:01 FIRST SECOND
STARS OF THE MONTH
PRINCE OF PERSIA GN
(W) Jordan Mechner, A.B. Sina (A) LeUyen Pham, Alex Puvilland
Last chance at the original cover design! In this graphic novel adventure based on Jordan Mechner’s classic Prince of Persia video games, two princes in different centuries of historic Persia are drawn together by their joint destinies. When everything they believe in begins to fade and decay, they find that only they can stand against the twilight of their eras! Soon to be a motion picture. (JUL084001)
SC, 6x9, 208pgs, FC SRP: $16.95
GEMSTONE PUBLISHING
STARS OF THE MONTH
THE OVERSTREET COMIC BOOK PRICE GUIDE VOLUME 39 SC
(E) Robert M. Overstreet
The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, the definitive guide for comic collectors and dealers alike, is back for its 39th edition, including a 70th anniversary look at Batman's first year, an introduction to The Hero Initiative, an amazing roster of new entries in the Overstreet Hall of Fame, and the most extensive pricing from the world of comics! This edition features a choice of two covers — a great modern interpretation of The Avengers #1 by John K. Snyder III and a spot-on recreation of the classic All-Select Comics #1 by Murphy Anderson.
ALL-SELECT (DEC084049)—SC SRP: $29.95
AVENGERS (DEC084047)—SC SRP: $29.95
************************************************************************
GIRL TWIRL COMICS
STARS OF THE MONTH
O/A JANE'S WORLD OMNIBUS VOLUME 1 GN
by Paige Braddock
This 432-page book collects the first three volumes of Jane’s World into one handy size. This book will give readers a full introduction to the cast and crew of the Eisner-nominated series. See the characters and story lines evolve and get ever more humorous and complicated. Alien abductions, vegan Amazons, Elvis impersonators, Jane Bond, and feisty ex-girlfriends all collide.
MATURE THEMES
SC, 432pgs, B&W SRP: $19.95
JANE'S WORLD VOLUME 9 TP
(W/A) Paige Braddock
Jane is on a quest for love, but will she succeed? Her journey will be filled with romantic misadventures, misunderstandings, and general quixotic mayhem! Jane goes undercover as a busboy at Hooters. Then, after failing to uncover sexism in the workplace she's sent out to cover a mountain bike race, which of course ends in disaster. (MAY090864)
SC, 6x9, 128pgs, B&W SRP: $15.00
**********************************************************************
FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS
IT WAS THE WAR OF THE TRENCHES HC
(W/A) Jacques Tardi
128 pgs / B&W / 7.75 x 10.5 / HC
$24.99
World War I, that awful, gaping wound in the history of Europe, has long been an obsession of Jacques Tardi’s. It Was the War of the Trenches is Tardi’s defining, masterful statement on the subject, a graphic novel that can stand shoulder to shoulder with Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. Tardi is not interested in the national politics, the strategies, or the battles. Like Remarque, he focuses on the day to day of the grunts in the trenches, and, with icy, controlled fury and disgust, with sardonic yet deeply sympathetic narration, he brings that existence alive as no one has before or since. Yet he also delves deeply into the underlying causes of the war, the madness, the cynical political exploitation of patriotism. And in a final, heartbreaking coda, Tardi grimly itemizes the ghastly human cost of the war, and lays out the future 20th century conflicts, all of which seem to spring from this global burst of insanity. Trenches features some of Tardi’s most stunning artwork. Rendered in an inhabitually lush illustrative style, inspired both by abundant photographic documentation and classic American war comics, augmented by a sophisticated, gorgeous use of Craftint tones, Trenches is somehow simultaneously atypical and a perfect encapsulation of Tardi’s mature style. It is the indisputable centerpiece of Tardi’s oeuvre.
