Click the full post link below for a tentative list of titles due to ship next week.
Aaron And Ahmed HC
Amazing Spider-Man Annual #38
Annihilators #2 (Of 4)
Archie Best Of Dan Decarlo HC Vol 2
Avengers Childrens Crusade #5 (Of 9)
Avengers Thor Captain America Official Index To The Marvel Universe #12
Axe Cop Bad Guy Earth #2 (Of 3)
Batman Beyond #4
Blue Estate #1
BPRD Dead Remembered #1 (Of 3)
Brightest Day #23
Captain America Hail Hydra #4 (Of 5)
Chaos War TP
Chew #18
Conan Legacy Frazetta Cover #7 (Of 8)
Daomu #3
DC Universe Online Legends #5
Deadpool Family #1
Doom Patrol #21
Dungeons And Dragons #5
Fables TP Vol 15 Rose Red
Fallen Angel Return Of The Son #3 (Of 4)
Fear Itself #1 (Of 7)
Fear Itself Home Front #1 (Of 7)
Fear Itself Spotlight Fear
Firebreather Holmgang #2 (Of 4)
First Wave Special #1
Green Wake #1 (Of 5)
Herc #1
Heroes For Hire #5
House Of Mystery #36
Infestation #2 (Of 2)
Intrepids #2
Iron Siege #3 (Of 3)
iZombie #12
JLA 80 Page Giant 2011 #1
Jonah Hex #66
JSA All Stars #17
Jurassic Park Devils In The Desert #4 (Of 4)
Let Me In Crossroads #4 (Of 4)
Madman Giant Size Super Ginchy One-Shot
Marvel Zombies 5 TP
Marvel Zombies Supreme #3 (Of 5)
Nexus Archives HC Vol 12
Nonplayer #1 (Of 6)
Our Army At War TP
Ozma Of Oz #5 (Of 8)
Poseurs GN
Red Better Red Than Dead TP
Secret Six #32
Skaar King Of Savage Land #1 (Of 5)
Solomon Kane Red Shadows #1 (Of 4)
Spider-Man Power Comes Responsibility #1
Superman Batman Annual #5
Sweet Tooth #20
Thunderbolts From Marvel Vault #1
Time Masters Vanishing Point TP
Transformers Sector 7 TP
Ultimate Comics Captain America #4 (Of 4)
Uncanny X-Men #534 Point One
Vertigo Resurrected Hellblazer Bad Blood #1
Walking Dead Weekly #14
Weird World Of Jack Staff #6
Weird Worlds #4 (Of 6)
Who Is Jake Ellis #3
Witchfinder Lost & Gone Forever #3 (Of 5)
Wolverine Best There Is #5
Wolverine Hercules Myths Monsters And Mutants #2 (Of 4)
Zombies Vs Robots Aventure TP
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Due To Arrive 06/04/11
The Gosh! Authority 29/03/11
Instead of enticing you into the shop I’m going to throw you a curve ball and urge you to go somewhere else. Foyles on Charing Cross Road are currently hosting an exhibition of original art from the French graphic novel Pinocchio by Winshluss (a.k.a. Vincent Paronnaud, who fairly recently won an Academy Award for co-writing the animated Persepolis film with Marjane Satrapi).
It’s an incredibly loose adaptation of the eponymous novel by Carlo Collidi, a sort of demented fever dream of fairytale characters in a wrong and horrifying Mad Magazine kind of way. The exhibition launched last night and runs until the 9th of April. All the details you need are over at the Foyles website but ignore their blurb because that ain’t what the book’s about. Also, heed me when I say Don’t Take Your Kids or you’ll end up having to explain what those seven leather-clad dwarves are doing to the unconscious Snow White. 
Pinocchio won’t arrive on our shelves until late April so you can consider this a fancy preview, one which you theoretically have to get out of your pajamas to see.
