic novel The Hypo and he blows up and you can't afford him anymore!

Jason has revealed the beautiful cover illustration for his next forthcoming book, Athos in America. At his blog he includes the initial thumbnail sketch, which I recall falling in love with when he first posted it a little while back. Title treatment and coloring are TK. The book will be in the same clothbound hardcover format as Low Moon.