The Kirby and The Ditko will be mentioned on the appropriate weblogs linked to in the sidebar.
Book of the month of those below is the HAUNTED TANK reprint volume, for the sheer volume of previously unavailable quality material, 35 stories, most not available for over 40 years. Non-reprint book of the month is the new Eddie Campbell graphic novel, THE FATE OF THE ARTIST.
I'll add some more to this later if I find some stuff I missed on the first look over the solicitations.
Here are some nice pictures.
And now with the words.
KINGS IN DISGUISE TP
by James Vance & Dan Burr
Hailed as one of the top 100 comics of all time before graphic novels became a phenomenon, Kings In Disguise now resurfaces as a classic. In the Great Depression, Freddie Bloch finds himself homeless and adrift amid the Detroit riots and violent anti-communist mobs. Introduction by Alan Moore.
SC, 8x11, 208pgs $16.95
An excellent book, good to see it finally back in print, and from a mainstream publisher (WW Norton), which may get it some of the attention that it deserves.
USAGI YOJIMBO #93
Written and drawn by Stan Sakai
World-renowned storyteller Stan Sakai explores a very important part of Japanese culture in this special issue of Usagi Yojimbo. After an eventful stay, the time has come for Usagi to continue his wandering travels and bid farewell to the Geishu Province. Before he goes, he and Tomoe will first partake in the chanoyu--the formal tea ceremony. But is there something besides tea brewing between the two of them? Meanwhile, unbeknownst to either of the pair, arrangements are being made for Tomoe's marriage.
This unusual issue explores the stylized, spiritual event of the tea ceremony, which epitomizes the feeling of Zen. Sakai's attention to the historical details of Usagi's feudal environment is a hallmark of the series, and this focus is highlighted this month in "Chanoyu"!
24 pages, black and white, $2.99, in stores on April 26.
Still not easy to find new ways to say, hey, it's more Stan Sakai. This sounds like an interesting more experimental story, which I look forward to.
SGT. ROCK: THE PROPHECY #4
by Joe Kubert
On the road to Riga, Rock and Easy Co. bear witness to the horrific truths at the heart of WWII. Then, pushing forward with their package, the men of Easy are given further responsibility: a newborn child. That innocent life leads them into their fiercest battle yet -- will it lead them to their deaths as well?
32 pages, $2.99, in stores on April 19.
And of course great to see Kubert, and with a Wildman cover no less. Hope they don't delay too long before collecting this series.
OUR GANG Volume 1
by Walt Kelly
Early work from the creator of the celebrated Pogo syndicated strip! Along with fellow Disney alumnus Carl Barks, Walt Kelly is now considered one of the two classic "funny animal" artists from the golden age of comics. Surprisingly, Kelly's longest-running continuing series was based on actual people the "real-life" characters of MGM's durable short-film series, Our Gang (a.k.a. "The Little Rascals").
Spirited and engaging, Kelly's Our Gang harks back to the days before television, when kids spent most of their time playing outdoors, limited only by each other's imagination and ingenuity. Kelly created nearly 100 Our Gang stories by the end of its 59-issue run in 1949, the year he quit comic books to switch careers a final time as syndicated artist/writer on the immortal newspaper strip, Pogo.
This is the first in a series of books reprinting Walt Kelly's Our Gang stories. Suitable for both adults and children, Fantagraphics Books has lovingly restored the work from their comic book appearance, which will be printed in their original four-color splendour.
Paperback, 96 pages, $12.95
Loves me some Walt Kelly. My preference would be for some Pogo (comic strip or comic books) or the various holiday comic stuff, but I'm happy to take a sampling of his OUR GANG work while waiting.
FLAMING CARROT, VOL. 1, TP
April 12 140 pg BW $14.99
by BOB BURDEN
A humble man, lonely at heart, seeks out the rejected "freaks" of the world, taking these misbegotten outcasts under his wing in a traveling show of oddities. But life is not without its own irony and his true self is revealed in a twist of fate and revenge.
