Friday by Ed Brubaker. A supernatural mystery based in the quiet town of Kings Hill, New England. A haunting coming of age tale perfect for readers who want a mix of mystery with beautifully drawn winter landscapes.

Some rarities I've been after for a while! 2001 Nights, Seraphim and Opus.
Still looking for Planetes Vol 2 in the old paperback format.

Solitary Gourmet is a wonderful read.

Does anyone have any good recommendations for more hard sci-fi like 2001 Nights or Seraphim?

Or anything else with the pace and grace of Jiro Taniguchi?

Thanks to u/Wilco8183 for giving the heads up that some new books were on the Fantagraphics website!

Included in the screen captures are plenty of books we already knew about, but wanted to just show the 20 books they had featured so far for May to August next year.

I Pre-ordered this book weeks ago. I had no idea about its subject matter beyond the title. In the order form it asked for "special instructions" I wrote, a sketch of Emma Goldman would be cool. Emma Goldman is a personal hero of mine and the lady we named our daughter after. I was blown away to actually see Backderf had indeed done a sketch of her on the title page. Turns out this book puts alot of focus on her life too. This is an amazing read and makes my short list for book of the year.

Treated myself to a couple new books as a reward for completely my first full marathon.

Halfway through City of Owls and have heard REALLY great things about New Frontier.

I've been reading volume #1 at work today. Two more chapters to go. I'm still not sure how i feel about it. I do love Princess Doughnut though 🤣

Humble Bundle and Dynamite Entertainment are celebrating Halloween with a collection of up to 98 digital comics featuring Army of Darkness, Vampirella, Red Sonja, Elvira, Bettie Page, and more. The full bundle costs $18 and supports The Hero Initiative.

Premise:

A graphic, graphic novel by the masters Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, this colored edition omnibus tells the story of Jack the Ripper(JTR) terrorizing the streets of 19th c. London.
Historical faction is what I would call it.

What I loved:

• The simple ink drawn characters work surprisingly well for this dark story. Just goes to show, one doesn't need Alex Ross' level of panel art to tell a great story.
• The deep dive into the mind of JTR was probably the best part of this story. Esp., chapter 4. Mixes architecture, geography, psychology, history, mythology to present a really twisted mindset.
• Loved the rich depiction of the underbelly of 19th c London. There's class division, prostitutes, asylums, Victorian politics, conspiracies, xenophobia, slums...
• DEEP RESEARCH: The Appendices were a pleasure to read. So many sources, ideas and books referred... Alan Moore truly is a genius. Every page and almost each panel is accounted for! Is this the most thoroughly researched graphic novel out there?! Has to be!
• Font style: Very unique. Ink pen, handwritten mostly. It feels very gritty, grounded, as if the reader too is going through those files/conversations, trying to decipher their meaning, the dialects. Very new experience for me.

Cool ideas/concepts:

• Book begins with Salutation to Lord Ganesa!
• Howard Hinton published a paper - "What's the Fourth Dimension" in 1884, Edwin Abbott's Flatland was published then too!
• "Water falls down as slope, any hope of it going up has to be through a trial by fire, touched by purity, it becomes steam! And rises to God."
• Hackney was once Hakons Ea- where Saxons deified heroes as gods, like Hengest's father Ivalde, who killed Mani: Teutonic Moon God. - I wanna read more on this mythology now!
• Intriguing theory about corpus collosum thickening since millennia...might have linked the Apollo Left to Dionysian Right, so now the left brain doesn't get much mystified by right brains visions.
• Chapter 4: What a twisted rabbit hole of psychology and mythology. All about twisting the Sun vs Moon trope, to infer chaining woman to men. That's some twisted sick mentality... wow.
• Chapter 5 opens with Austria 1888, conception of Adolf Hitler... and the 1st murder by JTR, with Salutation to Ganesha, also connecting to the Elephant Man How does one think of these links!
• Attention to detail in some panels is absolutely insane. Like the calender pages, each with a banger quote (see image 👆). It's what I love about Alan Moore ... He sprinkles these seeds of ideas and concepts for the enthusiasts. Not only does it make for a richer story, it forces one to think - go down multiple rabbit holes - be as crazy as him, for a while. For example, Ch11 pg 23 - I had to Google Thomas Browne's quote's meaning, and it comes from his work "Urn Burial". But the page is also discussing dust prints as a possible new method for criminal identification!
• How seamlessly he brings together so many historical characters and events into this story, it's marvelously dense! Krakatoa, Queen Victoria, Oscar Wilde, David Croly, WB Yeats, The Elephant Man), George Bernard Shaw, Annie Besant, Howard Hinton, Hitler, even Osho)!
• Regarding David Croly - I took a break of few months after chapters 4-6... (Chapter 10 is the most brutal😨) At times I felt as if Eddie & Alan might be MO(o)RE messed up than JTR! In the meantime, I started reading Croly's excellent 1888 book "Glimpses for the Future". Really fascinating stuff. I'll post a review soon.

