Customer Comments

Three words: Bacon Egg Bolo. I don't know if it's in the cookbook, but it's my regular Grand Central breakfast. Like I said, Bacon Egg Bolo.

For those reading this series collecting Terry & the Pirates, Milton Caniff's mastery of the form is maturing before our eyes. This latest volume contains extended stories of adventure, danger, even surprisingly dark moments for a comic strip. Fewer false notes appear, and the narrative and art meld together like the best of a Howard Hawks film.

This was a very satisfying read. From the very beginning McDonald drives this novel toward the end. The story and depth of character make this book both exciting and thoughtful, intelligent and tense. River of Gods has a large cast of characters and complexity of plot, but never loses its place. This is a genre book for people who don't care about genre.

The Eight is a Da Vinci Code-like thriller written years before Dan Brown's ubiquitous book was published. Like the Da Vinci code this novel is flawed, but in different ways. Brown's book was written to be read at lightning speed, so any suspension of disbelief or pause at badly-written prose was left in the dust of the read. Neville's book is more complex, more thoughtful, but the suspension of disbelief fails at several places. I found this book fun and readable, but also found myself mentally muttering, "No, I don't think so," many times through the reading.

Dan Simmons pulls off a complex trick, using a narrator that can't be trusted, and mixing historical fact with a Victorian tale of horror, drugs, violence, gossip, manners, jealousy, racism, and imagined and real violence. And the novel is occasionally quite funny, usually when the narrator lets slip too much envy or gossip. This is fun reading, but like many actual novels written in the age, you should take your time with the nearly 800 pages, enjoying the meanderings and digressions that make this novel fit its setting so well.

The Kramer's Ergot anthology series has been compared to Raw Magazine from the 1980's, the post-modern, avant-garde, self-conscious cartoon series edited by Art Spiegelman and his wife, Francine Mouly. Kramer's Ergot has grown up from slender volumes to this year's big book. This volume has work by both well-known cartoonists (Chris Ware, Seth, Kim Deitch, Jaime Hernandez) and lesser-known (CF, Chris Cilla), the 16 X 21 inch pages showing a variety of approach. From more traditional cartooning with regular panels and narrative to pages better seen as complex Rauschenbergian paintings, the viewer can unpack these works, taking them in as a whole and then moving across the surface and examining the details. The page size rewards the reader, as does the quality of color and print. This book could make a stellar gallery show of the best groundbreaking artists in this field, increasing its appeal by including both the renowned and widely published and some whose work has appeared mostly in small print anthologies and zines. KE7 is a book that can be returned to and examined, read again and again, keeping in mind that much of the reading is akin to working through a combine work or something from the Abstract Expressionists, Cubists, or other Modernists.

This is great trash! It could be the next crazy HBO series! I must stop with the exclamation points! I recently read an AR copy of the book, and it was fast, fun, and crazy. This is written in the same spirit as Greg Rucka's Atticus Kodiak novels, but even more over the top.

I just finished an advanced reader of this book. Nesbo's highly flawed police detective stumbles through another tense, bloody thriller, with a false ending or two and a satisfying finish. If you like Henning Mankell and Fred Vargas, you should enjoy Jo Nesbo.

This remarkable, award-winning biography of Willem de Kooning is illuminating in a number of ways, but primarily has left me with the impression of a man tortured over his work, never satisfied, reworking and reworking, and never derivative of others.

The Comics Journal is the long-running (over 30 years) magazine that dared to take comic book criticism seriously long before graphic novels had their own section in every bookstore. Gary Groth is the publisher of the Journal, and over the years has held lengthy interviews with an extensive list of the great artists of cartooning and comics. In this issue Groth interviews all three Deitch Brothers, Kim, Simon, and Seth, as well as their father, Academy-award winning animator, Gene Deitch. Kim's interview includes details about his underground comics days at the East Village Other and elsewhere. The Deitchs' honesty about each other's successes ansd failures is refreshing and entertaining. As well as the interviews, this issue of the Journal also contains the usual news articles about the cartooning world, reviews, and columns by regular contributors. Much of what the Journal covers can be found online, but the interviews alone are worth reading this periodical.

This is the first volume of John Richardson's biography of Picasso. I find the writing scholarly but quite accessable. There are many images per chapter, not only of Picasso's work, but of other artists mentioned in the text, as well as photographs of important figures in Picasso's life. These carefully selected images illuminate the text well. Richardson clearly demonstrates how the work in this early part of Picasso's life is related to his entire oevre, explaining context and place. This book is comprehensive and approachable, and speaks to many of the myths, some promoted by the artist himself, that are still extant.