Winshluss sketching at the exhibition launch last night
Also out today is Alan Moore’s Dodgem Logic #8, in which he makes the following confession of madness: “I’m sure you’ll be as astonished as I was that our initial strategy of paying contributors, high production values, no stinking capitalist advertising and an affordably low cover price (basically, ‘Let’s do everything backwards and see what happens’) seems not to have worked. We’ve never quite broken even, despite the terrific response we’ve had to the mag where people had heard of it and could find it.” So this is the last issue of Dodgem Logic in its print form, at least for a while.
Alan Moore (herein noted as Mull of Kintyre, Wrath of Khan, and hated waxwork-faced dictator in ridiculous clothes) and the Dodgem Logic crowd are going to continue putting new material on the website (their spectacular new cyber slum!) and hope to see a return to print either late this year or early next. “As this is the last issue,” Moore continues, “I think you’ll agree that we’re going out in a thermonuclear fireball of glory rather than a whimper.” There’s the first chapter of Melinda Gebbie’s forthcoming autobiography, a ten-page reminiscence by Michael Moorcock about being a child during the Blitz, a page from Kevin O’Neill, as well as stuff from comedian Robin Ince and all the other usual suspects you’ll miss when it goes. Buy it and encourage its swift and welcome return.
Also changing formats is Nobrow Magazine. The fifth issue hit the shelves earlier this week entitled A Few of My Favourite Things in which 30 artists have created repeatable patterns of, uh, their favourite things. This is the last Nobrow Magazine to have the regular format and page run that you’re probably used to by now, and what they’ve got planned for the next issue is a total mystery. Grab one before they go – it’s a screenprinted, limited edition of inky loveliness. Pictures over at the Nobrow site.
From Fantagraphics you can have 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente HC, who was a Puerto Rican baseball player in the ‘60s and died in a tragic plane crash on a relief mission to an earthquake-torn Nicarugua.
All I know about baseball is that there are some bases and a ball, but from this PDF preview it looks like one of those books that fools you into thinking you like a sport when you clearly don’t, just because it’s presented so beautifully (as Exhibit A I offer you anything by David Foster Wallace about a thing called “tennis” versus my face when I mistakenly watched some Wimbledon). Wilfred Santiago’s (Pop Life, In My Darkest Hour) art is amazingly expressive. Looks like a good’un.
Chimo by Canadian cartoonist David Collier is about a man re-enlisting in the army at the age of 42 simply so that he can document the war in Afganistan in cartoon form. According to The Comics Journal’s review, it’s a stream of autobiographical anecdotes – pieces of story rather than one master plan wrapped up in a bow – which if you’ve been reading Collier for years (he was first published in R. Crumb’s Weirdo magazine) it’s the kind of thing you’re probably used to. Chris Ware said it’s “…an idiosyncratic, compelling and hilarious musing-in-comics... Seemingly a quirky memoir about soldiering, it’s really a quest for survival — both basic and artistic — and a meditation on ageing, family and the fight to simply try and understand oneself, all told by one of the most unpretentious cartoonists in North America.” Preview over at Bleeding Cool, who wonder if it’s the Asterios Polyp of 2011 or the Safe Area Gorazde. No pressure, huh?
R.I.P. Best of 1985 – 2004 by Thomas Ott (The Number 73304-23-4153-6-96-8) is a hardcover omnibus collecting his long out-of-print EC Comics-style totally wordless shock-ending horror stories, along with other previously unreprinted bits from MOME and a collaboration with David B. (Epileptic).
If you like murder, terror, mutilation, crime, nuclear annihilation, and the idea of a suicidal clown sticking a gun in his mouth, this is the very fellow for you. PDF preview courtesy of Fantagraphics.
Indie creators get to do whatever they like with classic Marvel characters in Strange Tales II HC, which includes one of the last things ever written by the late, great Harvey Pekar (American Splendour).
Other creators include Alex Robinson, Dash Shaw, David Heatley, Dean Haspiel, Edu Medeiros, Farel Dalrymple, Frank Santoro, Gene Yang, Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez, Jeff Lemire, Jeffrey Brown, Jhonen Vasquez, Jillian Tamaki, Jon Vermilyea, Kate Beaton, Nick Gurewitch, Paul Hornschemeier, Paul Maybury, Rafael Grampa, Shannon Wheeler, Terry Moore, Tim Hamilton, and Tony Millionaire. Here’s a preview of the Pekar issue.