Ending:

Masterful. I'd like to believe it's true that Mary perhaps escaped, and had daughters named after her friends.. . The Epilogue is just Cherry on top: All is explained, and yet nothing is. Paradoxical, like the Koch Snowflake.

Probably has the funniest panel in whole work, includes the authors Gull-catching XD (see image above👆)

Rating: 11/10 {Like Moore's works, the Rating can't be just normal, it must TRANSCEND!}

Just finished reading the classic INFINITY GAUNTLET story. After Thanos obtains all six Infinity Gems to add to his gauntlet, he becomes like a god. And he tries desperately, through increasing acts of might, to impress Mistress Death. When these all fail, he instead decides to, with a snap, eliminate half the life in the universe. This causes Adam Warlock to enlist the remaining heroes after Thanos.

I understand why this is one of Marvel’s greatest stories and why it was adapted into the MCU. Before huge comic events occurred every couple of months, they had to really feel BIG. The stakes had to be HIGH. And Infinity Gauntlet was a comic event done right. Starlin manages to craft a complex, character-driven story with huge consequences, multiple characters interacting with one another without it getting messy, and real emotional weight. Thanos is a compelling, multidimensional villain who is not just evil for evil’s sake but possesses both righteous rage and vulnerability which, when combined, make him truly dangerous.

I’m glad that I finally got around to reading this and, though I checked this out from my local library, I feel compelled to pick up an actual copy of the collected edition for my own comic collection.

For those who read the Infinity Gauntlet, what did you think? And do you think it deserves the hype as being one of Marvel’s greatest stories?

EDIT: Autocorrect for some reason changed Jim STARLIN’s name to “Starling”.

Title: Zátopek: When You Can't Keep Going, Go Faster!

Writer: Jan Novák

Artist: Jaromír 99

Genre: Non-Fiction / Biographical / Sports

Pages: 208 pages

English Publisher: SelfMadeHero

Country (about): Czechoslovakia / Czech Republic

Translation by: Translated from Czech by Mark Pollizzotti

Plot (Spoiler Free)

Zátopek is a biography following the life and career of legendary Czech runner Emil Zátopek, an Olympic distance runner. The graphic novel chronicles the obstacles he faced in being able to run. It documents his self-devised training methods and his meeting with Dana Ingrová, who later became his wife and an Olympic medal-winning athlete herself. It highlights his struggles against societal attitudes in his earlier days; and against the ruling Communist Party in his later days as he tries to help a fellow athlete risking his career. The story reached its end as Emil earns his place in sports history, culminating in his iconic achievements at the 1952 Helsinki Summer Olympics.

Plot (Spoiler Included)

The story details key phases of Zátopek's life and athletic journey. The early pages of the book highlight the restrictive attitudes of the era and the societal hurdles that initially attempted to stop Emil from running. As the story progresses, we learn more about Emil's unconventional and extreme training techniques, leading into the celebration of his major early victories. We get introduced to Dana Ingrová, a  javelin thrower who later becomes Emil's wife and goes on to win her own Olympic gold medal.

In 1952, before Helsinki Olympics, Emil puts himself in direct conflict with the ruling Communist Party by insisting that his teammate, Stanislav Jungwirth, be included among the Olympic athletes representing Czechoslovakia. This is in contrast to his usual attitude of "don't stick your neck out". He was fully aware of the potential political consequences, the risk to his career, and to his freedom. The regime finally yields, but Emil is now at risk unless he becomes that star athlete that the regime can't just 'disappear'.  In the final pages, after sweeping gold medals at the Olympics, we see Emil reflect on his journey. His willingness to take a stand for his fellow athletes highlights a clear shift in his overall life perspectives.

Review

Zátopek is a well-paced and very enjoyable sports biography that bridges athletic achievement with human courage. The early sections effectively establish the societal hurdles Emil faced, making his eventual victories feel earned and rewarding . The timely humour (though limited) in the dialogues by Jan Novák makes the book a very easy and engaging read from start to finish.

Though the book mostly reads like a sports biography, the main high points are Emil's shift in personality and him standing up for his fellow athlete against the ruling Communist Party. In the book, the risks he took, I felt, were not conveyed strong enough. With out knowledge of the authoritarian attitudes and approaches of the ruling Communist Party, this confrontation does not evoke the same sense of danger he was in.

Visually, the book employs a distinct 4 tone linocut style. While I have personally had a hit-and-miss experience with this art style in the past, I found the art by Jaromír 99 to be very enjoyable here. The colour usage throughout the graphic novel is brilliant, perfectly complementing the stark lines and high contrast. The book is a very fast read.

