Summer is upon us, and there’s no better time to kick back with an ice cold bev and a fresh stack of comics! We have some incredibly cool books, coming out this month, and can’t wait to tell you all about ‘em, but first, the news!
- Barry Windsor-Smith’s Monsters received great reviews from both The Guardian and The New York Times
- Ed Piskor’s Red Room #1 got great reviews from SYFYWire, Daily Dead, and Multiversity.com among many others
- IGN compared Glenn Head’s new memoir Chartwell Manor to Maus in this great review
- Publisher’s Weekly ran a great feature on Stone Fruit by Lee Lai
- ScreenRant ran a great advance review and preview of Celestia by Manuele Fior
- TCAF went virtual this year: Check out their archived programming with appearances by Daniel Clowes, Eric Haven, Ben Sears, Jaime Hernandez, Katie Skelly and many more!
- … and so did VanCAF! Listen to their podcast episodes featuring Shira Spector and Lee Lai
June New Releases:
Coping Skills by John Cuneo
When John Cuneo isn’t gracing the cover of The New Yorker, being featured in Esquire, or winning every prodigious illustration award known to humankind, he fills a plastic container with drawings labeled “Loose Sketches.” He explains that those personal pieces — not likely to see publication in any prestigious magazine for many obvious reasons — are not categorized by anything else than “it simply means they are untethered.” And, boy, are they! Lucky for us, Coping Skills collects these squiggly-lined scenes of domesticated manatees, climate change, sex — lots and lots of sex — and many more of these “helpful drawings” by one of the best illustrators in the world.
Crash Site by Nathan Cowdry
Crash Site, the debut graphic novel from British cartoonist Nathan Cowdry, is the story of Rosie, a young drug trafficker who uses her lovelorn talking dog, Denton, to mule drugs across international lines. When Rosie and Denton’s return flight to England goes down and they find themselves stranded in the Amazon basin (with fifty grand worth of coke in Denton’s stomach), well, getting busted becomes the least of their concerns as they try to find their way out. Did we mention that Rosie is also wearing a pair of anthropomorphic underwear she calls Pants Dude, and that he may have other plans for her and Denton?
Scoop Scuttle and His Pals: The Crackpot Comics of Basil Wolverton
In this rip-roaring retrospective of the influential Mad Magazine cartoonist, Basil Wolverton’s often-warped imagination combines with his outlandishly wacky visual humor to fascinate and delight. It collects the ultra-rare treasures Scoop Scuttle, Mystic Moot, Bingbang Buster, and Jumpin’ Jupiter – as they’ve never been seen before! Due to the rock-bottom printing methods of ten-cent comic books, Wolverton’s intricate line work was routinely obscured, and often obliterated. In this collection, every effort has been made to restore the art to its original splendor, and to at last present the uniquely detailed graphics of this justly revered comic book master.
Bleeding Skull!: A 1990s Trash-Horror Odyssey by Annie Choi, Zack Carlson, Joseph A. Ziemba
| A celebration of the most obscure, bizarre, and brain-busting movies ever made, this film guide features 250 in-depth reviews that have escaped the radar of people with taste and the tolerance of critics — Gorgasm! I Was a Teenage Serial Killer! Satan Claus! Die Hard Dracula! Curated by the enthusiastic minds behind BleedingSkull.com, this book gets deep into gutter-level, no-budget horror, from shot-on-VHS revelations (Eyes of the Werewolf) to forgotten outsider art hallucinations (Alien Beasts). Jam-packed with rare photographs, advertisements, and VHS sleeves (most of which have never been seen before), Bleeding Skull is an edifying, laugh-out-loud guide to the dusty inventory of the greatest video store that never existed. |
Darkwing Duck: Just Us Justice Ducks: Disney Afternoon Adventures Vol. 1
From the pages of Disney Adventures and its sister magazines come much-requested feature-length thrillers! In “Just Us Justice Ducks,” Darkwing Duck and DuckTales’ Gizmoduck are called to action when the Fearsome Five — Negaduck, Megavolt, Liquidator, Bushroot, and Quackerjack — successfully take over St. Canard! Then Goofy and Max take a trip on the open road… far from Max’s beloved Roxanne, but into the clutches of a Bigfoot in the original comics adaptation of A Goofy Movie! Then in “The Legend of the Chaos God,” an evil spirit named Solego is trapped in a priceless gem… and wreaks havoc on Cape Suzette, Duckburg, and St. Canard. It’s up to the Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers, Scrooge McDuck, Darkwing, and the TaleSpin crew to stop him! “…Everybody’s busy, bringing you a Disney Afternoon!”
Another History of Art by Anita Kunz
Have you ever awakened from a sleepy delirium one morning and imagined that you lived in a different and glorious world where all the recognized masterpieces in the Western pantheon of art history were painted by women? If not, no problem: The renowned and award-winning painter and illustrator Anita Kunz has imagined it for you in her hilariously inventive and masterfully executed Another History of Art. Kunz depicts the most iconic paintings in the history of art — as if they had been painted by women. Conceived with delicious wit, boundless humor, and an eye for the telling aesthetic detail, Kunz’s recreations are not only stunning paintings in their own right but a sly, revisionist social commentary on the male-dominated history of Western civilization.
Red Room #2 by Ed Piskor
Grooming victims to be slaughtered on the DARK WEB for the enjoyment of psychopaths requires lots of work to keep them from being identified. The Poker Face organization, one of the most successful black market Red Room companies on the internet, goes through great lengths to fulfill their customers’ depraved fantasies while avoiding law enforcement every step of the way. From the creator of Hip Hop Family Tree and X-Men: Grand Design comes this ALL-NEW monthly comic book series! A cyberpunk, outlaw, splatterpunk deep dive into the subculture of criminals who live-stream and patronize webcam murders for entertainment in the darkest corners of the web with nearly untraceable crypto-currency. Who are the murderers? Who are the victims? How do we stop it? Every issue of this 12-part series is a complete, self-contained, satisfying story. As seen on Piskor’s YouTube channel sensation, Cartoonist Kayfabe!
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