by Andy Mansell

Comic Strip Corner—a great place for Christmas shopping! Located in the back of the store, between the action figures and the Fiction/Lit section. This is a place everyone should drop by and visit. Have you ever been interested in the comic strip collections, but don’t know where to start? Well here is a primer for you to get going!

FIRST you need to get comfortable with the format of the strips. Most if not all of you are more comfortable with storytelling on the comics page. The eye travels from left to right and top to bottom. The capable writer and editor make sure all of the important information—”rocketed to earth as an infant, young Kal-El…”, etc—is found somewhere within the context of the first few pages. On the last page you get a plot twist or reveal.

The comic strip is a bit different—not necessarily better or worse, but different; and like manga, you need to be aware and ready for the subtle differences so you can thoroughly enjoy the reading experience.

There are two basic kinds of comic strips, the gag-a-day humor strips and adventure strips. Most of the strips found today in our local Charlotte Observer are humor strips. They very often follow a mini-plot that lasts the course of the week, but each day (should) end in a punch line.

SOME HUMOR STRIPS I’D RECOMMEND:

PEANUTS
–no introduction is necessary. Jump in with any collection, although I suggest you start with any after #3. Currently the reprints are up to 1970 and the strip is about ¾ of the way through it’s twenty year run on unequaled originality, creativity and laugh out loud humor.

DENNIS THE MENACE
–a must for every fan of humor as well as required reading for any budding cartoonist. Hank Ketcham had to sell his joke every-day in 1 panel and a caption. Every line had to count and boy did it!! Pick up any volume and read it for laughs, but then slow down and look to see how the man got sooo much out of so little space. A pen and ink masterpiece!!

The other basic comic strip type and the main focus of most of the current reprint projects are the adventure and continuity strips from the heyday of the newspaper comic strip—1934- 1960. To summarize (very) quickly: These kinds of strips were born out of an era when the daily newspaper–along with the radio and the Saturday movie matinee–were the most popular forms of cheap entertainment. Cartoonists needed to create characters that were fully developed and story lines that provided non-stop cliff hangers; the successful strip made sure the reader absolutely HAD to buy the paper the next day to find out what happened next!!

A new reader to the strips needs to get into the rhythm of the adventure strip—panel 1 quickly re-caps yesterday’s action, panel 2 moves the story forward, panel three gives a slight hint of what is coming tomorrow… Once you are used to this style of storytelling, you are in for the ride of your reading life!

SOME ADVENTURE STRIPS I’D RECOMMEND:

Assuming the majority of the readers of the Heroesonline blog are hard- (or at least medium-) core super hero and/or science fiction fans, I am going to recommend the following strip collections to get your feet wet and in turn shows you just how entertaining comic strips can be.

MODESTY BLAISE
–if Lara Croft and James Bond had a baby girl she may very well have become Modesty Blaise. This is a truly adult daily strip about a two former world-class villains turned secret agents—Modesty and companion for life (but never lover) Willie Garvin. The plots are always intricate, the danger is always real. The intrigue is thick, the body count is high and very often our heroes endure severe and realistic trauma both physical and psychological. This is a strip that explodes off the page and in 30-odd years, the writer never, never took the easy way out. A new reader can start anywhere. The 4 or 5 collections in the store are all highly recommended. You will not be disappointed.

TERRY AND THE PIRATES by Milton Caniff
–is this the greatest adventure strip of all time? Arguably… but unquestionably, it IS the most influential. A young writer and his ward go off to China in 1934 in search of adventure and boy do they ever find it! Pirates, revolutions, smugglers and finally World War II. And the women!! Burma and the Dragon Lady may be the two greatest creations in comic history. Caniff presents situations with realistic violence and adds a woman who is a lightly veiled hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold and a powerful and dangerous pirate/revolutionary in the Dragon Lady. Terry the young ward grows up throughout the course of the strip and the action tales are peppered with situations where his budding maturity runs head long into the clutches of these two great femme fatales! Just writing about it makes me want to go back and re-read them. The only draw back is that Volume 1 begins with Caniff nowhere near his mature artistic powers… it takes a while for the artwork and story to fully develop, but when it does (the beginning of volume 2) there is no turning back.

FLASH GORDON by Harry Harrison and Mac Raboy
–4 volumes from Dark Horse. These collections are Sunday pages written by sci-fi legend Harry Harrison and drawn by virtuoso Mac Raboy (Captain Marvel Jr). The pages are gorgeous to look at. Granted our blond hero is a bit blasé, but the sci-fi concepts are surprisingly well thought out and the Raboy’s artwork is nothing short of gorgeous. The only drawback is that the Sunday pages are printed in black and white. The plus side—you get over 4 years (!) of Sunday pages for $20.00!!

