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THE SECOND BOOK FROM 2008 EISNER 'BEST NEW TALENT' CATHY MALKASIAN
Do ideas of war and enemies hold a people together? Is a culture of conflict too seductive not to be irresistible? These are the questions Cathy Malkasian explores in her second graphic novel, Temperance. Malkasian creates, as she did in the critically acclaimed Percy Gloom, a fully realized, multi-layered world, inhabited by vividly realized characters. After a brutal injury in battle, Lester has no memory of his prior life. For the next thirty years his wife does everything to keep him from remembering -and re-constructing- a society, Blessedbowl, that elevates him as a hero. Blessedbowl is a cultural convergence of lies, memories, stories, and beliefs. Its people thrive on ideas of persecution, exceptionality, and enemies, convinced that war lurks just outside their walls. They have come to depend on Lester, their greatest war hero, to lead the charge once the Final Battle begins. What kind of enemy could topple such a people and its walls? Mere memory, it seems, as Lester gradually emerges from his amnesia.

The suppression of family history is the initial thread that ties together The Love Bunglers, featuring Hernandez's longtime Love and Rockets heroine Maggie. Because these secrets can't be dealt with openly, their lingering effect is even more powerful. But Maggie's ability to navigate and find meaning in her life - despite losing her culture, her brother, her profession, and her friends - is what's made her a compelling character. After a lifetime of losses, Maggie finds, in the second half, her longtime off and on lover, Ray Dominguez. Much like John Updike in his four Rabbitnovels, Jaime Hernandez has been following his longtime character Maggie around for several decades, all of which has seemed to be building towards this book in particular.

Megg the witch, Mogg the cat, their friend Owl, and Werewolf Jones struggle unsuccessfully with their depression, drug use, sexuality, poverty, lack of ambition, and their complex feelings about each other. It's a laff riot! Megg and Mogg decide to take a trip to Amsterdam for some quality couple time, although the trip gets off to a rocky start when they forget their antidepressants. They need Owl to come and help them save their relationship. But why does he have a suitcase full of glass dildos? And what will they do when they realize that the housesitting Werewolf Jones has turned their apartment into a "f#@k zone"? Megg & Mogg in Amsterdam collects all of Simon Hanselmann's contributions to Vice.com, the Ignatz Award-nominated short story "St. Owl's Bay," and other surprises that will add additional color and background for fans of Megahex.

Although there have been literally hundreds of Peanuts books published, many of the strips from the series' first two or three years have never been collected before―in large part because they showed a young Schulz working out the kinks in his new strip and include some characterizations and designs that are quite different from the cast we're all familiar with. (Among other things, three major cast members―Schroeder, Lucy, and Linus―initially show up as infants and only "grow" into their final "mature" selves as the months go by. Even Snoopy debuts as a puppy!) Thus The Complete Peanuts offers a unique chance to see a master of the art form refine his skills and solidify his universe, day by day, week by week, month by month.

This groundbreaking body of comics journalism collects for first time Anderson's entire biography of the renowned civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Over a decade in the making, the saga has been praised for its vivid recreation of one of the most tumultuous periods in U.S. history and for its accuracy in depicting the personal and public lives of King, from his birth to his assassination. King probes the life story of one of America's greatest public figures with an unflinchingly critical eye, casting King as an ambitious, dichotomous figure deserving of his place in history but not above moral sacrifice to get there. Anderson's expressionistic visual style is wrought with dramatic energy; panels evoke a painterly attention to detail but juxtapose with one another in such a way as to propel King's story with cinematic momentum. Anderson's successful use of the graphic novel to tell a major work of nonfiction has drawn favorable comparisons to Art Spiegelman's Maus: A Survivor's Tale, Joe Sacco's Palestine, and Osamu Tezuka's Adolph.