Good Bye, as well as the two previous Drawn & Quarterly collections of Tatsumi's work, is a revelation. I usually avoid manga, but had read about this work on D&Q's website and other places. This is dark and grown up work, its imagery not beholding to the tropes of conventional manga. As good fiction does, it draws you into its own world, that is, the many worlds within the many stories, worlds of desperate, lonely, depressed misfits. I highly recommend this, and any other work you can find by Yoshihiro Tatsumi.

Kim Deitch, part of a renowned cartooning family, has produced weird, funny stories since his undergound comic days. Shadowland is a collection of such work, his continuing odd and fantastic take on Americana and the subset that is early Hollywood. His cartooning style is unique (I tried copying it when I was in junior high school way back in 1972) and it fits perfectly with the crazy, humorous, entertaining stories he tells. You should read Kim Deitch.

I enjoyed the second in this series, the Silver Swan, but not as much as the first, Christine Falls. It's not as thoroughly depressing, or compelling, or cold. The characters are not quite as larger than life. It's a worthy follow up to Christine Falls, but not its equal. I do recommend it, though, for readers who like mysteries that are dark and unresolved: these kinds of stories certainly put a song in my heart.

I will not like this book! I will not, I told myself. As much as I have been pleasantly surprised and even amazed at some of the great comic strip reprints published recently (Walt & Skeezix, Krazy Kat & Ignatz, E.C. Segar's Popeye, to name a few), I was ready to hate Little Orphan Annie. I knew all about that reactionary Harold Gray, I sat through parts of the Annie movie ("Tomorrow! Tomorrow! gag!). I had low expectations. Then I began reading the strips from this first volume, originally done in the mid-1920's. My god, Annie is the spunkiest girl in the world, and I like her! There are three years worth of comic strips here, and I couldn't get enough. She's spunky, and she's tough, and she's smart! She might be the prototype for Hillary Clinton! Anyway, you should read this. You'll be surprised, really. I feel like Lou Grant, "I hate spunky." Except, after reading this first volume of Little Orphan Annie, I like spunky. I even like that damn weapons manufacturer and war profiteer, Daddy Warbucks! I no longer qualify to be in the liberal elite! I bet even Lou Grant was an Annie fan!

The dark, depressing, and cold environment of most of this novel's settings match its dark, depressing, and cold tale, a mystery set in 1950's Dublin with no happy ending, just the personal destruction that follows both covering up the truth and uncovering it. If you want a dark, sad, unresolved mystery, this is for you: I quite enjoyed it.

Los Bros Hernandez just keep rolling along. Their comic is now an annual book, the first of which is 100 pages, evenly split between Jaime and Gilbert, with a little Mario thrown in. Jaime tells a superhero story, which sort of brings the rockets back to Love and Rockets. His story is told in two parts, taking the first 25 pages and the last 25 pages of the book. Gilbert has several shorter stories filling the middle, one of his stories written by Mario. Gilbert's stories are strange, satiric, parodic, and just weird, and his thick, black lines match the odd mood(s) he evokes. The cover is drawn by Jaime, with an oversized Penny Century replacing the top of the L.A. City Hall with a giant beanie-cap. This is the familiar building used as the Daily Planet in the George Reeves' Superman series from the 1950's. Anyway, this book is fun, fun, fun! It's Los Bros!

A staff recommendation at Powells clued me in to Fred Vargas' mysteries. These are fantastic, filled with intriguing characters, humor, and intelligence. The latest, This Night's Foul Work, continues the joy of following Chief Adamsberg, his colleagues, his on-again, off-again mistress and mother to his small child, and the odd cast of others that people Vargas' stories.

This volume is even more brilliant than the first. The Sunday strips read like they were written and performed by the Marx Brothers. I found myself laughing out loud with Popeye in his hysterical, "Arf! Arf! Arf!" As for J. Wellington Wimpy, I love this man. I would gladly pay you Tuesday for the next volume of Popeye today.

Exit Wounds is a mystery, a comedy, an ironic tale sitting on the ground of Israel's precarious environment. Modan doesn't preach or tell; instead, she shows through this intriguing story how family and love fall apart or come together, and how the truth about others is elusive and tricky. This is that rare thing: a graphic novel that's actually a novel. I need to re-read it.

I picked this up in a local bookstore in Seattle and was immediately hooked. Fans of Paco Taibo II should enjoy this tale of mystery and revenge. Chavarria unwinds the story from different viewpoints, and uses the Havana setting to great advantage. Humor, complexity, great characters, and true humanism all inform this novel.

