FLOG! Entries tagged 'Disney'

First Look: Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Color Sundays Vol. 1: Call of the Wild by Floyd Gottfredson

mike

Our Eisner-winning series goes chromatic! The first of two volumes collecting the great Floyd Gottfredson's 1932-1938 run on the Sunday Mickey Mouse comic strip, Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Color Sundays Vol. 1: Call of the Wild is truly a spectacular package. The linework is so crisp, the authentically-recreated color so dazzling (and surprising... yellow Donald Duck??), you'd be forgiven for thinking these strips are from 80 days ago, not 80 years! And of course you also get all the informative supplemental features these volumes are known for. Get more details, read a 21-page excerpt, and pre-order this volume right here.

And have we got a sweet offer for collectors who want the eventual 2-volume box set but are eager to start reading the first volume: pre-order the box set now and we'll send you this volume as soon as it's released, with the second volume and slipcase when they're available in the Fall — all for the regular box set price, which is cheaper than buying the volumes separately! Keen-o!

Eisner Awards Nominations

TheJenVaughn

We love all of our books but are especially happy for the creators of the Eisner-nominated books. You can vote until June 12 online. If you haven't read all of them, check 'em out individually or via our list!

Best Short Story: "Moon 1969: The True Story of the 1969 Moon Launch," by Michael Kupperman, in Tales Designed to Thrizzle #8

"Rainbow Moment," by Lilli Carré, in Heads or Tails

Best Single Issue (or One-Shot): Tales Designed to Thrizzle #8, by Michael Kupperman

Best Humor Publication: Naked Cartoonists, edited by Gary Groth

Best Anthology: No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics, edited by Justin Hall

Best Reality-Based Work: You'll Never Know, Book 3: A Soldier's Heart, by C. Tyler

Best Graphic Album-New: You'll Never Know, Book 3: A Soldier's Heart, by C. Tyler

Best Graphic Album-Reprint: Cruisin' with the Hound, by Spain

Heads or Tails, by Lilli Carré

Best Archival Collection/Project-Strips: Mister Twee Deedle: Raggedy Ann's Sprightly Cousin, by Johnny Gruelle, edited by Rick Marschall

Pogo, Vol. 2: Bona Fide Balderdash, by Walt Kelly, edited by Carolyn Kelly and Kim Thompson

Roy Crane's Captain Easy: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips, vol. 3, edited by Rick Norwood

Best Archival Collection/Project-Comic Books: Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge: Only a Poor Old Man, by Carl Barks, edited by Gary Groth

Young Romance: The Best of Simon & Kirby's Romance Comics, edited by Michel Gagné

Best U.S. Edition of International Material: Athos in America, by Jason

New York Mon Amour, by Benjamin LeGrand, Dominique Grange, and Jacques Tardi

Best Writer/Artist: Gilbert Hernandez, Love and Rockets New Stories, vol. 5

Jaime Hernandez, Love and Rockets New Stories, vol. 5

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

Best Painter/Multimedia Artist (interior art): Lorenzo Mattotti, The Crackle of the Frost

Best Lettering: C. Tyler, You'll Never Know, Book 3: A Soldier's Heart

Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism: tcj.com, edited by Timothy Hodler and Dan Nadel

Best Publication Design: Dal Tokyo, designed by Gary Panter and Family Sohn

Mister Twee Deedle: Raggedy Ann's Sprightly Cousin, designed by Tony Ong

Still no sure which to read? Heidi MacDonald, Cal Reid and company discuss the nominations on the Publishers Weekly podcast. Meanwhile, Chris Sims, Matt D. Wilson and more of War Rocket Ajax discuss the nominations, although I'm not sure how long the podcast will be up at this link.

Some of the nominations gather in our mail room. See you in JULY!

Walt Disney's Donald Duck: The Old Castle's Secret by Carl Barks - Now in Stock

mike

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

Walt Disney's Donald Duck: The Old Castle's Secret (The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library Vol. 6)
by Carl Barks

232-page full-color 7.5" x 10.25" hardcover • $28.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-653-9

See Previews / Order Now

With this volume, "The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library" loops back to Barks's earlier days, collecting the entirety of Barks's (astounding) 1948 output.

The title story, "The Old Castle's Secret," is notable not just for being the first full-length 32-page adventure instigated by Scrooge McDuck (in his second-ever appearance), but for featuring some of Barks's spookiest, lushest settings in old Clan McDuck castle of Dismal Downs. The other long story, "The Sheriff of Bullet Valley," plunks Donald and the nephews in the Wild West, with Donald as an overconfident deputy having to deal with some high-tech rustlers. The book also includes the less-known "In Darkest Africa," originally published in a giveaway and unreleased for decades.

This volume also features an even 10 of Barks's dynamic "Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories" 10-pagers, including "Wintertime Wager" (the first appearance of a not-yet-lucky-but-still-obnoxious Gladstone Gander); "Spoil the Rod" (in which the exquisitely named educational professor Pulpheart Clabberhead is brought in to help tame the nephews); "Rocket Race to the Moon" (a rare full-on adventure — interplanetary, no less — in the short form); "Gladstone Returns" and "Links Highjinks" (two more Gladstone yarns); and five more stories... plus a half-dozen hilarious one-page gags.

Of course, once again all the stories have been shot from crisp originals, then re-colored (and printed) to match, for the first time since their original release over 60 years ago, the colorful yet soft hues of the originals — and of course the book is rounded off with essays about Barks, the Ducks, and these specific stories by Barks experts from all over the world.

Excerpt: Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Color Sundays Vol. 1: Call of the Wild by Floyd Gottfredson

mike

Speaking of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Color Sundays Vol. 1: Call of the Wild by Floyd Gottfredson, we've just posted a big 21-page excerpt with the Table of Contents, a few introductory pages and 16 weeks' worth of colorful strips! If the embedded viewer above isn't visible to you wherever you're reading this, head to this page — and don't forget to take advantage of our special box set offer!

Special Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Color Sundays offer!

mike

(not final cover)

Customers in the U.S. and Canada can now pre-order Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Color Sundays Volume 1, coming this Summer, and Volume 2 and the Vols. 1-2 Gift Box Set, which will be out in the Fall. (Sorry, our contract with Disney prevents us from selling to customers outside the U.S. and Canada.) We have a special offer for fans who want the slipcased set but don't want to wait to start reading Volume 1!

Pre-order the Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Color Sundays Gift Box Set and we will send you Volume 1 as soon as it's released in Summer 2013, and Volume 2 with the slipcase when they are available in Fall 2013!

Wowee! Not only do you get each volume as it's released, you get them at the box set price (cheaper!) and the deal even saves you a few bucks on shipping. Pretty swell, huh?

Cover Uncovered: Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Color Sundays Vol. 1 by Floyd Gottfredson

mike

Like Mickey & Donald, we're doing a dance of joy as the release of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Color Sundays Vol. 1: Call of the Wild by Floyd Gottfredson nears! The first of two volumes collecting Gottfredson's complete Mickey Mouse Sunday strips in full glorious remastered color (scrupulously recreated based on the original strips) has gone to the printer and will be on shelves in mid-summer, with the second volume and slipcased set arriving in time for the holidays. Stay tuned for previews and pre-ordering details!

Photoset: Walt Disney's Donald Duck: The Old Castle's Secret by Carl Barks

mike

Enjoy this assortment of glamor shots of Walt Disney's Donald Duck: The Old Castle's Secret, the upcoming volume of The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library due out next month. These books sure are handsome.

Click the images for bigger versions and see many more in our Flickr set.

Walt Disney's Donald Duck: The Old Castle's Secret by Carl Barks - Previews, Pre-Order

mike

Walt Disney's Donald Duck: The Old Castle's Secret (The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library Vol. 6)
by Carl Barks

232-page full-color 7.5" x 10.25" hardcover • $28.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-653-9

Ships in: May 2013 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now

With this volume, "The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library" loops back to Barks's earlier days, collecting the entirety of Barks's (astounding) 1948 output.

22-page excerpt (download 10.4 MB PDF):

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

First Look: Walt Disney's Donald Duck: The Old Castle's Secret by Carl Barks

mike

Donald, the nephews, and Unca Scrooge are back for more laughs and adventures featuring cattle rustlers, jewel smugglers, deep sea diving, stampeding elephants, a rocket race, golf, and a g-g-g-ghost! Walt Disney's Donald Duck: The Old Castle's Secret is the 4th book (and Vol. 6 chronologically) of our Complete Carl Barks Disney Library series, and it's coming your way in June! Here's a peek at an advance copy.

If you've picked up other volumes in the series so far, you know why fans and critics have been raving about these books. Why, both The A.V. Club and Paste named the first book the best reissue/archival collection of 2011!

Read a 22-page excerpt from the title story, and pre-order your copy right here.

Fantagraphics' Diamond PREVIEWS for May 2013

mike

This month PREVIEWS is spotlighting "Manga & More: Comics from Around the World," and since we here at Fantagraphics pride ourselves on being Publisher of the World's Greatest Cartoonists, the shoe certainly fits. See below for additional info, sneak peek images (click 'em for larger versions), and links to previews for our May 2013 offerings!

This info was prepared for retailers, but we're also sharing it here to encourage everybody to order these books from your local comic shop!

Hit the links below for complete info on each title, and see the whole lineup here.

NEW VOLUME OF THE BEST-SELLING ARCHIVAL SERIES!
FAN-FAVORITE, FAMILY-FRIENDLY FUN BY AN ALL-TIME COMICS GREAT

Walt Disney's Donald Duck: The Old Castle's Secret (The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library Vol. 6)

By Carl Barks; edited by Gary Groth

$28.99 / HC / 240 pgs / FC / 7.25 x 10

Another volume of the essential Complete Carl Barks Disney Library series, this one collecting the entirety of Carl Barks’ astounding 1948 output. Readers and critics can't stop talking about the stellar quality of this series -- no serious comics collection is complete without these books! More Details

Read a 22-Page Excerpt with the Table of Contents (PDF)

Offered Again:

Walt Disney's Donald Duck: A Christmas for Shacktown
By Carl Barks
$28.99 SEP121088

Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Box Set: Vols. 3 & 4
By Floyd Gottfredson
$49.99 AUG121147

Be sure to stock our full line of Disney books!

