A lot of painstaking work is about to come to fruition as we're preparing to send our new edition of the cult classic The Adventures of Jodelle by Guy Peellaert & Pierre Bartier off to the printer. From Kim Thompson's new English translation to the meticulous recreation of the eye-popping colors to the 80 pages of new supplemental material, with the entire package overseen by Peellaert's son Orson, we've gone all-out to bring you the definitive edition of this psychedelic, satirical, and sexy Pop Art masterpiece. We're pleased to bring you this first look at the finalized cover design; the book itself should be hitting shelves in February.

Here is a book that we are very proud to be presenting this December: Jack Jackson's American History: Los Tejanos & Lost Cause, combining two of Jackson's historical graphic novels from the 1980s into a new, lovingly-produced hardcover volume (the first in a series of three). Together they comprise a masterful and unflinching look at Texas during its decades-long pre-Civil War conflict with Mexico and its struggles during the Reconstruction. Combining historical verisimilitude with crisp, muscular artwork, Jackson's uncompromising work is unparallelled in his milieu, and we are pleased to present his great works in a format befitting their stature. More copious previews are in the works; for now you can read 26 pages, with excerpts from both stories, right here.

At last, Volume 1 of Linda Medley's beloved Castle Waiting is coming out in an omnibus softcover edition following multiple printings of the hardcover collection. If you've never read this wonderful series before, this fat, affordable paperback will be the perfect place to start! Here's a quick peek at one of the advance copies we received a few days ago — you can read the entire first chapter for free right here, and we'll be posting more detailed previews in the near future. We'll have copies available in about a month and it should hit shelves shortly after that.

If you like erudite and sharp-witted cultural criticism you'll want to get your hands on this forthcoming collection of essays by Alexander Theroux, titled The Grammar of Rock: Art and Artlessness in 20th Century Pop Lyrics, when it's released in January. Covering a century of pop music from Ira Gershwin to Ghostface Killah, Theroux deconstructs and evaluates the very nature of the pop song. We're just putting on the finishing touches and packing it off to the printer and, by gum, it's 160 pages longer than when we first announced it. And why yes, that is a vintage Robert Crumb drawing on the front cover.

Nancy Likes Christmas: Complete Dailies 1946-1948
by Ernie Bushmiller

336-page black & white 8.5" x 8.5" flexibound softcover • $26.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-599-0

Ships in: November 2012 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now

BARGAIN COMBO:

Nancy Is Happy + Nancy Likes Christmas Gift Set

Price: $51.98 $41.59

Order this book and receive this FBI•MINI comic shown here as a FREE bonus! Click here for details. Limit one per customer while supplies last.

It's three more full years of Ernie Bushmiller's beloved comic strip, featuring nearly one thousand meticulously restored daily strips from its post-World-War II graphic high point — superbly crafted but not yet quite stylized into the almost machine-life sleekness of later decades. And what can you say about the jokes in Nancy other than that, contrary to its reputation for a zen-like, ultra-square oddness, many of them are actually just extremely funny?

Nancy Likes Christmas is topped off with a new introduction by Zippy the Pinhead creator Bill Griffith, a lifelong fan of Nancy and admirer of Bushmiller's genius, and once again designed with pop-art snap and crackle by Fantagraphics senior designer Jacob Covey.

20-page excerpt (download 2 MB PDF):

Video & Photo Slideshow Preview (view in new window):

Drew Friedman continues to pay tribute to the Legends of Comics with this wonderful new portrait of the great Al Jaffee, which is now available as a limited-edition print. Does not ship folded.

Vapor, the long-awaited new graphic novel by Spanish master of surrealist comics Max, comes out next week in his home country from our fine colleagues at La Cúpula (in Spanish and Catalan editions, shown above), and our English-language edition is now rescheduled for June of next year. To celebrate (and promote) the book's arrival, Max has started a new blog exploring the creative process of the book, posting developmental artwork, inspirations, and other behind-the-scenes info. It's all in Spanish but Google Translate does a pretty fair job with it if you're not multilingual.

Prison Pit Book 4
by Johnny Ryan

116-page black & white 6.5" x 8.5" softcover • $12.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-591-4

Ships in: November 2012 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now

Order this book and receive this FBI•MINI comic shown here as a FREE bonus! Click here for details. Limit one per customer while supplies last.

BARGAIN COMBO:

Prison Pit: Books 1 - 4

Price: $51.96 $38.97

As always, a plot summary of the latest installment of Johnny (Angry Youth Comix) Ryan’s hugely popular sci-fi-prison-planet-gore-fest-slugfest-a-thon serial must, in order to be presentable to normal, decent human beings, be cut into fine Belgian lace. And so, with apologies:

“Cannibal F***face discovers the only way to escape the Caligulon is to brainf*** the Slorge and create a giant, brainless oafchild that only knows how to annihilate everything in its path. And what happens when the Slugstaxx show up and use their nightj*** to turn this mindless monster against CF? Total F***ing Mayhem.”