OFFERED AGAIN
YOU ARE THERE HC
by Jacques Tardi & Jean-Claude Forest
196 pgs / BW / 8.25 x 10.75 / HC
$26.99
The satirical masterpiece that ushered in the graphic novel era to European comics, finally available in English. An unexpected combination of dark cynicism and playful fantasy; a feast for eyes and brain alike. (JUL090864)
WEST COAST BLUES HC
by Jacques Tardi & Jean-Patrick Manchette
80 pgs / BW / 7.5 x 10.5 / HC
$18.99
A master crime novelist and a superlative French cartoonist unite for a savage noir thriller. An aimless family man is sucked into a spiral of violence involving an exiled war criminal and two hired assassin. (JUL090863)
KAFKA SC
by Robert Crumb & David Zane Mairowitz
176 pgs / BW / 6.25 x 8.5 / SC
$12.95
Alienated from his roots, his family, his surroundings, and primarily from his own body, Kafka created a unique literary language in which to hide away, transforming himself into a cockroach, an ape, a dog, a mole or a circus artiste who starves himself to death in front of admiring crowds. David Zane Mairowitz's brilliant text and the illustrations and comic panels of the world's greatest cartoonist, Robert Crumb (himself no stranger to self-loathing and alienation), help us to understand the essence of Kafka and provide insight beyond the cliche "Kafkaesque," peering through Kafka's glass wall like no other book before it. (FEB073461)
OUR GANG VOL. 1 SC
(W/A) Walt Kelly
96 pgs / FULL COLOR / 7 x 10 / SC
$12.95
This series reprints Walt Kelly's spirited and engaging Our Gang stories (starring the characters from the durable and popular short film series), lovingly restored and printed in their original four-color splendor. Cover by Jeff Smith. (FEB063039)
OUR GANG VOL. 2 SC
(W/A) Walt Kelly
96 pgs / FULL COLOR / 7 x 10 / SC
$12.95
Of the handful of comics' bona fide geniuses, few could match the versatility of Walt Kelly. This is the second in a series of books reprinting Kelly's Our Gang stories from the 1940s. Cover by Jeff Smith of Bone fame. Cover by Jeff Smith. (FEB073463)
OUR GANG VOL. 3 SC
(W/A) Walt Kelly
96 pgs / FULL COLOR / 7 x 10 / SC
$12.95
In our third volume of all-ages adventures, Kelly begins to hit his stride by relying more on original ideas than following the MGM scripts. The mainstay offbeat personas are joined by other whimsical characters in these witty tales. Cover by Jeff Smith. (FEB083749)
************************************************************************
OUR GANG VOL. 4 SC
(W/A) Walt Kelly
112 pgs / FULL COLOR / 7 x 10 / SC
$14.99
Created in 1946 and 1947, these stories show Walt Kelly refining the style that would serve him so well for his later masterpiece — Pogo. Much of this fourth volume is taken up with an extended four-part cycle of stories –- almost a graphic novel, really! — in which Froggie and the Gang (including Julip the Goat) ship out with Professor Gravy on his showboat for an engagement downriver, which results in a series of action-packed adventures involving fisticuffs, gunfire, fireworks, and horse thieves! Cover by Jeff Smith.
THE COMPLETE PEANUTS 1975-1976 (VOL. 13) HC
(W/A) Charles M. Schulz
Introduction by Robert Smigel
344 pgs / BW / 8.5 x 7 / HC
$28.99
GOOD GRIEF, CHARLIE BROWN, WE’RE HALFWAY THERE! That’s right! With this volume, The Complete Peanuts reaches the halfway point of Charles M. Schulz’s astounding half-century run on the greatest comic strip. These years are especially fecund in terms of new canine characters, as Snoopy is joined by his wandering brother Spike (from Needles), his beloved sister Belle (from Kansas City), and... did you know he had a nephew? In other beagle news, Snoopy breaks his foot and spends six weeks in a cast, deals with his friend Woodstock’s case of the “the vapors,” and gets involved in a heated love triangle with Linus over the girl “Truffles.” It’s another two years of Peanuts at its finest! Featuring an introduction by comedian Robert Smigel (Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog, Saturday Night Live).
THE BOOK OF MR. NATURAL
(W/A) R. Crumb
112 pgs / BW / 8 x 10.5 / HC
$19.99
This new hardcover collection features over 120 pages of vintage Crumb comics starring the white-bearded, diminutive sage-cum-charlatan, ranging from charming, free-wheeling early ’70s stories to the disturbing, controversial ’90s stories (as seen in the Crumb movie), including the entire 40-page “Mr. Natural and Devil Girl” epic. Find out why Mr. Natural is probably the most famous underground character of all time!