Collects FLAMING CARROT #1-4 (#33-36 in regular series) and FLAMING CARROT PHOTO SPECIAL
It's been great to have Bob Burden back in comics in the past year, really on his game with the new stuff. Well worth picking up based on the first three issues I've read. Still not sure about the photo comic (don't even know if it's come out yet).
THE FATE OF THE ARTIST
by Eddie Campbell
In Eddie Campbell's latest graphic novel, the author will conduct an investigation into his own sudden disappearance.
In wildly comical reenactments of incidents from his curious life, his part will be played by an actor. With audacious literary sleight of hand, he will put words into the mouths of those who knew him. Clues will be sought in artistic blow-outs from the history of all the arts. And all the major players, even down to Monty the dog, will get their own daily strip and Sunday page in yellowed newspaper sections from an imaginary long ago.
In this creative mining of the rich resources of the comic strip language Campbell will give us a complex meditation on the lonely demands of art amid the realities of everyday life.
96 pages Full Color US $15.95
Hardcover Deluxe Collector's Edition US $22.95
New Eddie Campbell is always news, and with a full colour original book it looks like he's going to be taking the old "Alec" stuff to the next level with this. I might even spring for the hardcover on this.
SHOWCASE PRESENTS HAUNTED TANK VOL. 1 TP
Written by Robert Kanigher, art by Joe Kubert, Russ Heath, Irv Novick, Jerry Grandenetti, and Jack Abel, cover by Joe Kubert.
One of the most unusual concepts in war comics gets the Showcase treatment in this volume collecting stories from G.I. Combat #87-119, Brave and The Bold #52 and Our Army At War #155. The ghost of a Confederate general returns to protect to his namesake, commander of a tank in North Africa in WWII.
560 pages, black and white, $16.99, in stores on May 17.
Definitely an exciting book, the few reprints I've seen of early Tank stories are great, and anything with over 200 pages of Russ Heath and 200 pages of Joe Kubert in crisp clean black and white is worth a lot more than $17, plus it'll be nice to see the handful of Novick stories and single examples of Grandenetti and Abel.
THE COMPLETE PEANUTS 1959-1960
As the first decade of Peanuts closes, it seems only fitting to bid farewell to that halcyon decade with a cover starring Patty, one of the original three Peanuts.
Major new additions to classic Peanuts lore come fast and furious here. Snoopy begins to take up residence atop his doghouse, and his repertoire of impressions increases exponentially. Lucy sets up her booth and offers her first five-cent psychiatric counsel. (Her advice to a forlorn Charlie Brown: "Get over it.") For the very first time, Linus spends all night in the pumpkin patch on his lonely vigil for the Great Pumpkin (although he laments that he was a victim of "false doctrine," he's back 12 months later). Linus also gets into repeated, and visually explosive, scuffles with a blanket-stealing Snoopy, suffers the first depredations of his blanket-hating grandmother, and falls in love with his new teacher Miss Othmar.
Even more importantly, several years after the last addition to the cast ("Pig-Pen"), Charlie Brown's sister Sally makes her appearance - first as an (off-panel) brand new baby for Charlie to gush over, then as a toddler and eventually a real, talking, thinking cast member. (By the end of this volume, she'll already start developing her crush on Linus.)
All this, and one of the most famous Peanuts strips ever: "Happiness is a warm puppy."
Almost one hundred of the 731 strips collected in this volume (including many Sundays) have never been collected in any book since their original release, with one hundred more having been collected only once in relatively obscure and now impossible-to-find books; in other words, close to one quarter of the strips have never been seen by anyone but the most avid Peanuts completists.
The introduction is by comedienne extraordinaire Whoopi Goldberg, who reveals which Peanuts character she has tattooed on her body (and where) - as well as telling of her meeting with "Sparky" Schulz, and her fascinating theory on Snoopy's brother Spike. The Complete Peanuts continues to receive national and international media attention for its sophisticated treatment of one of the 20th Century's defining American classics.