Fans of classic American newspaper strips should look out for Brian Walker’s comprehensive omnibus collection this week, The Comics, which combines the two previously released volumes – The Comics Before 1945 and The Comics Since 1945. There’s over 1300 images featuring the likes of Krazy Kat, Pogo, Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes, and Mutts, and the pedantic will be pleased to know they’re all organised chronologically. Comicmix has a review, and Juxtapoz gloat about their free copy along with posting some pictures.
Frank Frazetta’s classic comics get their own hardcover collections thanks to Vanguard Productions (which is odd given their history, but everything seems to be sorted, now). Volume 1 collects the newspaper strip Johnny Comet with all pages shot from the artist’s own personal proofs so everything’s top-notch, reproduction-wise. Volume 2 is 200 pages of the White Indian, collecting the entire 16-issue run from the back of Durango Kid.
Independently Animated: Bill Plympton is, as the subtitle suggests, about the life and art of the King of Indie Animation. Matt Groening refers to him simply as “God” and Terry Gilliam likes him so much he provided the foreword to this book. Plympton was nominated for an Academy Award in 1987 for Your Face but if you want to check out what he’s been up to recently there’s all sorts of things on his Plymptoons YouTube channel. The Comics Journal review it and Juxtapoz are all over it too.
Ivan Brunetti’s work is some of the most horrifyingly neurotic stuff around, but if you want to be just like him he’s helpfully provided you with a How To manual. In Brunetti’s Cartooning, he gives you fifteen lessons on terminology, techniques, tools and theory – but if that all sounds a little dry it you can rest assured it probably isn’t. Over at Yale Books he’s written a great little essay on why he cartoons. “I am happy to be a subatomic particle whizzing around inside the seemingly infinite ocean of cartooning. I believe that cartooning, we shall always have with us. The calligraphic quality that I see in cave paintings is still there in Kandinsky and in Leonardo’s beard in red chalk and in the way Charles Schulz drew Patty’s hair in the early Peanuts strips. The line in all its incarnations is, to me, the mind asserting itself, absorbing and transforming experience. We cartoonists are trying to perfect a blend of drawing and writing, via observation, memory, and imagination. I hope, in some small way, to contribute to this Sisyphean quest, even though, ultimately, everything will be ground to dust and forgotten and reborn into something else, over and over and over again, world without end.”
Cheery dude, as ever.
Titmouse is a book by some jokers who pitch it as 1/3 Heavy Metal, 1/3 MAD Magazine, 1/3 Juxtapoz, and 1/3 Ralph Bakshi film-on-fancy-paper. With Dave Johnson as its captain (he of 100 Bullets covers fame) it presents the work of a motley crew of “weirdo artist-types” (such as Dave Cooper) doing comic strips, paintings as well as a bunch of interviews too. It’s 100 pages long and “is intended for the enjoyment of consenting adults. It is for mature audiences. Not like a porno, but like an 80s comedy.” Preview pictures at the Titmouse website.
Here’s some stuff you’ve seen before but it’s gone to great effort getting all gussied up in new clothes so you might want to see it again (Why, yes! I am running out of ways to say This thing is being collected!):
Peter Milligan’s Vertigo Crime book, Bronx Kill, is out in softcover. It’s illustrated by James Romberger who’s most famous for his New York-themed art so it’s in the right hands. There’s a preview at the Vertigo blog if you missed it the first go round. Incidentally, if you’re a Milligan fan the final issues of both 5 Ronin and After Dark are out so be sure to grab them too.
Strange Science Fantasy by the award-winning Scott Morse is collected in trade-paperback this week. Here’s the interview I linked to when the first issue was preparing to land.