KRAZY AND IGNATZ: 1916-1918 SC
(W/A) George Herriman
Designed by Chris Ware
176 pgs / BW / 9 x 12 / SC
$24.99
When Fantagraphics launched its collection of Krazy Kat Sunday strips back in 2002, we picked up with the 10th and 11th years of the legendary strip (1925-1926) because another publisher had already collected the first nine during the 1980s and 1990s. But now, with that publisher long gone and their Krazy Kat collections fetching record prices (some over $100!) among collectors, it’s time to go back and get every one of these masterpieces back in print — re-scanned and re-retouched from original tearsheets, using 21st century digital resources. Fantagraphics will be collecting these first nine years of Sundays into three volumes comprising three years apiece, starting with the very first Sundays from 1916 through 1918, and incorporating all the added features from the first edition. Krazy Kat, with its eternally beguiling love triangle of kat/dog/mouse, its fantastically inventive language, and its haunting, minimalist desert décor, has consistently been rated the best comic strip ever created. Krazy and Ignatz 1916-1918, the 11th of a projected 13 volumes collecting the entirety of the Sundays, brings us within a brick’s throw of finishing “The Komplete Kat Sundays” once and for all!
HATE ANNUAL #8
(W/A) Pete Bagge
32 pgs / FULL COLOR / Comic Book
$4.95
HATE ANNUAL 8 features a whopping new 20 page Buddy Bradley story where Lisa (everyone's favorite psycho!) makes her first foray into show biz and gets WAY more than she bargained for! This issue of P. Bagge's annual Hate also features 5 biography's of scientists you've never heard of! other than maybe Walter Reed, who's well known only for that hell of a hospital named after him, and not for the handy yet forgotten fact that he discovered how malaria is spread... All that and many other odds and ends from hither and tither. Can you feel the Hate!?!
ABANDONED CARS
(W/A) Tim Lane
168 pgs / BW / 7 x 9.5 / SC
$18.99
Now in paperback, this debut collection of short stories are united by their exploration of the great American mythological drama. Tim Lane’s characters exist on the margins of society—alienated, floating in the void between hope and despair. Visually reminiscent of Al Feldstein and Charles Burns, Lane's idiosyncratic and tense realism weaves between comic absurdity, nightmarish naturalism, chemical hallucination, and ecstatic terror. Lane's America is a haunted Coney Island, made up of lost characters haplessly shooting themselves in the face, and hopping freight trains in search of Elvis.
THE CLASSIC PIN-UP ART OF JACK COLE
(E) Alex Chun (A) Jack Cole
104 pgs / BW and COLOR / 7.25 x 10.24 / SC
$18.99
After finishing his legendary 14-year run on Plastic Man, Jack Cole found himself looking for something new. Cole's savior was the Humorama line of down-market digest magazines. The girls and gags magazine circuit proved to be the perfect training ground for Cole to regain his footing and develop his craft at single panel “gag” cartoons. Due to his superior skills it wasn't long before Cole received a phone call from Hugh Hefner. Under Hef's guiding hand, Cole became Playboy's marquee cartoonist, a position he held until his untimely death at the age of 43. Watch your customers stand firm as they peruse this definitive and classy collection.
CULTURE CORNER
(W/A) Basil Wolverton
Introduction by Monte Wolverton
160 pgs / FULL COLOR / 9 x 6.75 / HC
$22.99
Did you ever wonder how to stop brooding if your ears are protruding? Or how to indulge yourself and snore without being a bore? Or for the masochists among you, how to sit on a tack? Or something as simple as how to get out of bed gracefully? Or something more challenging like how to boot a fly off your snoot? Or, if you’re the violent type, what’s the best way to kick someone in the teeth? If you're mystified by these conundrums, then we've got the remedy: cartooning madman Basil Wolverton’s CULTURE CORNER, an indispensable guide to solving life’s most worrisome and disconcerting social quandaries. This essential and complete collection is the first time these rare comic strip tutorials have been reprinted since their original publication over 60 years ago! Revered by aficionados, this quality publication also contains Wolverton’s original pencil versions of each strip, carefully preserved, these doddle-drafts demonstrate a looser, more spontaneous interpretation of each finished strip. Don't get left on your cleft!