NEW EC COMICS LIBRARY VOLUME!
HARD-BOILED CRIME & HORROR CLASSICS BY JOHNNY CRAIG

Fall Guy for Murder and Other Stories (The EC Comics Library)

By Johnny Craig

$28.99 / HC / 160 pgs / BW / 7 x 10

New volumes in our EC Comics Library series are now being released quarterly! This one is the first of four projected volumes to showcase, for the first time, the full chronological run of Johnny Craig’s EC stories from Crime SuspenStories, Vault of Horror, and elsewhere, with our trademark bonus features and top-notch production values. More Details

BATTER UP! NOSTALGIC BASEBALL CARTOONS BY THE "SPORTS CARTOONIST OF THE CENTURY"

Willard Mullin's Golden Age of Baseball: Drawings 1934-1972

By Willard Mullin; edited by Hal Bock and Michael Powers

$29.99 / HC / 200 pgs / PC / 9 x 12

The title of “Sports Cartoonist of the Century” was bestowed on Willard Mullin by his peers, and his cartoons were read by millions of sports fans from the '30s to the '70s. He created the "Brooklyn Bum" and depicted legends like Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Yogi Berra, Sandy Koufax and events like Lou Gehrig’s emotional retirement speech. This is the first-ever retrospective of his work! Recommended for all shops; essential for shops that also deal in sports trading cards and memorabilia. More Details

(And don't forget to stock 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente by Wilfred Santiago for your baseball-loving customers!)

VISIONARY NEW GRAPHIC NOVEL SEQUEL BY A CERTIFIED COMICS GENIUS

Fran

By Jim Woodring

$19.99 / HC / 120 pgs / BW / 7.25 x 10

Another original graphic novel in the format of the resoundingly acclaimed Weathercraft and Congress of the Animals. At the end of Congress, Jim Woodring’s beloved character Frank underwent a transformative journey and found himself with a cute new girlfriend. Now what? Fran answers that question in strange and unpredictable ways that are sure to delight fans of adventurous comics. More Details

Offered Again:

Congress of the Animals
By Jim Woodring
$19.99 FEB111042

Problematic: Sketchbook Drawings 2004-2012
By Jim Woodring
$28.99 AUG121141

More Jim Woodring backlist

THE FIRST FULL-LENGTH GRAPHIC NOVEL BY THE HOT-SELLING GENRE-BENDER

Lost Cat

By Jason

$24.99 / HC / 160 pgs / PC / 5.5 x 8.5

A milestone event! The latest addition to award-winning Norwegian comics master Jason's deep catalog is also his first full-length graphic novel. His bittersweet, deeply quirky stories have won him a legion of devoted fans for whom every release is a must-have, and Lost Cat is sure to win him even more loyal readers. More Details

Offered Again:

Athos in America
By Jason
$24.99 SEP111102

Why Are You Doing This?
By Jason
$12.95 MAR052906

Sshhhh!
By Jason
$16.99 AUG084055

More Jason backlist

AWARD-WINNING GRAPHIC MEMOIR OF A SEXY, DANGEROUS PUNK ROCK ROAD TRIP

Today Is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life

By Ulli Lust

$35.00 / SC / 460 pgs / PC / 6.75 x 9

The unflinchingly honest, minutely observed autobiographical story of two teenaged girls’ wild hitchhiking trip across Italy. Already considered a contemporary classic in Europe, where it won the 2011 Angoulême “Revelation” prize, this first English edition is one of our big prestige releases of 2013! More Details

Read a 30-Page Excerpt (PDF)

AN EARLY EUROCOMICS MASTERPIECE, NOW IN PAPERBACK WITH A NEW COVER & INTRODUCTION

You Are There - New Softcover Edition

By Jean-Claude Forest and Jacques Tardi; introduction by Dr. Bart Beaty

$19.99 / SC / 192 pgs / BW / 7 x 10

Following the sell-out of the 2009 hardcover edition, Fantagraphics presents a new softcover edition of one of the earliest European graphic novels. Set in the early 20th century on a small island where the scion of a once wealthy family is trying to reclaim his birthright, You Are There is a collaboration between renowned cartoonist Jacques Tardi and Barbarella creator Jean-Claude Forest. More Details

Read a 19-Page Excerpt (PDF)

Offered Again:

West Coast Blues
By Jaques Tardi and Jean-Patrick Manchette
$18.99 JUL090863

More Tardi backlist

MIDCENTURY JAZZ ART FOR SWINGIN' HEPCATS!
FOURTH VOLUME IN THE SELL-OUT SERIES

The High Fidelity Art of Jim Flora

By Jim Flora; edited by Irwin Chusid & Barbara Economon

$34.99 / SC / 180 pgs / FC / 11 x 10

Our series of Jim Flora art books has been so successful in reviving interest in the once-forgotten illustrator that the first two volumes are sold out. This one is the easiest sell of all, compiling the work Flora is best known for and with the broadest fan appeal: his famous record covers (including recent discoveries) and other music-related artwork. More Details

Offered Again:

The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora
By Jim Flora; edited by Irwin Chusid & Barbara Economon
$34.99 MAY090845

New Reprints:

Ghost World – New Reprint

By Daniel Clowes

$11.95 DEC032432

18th softcover printing! To paraphrase The Dead Milkmen, "If you ain't got Ghost World, your store could use some fixin'."

More Details & Previews

Big Baby – New Reprint

By Charles Burns

$16.95 DEC063563

With the recent release of the hot-selling The Hive, make sure your Burns backlist is beefed up!

More Details & Previews

Usagi Yojimbo Book 4: The Dragon Bellow Conspiracy – New Reprint

By Stan Sakai

$16.95 STAR07545

Demand for this perennial all-ages favorite series never wanes!

More Details & Previews

Daily OCD: 2/19/13

TheJenVaughn

The fullest mailbox of Online Commentaries & Diversions:

• Interview: Alex Dueben interviews Richard Sala about Delphine on CBR . "The main story, which is depicted with ruled borders, was always linear. But I allowed myself more room with the main character's inner life. All of that -- the memories, dreams, fantasies, wishful thinking -- all of that is depicted in panels with soft, cloud-like, non-ruled borders. And so I was able to add to the character's inner life -- his thoughts and fears and confusion -- as I went along." And, edit to the article, we also have The Hidden and The Grave Robber's Daughter available at comiXology.

• Interview: Wilfred Santiago is interviewed by Christopher Borelli about Bull on Parade for the Chicago Tribune and Michael Jordan's 50th birthday. "[Santiago] said a graphic novel seemed like a perfect medium for exploiting athleticism, then added: 'But also, Jordan, as a figure, never seemed that interested in satisfying people. Which is interesting to me.'"

• Plug: Tom Spurgeon on the Comics Reporter talks about TCJ 302, edited by Gary Groth, Kristy Valenti and Michael Dean. "There's an amazing Roy Crane section in there that's as good as you can imagine practical advice from a practical-minded comics craft master being. The Sendak is hilarious and sad." Spurgeon gives a review for TCJ 301 as well. "Publishing Groth's big interviews in print like this is an effective use of one of comics' most versatile thinkers and aiming a very good and only intermittent writer like Kreider at something as odd yet Journal-appropriate as the entirety of Cerebus seems to me fine editorial planning."

• Review: Page 45 reviews 7 Miles a Second by David Wajnarowicz, James Romberger and Marguerite Van Cook. "Romberger painfully captures the frailty of forms and tenderness of touch, but equally the delirium of David’s mad fucking visions and dreams. Marguerite Van Cook’s colours are virtually toxic…This is not a beautiful book; it’s an ugly book, a brilliant book, a Last Will & Testament which I hope you will hear," writes Stephen L. Holland.

• Interview: James Romberger interviews Tom Kaczynski about Beta Testing the Apocalypse on the Hooded Utilitarian. Kaczynski made a list, we love those: "Overall I can cite 3 primary ways I use color in the book.
1. Color as a naturalistic element (as lighting, depth, etc.)
2. Color as pure design element.
3. Color as information."

• Review: Julien of the D&Q Bookstore is excited to read Moto Hagio's The Heart of Thomas. "Like the other Magnificent 49ers (the legendary first wave of female comic artists), Hagio's work is fearlessly avant-garde and visually stunning. Over her fruitful and now slightly less under-translated career, she has set the bar for all manga artists to follow, up to this day, and not just shonen-ai or shoujo mangaka."

• Review: Publishers Weekly loves Tales Designed to Thrizzle Vol. 2 by Michael Kupperman. "Kupperman deploys a stunning arsenal of art styles to bring home the laughs, from stilted woodcut art to a kind of Tintin lite…Kupperman is pretty much his own genre of humor now."

• Interview: Gary Panter was interviewed by Nick Gazin on VICE on Dal Tokyo, creativity and other fun. Gazin describes the book, "…trying to follow the story like it was a traditional comic is hard it feels like we're seeing the inside of Panter's brain. We go where he wants to take us and the landscape reflects his current mood and interests. Not everybody can do whatever they feel like and make it as interesting as this book."

• Plug: Jeff Kinney from Diary of a Wimpy Kid reminisces about his father and their shared love of Carl Bark's duck comics at Disney Dads. Kinney says, "I consider [Carl Bark's comics] to be the best form of storytelling I’ve ever read. My father always made sure to leave the comics page open in the newspaper in the morning so we kids could read them. I think that without my father, I wouldn’t have ended up on the career path that I’m on.

• Review: Johanna Draper Carlson reviews Young Romance edited by Michel Gagné on Comics Worth Reading. "It’s neat to read these long-ago tales of girls acting out of jealousy or determining how to make the right love decision in such an easy-to-hold hardcover with restored coloring. I love seeing more of this forgotten period of comic history, particularly since it was so widely popular and yet so ignored these days," writes Carlson.

• Plug: Jim Hanley's Universe blog creates The Definitive Love & Rockets Reading Guide and Full Bibliography by Jeffrey O. Gustafson to whet your appetite for our Love and Rockets Companion and Reader. "Featuring mature, character based stories, the quality in art and story of the work of [Hernandez brothers] represent the high-water mark of independent, creator-owned comics, indeed comics period."

• Plug: Peter Bagge 'hates' on Beavis and Butthead in this month's MAD magazine, reported by Paste.

• Plug: Noah Van Sciver continues the funny at Denver Westword with the 10 biggest buzzkills at a concert. Read this and laugh or maybe recognize the horrible person that you are.

Cover Uncovered: Walt Disney's Donald Duck: The Old Castle's Secret by Carl Barks

mike

We love our last-minute tinkering! We switched out one of the panels on the cover artwork of Walt Disney's Donald Duck: The Old Castle's Secret by Carl Barks, to give us that extra spookitude we were looking for, so it looks a little different from the first version we showed you. There's some creepy doings a(webbed)foot at the ancestral Clan McDuck castle of Dismal Downs! This new, improved version got the thumbs-up from our pals at Disney and it's off at the printer for release in June. We should have some previews put together for you in the near future; you can get an early jump on pre-order right now.