When he’s not photographing his burgeoning beard, Paul Cornell writes a lot of comics. Superman: The Black Ring HC collects Action Comics #890 – 895 in which there is an appearance by The Sandman’s big sister, Death. Next to it on the shelf will be the Jimmy Olsen One-Shot which is not written by Cornell but the impossibly busy Nick Spencer (Morning Glories, Infinite Vacation). It reprints the first four parts of the Action Comics co-feature and then smacks 30 all-new pages on top of it to make an 80-page special for well under a fiver.
Probably a lot of death in this next one, but not in a cute smiley goth-girl way. David Lapham (who most recently brought you Crossed: Family Values) now takes on the Roman Emperor Caligula in a six-issue miniseries. “I'm approaching it from the perspective that every vile rumour that could possibly be tied to Caligula is fact. Then I make up more stuff….The guy's name is synonymous with depravity, excess, and insanity,” he told Comicbook Resources. There’s no preview on this one but if it’s anything like Tinto Brass’ infamous efforts you’re probably better off without one anyway.
Captain America #616 is a big bumper issue in celebration of the man’s 70th birthday. Ed Brubaker, Howard Chaykin and Paul Grist all appear among long list of others and if you head over to iFanboy you can have a sneaky peak. Next to it you’ll find Captain America Comics #1 70th Anniversary Special – it’s not a reprint of the James Robinson/Marcos Martin thing that came out a couple of years ago which inexplicably had the same name and claimed to be a 70th anniversary special, though I and the science of mathematics can’t figure out how that can be. It’s something different.
Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters is a new ongoing series written by Eric Powell and Tracy Marsh, illustrated by Phil Hester. “Godzilla was originally an allegory for the nuclear age, and we’re definitely going for a modern-day interpretation of that,” Marsh said to CbR. “But readers want to see Godzilla and his buddies eff stuff up. So that’s what they’re gonna get.” 
And the last mention of the week goes to what might otherwise end up buried by the ongoing cavalcade of X-books: the Cyclops One-Shot written by Lee Black and illustrated by the very excellent Dean Haspiel (Opposable Thumbs, The Alcoholic). Check out the preview. While I’m here I should probably mention that this week’s X-23 #8 is part of the Daken Dark Wolverine crossover.
This year the 6th International Digital Cartoon Competiton is being held at the 15th Seoul International Cartoon & Animation Festival (SICAF) in South Korea. It’s run by an organisational committee who evidently like their numbers because they provided us with these ones too: since the competition’s inauguration in 2006, they have received around 3000 works from all around the world. 84 of them in 2007 were from the UK, 18 in 2008, 5 in 2009 and exactly zero in 2010. UK animators – fix these terrible statistics! Details here.
Anyone who’s been in the shop recently will probably have noticed the original artwork on our walls by Gosh! Favourite Jason Atomic. It’s all part of the Hail To The King! exhibition currently on at Bethnal Green’s Resistance Gallery – a celebration of all things Jack Kirby. Details and pictures galore over at the Resistance blogspot.
Well, that was fairly longwinded but it’s over now, I promise.
-- Hayley
In Store 24/03/11 - 30/03/11
Click the full post link below for a list of items in store this week.