I like my genre books fairly short and to the point, but was drawn to this book by the PBS Mystery series featuring Inpector Lynley. This nearly 800 page novel had me wishing it wouldn't end, not a typical response on my part. I'm more likely to say, "Too many words!" but this is a happy exception, and I'm seeking out other entries in this series. With No One as Witness is extremely satisfying, funny, heartbreaking, and cathartic, and the use of location around London is quite good. This is late in the series, but it worked as a great starting point for me.

Charming! Of course, "charming" is a death-knell of a cliche describing many books and films. This collection of the Moomin comic strip showcases a unique cartooning style and unusual choices in dialogue and plot. Moomin IS charming, by which I mean appropriate for children, but the characters are intelligently designed and the humor works for the adult reader. Moomin takes the cliche out of charming. It's charming!

Can you take it? This is brutal. This guy hates everybody, and mostly himself. Ivan Brunetti is brilliant, funny, extremely talented, and I dare you to read the whole thing!

This collection includes two of the finest stories in cartooning (graphic novels, comic books, whatever you want to call them), "The Death of Speedy Ortiz," and "Flies on the Ceiling." Both stories show the mastery that Jaime Hernandez had only a few years into his career. "Flies on the Ceiling," especially, accomplishes everything by showing, not telling. The dialogue is minimal, the images frightening and gripping. In "The Death of Speedy Ortiz" Hernandez demonstrates a mature visual technique, with quick cuts between past and present, and again, showing rather than telling, which in cartooning means a minimum of wordiness. These stories hold up and reveal more upon multiple readings, and I still get a chill on the last page of "Speedy Ortiz."

This series is very satisfying. Eric Shanower has done a huge amount of research, and perhaps accomplished a harder task, reconciling and cherry-picking versions and fragments of versions of the story of the Trojan War, to put together an entertaining, detailed graphic novel. This volume is the second of a projected seven collecting the comic book series. This is a mature presentation of an important piece of Western culture, and by mature, I mean that Shanower has written and drawn a thoughtful work. I look forward to future volumes.

Gilbert Hernandez is the bomb! Okay, I was going to write a quick, intelligent recommendation of his work, but, um, his stuff just blows me away...thus, he's the bomb! I certainly recommend this volume, the first in a series collecting his "Love and Rockets" work. His cartooning is accessible, but smart, sometimes experimental. Sometimes, I just go, "Huh?" He is a master of leaving the words and word ballons out when silence is more thoughtful. He's been compared to Garcia Marquez, and that phrase "magic realism" gets thrown around, but don't let that stop you. His work is completely his own (paradoxically, even his collaborations!) He mixes sex, humor, horror, love, everything, into an unpredictable set of stories. Read something by Gilbert Hernandez! Really!

I just re-read this anthology, enjoying it more the second time around. Brunetti's selections are personal, a strength of the selections, and run a gamut from classic comic strips to modern mini comics, and from the well-known (R. Crumb et al) to the fairly unknown. I really enjoyed the various tributes to Charles Schulz, but would have liked more of his own pieces. Brunetti lets the work in this anthology speak for itself, though it would have been nice to have some kind of short blurbs accompanying the works regarding when they were done and where else the artists' works can be found; there are short author bios in the back of the book. The format does allow the cartoonists' works be the stars. Thoughtful re-reading of this collection is an education in the art of cartooning, and the learning is fun!

This was a delight as a magic realist political screed mystery thriller comedy tragedy. Subcomandante Marcos, writing every other chapter, a character in his own fiction, is charming, heartbreaking, preachy (but it's okay), and very funny. Who knew revolutionaries were funny? I do, now. The other writer, Mexican academic and mystery writer Paco Taibo II, already a favorite, brings his legendary hard-boiled detective, Hector Belascoaran Shayne, to the mix. I only give this four out of five because, being a good American liberal, the preachiness bugged me a little. Yeah, yeah, my problem, right? Anyway, read this book! And read the other Taibo mysteries! I'm going to check out Subcomandante Marcos' kid's book now. Go, Zapatistas!

Rather than formal interviews, this volume allows nine contemporary cartoonists to speak for thrmselves. The interviewer is unseen and unheard. Artists such as Robert Crumb, Seth, Dan Clowes, and Jaime Hernandez speak about their own work, but just as interesting, speak about their influences, or talk about current interests. Each artist's section is introduced by Todd Hignite's intelligent and critical (in the academic sense) review. These introductions do more than speak of the cartoonist's work; they speak of the work in a larger art-historical context, viewing cartoonists with the same methodological glass as any artist whose work is made public.

