Every day in July we're spotlighting books from our month-long Hidden Gems Sale, wherein we're featuring some of our under-the-radar backlist titles and encouraging you to try them by offering them at a nice discount of 25% off!

Today we're featuring another recent award nominee (Best U.S. Edition of International Material, 2007 Eisners) that we want to put back in the spotlight: the mind-bending debut from French artist Matthias Lehmann.

Hwy. 115

A road movie featuring two detectives, René and Agatha, on the tracks of Robert Illot, a.k.a. "The Heimlich Killer," a serial killer whose modus operandi is to suffocate his victim with various objects (including chickens and lightbulbs) along the highways and byways of France. As they get closer and closer to catching up with him, seeking out and interrogating men and women from his past life at the insane asylum, he always stays one step ahead and the row of corpses grows longer and longer... In this lengthy original graphic novel, dreams and flashbacks converge with the ongoing narrative, done in Lehmann's hypnotically intense and insanely labor-intensive woodcut style to form a dark and disquieting vision of humanity.

240-page black & white 6.5" x 8.75" hardcover
regularly $19.95 • ON SALE $14.96
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No update next week due to Comic-Con, but the next one will be a two-fer. In this week's web reviews:

• The Stranger weighs in on Dash Shaw's Bottomless Belly Button

• Sean T. Collins looks at Mome Vol. 11

• The Toronto Star, Newsarama, Javier Hernandez, ComicMix and Maclean's on Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko by Blake Bell - see this previous Flog post for even more recent links related to this book

• On the NPR website, Laurel Maury looks at Willie & Joe: The WWII Years by Bill Mauldin; The Miami Herald also takes a look

• Til the Last Hemlock Dies looks at I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets! by Fletcher Hanks

• Vice loves Johnny Ryan's Angry Youth Comix #14

• Sequart continues their detailed examination of Love and Rockets Vol. 1 with issue #34

• Sequart also looks at the anthology fanzine Mineshaft #19

• Sequart additionally examines The Comics Journal #291

• The Alex Ross Collector looks at Ross's covers for TCJ #216 and #223

• Newsarama digs the Comic Arf anthology

In other news:

• Here's what the hardworking Roger Langridge is up to lately

• Empire magazine names Usagi Yojimbo the 31st-greatest comic book character of all time (the highest-ranking alt-comics character on the list is Vladek Spiegelman, at #13)

• du9 presents a 2004 interview with Daddy's Girl author Debbie Drechsler

• The latest cat-n-comix find on Flickr, from user "contrasts":

Steven Weissman brings us something new! Starting today and running each week through late February/early March 2009 we'll be bringing you in-progress pages from "Blue Jay," an epic 32-page story from Chocolate Cheeks, the next collection of the Yikes! gang's adventures. The story begins right here! (Remember, you must be registered and logged in to read.)

Here's our schedule of signings and panels for Comic-Con International next week, all prettified by our Art Department. Click it for a readable size (and see here for the text version)!

Our week of video and photo teasers of upcoming releases continues to continue with Abandoned Cars, the debut collection from the young and scarily talented Tim Lane (whom you can meet at Comic-Con!). Watch the video above, and take a closer look in our photo gallery. Finale on Monday!

Courtesy Robert Williams:

The new issue of Comics Foundry magazine features this pretty awesome explication of Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw: 

Every day in July we're spotlighting books from our month-long Hidden Gems Sale, wherein we're featuring some of our under-the-radar backlist titles and encouraging you to try them by offering them at a nice discount of 25% off!

Today's installment features the compelling 1999 debut from Chris Lanier.

Combustion

Combustion is a striking visual parable on War, drawn in an expressionistic woodcut style. This mature, poetic work by newcomer Chris Lanier holds its own with such best-selling and critically acclaimed graphic novels as Maus and Palestine. Elegant and subversive, at times harrowing, Combustion will intrigue and enlighten with its stark, chiaroscuro visuals and compelling story of a soldier lost in a ravaged country.

56-page black & white 8" x 10" softcover
regularly $7.95 • ON SALE $5.96
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