FLASH GORDON by Alex Raymond
–the original. Although the stories are far superior in the Raboy editions, these full color collections from Checker present one of the high water marks of all comic illustration. Alex Raymond’s art is a joy to behold. Movement, swashbuckling sword play, evil villains and gorgeous women.

BATMAN and SUPERMAN
–For any fans of the Dynamic Duo and the Man of Steel’s golden age stories… these are very inexpensive collections that show the charm and excitement these characters displayed in their formative decade- the 1940s.

STAR HAWKS
–written by Ron Goulart and Archie Goodwin and drawn by Gil Kane. The complete run of the strip in one book. This was the last great adventure strip. The action and intrigue explode off the page. Reminiscent of many of the outer space super-hero books published by Marvel and DC in the late 70s, but with strong consistent focus and the same artist all the way through. This is an over-looked gem.

If you like what you’ve read, or if you are more a fan of alternative or Indy comic books, it will be time for:

THE ADVANCED CLASS: Life In The Great Depression

WALT & SKEEZIX
–by Frank King, one of the all time greats. A daily chronicle of a lower middle class family in the Midwest. Unlike most other strips, the strip is told in real time. They experience the fads of the 20s, the depression of the 30s and the war of the forties. Utter charming, utterly humane, heart-breaking, hilarious and sometimes embarrassing. Very much like life itself.

POPEYE
–by E. C. Segar. As regular readers of this blog can attest, I can’t say enough about this strip, its influence on all strips that followed, the iconic nature of the characters and the political and social farces in which E.C. Segar, their creator, involved them in, but above all Popeye is rip-roaring action strip with plenty of laughs.

LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE
–by Harold Gray. Charles Dickens meets Fox News. Never has one strip been more political, more melodramatic and more suspenseful. A moody, forbidding and yet optimistic masterpiece that needs to be read in it’s entirety to be truly appreciated. Forget the musical—this is the real deal. This strip affected the political beliefs of its readers for 30 years. Harold Gray was grooming all of us to be Republicans who could succeed without FDR to help us out of the Depression.

To me these three are in may ways the pinnacles of all comic art; the fear is that if you dive into any of these three cold, you may be startled and possibly put off by the challenging, and often dated, material.

Try Modesty Blaise, or Flash Gordon, Star Hawks first and then let us know what you think here on the blog! Thanks for reading!!

Apparently you guys are more interested in Forgetting Sarah Marshall than the Incredible Hulk–what does this mean? I haven’t seen either one, so I have no real opinion, although I remember that the former had a bunch of pretty girls in it, and the latter had a bunch of big green CGI guys, so maybe that’s part of it.

NONETHELESS–I’m going to extend this contest until this Friday morning, just to give any late arrivals a chance to spin their own web: Do me a favor and post your comments at the original blog-post, just to keep everything in one place. You can find the rules there as well, which are BASICALLY: no swearing, mainly fisticuffs, etc.

Okay, get out there and SMASH!

Every Wednesday we run down the 5 most interesting comics or graphic novels coming out for the week.
5. MYTHOS HC
Written by Paul Jenkins; art by Paolo Rivera
Marvel
$24.99

Mythos is a series of one-shots that have been released over the past couple of years, each retelling the origins of the big players in the Marvel Universe: The X-men, Hulk, Spider-man, Fantastic Four, Captain America and Ghost Rider (yeah that’s right – Ghost Rider, what he’s not good enough for you?) Written by Paul Jenkins and lushly painted by Paolo Rivera, the idea with these stories is to weave together various story elements that have evolved into canon over time from both modern comics and the movies into the stories that were originally told in the first issue of each character’s respective books. I hear the results were mixed as far as how effectively this was done but it’s all certainly nice to look at.

4. TED McKEEVER LIBRARY BOOK 1: TRANSIT
By Ted McKeever
Image Comics
$24.99 | 156 pgs

Ted McKeever is an artist with a bit of a cult following who’s never had a real breakthrough hit but has produced some interesting work over the years, notably his Epic series Plastic Forks and Metropol and his Vertigo book with Peter Milligan, The Extremist.

This first hardcover volume of a planned series of reprints from his career begins with his first book originally published in 1987 by Vortex called Transit. It’s about an “urban rebel” who gets caught up in a political power play that might take down his whole city. McKeever never actually finished this story until now. In addition to the original five issues this book collects the never before seen ending and some other odds and ends.