Cartoonist Basil Wolverton was known for his grotesque drawings, fantastically odd creatures, spaghetti-like hair, smoothly sculpted caricatures and insanely detailed crosshatching. His career in the golden age of comic books lasted from 1938 until 1952, after which his illustrations and caricatures extended into such publications as Life, Pageant and MAD magazines. Stylistically, he has been regarded as one of the spiritual grandfathers of underground and alternative comix. Less well known and understood is his work for the Worldwide Church of God, headed until 1986 by radio evangelist Herbert Armstrong. From 1953 through 1974, Wolverton, a deeply religious man, was commissioned and later employed by the church to write and illustrate a narrative of the Old Testament (including over 550 illustrations), some 20 apocalyptic illustrations inspired by the Book of Revelations, and dozens of cartoons and humorous illustrations for various Worldwide Church publications.

Winsor McCay, the creator of Little Nemo in Slumberland, is internationally renowned as a pioneer in comics and animation. But author Ulrich Merkl's dedicated sleuthing has unearthed a never-published strip by McCay that was lost following the artist's untimely death. Titled simply Dino, it opens a surprising new window into McCay's life and work and showcases his exquisitely beautiful and delicate delineations (exactingly reproduced from the original art). Merkl explores the influences McCay brought to the strip - including McCay's own Gertie the Dinosaur animated shorts, the animation in 1933's King Kong, and the growth of New York City from the Holland Tunnel to the Empire State Building - and traces our love of dinosaurs and monster movies down through the decades. Breathtakingly designed, each page of this deluxe oversize volume is overflowing with amazing imagery, with more than 650 photographs and illustrations (more than 250 in color) - most of them seen here for the first time in a century! An essential volume for everyone interested in the development of the comic strip - and our never-ending fascination with dinosaurs!

L.B. Cole created some of the most bizarre, proto-psychedelic, eye-popping comic book covers of all time, yet remarkably this is the first retrospective of his career, featuring the largest collection of Cole covers ever assembled, in an oversize format that showcases his attention to detail and his versatility in all the popular comic book genres of the day. Cole burst into comics during the glory years of the Golden Age of comics. He was famous for his bold covers, usually featuring "poster colors" ― brilliant primaries often over black backgrounds ― and an over-the-top sense of the bizarre mixed with whimsy. There's never been a comic book cover designer like L.B. Cole and there's never been a book like this one.

This collection includes all 15 of Elder's humorous Panic stories (The Night Before Christmas" got the first issue banned in the entire state of Massachusetts); all seven of his science fiction tales from the pages of Weird Science and Weird Fantasy (including two Ray Bradbury adaptations, "The King of the Grey Spaces!" and "The Million-Year Picnic"); and a special horror story that hasn't been seen since its original publication more than 60 years ago.

This beautifully reproduced selection of quirkily elegant, sensual pin-up art from Jack Cole's 1950s career as the premier Playboy cartoonist shows that there was far more to Cole than his brilliant Plastic Man.

This is, simply, Frank Thorne's paean to women and art. Chronicling Thorne's days as an art student, his growing fascination and love of the female form, his professional association with famous bondage photographer Irving Klaw and Marvel Comics impresario Stan Lee, his encounters with Hollywood, and his emergence as the most imaginative, uninhibited, preeminent erotic artist in America.

The enduring cultural phenomenon of comic book heroes was invented in the late 1930s by a talented and hungry group of artists and writers barely out of their teens, flying by the seat of their pants to create something new, exciting, and above all profitable. The iconography and mythology they created flourishes to this day in comic books, video, movies, fine art, advertising, and practically all other media. Supermen! collects the best and the brightest of this first generation, including Jack Cole, Will Eisner, Bill Everett, Lou Fine, Fletcher Hanks, Jack Kirby, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, and Basil Wolverton.

Collecting more than a decade's worth of excavations, comic strips, animation stills, storybook covers, and much more, this broken jigsaw puzzle of a graphic novel tells the story of Pim & Francie - childlike male and female imps - whose irresponsible antics get them into horrific, fantastic trouble. The brilliant, fairy tale-like backdrops hint at further layers of reality lurking under every gingerbread house or behind every sunny afternoon. Their loosely defined relationship only contributes to the existential fear that lingers underneath the various perils they are subjected to, which are threaded together by text and notes by the artist.