Fantagraphics' Diamond PREVIEWS for April 2013

mike

This month's Diamond Previews catalog is out now and in it you'll find our usual 2-page spread (download the PDF) with our releases scheduled to arrive in your local comic shop in April 2013 (give or take — release dates are likely to have changed since the issue went to press). We're pleased to offer additional and updated information about these upcoming releases here on our website, to help shops and customers alike make more informed ordering decisions.

(Retailers! These updates are also available in a new monthly email newsletter especially for you. If you're not already getting it and would like to sign up, contact us and we'll add you to the mailing list! And don't forget, we have a ton of digital resources which are at your disposal for your website and social networks, which you can learn more about here.)

Hit the links below for complete info on each title, and see the whole lineup here.

Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Color Sundays Vol. 1: "Call of the Wild"

By Floyd Gottfredson

$29.99 / HC / 280 pgs / FC / 10.5 x 8.5

Floyd Gottfredson’s Mickey Mouse series makes the jump from black and white to vibrant color. Many of these classic Sunday strips from 1932-1935 have never before been reprinted and have been restored from Disney’s archives and enhanced with a meticulous recreation of the strips’ original color. Call of the Wild also brings you more than 30 pages of supplementary features such as rare behind-the-scenes art, vintage publicity material, and fascinating commentary by a prismatic pack of Disney scholars. This is a collection that fans have been seeking for a lifetime!

More Details

The Complete Crumb Comics Vol. 5: "Happy Hippy Comix" – New Reprint

By Robert Crumb

$19.99/ SC / 144 pgs / PC / 8.5 x 11

The Complete Crumb Comics Vol. 8: "The Death of Fritz the Cat" – New Reprint

By Robert Crumb

$19.99/ SC / 144 pgs / PC / 8.5 x 11

Continuing our ongoing commitment to keep the canonic Complete Crumb Comics series available, we reprint two of most often- demanded volumes. Vol. 5: “Happy Hippy Comix” spotlights the period from late-1967 through 1969, including the second issue of ZAP Comix, the introduction of Angelfood McSpade, Mr. Natural, a long Fritz story, an alternate version of the Cheap Thrills album cover, and more! Vol. 8: “Starring Fritz the Cat” covers the years 1971-1972 and features one of Crumb’s most notorious comics, “The Death of Fritz the Cat,” as well as “Whiteman Meets Bigfoot,” the complete Big Ass #2 and Mr. Natural #2, wild jams and loads of photos!

Vol. 5 Details • Vol. 8 Details

Love and Rockets: The Covers

By Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez

$35.00 / SC / 144 pgs / FC / 10 x 13

Fantagraphics proudly presents 20 years of Love And Rockets covers collated in full-color, virtually all of them without logos or cover text for maximum visual impact so the viewer can better appreciate these iconic images created by Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez. With over 150 classic covers, this will be a gorgeous, oversized art book and the perfect gift for fans of the series that virtually defines alternative comics.

More Details

New School

By Dash Shaw

$35.00 / HC / 340 pgs / FC / 8.5 x 11

From the author of Bottomless Belly Button comes a stunning new graphic novel set in a fantastical amusement park. New School follows a teenage boy’s search for his brother, which leads at first to wonderment and delight but ultimately to alienation and disillusionment. Unlike anything in the history of the comics medium, New School is at once funny and deadly serious, easily readable while wildly artistic, personal and political, familiar and completely new.

More Details & 18-Page Excerpt 3 New Stories

By Dash Shaw

$3.99 / Comic / 32 pgs / FC / 6.5 x 10

This one-shot comic book will feature three all-new, full-color short stories that explore var- ied dystopian societies. From a Sherlock Holmes-style investiga- tor who must complete his high school degree to filmed ‘volun- tary’ nudity to prison camps full of jaded children, Shaw pens each story with his signature style and unique spin, all in 32 pages.

More Details & Preview Images His Wife Leaves Him

By Stephen Dixon

$29.99 / HC / 600 pgs / Prose / 6 x 9

Stephen Dixon’s first novel in five years is an intimate exploration of the interior life of a husband who has lost his wife. His Wife Leaves Him is Dixon’s most important and ambitious novel, featuring his tenderest and funniest writing to date, and represents the stylistic and thematic summation of his writing life.

(Updated release: June 2013)

More Details

Heroic Tales: The Bill Everett Archives Vol. 2
By Bill Everett; Edited by Blake Bell

$39.99 / HC / 240 pgs / FC / 7.25 x 10.5

Over 200 pages of never- before-reprinted work from Golden-Age-Of-Comics legend Bill Everett. Spanning the years 1938- 1940 and culled from such magazines as Amazing Mystery Funnies and Amazing-Man Comics, Heroic Tales features vintage characters such as Amazing-Man, Hydroman, Skyrocket Steele, The Chameleon plus many more. This is a stunning companion to Fantagraphics’ critically acclaimed 2010 Everett retrospective, Fire and Water, and features beautifully restored, full-color stories plus an introduction about the man, his art, the history of the era, and his relationship with Marvel Comics.

(Updated release: June 2013)

More Details

The End

By Anders Nilsen

$19.99 / HC / 80 pgs / PC / 8.5 x 11

Assembled from work done in Anders Nilsen’s sketchbooks over the course of the year following the death of his fiancée, The End is
a collection of short strips about loss, paralysis, waiting and transformation. Originally released in magazine form, The End has been updated and expanded to more than twice its origi-nal length, including a 16-page full-color section.

More Details & 11-Page Excerpt

The Squirrel Machine – Now in Paperback

By Hans Rickheit

$19.99 / SC / 192 pgs / BW / 7 x 10

An anachronistic parable for the convulsive elite — now in paperback. Meticulous, strange, and hauntingly beautiful, this evocative and enigmatic book will ensure the inquisitive reader a spleenful of cerebral serenity that will take exposure to vast quantities of mediocrity to dispel.

Order this item from the Previews Adult catalog!

More Details & 15-Page Excerpt

Offered Again:

What Is All This? by Stephen Dixon
Big Baby (New Printing!) by Charles Burns
Skin Deep (New Printing!) by Charles Burns
Palestine (New Printing!) by Joe Sacco
Fire & Water: Bill Everett, the Sub-Mariner and the Birth of Marvel Comics by Blake Bell
Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Vol. 3: High Noon at Inferno Gulch by Floyd Gottfredson
Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Vol. 4: House of the Seven Haunts by Floyd Gottfredson
Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw
The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D. by Dash Shaw
Folly: The Consequences of Indiscretion by Hans Rickheit

Daily OCD 1/15/13

TheJenVaughn

The gnarliest gnome of Online Commentaries and Diversions:

• Review: Zack Davisson of Comics Bulletin reads the weighty Castle Waiting Vol 1 (softcover) by Linda Medley. "It is whimsical, unexpected, packed with a deep knowledge of folklore and fairytales, irreverent, interesting and a whole lot of other adjectives that add up to something great… I would rank it up there with Bone in terms of just being a sheer delight to read…I'm a 40-year old guy, and I don't really see gender issues coming into play here -- Castle Waiting is just a great comic, with interesting characters and an addictive story for everyone who likes charm and wit and fantasy."

• Review: Richard Sala's latest fairy tale of woe Delphine gets a starred review from Publishers Weekly. "…Sala’s era-conflating fairy tale is coated in the kind of atmosphere the artist is known for: a creepy, gnarled darkness that evokes German Expressionism, Universal horror films of the 1930s, and secrets hiding in dank old mansions and haunted forests."

• Review: The Hidden by Richard Sala is reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux on I Reads You. "This graphic novel is essentially a parable about ethical-free, morality-light, cutting-edge science. Why do anything? Why play God? The answer to both questions is 'because we can.' 'Damn the consequences' is The Hidden’s unspoken refrain."

• Plug: Chris Mautner of Robot 6 writes the list for the 6 Most Criminially Ignored Books of 2012. Carol Tyler's You'll Never Know Book 3: Soldier's Heart lands on the list. "While Tyler’s discursive, homey storytelling style might not appeal to everyone, she proves in these pages she is a cartoonist capable of producing sequences of exquisite beauty and deep emotional heft. It’s a book — and a series — that deserves more attention than it’s gotten so far."

• Plug: Paul Gravatt releases his Best of 2012 list and for Best Autobiography/Biography..."in the end what floored me, in its level of craft and care, complexity and clarity, was the third and final book of Carol Tyler’s You’ll Never Know."

• Review: The Complete Syndicated Pogo Vol. 2 "Bona Fide Balderdash" gets reviewed by the Chicago Tribune. Michael Robbins trills on about Walt Kelly, "As brilliant as Kelly's political satire is, it's only one reason 'Pogo' might be the greatest comic strip of all time (its only rivals are 'Krazy Kat' and 'Peanuts,' both of which Fantagraphics has also been reprinting in gorgeously designed editions)."

• Review: Bookgasm doubles their pleasure by reading TWO of our EC books. JT Lindroos starts with Corpse on the Imjin! by Harvey Kurtzman. "The ability of Kurtzman to have conflicting viewpoints to the myriad stories and situations within this volume is what makes it so rich." Lindroos continues onto Came the Dawn by Wallace Wood, "His line is much more precise and realistic than anything in the Kurtzman volume, but he has a flair for a dynamic layout and positioning of characters that pulls the art to the kind of pulpy mayhem for which EC is best known."

• Plug: Chris Mautner of Robot 6 writes the list for the 6 Most Criminially Ignored Books of 2012. Malcom McNeill's The Lost Art of Ah Pook is on there. "Ten or 20 years ago the release of an long-lost and unfinished comic by [William Burroughs] would generate a lot more heat than the release of this work…did. Perhaps now that comics have garnered more respect from the outside world, this sort of thing impresses us a lot less…Still, there’s some amazing, hallucinatory imagery here (and in McNeill’s companion memoir, Observed While Falling), to marvel at and make you wish the project had reached some better form of completion."

• Interview: Tom Kaczynski of Beta Testing the Apocalypse is interviewed on Rumpus by Greg Hunter and answers deep questions like "throughout the book we see instances of an object or system standing in for an even larger system—worlds upon worlds of simulacra. Do you believe in any sort of binary between authentic and inauthentic modes of experience?"

• Interview (audio): Ross Reynolds of KUOW interviews Jaime Hernandez on the secret to 30 Years of Love and Rockets. Did you know BLUE FOOD was a title in the running for L&R? Jaime mentions the influence of the punk movement and DIY culture on their work.

• Review: Comic Book Daily reads the masterful Carl Barks stories in Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge: Only a Poor Old Man. Anthony Falcone states "I would like to see more companies take Fantagraphics’ approach to the reproduction and presentation of material.…These are true 'all-ages' stories that can be enjoyed by adults and with your children at story time."