3. BATMAN: CACOPHONY #1 (of 3)
Written by Kevin Smith; art by Walt. J. Flanagan and Sandra Hope
DC
$3.99 | 32 pgs

Kevin Smith makes his long awaited return to comics this week. But it’s not to finish that Daredevil/Bullseye book he left hanging a few years ago. Or to finally do that Spider-man book he was supposed to write. Nope, he’s starting a new book with DC that has been logically limited to only 3 issues which gives him a pretty fair chance of actually finishing it.

Cacophony is a Batman comic that features the villain Onomatopoeia that Smith created during his Green Arrow run. He’s a serial killer who imitates sounds in a very comic booky way (blam, krak, sploosh, and all that). In addition to Onomatopoeia, other villains make an appearnce here like The Joker, Deadshot and Maxie Zeus.

One interesting thing to note is that the book is drawn by Smith’s friend Walt Flanagan who has appeared in many of Smith’s movies like Mallrats and Clerks.

2. STRAY TOASTERS
By Bill Sienkiewicz
Image Comics
$24.99 | 224pgs

This lost relic from the ’80’s has rarely been reprinted over the years, possibly because its weird, near impenetrable story is not for everyone. But it’s Bill Sienkiewicz in his Ralph Steadman meets Bob Peak heyday, around the time of his other classic works like Elektra:Assassin and his run on New Mutants.

It’s a serial killer story featuring a tough but burnt out detective, freshly released from the nuthouse. Oh and toasters come into play somehow.

1. FABLES: COVERS BY JAMES JEAN
By James Jean
DC Vertigo
$39.99 | 208 pgs

A coffee table art book for those comic fans that just like looking at the covers. You don’t get better than this. All of James Jean’s covers for the excellent Vertigo comic, Fables, collected in an oversized hardcover and accompanied by sketches, annotations and an afterword by Fables writer Bill Willingham.

Jean will seriously be considered one of the best, if not the best, cover artist of all time someday and the fact that he’s been producing such amazing works of art on a monthly basis for this comic is mind boggling. They are all equally breathtaking.

It was recently announced that Jean is leaving Fables soon so consider this book a farewell celebration of his magnificent run. The comic won’t be the same without him.

OH AND ALSO…

HULK: RED HULK HC
Collecting the first issues of the newly relaunched Hulk comic – post World War Hulk. Written by Jeph Loeb and drawn by Ed McGuiness and featuring the mysterious death of a long-time member of the Hulk comic cast and the Hulk turns red.

BIG QUESTIONS #11: SWEETNESS AND LIGHT
Anders Nilsen’s highly acclaimed comic reaches its 11th issue of gloomy, existential angst and talking animals.

BATMAN EGO & OTHER TAILS
A softcover collection of various Batman-related stories written and drawn by Darwyn Cooke, including the excellent Selina’s Big Score.

NEW X-MEN BY GRANT MORRISON ULTIMATE COLLECTION VOL. 3
The final volume collecting Grant Morrison’s crazy run on New X-men. This one has the truth about Xorn and Marc Silvestri illustrating the future.

JSA KINGDOM COME SPECIAL: SUPERMAN #1
Written and drawn by Alex Ross. This spins off from recent events in the JSA comic and of course ties in to the classic Kingdom Come series that Ross did with Mark Waid way back.

Last Saturday was maybe the longest day ever working comic conventions. I do remember staying up all night prepping for HeroesCon back in the day, but this was waking up at home at 4am and hitting the road before 5 for Myrtle Beach.

I arrived at 8am, just after sunrise. I went ahead and walked out the 20 yards or so from the conference center to the ocean because I knew once I got started setting up and the show opened I would not get another chance. I didn’t want to drive all the way to the coast and have to admit I didn’t set foot on the beach! Needless to say, it was a beautiful morning. Not a cloud in the sky with a daytime high of 75 degrees, on NOVEMBER 1st! What a great day to be at the beach…I wish I could have spent the day out there, but duty called.

I was impressed by the cool sand sculpture the con had commissioned on the beach. Jabba the hut, Jar-Jar Binks, Stimpy, a Bat-signal and ole Shellhead’s helmet. Pretty cool.

The day was great. A first time con is always an unknown, but Chad put everything he had into it. The show drew a little over 300 fans for comics, art and gaming. I had good traffic and better than average sales all day. It helped that the dealers’ room was diverse and I was one of only three comic sellers. Our buddy Brett, of Brett’s Comic Pile and the Virginia Comicon came down from Richmond, along with Chad’s Apocalypse Comics. The ratio of fans to sellers was just right. Chad is already planning next year’s show and I expect it to just get better and better.