The publisher's description makes this book sound a little intimidating, but I found it intelligent, readable, illuminating, and ultimately, fascinating. Hans Bellmer created some very disturbing art, works that we might want to argue against and condemn. Sue Taylor's study gives depth and context to these works, the dolls, drawings and photographs Bellmer produced. Taylor brings in other studies on Bellmer, as well as related work by Freud and a Feminist sensibility, and tells Bellmer's story through a smart discussion of his art.

Marlene Dumas is one of the hottest contemporary artists today. Most of her work is drawn or painted. She has been noted for rising to the challenge of representational art in the post-modern world. Her work is disturbing, powerful, uncomfortable. She paints children, celebrities, sex workers, and others, working from photographs, and producing stunning works. This book contains an interview with her, a critical essay, and excerpts of her own writings. It's a good introduction to her great body of work, and the way she thinks about her work. She tells of the time a viewer asked how old the child was in one of her works. Her reply was, "It's not a child, it's a painting." I discovered her work, and this book, through an undergraduate class in Contemporary Art. We were assigned to look into the contemporary art auctions at Christie's and Sotheby's and find a work for which we'd make a case to acquire for our local museum. The first piece I saw was Dumas' Die Baba (The Baby). It was (a kind of creepy) love at first sight. If you're interested in a powerful, contemporary, representational painter, take a look at Marlene Dumas.

Kevin Huizenga answers the question I asked myself just this morning, Can "art comics" work as fiction. We see so much autobiography, memoir, slice of the cartoonist's life. Huizenga writes short stories, combining myth and everyday concerns. His stories are accessible on different levels, from a brief reading of the text to a deeper inquiry into the images. Of course, now that I think about my question I remember Chris Ware, Jaime Hernandez, Gilbert Hernandez, Dan Clowes...doh! Anyway, Huizenga is of a younger generation than the artists I mentioned, but brings quite a maturity and depth to his work. I highly recommend his work.

Well, blow me down! Who knew that Popeye was such a treat? Before he became a spinach-as-steroids addict, he was a supporting character in a comic strip by E. C. Segar. It's pure silly genius! This is a brilliant addition to Fantagraphics Books' series collecting complete runs of classic and important comic strips (Peanuts, Krazy & Ignatz, Dennis the Menace). The oversized hardcover is truly a book with "muskels". I highly recommend all four series mentioned above, as well as the Walt & Skeezix series from Drawn & Quarterly and, for those with fat wallets, Little Nemo in Slumberland: So Many Splendid Sundays. Those old cartoonists (The 20th Century was so long ago!) were amazing.

The Mome series is everything the publisher claims it to be, but what I enjoy most are the interviews. Gary Groth set the standard decades ago in his Comics Journal interviews for his intelligent questions, his ability to draw out from cartoonists their thoughts, opinions, theories, even embarrassing moments. Plus, Groth is hated by Harlan Ellison, which is all the more reason to pay attention to him. In Mome, Groth interviews a younger, generally less mature set of cartoonists, since that's what the series is about. He still pulls out fascinating stuff.

The Walt & Skeezix reprint project from Drawn & Quarterly has been a revelation of cartoon mastery. These Gasoline Alley strips from the 1920's reveal Frank King's masterful storytelling and humor. There are also details that place this firmly in the first half of the 20th Century. Most women are drawn with small heads and look like they were taken from the magazine ads of the day. Two housekeepers, African-American, are pictured with overlarge lips and portrayed with an essential silliness and childish outlook, and the women are rivals for the attentions of the only African-American man to be seen, a philandering chauffeur more than willing to play one against the other. These are minor elements, and hopefully won't spoil your reading of this strip. However, it's good to know in advance that you'll encounter the unapologetic sexism and racism of the era. This series is essential for fans of the comic strip form. Here is a daily strip that told told its stories, its punchlines, its longer dramas, while maintaining the rhythm necessary to appear natural and effortless.

Two things stand out to me in this collection, the variety in style and content and the unique vision of each contributor; that may be two ways of saying the same thing. Pekar and Moore present a representation of what is most interesting in cartooning today, from relative newcomers to artists that have been speaking their mind for decades. I'm especially happy to see one of my all-time favorite cartoonists, Jaime Hernandez. Maybe next year we'll see something by his brother Gilbert! I highly recommend this collection to those who love comics and to those who rarely read them.