• Plug: Kuriousity plugged Moto Hagio's The Heart of Thomas as it "is probably the best example of the earliest of boys’ love works. It helped define the genres of shoujo and boys’ love as we know them today, and I couldn’t wish for anything more substantial as a starting point," writes Lissa Pattillo.

• Plug: Spacehawk by Basil Wolverton gets the hi-how-are-ya? from the D&Q Bookstore. Jade says "This is one cool book folks, with intense colors, funny looking characters, and very weird plots…Even the end papers are extraordinary!"

• Plug: Holy hot suit, did you see Lorenzo Mattotti's NEW YORKER cover? Damn. If you like that, check out his most recent graphic novel The Crackle of the Frost (written by Jorge Zentner) or 2011's Stigmata (written by Claudio Piersanti).

• Plug: Maria Popova's Brain Pickings features animation and comics pages from Lilli Carré's Heads or Tails which is "a sublime collection of Carré’s short story comics from the past five years, was published last November and is an absolute treat."

• Plug: All About Jazz looks at Kevin Avery's Everything is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson. "Avery's account of Nelson's life reveals an almost claustrophobic existence of the writer in general…Paul Nelson may have only been equaled by Greil Marcus for sheer love of music and music writing. He went entirely too gently into that good night, leaving the majority of us in the shadows…" writes C. Michael Bailey.

• Plug: Harriet Staff of the Poetry Foundation reads The Last Vispo edited by Nico Vassilakis and Craig Hill. "… the anthology highlights the way the digital and computerized tools of visual poetry are transforming not only visual poetry, but how we experience all poetry," notes Staff and Alison Watkins.

• Plug: TV superstar Lena Dunham's ideal bookshelf on Vulture includes Daniel Clowes' Ghost World.

• Plug: Buzzfeed cracks open Sean T Collins' David Bowie sketchbook and out jumps some of your favorite artists: Tom Kaczynski, Michael Kupperman, Jaime Hernandez, Gilbert Hernandez, Gary Panter, Charles Burns and Johnny Ryan. GO LOOK!

Daily OCD 12/29/2012

TheJenVaughn

The most returned sweater of Online Commentaries & Diversions:

• Interview: Tom Spurgeon of the Comics Reporter interviews cartoonist Carol Tyler about her You'll Never Know series about her father, WWII and family bonds. He starts of the interview right, "You've lived with these books for a very long time. How did it feel to get some closure on this work?". Click here for the answers and more.

• Review: Comics Bulletin looks at You'll Never Know Book 3: Soldier's Heart by Carol Tyler. Jason Sacks states "You'll Never Know is a breathtaking graphic novel because Carol Tyler is honest enough to know that stories are seldom as tidy nor as dysfunctional as they seem on TV…It's a tremendously real story straight from the heart, told by a master cartoonist."

• Plug: Comic Book Resources and Brian Cronin investigate the legend around the FBI examining Pogo comic strips searching for hidden messages.

• Review: George Gene Gustines loves Pogo Vol. 2 by Walt Kelly, which is now a NY Times Bestseller. Check it out either at the New York Times or our lil' write-up.

• Plug: Geekosystem has suggestions for our 20% sale like Pogo by Walt Kelly. "Are you a Calvin and Hobbes fan, dear reader?…If you are a fan, we’d point you towards one of the strip’s inspirations, Walt Kelly’s classic Pogo cartoons. By turns razor-edged political satire and old-fashioned slapstick comedy gold, these strips are being given their due."

• Review: Reality Studio looks and relooks at Observed While Falling and The Lost Art of Ah Pook Is Here by Malcolm McNeill on his collaboration with William S. Burroughs. Jan Herman writes "Observed While Falling brings a fresh analytical eye to the familiar Burroughsian fixations — synchronicity and doppelgangers, control systems, the word as virus, the number 23 — that dominate this memoir, while still offering a straightforward chronicle of the author’s relationship with le maître. Luckily for us, McNeill is an artist who can write. Really write.…the hard work, the exhilaration and, ultimately, the frustration of a project that failed to achieve its original goal — is largely treated with brilliant introspection and loving grace."

• Review: Forbidden Planet International continues their Best of 2012 lists. Douglas Noble places Chris Wright's Blacklung on the list. "Unforgettable, and Wright's beautiful, scratchy art is a treat, like EC Segar working with Yuichi Yokoyama designs."

• Review: Comics Alliance announced their Stephanie Brown Memorial awards. On Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse: House of Seven Haunts by Floyd Gottfredson, Chris Sims writes, "They're one of the few things that I get excited about to the point of giddiness, and House of the Seven Haunts! was the best volume yet…It's one wild adventure after another, and they're all done with an incredible skill that still holds up almost 80 years later."

• Review: Comics Alliance announced their Stephanie Brown Memorial awards. The Furry Trap by Josh Simmons makes the list "The faux-Batman comic, which details the Bat's horrifically misanthropic ways, might be a reason to check out the contents of this hardcover collection of Simmons stories, but the entire volume is full of troubling tales worth your attention…The unexpected happens, consistently, and that's about the only thing you can be sure of," states Tim Callahan.

• Plug: NO releases its Best Comics of 2012 list and Sean Collins breathtakingly writes about The Furry Trap, "Josh Simmons shits in your heart, again and again in ways that grow exponentially more refined and chilling as the book progresses. A perfect statement of rancid intent."

• Review: Comics Alliance announced their Stephanie Brown Memorial awards. Designer Dylan Todd writes on Barack Hussein Obama by Steven Weissman. "There's something vaguely Peanuts-esque at work here, with a cast of recognizable characters… all with their own quirks and personalities, all delivering punchlines while the specter of death and soul-crushing doubt hangs over their heads. It's funny, but like any good comedy, it's tied up in uncomfortable and relatable truths…It's surreal, nonsensical, and a little depressing -- so, huh, maybe it's an accurate portrayal of political life in the 21st century after all."

• Review: Timothy Callahan of Comic Book Resources looks back on 2012 and Steven Weissman's Barack Hussein Obama is #20 on his Best Of list. "It's just such a fragmented work of narrative, but Weissman plays with repetition and transformation in a near-musical way, and that ends up mattering most…This comic is difficult to discuss without sounding ridiculous, but I can't stop thinking about its unsettling strangeness."

• Review: Paste Magazine's guest writers Nathan Bulmer and Kevin Huizenga pick out some of our books as the Best of 2012 including Steven Weissman's Barack Hussein Obama, Jason's Athos in America, and Chris Wright's Blacklung. Bulmer looks at Weissman, "I have so many feelings about this book. This, to me, is the most gorgeous book of the year and is one that I will be returning to often."

• Plug: Geekosystem has suggestions for our 20% sale like Athos in America by Jason. "Fact: New Jason books are weird, funny, and always bring something new and unexpected to the table. Conjecture: This book probably deserves a place on your shelf…"

• Review: The Village Voice looks at Walt Disney's Donald Duck: "A Christmas for Shacktown" by Carl Barks. "Sprightly, inventive, wise, and more exciting than 60-year-old-duck tales should be, Barks's work already stands at the top of any list of history's greatest comics. It should also rank high among stories, period," says Alan Scherstuhl.

• Review: KC Carlson of Comics Worth Reading dives not into a vault of money but Carl Barks' books. While reading Uncle Scrooge: "Only a Poor Old Man" she can't help but write,"One way or another, all of these stories are classics (if not masterpieces) of early comic book storytelling. And not just for kids." When flipping to Donald Duck: "A Christmas for Shacktown" Carlson notes,"It’s probably one of the least sentimental Christmas stories around (and thus a favorite of many fans). It features an early example of Scrooge’s lack of charity, counterbalanced by his steadfast work ethic…I can’t say enough about how much I love these new Fantagraphics collections of this 'should always be in print' Carl Barks material."

• Review: Andrew Wheeler over at Anticks Musings enjoys Peanuts Vol. 17: 1983-1984 by THE Charles M. Schulz. Wheeler states, "they're reliably funny and occasionally moving. The deep sadness that used to manifest in Charlie Brown now comes up, less rawly, . . . For work done by the same one man, day after day, more than thirty years after he started that project, that's not just impressive, it's amazing."

• Review (audio): Panel Culture zeroes in on the holiday books from Fantagraphics. Walt Disney's Donald Duck: "A Christmas for Shacktown" is "blowing my mind with their Carl Barks' collections…such a great Christmas present to me…sweet and heartwarming." On Charlie Brown's Christmas Stocking, they suggest "If you know anyone who loves Charlie, Snoopy and the whole Peanuts gang then this is a good gift for them because they probably haven't read them before."

• Plug: Matt Price of NewsOK plugs our holiday books, Walt Disney's Donald Duck: "A Christmas for Shacktown" by Carl Barks and Charlie Brown's Christmas Stocking by Charles Schulz.

• Plug: That KPBS short documentary on Charles Schulz is making the rounds.

• Review (video): Jon Longhi in episode 2 of Having a Book Moment features Spacehawk by Basil Wolverton "who was an amazing underground cartoonist with exp, surrealist view of reality that created some of the I think, most unique comics ever invented. . ."

• Review: Robot 6 enjoys Spacehawk by Basil Wolverton. Chris Mautner writes "Wolverton’s Spacehawk has a vitality — at times it practically throbs with life — that the more static Stardust simply does not have. Spacehawk not only the best reprint project of the year, it’s the best reprint project of the past several years. It’s a revelation."

• Review: Comics Alliance announced their Best Comics of 2012. Basil Wolverton's Spacehawk "remind[s] you of some kind of Buck Rogers Technicolor serial as designed by Robert Crumb…Spacehawk is the freakishly charming sideshow to the more popular main event, but everyone who's seen its wonders would find themselves bored with what the guy in the big hat in the center ring is babbling on about," writes Tim Callahan

• Review: Comics Bulletin and Jason Sacks give Spacehawk by Basil Wolverton a rating of 4.5 outta 5 stars. "This book is really fucking exhilarating and awesome and eye-popping, and you have to add it to your bookshelf if you loved I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets…Spacehawk is lunatic, manic genius."

• Plug: Glitz-2-Go by Diane Noomin is ranked as #5 on the Best of the Small Press 2012 on Karen's Library Blog by guest writer and cartoonist, Jennifer Hayden.

• Review: Delphine by Richard Sala gets BoingBoinged. Mark Frauenfelder writes, "I've long admired the gothy work of cartoonist Richard Sala. He delicately balances the line between horror and humor as few can. His latest graphic novel, Delphine, is his darkest effort to date."