I was loaded and ready to drive over to Atlanta for Wes Tillander’s Atlanta Comic Con by 8pm. As I suspected, the sun was down and I had not gotten back outside to the beach. I was really wishing I could have stayed and enjoyed the awesome weather the next day. Atlanta is not a short hop from the beach–I arrived in Hotlanta at 3 am! Thankfully the clocks fell back an hour overnight for daylight savings time and I managed to get about 5 hours sleep before I had to get up and set up the comic display again.

Atlanta was better than it has been the past few shows. Wes had a good crowd, possibly due to having Georges Jeanty as the special guest. I had quite a few new faces coming by the table looking for Buffy Season Eight comics and other back issues drawn by Georges. The newly built travel stock of just the “good stuff” has been well received and Seth and I just keep tweaking it every week to make it even better.

I was loaded and on the road back to Charlotte by 7pm (another day without seeing the light of day), and in my driveway by 10:30pm. It’s a good thing I love old comics and seeing old friends at the shows, cause driving 14 hours, working 24 hours (including loading and unloading the van 6 times) in a about 43 hours is crazy! I went to bed early Monday.

And I’m not done travelling yet–my schedule is packed this winter. Next up:

Big Apple Con — The National, Nov. 14-16 NYC.

Virginia Comic Con — Richmond , VA Nov. 23rd

Charlotte Comic Con — Dec. 27th — The Crowne Plaza uptown.

Happy Holidaze!

As is often remarked upon online, we are in an incredible golden age of comic book publishing in actual “book” form, from high end reprints of classic material, to brand new graphic novels from the U.S. and abroad, to aggressive reprinting of never-seen-in-English Japanese and Chinese comics. It’s great, although it can be pricey for those of us who prefer our comics in book form, not to mention presenting challenges as to where to PUT everything. There are worse problems to have.

Another not-so-bad problem is visibility: back around 1998 or 2000, there might be 4 or 5 really GREAT graphic novels published in a year’s time, and as such each was fairly momentous. Things like Jimmy Corrigan or Ghost World were on top of a very small pile of releases, and were highly visible. These days there are often 4 or 5 great books coming out in the space of a WEEK, and it’s easy to miss them as newer things appear on the racks.

Being helpful ABOVE ALL ELSE, I thought I’d point out a couple of things that you may have missed recently, at least judging by how many copies we still have on the rack. And would these books make excellent Christmas gifts for you or your loved ones? Well, sure they would:

JAMILTI
by Rutu Modan :: HC :: $19.95

Rutu Modan is an Israeli cartoonist that is (or was, I’m never sure) a part of the esteemed Actus Tragicus comics collective. Last year’s Exit Wounds was widely hailed as the best book of the year on many critics’ list. But even if you don’t think it was the “best” (I don’t), it was still great. She has a singular style and approach to storytelling, and her stories combine societal and political issues gracefully with more quotidian elements like family, romance, and so forth.

Jamilti is her new book, a hardcover collection of short stories, and is still just a few weeks old. I haven’t read it yet, so I can’t say much about how incredible it is, but it’s receiving great reviews so far, and is certainly a pretty little book, and at $19.95 is a cheap one to boot.

DOGS & WATER
by Anders Nilsen :: FC :: $19.95

I love this book, which is a hardcover edition of a previously released (and quickly sold-out–zip!) softcover a couple of years ago. Anders Nilsen’s work is hard to sum up, which is maybe my favorite facet of it. His drawings are beautiful, and the stories they tell are airy and open-ended, dreamlike to the point of being hallucinatory, and surreal without being overly esoteric. I’m not sure about that last one; I needed another “this but not that” to make three. At any rate, you may be familiar with the books he did related to the premature death of his then-fiance, including Don’t Go Where I Can’t Follow and The End. Dogs and Water is fictional and self-contained, although it’s hard to say that it’s lighter fare, it’s somewhat easier to jump into, lacking some of the heartbreaking qualities of the autobiographical works.

Dogs and Water is a great read for pretty much anyone interested in comics-as-art, but I’d especially recommend this one for the “My Artsy Buddy/Girlfriend/Boyfriend/Spouse/College-Student” category for gift-giving.