344-page hardcover $28.95
Have to say, I would probably pay extra for a copy where Goldberg doesn't tell us anything about her tattoo. Or her theories on Spike, for that matter. Otherwise, this should be a great book, I remember the strips around the early Sally stories from books I read as a kid, and the prospect of over 200 strips in that era of Schulz's work that I haven't seen before is irresistible.
WAMPUS (Volume 1)
by Franco Frescura & Luciano Bernasconi;
additional story by J.-M. Lofficier; additional art by Chris Malgrain; cover by Stephen R. Bissette
Wampus , the mysterious, shape-shifting servant of the all-powerful cosmic entity known only as the "Great Mind", has arrived on Earth to sow the seeds of chaos and destruction.
Collecting the original six-issue run of French comics from 1969, the great cities of the world fall to the power of Wampus, whose only adversary is French secret agent, Jean Sten.
Contents:
- Original Episodes of Wampus (1969) by Frescura & Bernasconi
- Epilog in Manhattan (2003) by Lofficier & Bernasconi
- 3 bonus pages by Chris Malgrain
- Foreword by Will Eisner
- Introduction by Lofficier
$20.95 - 5x8 trade paperback, 232 pages
Bissette has said a few good things about this, which makes i well worth considering (plus it's always good to see a cover by him), and the material that appeared about that era of French comics in ALTER EGO #30 was intriguing.
CRISIS ON MULTIPLE EARTHS VOL. 4 TP
Written by Elliot S! Maggin, E. Nelson Bridwell, Martin Pasko and Paul Levitz, art by Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin, cover by Alex Ross.
Collecting Justice League of America #122-124, #135-137 and #147-148! In this latest collection of team-ups, meet the heroes of Earth-S, led by the Earth's Mightiest Mortal, Captain Marvel, as well as the Legion of Super-Heroes!
168 page, $14.99, in stores on May 3.
Looking forward to this. I've heard about the LSH crossover but never been able to find the issues at a decent price, and only have two of the three Earth-S issues. And the other one sounds weird enough to be interesting (apparently Maggin and Cary Bates are the villains).
AGE OF BRONZE #23
April 5 24 pg BW $3.50
by ERIC SHANOWER
"BETRAYAL, PART 4"
The story of the Trojan War continues as the Trojans prepare for the invasion of their land. Hektor returns triumphantly with his new wife, Andromache, who makes her long-awaited debut in. Cressida resists attack from her fellow Trojans when they discover her father Kalchas's defection to the enemy.
And good to see Shanower's been getting this book out on a steady clip over the past year. Excellent stuff.
ADVENTURES IN OZ – TPB, HC
by Eric Shanower
In the marvelous Land of Oz, magic is always around the next corner. Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and their many Oz friends can't stop plunging into one adventure after another. Come journey over the rainbow to help save Oz from the Wicked Witch of the South, to ride an enchanted whirlpool that leads to a hidden island, to explore the spooky Great Gray Gillikin Swamp, to prevent a war between dragons and wood-nymphs, and to soar in an emerald unicorn to the frozen land of the mysterious Ice King. Wonder and magic abound in five full-color stories, The Enchanted Apples of Oz, The Secret Island of Oz, The Ice King of Oz, The Forgotten Forest of Oz, and The Blue Witch of Oz, by award-winning cartoonist Eric Shanower, collected here for the first time in one volume. This special volume also contains over 70 pages of sketches and other bonus material from Shanower. L. Frank Baum's Land of Oz lives again in stories that Booklist calls "well-written" and "charming" by "the superbly talented Shanower."
TPB • $39.99 • FC • 328 pages
HC • $75.00 • FC • 328 pages
Speaking of Shanower, this is a bit too pricey for me (like just about anything else interesting from IDW), but I have a few of these stories from when they were first published, and they're a lot of fun, well worth it for the Oz fan.