Rating: 4.25 / 5 Stars

Previous Posts: Book 1-3

Juan Buscamares is a european-style graphic novel by chilean artist/writer Félix Vega. I've searched for an english version to see if they changed the title but I couldn't find anything, si the best translation I can offer is "Juan Seaseeker". In any case, the story is about an amnesiac man who wanders a world in which the seas have dried up, and he might have a part to play in the return of the ocean. The story is divided in 4 chapters that were released as individual graphic novels from the late 90's until the early 2000's.

Starting off with the art, the book starts with an obvious inspiration, Mad Max. There's lot of inkwork depicting abandoned, rusty machinery and scavenging vehicles. Personally, I love that stuff. However, as the story progresses, the Mad Max-like desert gives way to new environs, and there was a lot more variety in settings and situations than I was expecting. Something that caught my attention is that, as the plot developed and the settings changed, so did the style of the artwork, with less and less visible ink lines in each page until the final moments of the book seem to be pure coloring (I think the coloring is done with acryllics). I thought this was great, the art remains good throughout but I liked that it also changed as the story grew weirder and more oneiric.

As for the plot itself, the only way I can describe it is weird. The characters are sadly not too engaging, since most of them are just in survival mode throughout the entire book with only a couple of exception. Even so, while the characters are not the most dynamic, the story itself is pretty engaging and deals with some pretty big concepts, and it denounces colonization and reinterprets biblical stories to offer a messianic tale in which the messiah is very very flawed, and in which things are only accomplished through group efforts, as opposed to western stories of solitary heroes who are so determined that they see their mission through no matter what.

As much as I find the story interesting, there is a pretty big elephant in the room when it comes to this book, especially in the first half, and that's sexual assault. There's a lot of sexual assault in this book, and don't get me wrong, it's portrayed as wrong and actually makes a lot of thematic sense when you read the whole thing, since it makes a simile between rape and the colonization of america, and it's a way of interacting with others that remains even in the post-apocaliptic future. I think it works in that capacity, as a denunciation of how the western world engages with other cultures.

Having said that, while it makes sense thematically in the book, it's not handled very well since it falls into the all-too-common pitfall of oversexualizing the victim. It's a portrayal that runs counter to the message the book wants to convey, since it sort of commits the same sin of the objectification of other people that it denounces, and I wish it was handled better, since it would make it easier to recommend because I did like a lot about this book.

So, pros: interesting story, great sci-fi concepts, very strong thematic execution that included an evolution of the art itself and beautiful art throughout. Cons: poor handling of depictions of sexual assault and mostly flat characters. In the end, I don't regret reading this, it gave me a lot to think about and I foundly mostly enjoyable, but it's as I said, I can't recommend it openly wothout the caveats I mentioned.

Hi everyone,
I’m helping my dad clear out his comic book collection and we found this. Neither of us know much about this, only a little about the festival etc. Can anyone give us some insights as to whether it would be worth selling or just donating to charity/library etc? (I have tried asking the good people of the Tomorrowland sub, to no avail!) Thanks!

On ComicBookDS

This is my stuff after getting back into reading comics. Thanks for checking it out.

To be clear looking for recommendations that are graphic novels and not main line comics if that makes sense

I really loved Barda and Orion. Also checked out the teen titans books. Any other graphic novels from dc people seems to enjoy?

So basically few months or maybe more than a year ago I saw a clip on YouTube of a few pages of this book, i looked up the book but didn't end up not reading it and eventually forgot about it completely, name and all. Fast forward to today the first thing i remember after waking up is that book, so i tried searching for it from my browsers history, youtube history, this sub, tried to get Gemini and Chat gpt to search it for me since those can look up sights faster than I can, but end up finding nothing.

This is the last place i had in mind, and hopefully the last place I will need to search for it. So, I am going to describe as much as I think I remember and hope it reminds someone of the book I am searching for.

In the youtube video I think it was a woman and a man talking about something, the woman might have been a anthro dragon or some other animal I don't remember for certain(Could also not be an animal at all), but if it was a dragon she was yellow in colour(i think), and the man might just have been a human. From what I remember the story was medieval fantasy themed and was something about WAR!... sorry but that's all I remember 😭. It was not for kids if I remember correctly. The cover mostly consisted of dark colours, again if I remember correctly.

That's all I remember, Thanks for any and all help or even if you read the whole thing

Edit:- Few more details-The dragon woman(if exists) was very much humanoid, and the art style wasn't too cartoonish

Tiers available at $1, $12, or $23 if you want the complete 61 issue bundle. I'm in no way associated with any comic book brand, affiliate referral program, or fanatical directly; just a comic fan trying to spread the word on digital stuff.

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They have some romance comic they recommend, something to pass the time?

A must buy. He's right up there with Robert Crumb and Daniel Clowes for such great self deprecating work. Well done to Fantagraphics for a beautiful book.