OR ELSE
by Kevin Huizenga :: pamphlet :: $4.95

Oh man, Kevin Huizenga. I could go on all day about the guy. It’s easy to say that his comics are smart, or smartly written, or smartly conceived, or smart smarty smarty-pants. But the more I think of it, it’s not that his comics are so well thought out (though they are) that makes them good, it’s that they PROMOTE thinking, both on the part of the reader AND the author. Reading a Kevin H. comic feels like you’re inside his thought process; almost as if you and he were mulling the problem over together.

I won’t say anything else. Just buy the darn thing–heck, it’s only five bucks.

MOOMIN
by Tove Jansson :: HC (3 volumes available) :: $19.95

This has been one of Drawn & Quarterly‘s fastest selling items (at least according to their website), but it hasn’t really taken off around here. Moomin is a 50’s era strip that’s suitable for all ages, especially that daughter or son (I think young girls would especially like it) with a creative side you’re looking to tickle. To call Moomin whimsical is a gross understatement, but it’s about as close as I can get to describing it in just one word. Hey whaddaya want, I’m a high school dropout–don’t let this be you, kids!

Moomin is an often nearly abstract, highly visually stylized story, with all the hipness of 50’s era ANYthing, but never snide, never superior. It’s an immersive and strange world, the kind of thing you would have loved when YOU were a kid, but would find difficult to explain to anyone who’d never read it before. As I am finding myself.

POPEYE VOLUME 3
by E.C. Segar :: HC (3 volumes available) :: $29.95

Oh man. This one just came out. Anyone who’s ever heard me expound on my love of Popeye in the store can tell you how glassy-eyed and fevered I become. Reading Popeye as an adult has been one of the singular comics-reading experiences of my life. Seriously. If I were to put together an all-time top-five RIGHT NOW, at gunpoint, TO SAVE AN ORPHAN’S LIFE!!!, Popeye might be the first thing that came to mind.

It’s not that Popeye is such a compelling story, or represents the zenith of all that is possible with comics, or whatever. Popeye is just good. Period. Segar’s art is pretty much the standard for all “big foot” comedy strips that would follow, not to mention highly visible in the work of Chester Brown, Sammy Harkham, and dozens of other modern cartoonists. But it’s his writing, his constant, apparently effortless barrage of wit and language and visual gags, that makes the strip so enjoyable. Simply put, Popeye is a great book to sit back with on a Sunday afternoon and just enjoy, turning the giant pages slowly, and taking in the whole rollicking, violent (so violent!), boisterous strip a week at a time. Check out this little promo video Fantagraphics put together:

Oh, and for you shoppers: Popeye is suitable for ANY reader. Only crazy people will not like it.

But let’s talk about it–what do YOU think is an overlooked book you haven’t heard enough about?

I’m reposting my original exhortation regarding the forthcoming Kramer’s Ergot #7, which is contained below the “—” underneath this top portion. There was a pretty shocking number of you who said you’d like me to order this book for you at the original post, but I wanted to give everyone a second chance to confirm. These are pricey books, and by offering them to you at a discount, we’re increasing our risk on them, so we want to make sure everyone actually wants one.

So, to paraphrase what’s below: Kramer’s Ergot #7 is a 96-page anthology that’s a mammoth 16″ x 21″ inches, which is massive. The roster is a who’s who of the best cartoonists working today, including Chris Ware, Jaime Hernandez, Dan Clowes, Matt Groening, Sammy Harkham, and a bunch of others. I saw the pages at SPX, and holy mackerel does it look better than I even dreamed. The retail price is $125, but we’ll sell them to you for $100 IF YOU PRE-ORDER THEM through us. We’ll have one or two on hand for you to eyeball, but the $100 price is only good for those that contact me by this Thursday, November 6. I’ll be ordering these direct from Buenaventura Press the next day.

Remember, you MUST e-mail me in order to get on this list. Please don’t be shy about not pre-ordering one if you aren’t sure you want it. Also I would point out that the book will show up some time in November or early December, which will make it an excellent Christmas gift. So feel free to have your loved ones e-mail me. As long as we know you, we’ll put you on the list. For those of you who don’t normally shop in the store, this book is too massive to mail order, so I would point you respectfully at Buenaventura itself.

Chris Ware’s double-page spread. Homina!

Tim Hensley and Dan Clowes.

Tom Gauld.

———-

OKAY, so one of my favorite cartoonists right now is Sammy Harkham, who you may or may not have met at this year’s HeroesCon. I met him, and might as well have been meeting Farrah Fawcett, considering how nervous I was the whole time. I LOVE HIM! But besides being a studly cartoonist, Sammy also edits the preeminent anthology KRAMER’S ERGOT, six volumes of which have come out over the last 8-10 years or so.