• Review: Comic Book Resources counts down the Top 100 Comics of 2012 and includes The Hypo by Noah Van Sciver at #54. Brian Cronin states "Van Sciver spotlights a fascinating time in Lincoln's life where he barely resembles the man who would one day become one of the most famous presidents in U.S. history…The artwork is strong, as is the research." Cronin's own Top 10 Comics of 2012 listed Van Sciver at #2.

• Review: Panel Patter lists the Favorite Graphic Novels of 2012 and Noah Van Sciver is #2 for The Hypo. Rob McMonigal writes "Given that Van Sciver specializes in characters who are at their wit's end and have horrible things going on in their lives, he's picture perfect in his presentation."

• Interview: Tom Spurgeon interviews editor and fan Marc Sobel on living life breathing Love and Rockets at the Comics Reporter. Sobel started writing, critiquing the Hernandez Brothers work, interviewing them that led to writing and co-editing The Love and Rockets Reader and The Love and Rockets Companion, coming out next year. Sobel pondered, "I decided to read Love & Rockets in its original format and blog about each issue as a way to teach myself about one of the medium's classics while still keeping active as a writer."

• Review: Comic Book Resources counts down the Top 100 Comics of 2012 and #35 is Love and Rockets: New Stories #5. "…the Bros turned in another installment of comics that are simultaneously agonizing to witness and darkly funny while they’re serving up stone-cold dramatic situations," writes Brian Warmoth

• Plug: Gilbert Hernandez receives some attention from Sean T. Collins at Carnival of Souls in regards to upcoming Julio's Day and D&Q's Marble Season. "A now-completed collection of work he serialized during Love & Rockets‘ second volume and a pseudoautobiography, these could send him in the direction of critical and audience reappraisal that the outré sex and violence of his recent comics have denied him."

• Interview (video): As part of the 30th Anniversary celebration, Vegas Seven posted a short interview with Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez conducted at Alternative Reality Comics in Las Vegas.

• Plug: Glyn Dillon writes the Best of the Year 2012 for Forbidden Planet International and shares the love for Jaime Hernandez's God and Science. "I'm not really a fan of the super hero genre, but he delivers it in such a fun way, it's hard to resist it's charm. It almost feels as though it's from an alternative universe, a universe where super hero comics are good."

• Review: The Chicago Tribune gets all fancy to read our EC Library Comics: Corpse on the Imjin by Harvey Kurtzman and Came the Dawn by Wallace Wood. "Kurtzman often evinces a grim humor in these war comics, they don't elicit laughs. His beautiful line-work — thick black strokes and quick black curves — captures the grit of battle and its aftermath: Corpses reach up from rubble, cones of fire erupt from gun barrels." Michael Robbins continues, "Wood's alternately claustrophobic and desolate brushwork lurches into life: spreading puddles and slanting rain, Rock Hudson jawlines and Jane Wyman curves, vertiginous angles, hallucinatory things with too many eyes."

•Plug: NO releases its Best Comics of 2012 list and Sean T Collins recommends Prison Pit 4 by Johnny Ryan. "Choose your monsters-transforming-and-pursuing-ultimate-murder poison: if you favour grossness, reality-breaking sci-fi and heavy manga inflections, go with Ryan."

• Plug: Michael Kupperman's Tales Designed to Thrizzle #8 is ranked 81 out of the Top 100 Comics of 2012 according to Comic Book Resources. "The latest 'Tales Designed to Thrizzle' very well might be the funniest edition of the annual comic yet! Kupperman's outrageously unpredictable sense of humor is on full force in this issue" states Brian Cronin. Cronin's own Top 10 Comics of 2012 listed Kupperman at #4.

• Review: Matt D. Wilson of Comics Alliance talks about Tales Designed to Thrizzle #8 by Michael Kupperman in the Best of Comics 2012. "There was no other comic this year like this… Kupperman nailed it."

• Review: Comic Attack bangs out the Best 15 All-Ages Titles of 2012. Hal Foster's Prince Valiant is on the list as Drew says "the detail and quality of the art alone along with the more literary form of narration provided the base and inspiration for dozens of artists and imitators after that, all these years still being just as entertaining as when first published, here from Fantagraphics never looking as good as collected before."

• Review: Nick Hanover of Comics Bulletin sits awhile with Tom Kaczynski's new book. Beta Testing the Apocalypse "is weird as all fuck and funny as all shit, a Singles Going Steady for the art comix crowd that merges Burroughs' cut-up commentary with Ballard's keen tech consumer insight and siliconic wit…is where we should be looking if we want to know what comes next, if we want to discern which hip priest had their ear closer to the ground."

• Interview: The Comics Journal's Tim Holder interviews Tom Kaczynski (cartoonist of Beta Testing the Apocalypse)on his comics and publishing endeavors.

• Plug: Jade at the D&Q Bookstore holds onto some serious love for Lilli Carré's Heads or Tails. "Her stories always incorporate some sense of magic realism, where bizarre occurrences are treated as if they were just another aspect of daily life. Equally impressive is Carré’s artistic versatility, always finding the appropriate style, palette and medium to tell her dreamy tales."

• Review: Cosmic Comix reviews The Crackle of the Frost by Mattotti and Zentner. "The story itself is amazing. It’s a story about loneliness, loss, and, most of all, fear…It’s a rare feat in which the words, although separate from the picture, are in perfect synch with it… If you are looking for a book that truly pushes the comics medium, then this is the book for you," writes David Lee.

•Review: Music magazine Ugly Things Issue 34 reviews Kevin Avery's book. Alan Bisbort writes "Everything is an Afterthought would, in another age, be considered 'essential reading' for anyone even remotely hip…these bokos remind us of how deeply some people cared for the music and its larger pop culture that many of us now take for granted."

• Plug: Geekosystem has suggestions for our 20% sale like Joe Sacco's book. "Safe Area Gorazde is a great introduction to his work and to the concept of comics journalism as a whole. This new special edition with notes from the author, updates on the characters, and a behind the scenes look at the creative process is must-own material.

• Plug: Geekosystem has suggestions for our 20% sale like I Shall Destroy All Civilized Planets by Fletcher Hanks. "Weirdness on the highest scale prevails in these collections…these delightfully strange relics deserve a place in the library of any comics art history completist or student of the medium."

• Plug: Filth and Fabulations looks at books for 2013 and The Astonishing Exploits of Lucien Brindavoine by Jacques Tardi is on there. "This book is perhaps a slightly less mature piece than some of Tardi's later self-authored work, but it is filled with a vibrancy and a dark humor that makes it a thing not to be missed, especially so for those who enjoy his amusing riffs on traditional genre pastiches, with a nice dose of violence and sarcasm thrown in". In addition to Goddamn this War! by Tardi and Jean-Pierre Verney. "It looks very promising, and seems to be more of a single narrative spanning the entirety of the war, rather than the looser vignette-style format of the earlier book."

Daily OCD 12/19/12

TheJenVaughn

The last peanut of a day of Online Commentaries & Diversions aka the news you missed while present shopping, latke eating and flying:

• Review: The Comics Journal and Rucker crack the two books focusing on Malcom McNeill and William S. Burrough's artistic collaboration, Observed While Falling (the memoir) and The Lost Art of Ah Pook is Here. (the art book) "The art is awesome, the memoir is engaging. . .Ah Pook is in a characteristic style of Burroughs’s middle period. He mixes a true-adventure story with bitter anti-establishment scenarios, gay sexual fantasies, science-fictional visualizations of chimerical mutants, and apocalyptic visions of a biological plague. . .The results are staggering—the best pictures of dicks that I’ve ever seen. . . ."

On the memoir "One of the pleasures of McNeill’s memoir, Observed While Falling, is reading about hear about his conversations with Burroughs. Old Bill laid down some tasty aphorisms. . . Ah Pook is a word/image virus. Study these new books and enjoy the disease."

• Interview: Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez of Love and Rockets are interviewed by Tim Hodler, Dan Nadel and Frank Santoro on The Comics Journal. Jaime talks about becoming more popular cartoonists, "So Gilbert and I kind of set up our own ground where we go. We go, you love Raw? Raw’s East Coast? Love and Rockets is West Coast. And they go, 'So West Coast is primitive and old-fashioned?' Fine. It’s not art school."

• Review: Comics Alliance features several of our box sets on their Holiday Gift Guide: Deluxe Editions. On the Love and Rockets Library Collection, by Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez Andy Khouri states, “This indie comics mainstay has been going for nearly 30 years, making Love and Rockets as intimidating to some new readers as even the densest superhero mythologies. Luckily, Fantagraphics has made the Los Bros Hernandez saga about a massive cast of startlingly lifelike characters digestible in the form of affordable reprint volumes published in chronological order."

• Plug: Ode to Love and Rockets and Sonic Youth by a fan on Buzzfeed.

• Review: Douglas Wolk reviews Harvey Kurtzman’s EC stories in Corpse on the Imjin! for the New York Times. "Kurtzman’s writing could be bombastic — nearly all of these stories’ titles end in exclamation points — but, as the United States became mired in the Korean War, his reeling disgust at the horrors of war (and his thick, slashing brush strokes) made for shockingly bold rhetoric."

•Review: The Atlantic lists Mark Twain's Autobiography 1910-2010 by Michael Kupperman as one of The Best Books I Read This Year. Chris Heller says "Kupperman’s brilliance isn’t just in his humor, though. Mark Twain’s Autobiography is meant to be read in small doses, no more than half a dozen pages at a time. Trust me: You don’t want to gorge on a book that’s this weirdly amusing. But after a peek into Kupperman’s hysterically twisted mind, you’ll keep wanting to go back for more."

• Plug: Liquid Television spotlights Michael Kupperman, Mark Twain's Autobiography 1910-2010 and Tales Designed to Thrizzle Vols. 1 and 2 ."You may recognize him (or not) from some of his comedy writing for legit platforms (SNL, Huff Post, etc). He does a comic called Tales Designed to Thrizzle that’s pretty good."

• Review: The Denver Westword is proud of their hometown hero, Noah Van Sciver, and his critical acclaim for The Hypo. Read on!

• Review: Comics Bulletin releases its 2012 Best Graphic Novel List and The Hypo by Noah Van Sciver makes it. "Van Sciver's toolkit includes the pens and pins of pathos and pain, self-doubt and angst, as much as it contains determination and fortitude. The Lincoln of The Hypo transcends his time, place, and even (or maybe especially) his name. . . It stands as a true example of the capabilities of this medium to deliver stories in a truly visceral manner," writes Daniel Elkin.

• Review: Unshelved comics review The Hypo by Noah Van Sciver. Gene Ambaum writes,"The mood of Lincoln’s life in Springfield, Illinois, is well-expressed via the rough-hewn, cross-hatched skies, floorboards, and backgrounds."