Advance Praise: "You know you're reading Prison Pit when there's a character called Undigestible Scrotum and someone tries to see if he lives up to his name... Prison Pit is what you read when no one is home and you're not eating." – Chris Mautner

14-page excerpt (download <1 MB PDF):

Video & Photo Slideshow Preview (view in new window):

This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include the following new titles. Read on to see what comics-blog commentators and web-savvy comic shops are saying about them (more to be added as they appear), check out our previews at the links, and contact your local shop to confirm availability.

As TCJ.com's Joe McCulloch notes in his "Conflict of Interest Reservoir," "Oh wait, we’ve still got $100+ of good-looking Fantagraphics books to cover."

Barack Hussein Obama
by Steven Weissman

112-page full-color 7.25" x 9.25" hardcover • $22.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-623-2

"When it comes to splurging, I’m going to be topical: Steven Weissman’s surreal, alternate take on the life and times of our current president, Barack Hussein Obama (Fantagraphics, $22.99) just may contain an explanation for that sleepy debate performance last week, if nothing else." – Graeme McMillan, Robot 6

"I’ve heard a bunch about Steven Weissman’s Barack Hussein Obama, a cracked fantastic vision of the contemporary political scene, and now it’s time to witness its 112 pages on my own." – Joe McCulloch, The Comics Journal

"This book advertises on this site, but there's no talent in comics exactly like Steve Weissman and this book is bound to hit at a key moment in history: Obama's win of a second term or his defeat at the polls." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

"Set in a surreal, parallel universe, Barrack Hussein Obama's odd world is really no stranger than our own. In our world, politicians exist with the protective Beltway Bubble, but in BHO politicians are made to live in the world they create via their policies." – Benn Ray (Atomic Books), Largehearted Boy

Buz Sawyer Vol. 2: Sultry's Tiger
by Roy Crane

228-page black & white/color 9.25" x 9.25" hardcover • $35.00
ISBN: 978-1-60699-499-3

"If I had $30, I’d... steal $5 from somebody — anybody — to get my hands on Vol. 2 of Buz Sawyer: Sultry’s Tiger. Buz doesn’t have quite the same pep as Roy Crane’s Captain Easy, but the art is much more professional and lush and beautiful. Besides it’s Roy Crane, and even middle grade Crane is miles and miles better than just about any other cartoonist around." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6

"Roy Crane proffers 228 pages of vintage derring-do with Buz Sawyer Vol. 2: Sultry’s Tiger." – Joe McCulloch, The Comics Journal

"Roy Crane never cheats. Killer cover, too." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

Naked Cartoonists: Drawers Drawing Themselves Without Drawers
by various artists; edited by Gary Groth

156-page full-color 6.25" x 8.25" hardcover • $22.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-538-9

"...seeing as it's from Fantagraphics means it would get a peek from me." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

The Raven (Softcover Ed.)
by Lorenzo Mattotti & Lou Reed

166-page full-color 9" x 9" softcover • $19.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-585-3

"Lou Reed & Lorenzo Mattotti rise again with a softcover edition of their collaborative The Raven." – Joe McCulloch, The Comics Journal

And wait, it's not on the official shipping list, but:

"...Robert Crumb inspires us all with a new paperback edition of selected dispatches in Your Vigor for Life Appalls Me: Robert Crumb Letters 1958-1977." – Joe McCulloch, The Comics Journal

Just arrived and shipping now from our mail-order department:

You'll Never Know Book 3: Soldier's Heart
by C. Tyler

128-page full-color 12" x 10.25" hardcover • $29.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-548-8

See Previews / Order Now

BARGAIN COMBO:

You'll Never Know Books 1-3: The Complete Trilogy

Price: $74.97 $59.98

In one of the most eagerly-anticipated graphic novels of 2012, Soldier’s Heart concludes the story of Carol Tyler and her delving into her father’s war experiences in a way that is both surprising and devastating — and rather than trying to summarize this episode and thus possibly spoil it for readers, we prefer to simply offer a selection of comments on the first two installments of this autobiographical masterpiece.

Publishers Weekly: “(Starred Review) In the first volume of Tyler’s planned trilogy of graphic memoirs, she dug into the eruptive, violent memories of her father’s WWII experiences while simultaneously dealing with a husband who decided to go find himself and leave her with a daughter to raise. [Book Two] is no less rich and overwhelming. Tyler gets back to the business of detailing her father’s war stories — difficult given that he is ‘one of those guys who closed it off and never talked about it’ — as well as coming to terms with her already touchy parents’ increasingly ornery attitudes. Closing the circle somewhat is Tyler’s concern over her daughter’s troubled nature, which seems to mirror her own wild past. While the language of Chicago-raised and Cincinnati-based Tyler has a winningly self-deprecating Midwestern spareness to it, her art is a lavishly prepared kaleidoscope of watercolors and finely etched drawings, all composed to look like the greatest family photo album of all time. The story’s honest self-revelations and humane evocations of family dramas are tremendously moving. Tyler’s book could well leave readers simultaneously eager to see the third volume, but also nervous about the traumas, home front and war front, that it might contain.”

Booklist: “Tyler’s fluid, expressive linework, complemented by subtly overlaid watercolors, gives ideal visual expression to a narrative that’s at once sensitive and hard-nosed... Decades of drawing mostly autobiographical stories have honed her skills, enabling her to produce a work that ranks in quality with the graphic memoirs of Alison Bechdel (Fun Home) and Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis).”