THIS FALL WILL SEE the release of Kramer’s Ergot #7, which will be published as a 16″ x 21″ massive tome for $125, filled with a laundry list of great creators, including Chris Ware, Dan Clowes, Adrian Tomine, Seth, Kevin Huizenga, Matt Groening, Jaime Hernandez, and a bajillion others. It’s crazy. While the book will only be 96 pages–I know, I know, let me FINISH–it’s all material created SPECIFICALLY to see print at this size, comparable to the size of old Sundays like Gasoline Alley, etc. This has NEVER BEEN DONE in comics before, and from all accounts some of the work is breathtaking. Imagine what someone with the graphic sense and careful pacing of Dan Clowes could do with a page over 4 times larger than a standard comic page. I’m getting sweaty just thinking about it, and I’m not even that big a Clowes fan. But I AM a big fan of comics, and the thought of pushing into this kind of territory is really exciting to me.

BUT NOT to everybody. A lot of people–maybe even YOU–are put off by the high price point and relatively low page count. Which is totally fine. There are a lot of books that are too expensive to buy at ANY price for some people. But the strange thing is that a lot of people have decided that they need to COMMENT on how expensive the book is, regardless of whether they care of not about what’s in the book, whether they’d have EVER bought it, etc. Boring, I know; but on the Internet people have to talk-talk-talk, especially bloggers, even when they pretend to be objective and journalisty. Imagine needing to say something EVERY DAY to an audience you can’t see. You can almost forgive these guys for their digital demagoguery.

ALMOST.

I have been more vocal in this dumb debate than I normally would be, half because I find it childish for people to complain about art–ignoring art is the best defense against art you don’t like. And half because I REALLY AM excited about this book, and want to stick up for it like you would for anything you like. And my excitement was only quadrupled a few days ago when Tom Spurgeon posted this excellent interview with Sammy Harkham about the book, the creators involved, et cetera, rather than flinging opinions out all willy-nilly with little more information than the size and cost of the book. But I’m a fan of Tom Spurgeon too, so maybe I’m just playing favorites.

SO, I say all this NOT to bring this cacophonous kerfuffle into our blog. I am uninterested in hearing what everyone thinks about expensive artsy books–I like the folksy neighborly vibe we have on this blog, and would prefer not to enter into some rejoinder war with anyone. So, if you’d like to be heard, please feel free to post on any of the threads I’ve linked to above.

THE REAL PROBLEM WITH THIS BOOK for me is all about the retail risk. Kramer’s Ergot #7 will be available for much less than $125 on Amazon, possibly as low as $80–how in the world can we compete with that? While I intend to support the book by purchasing it here, I get a fat employee discount, so it’s a wash. And while I’d love to order a bajillion, just to shut up the people who say that comic shops will never order such a pricey book, I’d have to defend to Shelton why I spent so much of his money (which is never in surplus anyway) on even a few of such a pricey book.

SO LET’S SAY (pending confirmation from the publisher of what our cost will be) that we offer the book to anyone who special orders it for an even $100. That’s 20% off the retail price; a little more than it costs on Amazon, but we throw in the satisfaction of supporting your locally owned and operated comic shop for no additional charge. This will ONLY apply to people who special order the book by posting here or e-mailing me directly–other copies purchased in the store will be at regular price, although stuff like your reserve discount, etc., would still apply. If I don’t know you, I may ask for some sort of confirmation, just so we don’t end up with a stack of these things unsold if you change your mind later. If you’re from out of town and would be mail-ordering the book, it’s probably better if you order it directly from the publisher (Buenaventura Press), as it’s an oversized package and would add too many weird costs for us.

ANY TAKERS? I really do think this is going to be one of the most talked-about and influential books of the DECADE, a historical event in comic book publishing. I CANNOT STOP USING CAPITAL LETTERS when talking about it.

I’M SORRY.

Happy Halloween from all of us at Heroes Aren’t Hard To Find, INCLUDING our own in-house superhero team, Blue Falcon and his trusty sidekick Dynomutt! Or maybe Blue Falcon is the sidekick–either way, Happy Halloween!

Now, if Dynomutt were to fight Scooby-Doo underwater…

Okay, you guys seemed to enjoy the contest we had a few weeks ago for a copy of the Forgetting Sarah Marshall DVD, so you’ll surely FLIP for this one, which actually has something to do with comics. Which is what we sell. Not DVD’s though, but the production company was kind enough to send us a free copy of the new Incredible Hulk DVD, which we have kindly decided to give to one of you.