• Review: Tim Callahan has nothing but love for Spacehawk by Basil Wolverton on Comic Book Resources. He states, "Wolverton's world is a weird and ugly and beautifully innocently horrible charmingly delightful one, and it has more in common with the absurd genre riffs from something like Pendleton Ward's Adventure Time or Jesse Moynihan's Forming or Tom Gauld's Goliath than it does the bland superhero melodrama of 'Marvel Mystery Comics'."

• Review: Comics Bulletin's Favorite Reprints Books of 2012 include Gary Panter's Dal Tokyo and our Carl Barks reprints. In reference to Carl Barks' Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck, "I would not hesitate to say that Fantagraphics’ reprints of Barks’ Duck comics may very well be the best collection series that any comic company is doing today! . . Each story is funny, smart and just plain fun and Fantagraphics treat each and every panel on the page with care and detail," states Nick Boisson. Jason Sacks writes "[Dal Tokyo is] a freaking godsend from the reprint editors at Fantagraphics because it unearthed an amazing, surreal, brilliant lost classic that's like an artifact from some amazing parallel dimension.. . Readers are asked to bring our perceptions to these pages, to bring our intelligence and passion and appreciation for abstraction and love for everything that feels different and yet the same as everyday life."

• Review: School Library Journal files Walt Disney's Donald Duck: A Christmas for Shacktown by Carl Barks in the Dewey (Huey and Louey) decimal of their hearts. J. Caleb Mozzocco says "[It] features another 200 pages of master cartooning from 'The Good Duck Artist' in a nicely produced bookshelf- or backpack-ready hardcover edition. . . the Barks books are great comics for kids and adult fans of the medium."

• Review: Uncle Scrooge: Only a Poor Old Man makes the Best of or Our Favorite Books of 2012 list on the Village Voice. Alan Scherstuhl states, “Sprightly, inventive, wise, and more exciting than 60-year-old-duck tales should be, Barks's work already stands at the top of any list of history's greatest comics. It should also rank high among stories, period.”

• Plug: J. Caleb Mozzocco reveals the many coats of Uncle Scrooge (SO FAR). Find a cut that works and get it in every color, right?

• Review: Brooklyn Based thinks Sexytime edited by Jacques Boyreau is for you and suggests books for reading and giving. "This book is a journey into the aesthetic of porn," states Jon Reiss.

• Interview: Alex Dueben interviews Lilli Carré on Comic Book Resources about comics and animation. "I loved designing and arranging the [Heads or Tails]. Figuring out which pieces to include and the best order for them took quite a while, since I wanted each story to speak to the one before and after it, and to have a good flow despite the shift in styles. It was like making a high-stakes mix tape."

• Review: North Adams Transcript and John Seven look at Heads or Tails by Lilli Carré. "The multi-faceted Lilli Carre -- author, illustrator, animator -- presents stories that are as gentle as they are cryptic, in which the darkness of her themes meld perfectly with the sweetness of her style. . .Carre’s short work is collected and celebrated, revealing a creator of power, easily on the level with lauded types like Chris Ware."

• Review: Hooded Utilitarian makes it through Josh Simmons' The Furry Trap (probably with all the lights on in the house). James Romberger writes it is “packed cover to cover with shudders that cannot be anticipated, that grow worse as they progressively become less clearly defined. The last narrative is the most frightening because it is a straightforwardly articulated bit of cinematography on paper that, as with the most effective of suspenseful creations, gains in impact from what is never shown, the reader’s mind having already been prepared by the foregoing tales to expect the worst.”

• Review: Lettering master Todd Klein on the Complete Peanuts Vol. 18 1985-1986 . "Thirty-five years into his fifty year run on this strip, Charles Schulz continues to keep me smiling and laughing. . .Highly recommended."

• Review: Comics Alliance features several of our box sets on their Holiday Gift Guide: Deluxe Editions. On The Complete Peanuts Collection box sets by Charles M Schulz. Andy Khouri writes, “Reprinted in chronological order with the highest production values, any one of these books would make an auspicious addition to any bookshelf.”

• Review: School Library Journal looks at Charlie Brown’s Christmas Stocking by Charles M. Schulz. J. Caleb Mozzocco says, "Schulz’s Peanuts has always been unique in its ability to speak to audiences of adults and children simultaneously. . . Nice then to have a comic that can speak to kids, adults and the little kids the adults used to be all at the same time—even if only for a quick 40 pages or so."

• Review: HeroesOnline looks at The Complete Syndicated Pogo Vol. 2 "Bona Fide Balderdash" by Walt Kelly. “Pogo certainly belongs on any informed list of the top 5 newspaper comic strips of all time. The artwork is stunning, the pacing is fast, the characters simply come alive on the page; the plot-lines are crazy and labyrinthine and above all hilarious . . . Fantagraphics does the Kelly oeuvre proud with beautiful production values and insightful introductory material,” states Andy Mansell.

• Review: Dungeon Quest 3 by Joe Daly is the Best of Year 2012 on the Forbidden Planet International site. Clark Burscough writes, “Deceptively simple looking artwork contains hidden depths, and the mythology that Joe Daly is building up around these characters and their world is starting to get properly out there.. . And on top of that – it’s laugh out loud funny. I can’t go into precisely why, because it’s also laugh out loud filthy. Something for everyone in these books.”

• Interview: Comic Book Resources and Alex Dueben interview James Romberger on his collaboration of 7 Miles a Second (and Post York). On his love of New York-centric books, “It is strange that I'll get used to an aspect of the landscape, but so often, I will come out to find it gone and replaced with something completely different. Still, I also love that shifting quality and the multiculturalism of the city; it is my primary subject,” says Romberger.

• Review: Listen, Whitey! on NPR Music for its MUSIC compilation. Matt Sullivan, assistant to author Pat Thomas, talks to Michaelangeo Matos about the project to accompany the book. "There's no way that Sony or EMI were going to [automatically] say yes to the Bob Dylan or John & Yoko tracks, because they get those requests all day. Years ago, Pat went to Bob Dylan's office and got those guys to approve it. The same thing with Yoko. . ."

• Plug: Speaking of 2013, Johanna Draper Carlson of Comics Worth Reading can't wait for Pretty in Ink: American Women Cartoonists by Trina Robbins to come out!

• Review (reprint): Publishers Weekly reissues their prime reviews on Blacklung, Heads or Tails, and Los Tejanos and Lost Cause .

• Plug: Nick Gazin of VICE posts pictures a friend sent of the Spain Rodriguez tribute murals made this month in Brooklyn.

• Plug: Why doesn’t Richard Sala take on the Caped Crusader? A question posed by Michael May on CBR.

• Plug: Johnny Ryan's Prison Pit shirts and vinyl figurines are on sale at Monster Worship for the truly tainted souls.

• Plug: Justin Hall (editor of No Straight Lines) has a new comic in the comics edition of SF Weekly. Enjoy!

Daily OCD 12/11/12

TheJenVaughn

The first* glass of spiked eggnog of Online Commentaries & Diversions:

• Review: Metroland's Simcoe reviews Walt Disney's Donald Duck: A Christmas for Shacktown by Carl Barks and The Complete Peanuts: 1985 to 1986 by Charles M. Schulz. Glenn Perrett states, "Reading Carl Bark's "Donald Duck" stories from 60 years ago was entertaining. The animation and colours are excellent and sections such as "Story Notes" [etc.] . . . complement the wonderful comics making this book a nice addition to any library." And "The Complete Peanuts: 1985 to 1986 are sure to make the holidays more entertaining and makes a nice gift and keepsake."

• Review: Noel Murray of The AV Club continues the Christmas coverage with Schulz's Charlie Brown's Christmas Stocking which "is mainly meant to serve as a nice little accessory to holiday decorations, to be brought out every December with the ornaments and Andy Williams records. For that reason, it’s hard to humbug it…" With Walt Disney's Donald Duck: "A Christmas for Shacktown" by Carl Barks, Murray notes "These stories—nearly all published in the early ’50s—are mostly non-Christmas-y, but the title tale is a sweet one. . . For those who do want a surefire present for the comics buff in their lives."

• Review: School Library Journal goes over some of the favorite holiday graphic novels of 2012 like Charlie Brown's Christmas Stocking by Charles Schulz. J. Caleb Mozzocco states "It’s beautifully designed, a breezy, five-minute read, and about the size of a Christmas card, making it a pretty great gift. And, this being Schulz’s Peanuts, it’s the sort of gift you’ll never grow out of." As for Carl Barks' holiday and title story in Walt Disney's Donald Duck: "A Christmas for Shacktown", "It’s one of about 20 of the top-notch comics in the book, which range from one-page gags to the sort of sprawling adventures Barks was best-known for."

• Review: Noel Murray of The AV Club takes a peak at Heads or Tails by Lilli Carré. "Carré loves to constrict her characters, because she knows that limiting their options won’t necessarily limit their imaginations. . . her comics work often has the feel of avant-garde cinema, as she weds surreal images to everyday situations to enchant audiences and spark ideas. . . "

• Review: Christopher Borrelli of The Chicago Tribune writes a loooong article on Lilli Carré and her new book Heads or Tails "that best captures the range, humor and vague sense of ennui she's made her name on. . . "

• Review: Noel Murray of The AV Club enjoys Tom Kacynski's Beta Testing the Apocalypse. "Kaczynski’s comics are frequently nightmarish, starting from a slightly askew place and then tipping further into darkness. . . But while his stories have characters and plots—often with haunting endings—they’re more like essays than conventional narratives."

• Review: Noel Murray of The AV Club finished the You'll Never Know series with Book 3: A Soldier's Heart by Carol Tyler. "This is Tyler’s magnum opus: her thoughts on art, work, relationships, music, war, and anything else that came to her mind while she was piecing together her dad’s story."

• Plug: About.com fills in the blanks of their Christmas Sex Book List by adding our most recent titles. On No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics edited by Justin Hall, Cory Silverberg slyly states "given the diversity of artists working today it's not a definitive collection, but it's sexy and joyful and difficult in parts, and definitely one to own." Meanwhile, Naked Cartoonists (edited by Gary Groth) contains "a number of stand outs among this overwhelmingly white, male collection of artists. And I imagine this could be a perfect gift for the right kind of comic nerd."

• Interview (audio): Dean Haspiel of Welcome to Trip City interviews Josh Simmons about The Furry Trap, Jessica Farm, living the life and accidental erections.