Archie Double Digest #217
2000 AD #1727
Judge Dredd Megazine #309
21 Story Of Roberto Clemente HC
5 Ronin #5 (Of 5) (Peter Milligan)
After Dark #3 (Of 3) (Peter Milligan)
Alter Ego #100 Centennial
American Vampire #13
Avengers #11 (B. Bendis)
Secret Avengers #11
Batman & Robin Batman Reborn TP(G. Morrison/F. Quitely)
Detective Comics #875 (S. Snyder)
Best Of Dick Tracy TP Vol 1
Black Panther Man Without Fear #516
Bloom County Complete Library HC Vol 4
Bronx Kill TP (Peter Milligan)
Buck Rogers In 25th Century Dailies HC Vol 5
Caligula #1 (Of 6) (David Lapham)
Captain America #616 (E. Brubaker/H. Chaykin/P. Grist Et Al)
Captain America And Secret Avengers One-Shot
Captain America Comics #1 70th Anniversary Special (J. Kirby)
Captain America Man Out Of Time #5 (Of 5) (Mark Waid)
Captain America TP Legacy Of Captain America (Simon/Kirby/Lee/Brubaker)
Chimo GN (David Collier)
Comics Complete Collection HC
Complete Peanuts HC Vol 15 1979-1980
Daredevil Reborn #3 (Of 4) (Diggle)
Dodgem Logic #8 (A. Moore/R. Ince/M. Moorcock Et Al)
Echo #29 (Terry Moore)
Famous Monsters Of Filmland #255
Fantastic Four By Jonathan Hickman TP Vol 3
Godzilla Kingdom Of Monsters #1(Eric Powell/Phil Hester)
Gotham City Sirens #21
Green Arrow #10
Green Hornet Year One #9
Hawkeye And Mockingbird Black Widow TP
Heavy Metal May 2011
Heralds TP
Howard Chaykin Conversations HC
Incognito Bad Influences #5 (Of 5)(Ed Brubaker/Sean Phillips)
Incredible Hulk TP Vol 3 World War Hulks
Incredible Hulks #625
Independently Animated: Bill Plympton HC
Ivan Brunetti Cartooning SC
Jack Of Fables #50 (Last Issue)
James Bond Omnibus TP Vol 2
Jimmy Olsen One-Shot (N. Spencer)
JLA The 99 #6 (Of 6)
Justice Society Of America #49
Kate & William: A Very Public Love Story TP
Kick-Ass 2 #2 (Millar/Romita Jr)
Kid Kos GN Vol 1 Agents Of Doom
Marvel Previews April 2011
Nobrow #5
Osborn #4 (Of 5)
Previews #271 April 2011
Punisher In The Blood #5 (Of 5)(R. Remender/R. Boschi)
Punisher: Welcome Back Frank TP New Ed (Ennis/Dillon)
R.I.P. HC Best Of 1985-2004 (Thomas Ott)
Scalped #47 (Jason Aaron)
Scarlet #5 (B M Bendis/A Maleev)
Sherlock Holmes Year One #3
Spider-Girl #5
Amazing Spider-Man #657
Astonishing Spider-Man/Wolverine #5 (Of 6) (J. Aaron/A. Kubert)
Spider-Man You're Hired One-Shot
Stand No Man’s Land #3 (Of 5)
Strange Science Fantasy TP Vol 1 (Scott Morse)
Strange Tales II HC (J. Brown/K. Huizenga/J. Lemire/D. Shaw Et Al)
Suicide Forest #4 (Of 4)
Super Hero Squad TP Super Hero Safari
Action Comics #899
Superman The Black Ring HC(Paul Cornell)
Tank Girl Bad Wind Rising #3 (Of 4)
Teen Titans #93
Thor #621 (Matt Fraction)
Titmouse HC (Dave Johnson/Dave Cooper et al)
Transformers Prime TP Vol 1
True Blood Tainted Love #2
Ultimate Comics X #4
Vanguard Frazetta Classics HCs
- Vol 1: Johnny Coment
- Vol 2: White Indian
Wonder Woman #609
World Of Warcraft TP Vol 3
X-9 Secret Agent Corrigan HC Vol 2
Cyclops One-Shot (Dean Haspiel)
Deadpool Corps #12
Deadpool Team-Up #883
Wolverine #7
X-23 #8 (Daken X-Over)
X-Men First Class TP Vol 2
X-Men Forever 2 TP Vol 3 Perfect S'world
Zatanna #11
MANGA
Tenken GN
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Due To Arrive 30/03/11
Click the full post link below for a tentative list of titles due to ship next week.