But which one of you? Well, therein lies a fight! Tell us, in less than 100 or so words, who wins the oft-discussed hypothetical fight between the Hulk and Superman. Two twists: the fight takes place ON THE MOON (!!!) and has to be hand-to-hand. Flying, giant jumping, et cetera okay, but no freeze breath, heat vision, etc. Non-violent abilities (super-hearing) are also okay. This is just to keep Superman from vaporizing Hulk in outer space over and over.

Spin your (short!) tale in the comments section below. Remember: BE NICE! No rudeness, no swearing, et cetera. You know how we roll. Okay, let the fight…

…begin!

Now that I’ve gone through the mainstream Marvel and DC fare, its time to get to the more adult-oriented stuff. Now in this department DC has Marvel considerably beat due to the fact that the Vertigo line has been around for almost 20 years, while Marvel’s Max line isn’t even a decade old yet and you could count the Icon titles published with your fingers. Okay here we go:

ICON: Criminal by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips is one of my favorite, favorite comics on the stand right now. Each storyline is 100% self-contained but all take place in the same universe and characters from other stories show up in other stories but really you can read them in any order you want. Kick-Ass (or Kick-Heinie as we call it here, we’re a family store), by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr., hasn’t been released in trade yet but talk about a hot, hot sizzling book. It’s the story of a normal teen who decides to become a superhero but instead gets beat up… pretty badly. Powers (Brian Michael Bendis and Mike Oeming) transferred over from Image and is about two detectives who work the superhero beat.

MAX: This line has produced mostly mini-series like War is Hell by Garth Ennis and Haunt of Horror by Richard Corben but there have been three major Supreme Power series, all written by J. Michael Stracynszki; each a slow burn realistic take on superheroes. Alias by Brian Michael Bendis is about Jessica Jones (who New Avengers fans know as Cage’s wife/baby mama), a PI investigating the seedy, sticky corners of the Marvel U. And Garth Ennis’ 60 plus issue run on Punisher Max is a soon-to-be-classic examination of the post-Vietnam mindset and the military industrial complex.

VERTIGO: To name all the great stuff that Vertigo has put out and the merits of those titles would take up the entire blog page. Since Sandman, Preacher, Y The Last Man, and Fables are well-known and some of the stores best-selling trades, I’m going to use this space to focus on some lesser-known gems. First of all is one of my favorite books at the moment Scalped: if you can imagine The Departed on an Indian reservation than your almost there. Sandman Mystery Theatre which takes the 40’s hero’s adventures and gives them a dark, noir-ish bent. Brian Wood has a couple of ongoing projects at Vertigo. One is DMZ which centers on a reporter in Manhattan, a demilitarized zone in the midst of the second Civil War. The newer series is Northlanders, a Viking anthology book, whose first trade has come and at eight issues for ten bucks is a snazzy deal. There are a couple of books like the crime-conspiracy 100 Bullets and Vertigo’s longest running book Hellblazer that have been around for so long that we take their presence for granted; but they’re both really excellent books.

And with another batch of fine recommendations, I hope to see you at the store soon!

Each Wednesday we run down what’s new and fresh at the store. I’m actually out of town right now and was going to skip this week but there is so much great stuff coming out that I couldn’t pass it up.

BERNIE WRIGHTSON’S FRANKENSTEIN
Written by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley; art by Bernie Wrightson
Dark Horse
$29.95 | 256 pgs

WARNING: NOT A COMIC. Still, it’s got famed comic artist Bernie Wrightson illustrating Mary Shelley’s prose. Wrightson originally did these illustrations back in the ’80’s for a printed portfolio and there was briefly a version of the art and prose together that is now long out of print. In addition to the original novel you get 47 incredible black and white bull page illustrations. Plus it’s overized and has a intro by Stephen King. Happy Halloween!

TOKEN
Written by Alisa Kwitney; Art and cover by Joëlle Jones
DC MINX
$9.99 | 176 pgs

Although DC decided to kill Minx, their young adult lined aimed at the teenage girl market, there’s been a final spurt of releases recently in order to get out some already solicited books. The last of them is Token and it is one that I, myself, was most looking forward to since it featured artwork by newcomer Joëlle Jones (12 Reasons Why I Lover Her) whose expressive, animated linework is a pleasure to look at and perfect for Minx’ target audience.

Set in South Beach in the 1980s, this tale of romance and culture clash is about a young Jewish girl who meets a Spanish “old soul” named Rafael.