• Review: Danel Olson of the Weird Fiction Volume 3 writes on Richard Sala and The Hidden . "Sala has become one of my favorite American sequential artists because of his subtle tributes and expansions to four of the most memorable twentieth century American cartoonists - Charles Addams, Edward Gorey, Gahan Wilson, and Basil Wolverton. . . Forbidding and weird seem like weak adjectives for Sala's The Hidden, and I urge you to open it. . . Give a standing order to Fantagraphics for any noirishly weird fictions forthcoming from Sala."

• Review: Chris Estey of KEXP reviews the Bill Griffith collection called Bill Griffith: Lost and Found - Comics 1969-2003. Chris Estey writes that it is "a luxurious and generous Fantagraphics big book collection of his non-Zippy work, is required reading for those who may have missed his parodies and punk rock operas in the past, or want them all bound together. It’s also for those like me who were never really that much into Zippy in the first place."

• Plug: Dave Segal recants the events immediately following his Stranger article on Listen, Whitey! by Pat Thomas on the Stranger Slog. White supremacists got all sorts of angry at this history book and the white dude who wrote it.

• Plug: One step forward, two steps back. The Adele Blanc-Sec movie is inching along towards distribution in America. Johanna Draper Carlson gets the scoop on DVDs Worth Reading on Jacques Tardi's graphic novel adaptation.

• Plug: Negromancer reviews the film adaptation of Art School Confidential directed by Terry Zwigoff based on the comics of Daniel Clowes. "While Art School Confidential comes across as a satire of art schools, the faculty, and students, it is also a love story and youth relationship drama. It works well as all three."

*let's be real, it's like our tenth glass of that local dairy's eggnog

Daily OCD 12/7/12

TheJenVaughn

The cutest Carré animation of Online Commentaries & Diversions*:

• Review: Chris Sims on Comics Alliance looks at the first story (and title story) of the latest Carl Barks collection: Walt Disney's Donald Duck "A Christmas for Shacktown." Sims says, "At 32 pages, it's a sprawling epic (By Barks' standards, anyway) that hits those beautiful Holiday themes of altruism and the spirit of giving. Although to be fair, it does get a little closer to cannibalism than most other Christmas comics.

• Review: Speaking of Christmas comics, John Seven of the North Adams Transcript reads Charlie Brown's Christmas Stocking by Charles M. Schulz. "As with the best of Schulz's work, the humor alternates between deadpan and over the top, and the presentation of religion and holidays both is both irreverent and respectful at the same time. Schulz was a multi-faceted writer and could tackle contradictions through great simplicity. Charlie Brown's Christmas Stocking stands as gift from the past that is greater than the size of the package. It's a real treasure."

• Review (audio): Comic Books are Burning in Hell take you on a whirlwind, family road-trip of a podcast review of Gary Panter, Dal Tokyo and his occasional critics (Andrew Arnold). "Panter is very good at drawing altered states." "What was loose, scrappy and punk rock becomes much tighter." "The later stuff in here is the quote, unquote nicest drawing Gary has ever done, most acceptable comicswise." The evolution of one man's comics.

• Plug (video): Last Gasp makes a cute and cool holiday gift guide featuring Dal Tokyo by Gary Panter, Barack Hussein Obama by Steven Weissman and The Cartoon Utopia by Ron Reje, Jr.

• Plug: Creator of Barack Hussein Obama, Steven Weissman, runs around looking for vintage comics with Love and Rockets co-creator, Mario Hernandez at the Comics Alliance. Need a hot tip? "They stick a lot old stuff in between the new stuff so I always look for the brown spines,"says Mario.

• Review: On the North Adams Transcript, John Seven enjoys Charles Forsman, Oily Comics and The End of the Fucking World. "When I started, I didn't have a real plan for [TEOTFW]," Forsman said. "I just wanted it to be fun. After laboring over the other book, I wanted to have fun again, because when you're working on something for awhile, you can get bogged down in the details."

• Plug: On the Forbidden Planet International site, Simon Moreton praises The End of the Fucking World by Charles Forsman as "It evokes that intoxicating, teen slacker vibe, a cool, calm, detached horror and the intelligence of a well-paced, keenly told tale."

• Review: Filth and Fabulations includes Dungeon Quest 3 by Joe Daly in a Best of 2012 list. "The riffing on classic roleplaying tropes is often hilarious, but the true comedic brilliance of the series lies in the way Daly writes the often drawn out pages of dialogue between the main characters. He manages to capture the way people talk in real life perfectly."

• Review: MTV Geek's Best of Graphic Novel 2012 List includes Athos in America by Jason. "A series of short stories that put Jason's insecurities and imperfections on display in an occassionally uncomfortable and frequently moving way," states Eddie Wright.

• Review: MTV Geek's Best of Graphic Novel 2012 List counts Noah Van Sciver's The Hypo as Numbah One! "A big-budget movie can't capture the subtlety of Lincoln's personality like it's done here," states Valerie. Eddie Wright chimes in and says, "In Van Sciver's well-researched, moving portrait of the troubled president, he's painted as a nuanced, difficult, intriguing and most of all, human figure."

• Review: Noah Bertlatksy of The Hooded Utilitarian looks at Johnny Ryan's Prison Pit 4, the importance of genitals in an invulnerable society. "Prison Pit is a hyberbolic, endless series of incredibly gruesome, pointless, testosterone-fueled battles with muscles and bodily fluids spurting copiously in every direction. . . everybody, everywhere, is a sack of more or less constantly violated meat, to whom gender is epoxied (literally, in this sequence) as a means of more fully realizing the work of degradation."

• Plug: David Allen of the Daily Bulletin takes a look at all the comic strip reprints out currently, ready to read Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Strips Vol. 2 "Bona Fide Balderdash" by Walt Kelly. "Through his nonsense-spouting critters in the Okefenokee swamp, Kelly often satirized government and national politics, taking on the Red Scare and coining the phrase "We have met the enemy and he is us. But 'Pogo' also had slapstick combined with wordplay and whimsy. Nice to have 'Pogo' back."

• Plug: Ng Suat Tong deconstructs The Crackle of the Frost by Mattotti and Zentner on The Hooded Utilitarian.

*referring to Lilli Carré's looping animation she made for Heads or Tails! Too irresistable.

Daily OCD 12/5/12

TheJenVaughn

The most symmetrical cake slice of Online Commentaries & Diversions:

• Review: Publishers Weekly occasionally lets smart and famous people recommend books. Jeopardy Master Ken Jennings "skipped the obvious Marjane Satrapi and Alison Bechdel entries in favor of this lesser-known three-volume masterpiece, about Tyler’s complicated relationship with her distant dad, a World War II vet. With her playful, fluid brush line and busy patchwork of watercolor woodgrain, Tyler’s art looks like the past feels." Carol Tyler's complete series You'll Never Know is available.

• Review: Booklist Online cooks up a review from some Pogo (The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips Vol. 2: "Bona Fide Balderdash"). Ian Chipman writes, "[Walt Kelly's] hallmarks of deft wordplay, daft swamp critters, and poisonously sharp sociopolitical satire are in full blossom here. The highlight is the 1952 election season that saw Pogo’s first and entirely reluctant presidential run and the birth of the “I Go Pogo” slogan. Mimicking “I Like Ike. . . A must for all collections of comic-strip history."

• Plug: Forces of Geek throws out some good gift recommendations for kids like Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge "Only a Poor Old Man" by Carl Barks. "Comic books have always been an excellent gateway into reading, and when it comes to smart, imaginative and engaging, you don't have to go much further than Carl Barks. . . What better way to introduce your own Huey, Dewey or Louie to comics?"

• Review: Paste Magazines's 10 Best Collections of 2012 include two Fantagraphics titles. Hillary Brown loved Young Romance, by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby edited by Michel Gagné who "painstakingly restored them (without making them look exactly new, thus giving the book the feel of a vintage compilation that just happens to be in amazing shape). . . Simon and Kirby tried to bring as much excitement to primarily psychological and interpersonal goings-on as to punching and flying." And this might be the last year anything by Carl Barks is on the list, "We’ll just grant it permanent honorary status as the best of the best, like when John Larroquette removed himself from Emmy consideration after winning four straight for Night Court. . . [Walt Disney's Donald Duck "A Christmas for Shacktown] once again proves Barks to be one of the finest draftsmen and storytellers we’ve ever had." Well put, Garrett Martin.

• Plug: The KUER Radiowest Show hosted many book sellers with their holiday gift ideas. Ken Sanders of Rare Books chose Walt Disney’s Donald Duck: “A Christmas for Shacktown” by for the "brilliant, brilliant artwork by Carl Barks" and Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse: Volume 4 “House of the Seven Haunts” by Floyd Gottfredson to top his 2012 list for kids.

• Plug: The Scotsman lists some of the Best of 2012 as told by the best scotsman. Withered Hand's singer/songwriter Dan Willson has eyes only for Ron Rege, Jr. and states, "[The] Cartoon Utopia , his magnum opus, is quite a head-trip. Thousands of very dense little drawings and words resemble a psychedelic illuminated manuscript peppered with themes of spiritual redemption and good versus evil. It’s a very unusual and beautiful work."

• Plug: From Boing Boing's list of the Best Damn Comics of 2012, compiled by Brian Heater. On Ron Rege Jr.'s The Cartoon Utopia , "The first esoteric text of the new century. The harbinger of the New Aeon. This book will be a staple of Esoteric Lore for millennia to come."

• Plug: Boing Boing makes my job easy by providing the Best Damn Comics of 2012. Compiled by Brian Heater, a lot of creative people offered up their favorite books of the year. Nick Abadzis thinks Kolor Klimax (edited by Matthias Wivel), "feels startling and vital to me and features a wide variety of styles, each as absorbing as all the others contained within these pages. I don't think I've enjoyed an anthology as much as this one in years."

• Plug: From Boing Boing's list of the Best Damn Comics of 2012, compiled by Brian Heater. Box Brown on Barack Hussein Obama, "Steven Weissman does stuff with actual analog comic materials that most dudes can't even do with photoshop." Jeffrey Brown chimes in on BHO, "Strange, funny and beautiful. Weissman reinvents his comics with the kind of book I wish I would make." Will Dinksi agrees, "Barack Hussein Obama is pretty much my favorite book of the year. . . I get a better appreciation for Weissman's craft in the printed collection where it can feel like you're actually looking at the finished artwork." Mari Naomi says,"I just love what this book is. If I didn't know better, I wouldn't even recognize this as Weissman. And I like that."

• Review: Paris Review checks out The Last Vispo, edited by Nico Vassilakis and Crag Hill. Nicole Rudick states,"it makes sense that in visual form poetry would elicit a kind of motion, an unfolding over the space of a page, and that even its sound would be voiced as a series of discoveries. Movement disrupts the continuity of a sentence, a phrase, a word. And language, unsettled, is unbound."

