[[[Tales of Mere Existence]]] began as a series of videos beginning in 1999 and now found at YouTube as Levni Yilmaz drew simple cartoons and added a narrative. They were immensely popular and won some awards and now Simon Spotlight Entertainment has released Sunny Side Down, a collection of those cartoons. The book, the fourth…
Life’s tough when you’re a teenage girl – sometimes, it’s even almost as tough as those teenage girls think it is. This week, three “normal girls” with gigantic eyes try to get through their massive problems…most of which, as you might have guessed, have to do with boys. Orange Planet , Vol. 1By Haruka FukushimaDel…
In a popular and academic marketplace where everyone wants and needs to learn better, smarter, faster, we have series upon series of things that have titles that are playfully self-deprecating in the hopes of our being brave enough to channel our inner superhero and dive in and learn something that might have seemed a bit…
The Eternal Smile: Three Stories By Gene Luen Yang and Derek Kirk Kim First Second, May 2009, $16.95 Three years ago, Gene Luen Yang’s graphic novel [[[American Born Chinese]]] – a three-stranded partly autobiographical and partly allegorical story of growing up Asian-American – was published to massive acclaim (National Book Award nominee, Michael L. Printz…
Back in October, we spoke with creator Bryan Talbot (Creator of Luther Arkwright, artist on Sandman) and he was talking about his forthcoming graphic novel Grandville. A trailer for the book went live this week. Take a look: The book will be available in October from Dark Horse in the US.
A Drifting LifeBy Yoshihiro TatsumiDrawn & Quarterly, April 2009, $29.99 It’s hard, sometimes impossible, to avoid a tunnel-visioned view of the world – not to have one’s mental map of things resemble that famous Saul Steinberg New Yorker cover, with familiar things reassuringly large and the rest of the world a small, distant blur. And…
Okay, let’s say you were a costumed crimefighter, and you financed your crusade through your own personal fortune. And then, for the sake of argument, you ran out of cash because of a nasty economic downturn, couldn’t pay the upkeep on all those wonderful toys. Sounds like a great idea for a story, right? You…
Showcase Presents: Ambush Bug Vol. 1 Plot & Pencils by Keith Giffen, Script by Robert Loren Fleming, Inks by Bob Oksner (for most of the stories) DC Comics, March 2009, $16.99 We all have to look back at the comics of our youth once in a while. It’s not always a pleasant experience, particularly when…
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith Quirk Books; April 2009; $12.95 What is there left to be said about the Undead Sensation That’s Sweeping the Nation? The buzz for this book was so loud that they rushed it into publication a few months early (which no doubt accounts for the…
Meet a talented lady with an unforgettable name – Miss Lasko Gross (yes, Miss is her first name). Her best selling graphic novel is soon to be joined by a sequel. Plus Mike Gold bashes Broadway, how Wolverine almost didn’t meet Your Mother and The Big Apple screams “Cowabunga”! PRESS THE BUTTON to Get The…
The theme is more random than ever this week, because – let’s be honest – it would be difficult to find four manga series that aren’t about teenagers. But these three books offer exceptionally varied takes on the eternal problems of adolescence, and that’s good enough for me! Wolverine: Prodigal Son, Vol. 1Story by Antony…
If you’ve ever ridden on a subway and looked outside, wondering just what was out there in the darkness, now there’s an answer. It’s a new graphic novel and a true story to boot! Plus Mike Gold bashes The Beatles and we build our comic book shopping list for the week, PRESS THE BUTTON to…
