ANDY’S PICK :: FABLES ENCYCLOPEDIA: There are few in fandom as detail oriented and obsessed as the living legend Jess Nevins.  He is the man who annotated every single panel from every volume of Alan Moore’s detail oriented work with League of Extraordinary Gentleman Companion (highly recommended!).  (Why is that car in the back ground on page 4 panel 2?  Whose car is it and what about the license plate?)  Once Nevins embarks on a project he never sleeps until all is explained. Now Vertigo and Bill Willingham have unleashed the very hard working and very focused Mr. Nevins on the expansive Fables Universe.  Fables Encyclopedia is just brimming with fun facts and anecdotes about this popular long running VERTIGO series.  Trust me, if there is minutiae to mined, Mr. Nevins is our man.  This coffee table book features illustrations from cover artists James Jean,  Joao Ruas, Adam Hughes, as well as contributions by the regular series art team of Mark Buckingham and Steve Leialoha.  Enjoy!!!

Well, the Heroes’ Discussion Group reunited with a bang.  We talked about Saga on and off for three hours and spent the rest of the time talking comics with legendary penciller Steve Bissette who stopped by with our friend Craig Fischer on a lark!  It was a tremendous afternoon—I was less a moderator and more of a plate-spinner with an itch between the shoulders.  We had a blast.  Thanks to all of you who attended.

Now we turn our sights onto Halloween.  In the past we’ve done Walking Dead and From Hell.  This year it is time we jumped feet first into the Mike Mignola-verse and talk about Hellboy and B.P.R.D.  The amount of consistent quality pages delivered by Mignola and team centering on everyone’s favorite earth-bound demon and his fellow bureau agents of Paranormal research and defense is legion.  So, we asked all of our Mignolaphiles which books we should tackle.  Based on a consensus over-seen by our own Seth Peagler (thanks Seth!) we have decided on the following trade paperbacks:

• Hellboy: Wake the Devil—an early complete Hellboy story arc
• Hellboy: The Chained Coffin—a really solid collections of shorter Hellboy pieces
• B.P.R.D.—The Dead—one of the best of the early B.P.R.D. extended stories.

Topics will include:

• The art by Mignola (Hellboy) and Guy Davis (BPRD) and how their different styles affect the storytelling
• The supporting cast (certainly one of the largest and most interesting around)
• The way Hellboy/BPRD is published—can new readers jump in anywhere?
• The use of comedy relief
• The consistency of the series
• And for any who are already well-versed with Mignola’s work: What should the new readers pick up next?
• And a whole lot more!  If you’ve been putting these series off—this is a perfect time to give it a try!

We hope you will join us for a belated Halloween on Saturday November 2^nd at 1:00pm.  As usual we will meet at the store and repair to either the Tavern or Bakery across the way.

As usual, Heroes is offering the 10% Discussion Discount on these three books.  But as a special incentive–if you purchase all three we are offering a 20% savings.  That’s 3 Trades for only 45.00.  Just remember to remind the clerk of the discount when you check out.  (The overwhelming and ever-present smell of Mylar is starting to get to us.)

Hope you’ll join us and Happy Halloween!

Andy’s Pick :: The Sandman: Endless Nights: With the new series due to drop any week now, the comic world will be abuzz with The Sandman. And rightfully so, it is one of the most influential and arguably one of the best comic book series of all time. In my opinion this anthology, Sandman: Endless Nights is the perfect place for the uninitiated to sample Neil Gaiman‘s comic work. Sandman is Dream. He and his siblings known as the endless (Destiny, Death, Desire, Despair, Destruction and Delight/Delirium) are each featured in stand alone stories all written by Gaiman and drawn by P. Craig Russell (Death), Milo Manara (Desire–natch!), Miguelanxo Prado (dream– this is a story set long before Earth came into being) Barron Story and Michael McKean (Despair) Bill Sienkiewicz (Delirium) Glen Fabry (Destruction) and Frank Quitely (Destiny) Each time I read it, a different story rises to the top of my favorites.  Now The Sandman: Endless Nights is available in an affordable softcover, you can’t put off the inevitable any longer.  The Dream Story will knock the socks off of any DC comics fan. Oh, BTW– this was the very first comic periodical to debut on the NY Times Bestseller list. Give it a try!

ANDY’S PICK :: EMERALD CITY OF OZ #3: Eric Shanower and Skottie Young continue their beautiful and exciting reinterpretation of L.Frank Baum’s immortal OZ series with this wonderful 6th installment.  Issue 3 comes out this week but you will want to get the other two issues as well.  Dorothy and Ozma take  Aunt Em and Uncle Ben (newly arrived from Kansas) on a sight-seeing  tour of Oz unaware that the  rotten Nome King is building an an army bent on sacking the Emerald City. Great story, great art  and Toto too.

 Here at Staff Picks Ltd (A Division of Renzicorp Intl.)–there are two types of books that we are drawn to: either books we recommend for personal reasons–love the characters, fan of the creative team, enjoy a particular storyline, etc. and then there are the books that we believe are indispensable and belong in every serious comic library. The first two volumes of Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (LoEG) belongs in the latter category; It is a must-read, must-own work of sequential art.  Even if you haven’t read it (yet), you are most likely familiar with the premise– every work of British genre fiction from Shakespeare to HG Wells occurs in the same universe. The LoEG tells the story of an epic team-up of the greatest adventurers from the end of the 19th century. Much has been written about the challenging nature and overwhelming detail of the subsequent volumes (The Black Dossier and the three part Century) but it is these first two story arcs– offered in a single soft cover omnibus at a very affordable price–that will excite and delight any comic fan. LoEG belongs in the same library with Moore’s other comic epics–Watchmen, V for Vendetta and Swamp Thing. And for goodness sake, avoid the LoEG movie at all costs!