Exciting, innovative, and beautifully drawn romance stories by two towering titans of the field (and originators of the genre).In such best-selling titles as Young Love and Real Western Romances, Simon and Kirby delighted a generation of girls and women (and probably a fair number of boys and men as well) with hundreds of charming and endlessly inventive stories of love and heartbreak. This never-before reprinted material painstakingly restored in full color and edited by Michel Gange. So get out your handkerchiefs and enjoy the trials, tribulations, tragedies and triumphs of Suzi, Marjorie, Annaliese, Toni, Kathy, Sari... and 15 other star-crossed young lovers from half a century ago.

From tears to soda fountains, from mobsters to pretty ingénues in freshly pressed dresses, the stories of love and betrayal herein will prompt you to grab a tissue box or swoon in delight. Featuring two of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby's sensational romance comics, "If You Want Me" focuses on a construction worker with a silver tongue who cannot abide the live of a lowly writer. Meanwhile, "The Town and Toni Benson" follows a newly wed couple trying to make the most of life in a town that doesn't want them within the city limits. Cup your lover's face and pull them in for a sweet kiss or crack open this book for an even BETTER time.

Exciting, innovative, and beautifully drawn romance stories by two towering titans of the field (and originators of the genre).In such best-selling titles as Young Love and Real Western Romances, Simon and Kirby delighted a generation of girls and women (and probably a fair number of boys and men as well) with hundreds of charming and endlessly inventive stories of love and heartbreak. This never-before reprinted material painstakingly restored in full color and edited by Michel Gange. So get out your handkerchiefs and enjoy the trials, tribulations, tragedies and triumphs of Suzi, Marjorie, Annaliese, Toni, Kathy, Sari... and 15 other star-crossed young lovers from half a century ago.

Ron Regé, Jr. is a very unusual yet accomplished storyteller whose work exudes a passionate moral, idealistic core that sets him apart from his peers. The Cartoon Utopia is his Magnum Opus, a unique work of comic art that, in the words of its author, ""focuses on ideas that I've become intrigued by that stem from magical, alchemical, ancient ideas & mystery schools."" It's part sci-fi, part philosophy, part visual poetry, and part social manifesto. Regé's work exudes psychedelia, outsider rawness, and pure cartoonish joy.

One of Library Journal's Best Books 2011: Graphic Novels. One of Booklist's Top 10 Graphic Novels: 2012 (for 2011 books)
21 chronicles Roberto Clemente's life from his early days growing up in rural Puerto Rico, the highlights of his career (including the 1960s World Series where he helped the Pirates win its first victory in 33 years, and his 3000th hit in 1972 during the last official at-bat of his life) as well as his private life and public mission off the field.
Wilfred Santiago captures the grit of Clemente's rise from his impoverished Puerto Rican childhood, to the majesty of his performance on the field, to his fundamental decency as a human being in a drawing style that combines realistic attention to detail and expressive cartooning.

In those countless cheap and long forgotten men's humor magazines, Ward's voluptuous "girly" drawings shared the pages with photos of Bettie Page and Mamie Van Doren, and pin-up cartoons by the likes of Archie's Dan DeCarlo and Playboy magazine's Jack Cole. Thumbing through those digests, it quickly becomes evident that Ward was Humorama's dominant pin-up cartoon artist. His mastery of the Conte crayon allowed him to produce unparalleled textures, including the wonderful sheen on satiny curve-hugging dresses and on black thigh-high stockings that became Ward trademarks. Ward's other trademark, of course, was his penchant for drawing extremely well endowed women accentuated by tiny waists, and whether playing the role of office secretaries, arm candy at cocktail parties or vamping it up in a boudoir, his women played to multiple fetishes adorned in opera-length gloves, lacy lingerie, and five-inch stiletto heals. Sometimes bawdy, but never tawdry, Ward's top-heavy Humorama women always managed to maintain their allure, innocence and glamour that made Torchy so popular.