21 Story Of Roberto Clemente HC
5 Ronin #5 (Of 5)
Action Comics #899
Age Of X Universe #1 (Of 2)
Amazing Spider-Man #657
American Vampire #13
Avengers #11
Azrael Killer Of Saints TP
Batman And Robin Batman Reborn Tp
Best Of Dick Tracy TP Vol 1
Black Panther Man Without Fear #516
Bronx Kill TP
Butcher Baker Righteous Maker #1
Captain America #616
Captain America And Secret Avengers #1
Captain America TP Legacy Of Captain America
Cyclops #1
Deadpool Corps #12
Deadpool Team-Up #883
Detective Comics #875
Dollhouse Epitaphs One-Shot
Edge Of Doom #5 (Of 5)
Elephantmen Man And Elephantman #1
Fantastic Four By Jonathan Hickman TP Vol 3
Godzilla Kingdom Of Monsters #1
Gotham City Sirens #21
Green Arrow #10
Green Lantern Emerald Warriors #8
Hawkeye And Mockingbird Black Widow TP Widowmaker
Heralds TP
Incognito Bad Influences #5
Incredible Hulk TP Vol 3 World War Hulks
Incredible Hulks #625
Infinite Vacation #2
Jack Of Fables #50
Jimmy Olsen #1
JLA The 99 #6 (Of 6)
Justice Society Of America #49
Kick-Ass 2 #2
King Conan Scarlet Citadel #2
Magdalena (Ongoing) #6
Outlaw Prince TP
Punisher In Blood #5 (Of 5)
Punisher Welcome Back Frank TP New Ed
Savage Dragon #170
Scalped #47
Scarlet #5
Secret Avengers #11
Secret Warriors TP Vol 4 Last Ride Howling Commandos
Spider-Girl #5
Spider-Man You're Hired One-Shot
Stand No Man's Land #3 (Of 5)
Star Wars Legacy War #4 (Of 6)
Star Wars Old Republic TP Vol 1 Threat Of Peace
Strange Science Fantasy TP Vol 1
Strange Tales II HC
Suicide Forest #4 (Of 4)
Superman The Black Ring HC
Teen Titans #93
Thor #621
Torpedo HC Vol 3
Transformers Prime TP Vol 1
True Blood Tainted Love #2
Ultimate Comics X #4
Undying Love #1
Usagi Yojimbo #136
Velocity #4 (Of 4)
Walking Dead #83
Walking Dead Weekly #13
Who Is Jake Ellis #3
Wolverine #7
Wonder Woman #609
World Of Warcraft TP Vol 3
X-23 #8
X-9 Secret Agent Corrigan HC Vol 2
X-Men First Class TP Vol 2
X-Men Forever 2 TP Vol 3 Perfect S'world
Zatanna #11
The Gosh! Authority 22/03/11
First things first: the Gosh! Exclusive Demo TP Volume 2 Bookplate Edition has arrived and is now nestled comfortably next to last week’s iZombie TP Bookplate Edition and the rest of our steadily expanding collection of signed books. If you didn’t order one, that’s fine – there are lots to go round so just form an orderly queue. If you did pre-order one you’ll be hearing from me in a bit. You know the drill.
Speaking of signed books, Arne Bellstorf popped in last week and signed – and even sketched in a few, too! – a bunch of his Stuart Sutcliffe/Astrid Kirchherr biography which I rabbited on about in a Gosh! Authority of yore. Come an’ get ‘em.
Suddenly Something Happened GN is a book by Québécois Jimmy Beaulieu, his first to be published in English after eight in French. It’s the definitive collection of his autobiographical work – collecting two previous award-winning books along with loads of new pages. It’s about being a comic artist, travelling to comic festivals around the world and the generally quiet existence of a cartoonist, full of idiosyncratic life moments and the like. With that as its premise I assumed the name Suddenly Something Happened was going to be ironic in a Joseph Heller Something Happened way (in which nothing ever did) but judging from various reviews this is not the case.
“Like the kick turn that allows a championship swimmer to thunder down the length of the pool without changing the basics of his stroke, that middle section of Suddenly Something Happened provides Beaulieu with an energy that forces the reader from their seat. It's a strong document in a small literature describing the subtle ways in which we all quietly grow up.” 
Beaulieu is interviewed on Inkstuds (a radio show about comics) and if you’ve not seen his work before I heartily recommend a visit to his website. I can confidently say the pictures are wonderful, but it’s all in French and I’m borderline-retarded when it comes to other languages, so he might be talking nonsense for all I know.