• Plug: From Boing Boing's list of the Best Damn Comics of 2012, compiled by Brian Heater. Box Brown continues to wax poetic on Josh Simmons' The Furry Trap, "Funny, even as it makes your hair stand on end and your skin start to crawl... Horror comics that gash their way below the surface."

• Plug: From Boing Boing's list of the Best Damn Comics of 2012, compiled by Brian Heater. Shaenon K. Garrity says that The Heart of Thomas by Moto Hagio "is a book I've been awaiting for over ten years, and it exceeds my expectations."

• Plug: From Boing Boing's list of the Best Damn Comics of 2012, compiled by Brian Heater. Nate Powell on Interiorae by Gabriella Giandelli, is "just what I look for in a narrative: patient, dreamy, full of seemingly endless layers of shadow, slowly revealing the sweetness inside the rotten, all within the confines of a single high-rise apartment building, surrounded by snow and static."

• Review: Slate finds themselves choosing Heads or Tails, going for broke. Dan Kois says, "Lilli Carré’s short stories are dreamy, unlikely, and unsettling. What transforms the stories from nightmares to fables is Carré’s artwork, which varies with each story. . ."

• Review: Page 45 looks at Heads or Tails by Lilli Carré. "The art reminds me a little of Lynda Barry and the flow of the pages reminded me a little of Walt Holcombe. . .I recently recommended this book to a customer who named their favourite film as Amelie (good choice!) precisely because it has that feeling of whimsy about it."

• Plug: From Boing Boing's list of the Best Damn Comics of 2012, compiled by Brian Heater. Jeremy Tinder on Heads or Tails by Lilli Carré, "A nice encapsulation of many of the ways Lilli has been pushing herself both narratively and stylistically over the last few years. If only there was a way to squeeze her animation in there too." Will Dinksi comments on Heads or Tails by Lilli Carré, "Beautiful artwork. Thoughtfully paced. "Of The Essence" is one of the best comic book short stories I've ever read."

• Plug: From Boing Boing's list of the Best Damn Comics of 2012, compiled by Brian Heater. Robert Kirby on No Straight Lines edited by Justin Hall, "Long overdue, this beautifully-produced, sharply edited retrospective may usher in a new era of respect and recognition for a long-neglected realm of the alt-comics world."

• Review: Nate's Broadcast enjoyed The Hypo by Noah Van Sciver in addition to the recent film, Lincoln, and book America Aflame. "Van Sciver’s contribution to the Lincoln mythology is perfect for those who like their heroes a little troubled and messy, but good at their core- not a bad way to interpret the American ideal." • Plug: From Boing Boing's list of the Best Damn Comics of 2012, compiled by Brian Heater. Will Dinski continues with The Hypo. "[Noah] Van Sciver is pretty prolific, but this is his best work to date. The line art just drips with anguish." Brian Heater thinks it "puts the cartoonist's brimming angst to a different use entirely, in a book that does precisely what a good piece of historical non-fiction should: finding a fascinating way to tell a story we were convinced we already knew."

• Review: Blacklung by Chris Wright is whittled on by Tucker Stone at TCJ. It's called "the big, trippy brother to Drew Weing’s Segar influenced Set To Sea. . . . [and] Gore saturates this comic. . . Brutality for its own sake is the point of some entertaining movies, no reason it can’t be the point of some entertaining comics as well."

• Review: On Filth and Fabulations, Jeppe Mulich states that Chris Wright's "[Blacklung is] not a work of splatter punk or mindless gore, but rather an engaging, breathless, and humorous tale of the dregs of the sea, including a colorful assortment of pirates and madmen, quite clearly drawing inspiration from both Melville, Stevenson and Peckinpah."

• Review: Paste Magazine reviews Charlie Brown's Christmas Stocking by Charles M. Schulz. "Seeing this work isolated and expanded only reinforces the sheer timelessness and brilliance inherent; Schulz was a master of mood and line in equal measure. . . it’s some of the finest nostalgia porn you can put under the tree," quips Sean Edgar.

•Review: Pheonix New Times unwraps their present early and Jason P. Woodbury interviews Nat Gertler on Charlie Brown's Christmas Stocking by Charles M Schulz. "[Schulz] had done a Christmas book, Christmas is Together-Time, using red and green," Gertler says, explaining the minimal color palette. "We wanted to keep that simplicity and Christmas-sense in there." The stable of Schulz characters transcend fads and time because as Gertler points out "It's not the way kids talk, but they way they feel is the way that kids feel."

• Plug: Drawn blog tops off another the Best of 2012 list with some Ernie Bushmiller. John Martz points out, "Nancy seems to be a love-it-or-leave-it strip, and I am firmly in the Love It camp. . . Often surreal, and always impeccably drawn, there is nothing quite like it. . . these books are a virtual masterclass in cartooning."

• Review: From Boing Boing's list of the Best Damn Comics of 2012, compiled by Brian Heater. Tom Kaczynski on Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy is Happy, "The minimalism of the art, the quirky humor, the amazing consistency, it all started with these strips."

• Review: Getting ready for the hardback release of Delphine by Richard Sala, Carrie Cuinn of SF Portal reviews the tale complete with "dark duotone inking style, little dialogue, and gothic, shadowy, art. . . Overall I think that Sala’s retelling of that well-known love story is affectingly tragic. . . It is, in a word, creepy."

• Review: If MTV Geek knows about The End of the Fucking World then the secret is out: Charles Forsman is amazing! "[It] pulls you in like no other comic this year. Stunning in its simplicity and brave in its subject matter. Charles Forsman is a future force. . . [it] is like stumbling onto the ultimate secret in comic books, but based on how great TEOTFW is, it won't be much a secret longer."

• Review: Ashley over at Bibliophibien looks at Wandering Son series by Shimura Takako, "While the story is focused on transgender topics, I think that this is a wonderfully moving coming-of-age story and captures the complexities of sexual identity, friendships, and family that teens face."

• Review: Rick Klaw at SF Site enjoys the glossy glory of Action! Mystery! Thrills!, edited by Greg Sadowski. "As in his previous volumes. . . Sadowski supplies copious end notes and annotations. Though this time, the information additionally reads as an entertaining history of early comics. . . Sadowski once again delivers an essential book for anyone with an interest in comics history."

• Plug: John McMurtrie of SF Gate (San Francisco Gate) lists Listen, Whitey! by Pat Thomas as one of the Music Books to Buy of 2012.

Daily OCD 11/29/12

TheJenVaughn

The first snowflake of Online Commentaries & Diversions:

• Review: Publishers Weekly enjoys Naked Cartoonists, edited by Gary Groth. "The litmus test for any collective work based on the idea of one page per artist is whether the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts. . . [Naked Cartoonists] no trouble achieving that goal. . . Dan Piraro (Bizarro) deserves kudos for his strategically-located likeness of Garfield . . ."

• Plug: Elliot Bay Book Company shows off a copy of Naked Cartoonists from their store and Dave states, "Hilarious. Scary. Weird. And just plain bawdy. If this is wrong, I don’t want to be right."

• Review: Print Magazine (issue 66.3 June 2012) gingerly flips through the pages of Naked Cartoonists. "Does your Sunday morning routine consis of reading The Wizard of Id and thinking, Gosh, I wish it had more nudity? Then Fantagraphics Books has just the thing for you." While out-and-about obscenity is rare, "there are moments of genuine creepiness, as when Jeff Keane, heir to The Family Circus, drops trou along side his fictional self, Jeffy."

• Review: Speaking of nudish things, Slate takes the time to slog through Prison Pit 4 by Johnny Ryan. Noah Bertlasky states, "For those who find filthy, blotchy tactile ink clots, überviolence, or body horror even remotely appealing, you need to buy this and its predecessors immediately."

• Review (audio): The boys on the block (Comics Books are Burning in Hell) review violent comics so naturally Blacklung by Chris Wright is included. The book affected the reviewers since it's "basically Chris Wright drawing terrifying shit" and Wright's drawing style falls in between "Old newspaper comics, like E.C. Segar's Popeye and Roy Crane's Wash Tubbs and Usagi Yojimbo [by Stan Sakai]."

• Review: New York Journal of Books looks at Walt Disney's Donald Duck: A Christmas for Shacktown by Carl Barks. Mark Squirek writes, "What he was really doing was showing us the absurdity of human behavior. . . This is a book that can be enjoyed by everyone from six to eighty. . . This is classic art and storytelling from a master of the form. Carl Barks ranks right up there with Jack Kirby and Will Eisner. If you love the frustrated, quacking, crazed Donald from the cartoons of the forties, you have to read A Christmas for Shacktown."

• Review: The Christian Science Monitor unwraps Charlie Brown's Christmas Stocking by Charles M. Schulz. Rich Clablaugh takes another sip of cider and says, "The design of the book is marvelous, thick off-white stock printed in two colors – red and green of course. . .Charlie Brown's Christmas Stocking is sure to bring a warm smile to readers young and old. A yearly reading of this little gem can in itself become a new tradition for the Christmas season."

• Review: Westfield Blog looks at archival prints from Fantagraphics. Roger Ash recounts, "Popeye, Pogo, Charlie Brown, Mickey Mouse, and many other classic comic strip characters live on at Fantagraphics in outstanding collections. If you aren't reading any of these, you should be."

• Review: Forbidden Planet International writes about Rich Tommaso's graphic novel, The Cavalier Mr. Thompson. "What the Cavalier does very well is encompass the zeitgeist of an era and people vividly. . . or the most part you’re happy to be led through the rooms and ravines, over train tracks and down corridors as a gentle narration of tales from times gone by ensconces you comfortingly," says Zainab.

• Review: Glen Weldon writes a large article in the New York Times Book Review on our newest anthology on queer comics. "With No Straight Lines [editor Justin Hall] has produced a useful, combative and frequently moving chronicle of a culture in perpetual transition; to read it is to watch as an insular demimonde transforms itself, in painful fits and joyful starts, and steps out into a wider monde."

• Review: Graphixia looks at Jacques Tardi's It Was the War of the Trenches. Scott Marsden states, "Seeing Tardi’s portrayal of the horrors of trench warfare and his vision of the random senselessness and brutality that accompanies it reminds us to reflect on our (mis)conceptions of history, drawing attention to the fractal realities that are embedded in events that have been experienced internationally. . . it feels far closer to reality than the propagandized historical materials offered by the typical academic publishing industry. . ."

• Review: Rob Clough reposts his review of our Hotwire anthology, this time on High Low. "A book for those who read Ghost World or American Splendor and [want] to know where to go next."

• Review: Chris Ware is profiled on the NY Review of Books on Jimmy Corrigan through Building Stories.