JOKER HC
Written by Brian Azzarello; Art by Lee Bermejo and Mick Gray;
DC Comics
$19.99 | 128 pgs

Brian Azzarello who is known for his stylish crime comics like 100 Bullets, brings his noirish flair to Gotham City with a graphic novel that seems to pull some inspiration from the superhero/crime hybrid film that we call The Dark Knight. Much like the Lex Luthor: Man of Steel mini that this same creative team brought us a few years back, this book stars the bad guy, in this case The Joker, in an attempt to get at a new definitive take on the character. A tough objective when, for good or bad, even the cover draws comparisons with the definitive take given us by the late Heath Ledger.

Even if you take this as a cynical attempt at drawing close to the cinema version of the character you have to be intrigued by what a writer like Azzarello whose skills lie with rhythmic dialogue and gritty violence will do with this story.

SPEAK OF THE DEVIL HC
By Gilbert Hernandez
Dark Horse
$19.95 | 128 pgs

Gilbert Hernandez has been rolling out an interesting spin-off of his Palomar stories from Love & Rockets that started with the graphic novel Chance In Hell and continued with this six issue mini-series from Dark Horse. At one point in Love & Rockets, chesty and lispy Fritz had a brief career as a B-movie actress. Well, why not do graphic novel adaptations of her entire filmography, right? This one is about a young girl who takes to wearing a devil mask and runs around peeping into the bedroom windows of her neighbors and even her own father and stepmother.

BAT MANGA SECRET HISTORY OF BATMAN IN JAPAN SC
By Chip Kidd, Saul Ferris and Geoff Spear
Pantheon
$29.95

Apparently, in 1966 during the Bat-mania generated by the popular TV show of that time, Batman was licensed to the Japanese magazine Shonen King to produce a bunch of Batman manga. Translated and published in the West for the first time, this collection of stories by Jiro Kuwata is designed and edited by Chip Kidd and, like many Kidd projects, is accompanied by nice photographs of kitschy vintage toys.

The stories themselves feature Batman and Robin fighting mutant dinosaurs and aliens and the undead and other things like that. So basically if you’ve been thinking that Grant Morrison’s current run on the main Batman title doesn’t go far enough with it’s unearthing of 50s and 60s era Bat-zaniness than this book is going to blow your mind.

FRANKLY, ALL OF THIS STUFF IS JUST AS GOOD:

TRAVEL SC
Picturebox gives us a new wordless graphic novel by manga creator Yuichi Yokoyama about three men travelling on a train. This one is all about the beauty of architecture, design and scenery.

OR ELSE #5
The last issue of Kevin Huizenga’s Or Else was an oddball masterpiece and I expect more of the same from this issue. This collection of minis includes tales of religious fanaticism, household insects, and things to do on Tuesdays.

BOURBON ISLAND 1730 GN
Lewis Trondheim releases yet another graphic novel with First Second Books, this one involving pirates and ornithologists in search of secret treasure and rare dodo birds. Oh and they’re all anthropomorphic animals.

MCCAIN THE COMIC BOOK
OBAMA THE COMIC BOOK
If you’re one of those mythical “undecided” voters who somehow have not made up their mind with less than a week to go before the election than maybe reading these new comic biographies about the two candidates will help steer you in one direction or the other. This is actually the second set of Obama and McCain comics to come out in the last couple of months so someone out there must think this is a good idea.

Seriously though, make up your mind and get out there and vote.

KILL YOUR BOYFRIEND NEW PTG
A new printing of a somewhat obscure Grant Morrison and Philip Bond work from the mid ’90s about teen sex and rebellion in middle class England.

GARTH ENNIS BATTLEFIELDS: NIGHT WITCHES #1(of 3)
A new Garth Ennis war comic published by Dynamite (who also put out his excellent The Boys series). This is the beginning a three part story about female Soviet bomber pilots during WWII.

EMPOWERED TP VOL 04
A new volume of Adam Warren’s highly addictive and highly cheesecakey satire of cheesecake in superhero comics.

ASTONISHING X-MEN GHOST BOXES #1
A one-shot to fill in some gaps in Warren Ellis’ ongoing Astonishing run. This one has artwork by Alan Davis and Adi Granov.

HELLBOY IN THE CHAPEL OF MOLOCH ONE SHOT
As a special Halloween treat, Hellboy creator Mike Mignola has chosen to write and draw his first Hellboy story in 3 years. This one takes place in a spooky Eastern European chapel and is sure to look great.