This blog is steadily turning into one comic shop employee quietly humping the leg of Seattle-based publisher Fantagraphics but they are excelling themselves lately, and their line of Jacques Tardi translations is one of their greatest efforts to date. Le Démon Des Glaces or The Arctic Marauder is a 1972 satirical, Jules Verne-esque steampunk tale about a ship in the Arctic Ocean discovering an abandoned vessel. 
“It’s a wickedly sly take on classic turn-of-the-century pulp adventures that nevertheless manages to both tweak and evoke those stories. It is, in short, a blast to read,” says Comicbook Resources. Expect mad scientists, monsters from the deep, futuristic machinery in an 1899 futuristic way, and the most purple of purple prose. Here’s a PDF preview, in which you can see the result of Tardi’s efforts to illustrate the comic in the same style as the woodcut engravings of the era. It looks amazing but was apparently such a pain in the arse he swore never to do it again.
It’s been years since I last read Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer, but I’ve got a renewed interest in Ben Katchor having read Michael Chabon’s (yes, him again, sorry) essay about the man in Maps & Legends. Katchor has an innate ability to build a world with a poetic logic not found anywhere else, and Chabon regards him as the creator of the last great American comic strip. The Comics Journal have an excellent review written by a man who can probably recite the dictionary, and I like this paragraph so much I’ve swiped it wholesale:
“In the same fashion as his Julius Knipl collections, The Cardboard Valise is a catalog of made-up occupations, obsessions, and cultural artifacts just too picayune to be plausible, but only just: a seaside cellphone stand that offers paying callers the chance to hear the sounds of the shore for ten minutes at a time, courtesy of employees who walk to the water and hold the phones aloft; an heir to a reference-work empire who sells off the famous family name since its value outstrips that of the imprint’s accumulated, outmoded publications — The Marrowbone Backseat Bible of Contraceptive Techniques, The Marrowbone Directory of Commonly Dialed Wrong Numbers, The Marrowbone Desk Reference to Nauseating Food Combinations. In one bravura strip alone, a traveler discovers a panoply of unique customs observed by the residents of his island destination: black-market traders of partially eaten toast, discarded exercise equipment worshiped in fertility rituals, hotel employees who can deduce the personal traits of their guests from the dents they leave in wire hangers and who brag about the colds they catch from their charges, “an unwritten encyclopedia of postural gestures used to solicit tips.” Together these quotidian flights of fancy suggest a world of possibilities that are at once inspiringly limitless (cumulatively) and depressingly limited (individually) — a world, in other words, much like our own.”
There’s an excerpt here in an annoying video format, and an interview with the man him self at Comicbook Resources.
Lewis Carroll created an entirely other world in Alice in Wonderland, and you can pick up a copy of the Tove Jansson version this week. It’s been around since 1966 but this is the first time it’s been available in English (well, this particular book’s been around for a bit but it’s the first time we’ve had it).
You can see some images at Crooked Timber along with a review of an older edition, ex-library and well-thumbed by the jam encrusted fingers of youth.
When John Matthews was writing The Chronicles of Arthur, a graphic novel aimed at kids between 9 and 12, he decided he wanted to do a grown-up version based on his favourite King Arthur book Le Mort D’Arthur. SelfMadeHero picked up the idea and teamed Matthews with illustrator Will Sweeney (Tales From Greenfuzz) and together they churned out 600 pages of Arthurian legend. They plan to do four volumes and talk about it in this interview. I know I keep saying it but SelfMadeHero books do smell the best.
Greg Rucka’s latest creator-owned series is collected in hardcover this Wednesday. If you didn’t catch it in its floppy form here’s what’s quite literally in store for you:
"Stumptown is – I suppose the bluntest way to put it is, if Queen and Country was me using a childhood love of espionage and things like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and James Bond and Ian Mackintosh's Sandbaggers, then Stumptown comes out of the childhood love of The Hardy Boys and The Rockford Files, Simon and Simon and Magnum, P.I. That's what this is. When I was in third grade, I would run home – literally run home from school – and if I could make it in time I could get home and the put the TV on in time to catch the answering machine message at the start of The Rockford Files.”
There’s a great interview with Rucka over at Comics Alliance in which he discusses Phillip Marlowe and the history of the smartass private investigator in general. I bet I can guess what Rucka wanted to be when he grew up.
Dungeon Quest Volume 2 by Joe Daly is out, giving you another installment of nerdy stories inspired by role-playing games, which you can see previewed at Fantagraphics. Daly’s interviewed here in which it is revealed that he doesn’t have the lactating boobs he adorned himself with in an autobiographical comicbook moment.
Johnny Ryan, similarly absurd, gives you New Character Parade: 120 new pages of full-page fart gags, probably. The Comics Journal goes into excruciating depth in their review. Incidentally, while looking for pictures of this one on Ryan’s site I was disturbed by this superfan’s armpit tattoo. Um. You’re welcome.
Draw Nexus: Tips and Techniques pretty much does what it says on the tin – model sheets of the entire Nexus cast, tips on figure construction and the human head, as well as hardware like space ships and futuristic interiors – all put together by the remarkable Steve Rude. Rude himself got some pretty harsh tips off ol’ Alex Toth back in the day. These scans have been floating about the Internet for a while now, and while I tweeted it I don’t recall ever putting them in the Gosh! Blog. Worth a look. “Think! Think! Think! — Before you draw, while you draw, and after! And redraw if it doesn’t work!”
As for comics, here’s what’s heading your way:
The recently married Kieron Gillen (congrats from all of us!) of Phonogram fame gives you the Captain America and the Batroc One-Shot."I just found myself looking at Batroc and thinking, 'So what makes that guy get up every day?' He's a character who gets punched a lot and people tend to treat him quite lightly. So how does that affect his head?' I wondered what his mindset was.” He tells CbR all about it (Gillen that is, not Batroc in some weird fourth-wall therapy session) and there’s a preview floating about too.
Lorna: Relic Wrangler is a one-shot story by Micah S. Harris (Heaven’s War) and Loston Wallace (Batman: The Animated Series) about a Southern belle Lara Croft in cut-off jeans. Gosh! Favourite Darwyn Cooke provides the cover and Wallace’s illustrations are equally lovely. You can see them alongside this interview with Harris, and Boing Boing has a regular preview for you too. If it goes well there’s more in the pipeline!
Issue #1s this week include Thor #620.1 because it’s another of Marvel’s engineered Point One jumping-on points. Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning do words and Mark Brooks (Dark Reign: Young Avengers) does pictures. Preview at Comicbook Resources.
Jonathan Hickman’s FF #1 lands on Wednesday, picking up after the death of the Human Torch. He fills you in on the new Future Foundation and their new monochrome outfits at Marvel, and you can see a preview here.
Clive Barker dusts off an old idea this week and co-writes a new ongoing series beginning with Hellraiser #1. Barker himself has only been involved in the whole Hellraiser thing twice: the original Hellbound Heart novel, and then when he wrote and directed the first of the films. In a way this is the first official Hellraiser continuity since then (penned by Barker, is what I mean – Neil Gaiman, Mike Mignola, and Alex Ross have all had a go over the years). Shock Till You Drop have posted an interview with Barker’s co-writer on the series too.
And lastly, if you’re following X-23 be sure to pick up a copy of this week’s Daken Dark Wolverine #7 because it’s a crossover. Preview here.
Events-wise, don’t forget the amazing Posy Simmonds is appearing this Thursday night at the French Institute to discuss Gustave Flaubert. I mentioned it a while ago so maybe you’ve already got a ticket, but if you haven’t – grab one now!
Man at the Crossroads Paul Gravett is doing a tag-team talk and Q&A with Ed Hillyer aka ILYA at the Westminster Reference Library, which the library blurb-writer hyperbolically boasts “will be of interest to anyone vaguely interested in the medium.” Take your questions and say hello, they’re a lovely bunch. Details here, which will be of interest to anyone vaguely interested in going.
-- Hayley