New Comics Day 12.3.14

This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include the following new titles. Read on to see what comics-blog commentators and web-savvy comic shops are saying about them (more to be added as they appear), check out our previews at the links, and contact your local shop to confirm availability.  

 

  

Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It 
edited by Anne Ishii and Graham Kolbeins

280-page black & white 7" x 10" softcover • $35.00
ISBN: 978-1-60699-785-7 

"The level of drawing in these erotic fantasies is extremely high, sometimes rivaling the work of the iconic Western porno artist Tom of Finland…The content of the stories in Massive is completely unlike the feathery romanticism of yaoi manga and anime. Rough, even sadistic sex takes the place of wistful longing." -Charles Solomon, IndieWire 

 

"Definitely the premiere manga release this week." –Joe McCulloch, The Comics Journal

 

The Late Child and Other Animals  
by Marguerite Van Cook and James Romberger

180-page full color 8" x 10" hardcover • $29.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-789-5

"The Late Child is a rich and intelligent work, one of the lushest and most giving graphic novels in recent memory." -Jason Sacks, Comics Bulletin  

 

"Marguerite's partner on these books as well as in life, Romberger, leaves his ink drawings open enough for her watercolors to capture various types of natural light during the day…It is a significantly gentler and more pastoral book, traditionally beautiful. Calling 7 Miles a Second "beautiful" would lead to smirking inwardly while waiting to be challenged; the book carries ugliness inside itself as part of its very being. While that book's language pushed forward with velocity and free association, this one places each considered thought into a caption to ring out poetically."–Brian Nicholson, Bookslut   

 

The Complete Zap Comix
by R. Crumb, Rick Griffin, Paul Mavrides, Victor Moscoso, Spain Rodriguez, Gilbert Shelton, Robert Williams, and S. Clay Wilson

920-page black & white with color 9.75" x 13.25" x 7" hardcover • $500.00
ISBN: 978-1-60699-787-1

"While the early issues stand as rowdy documents of the 1960s counterculture, Zap was also more. In reinventing the comic book, it set off legal battles and conversations over censorship, brought attention to cartoonists as artists, and set an example for generations of alternative comics creators like Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes, Joe Matt and the Hernandez Brothers." –Dana Jennings, The NY Times

 

"The Zapatistas were a sort of 'supergroup'-the dharma warriors of comics. Inkslingers. Revolutionaries. The best of the best. Their only yardsticks for comparison were each other and that sort of fraternal competition raised the bar and kept their art constantly evolving and their social satire razor sharp." –Richard Metzger, Dangerous Minds

 

 

The Comics Journal Library Vol. 9: Zap The Interviews 
edited by Michael Dean and Gary Groth 

264-page color/black & white 10" x 12"softcover • $35.00
ISBN: 978-1-60699-788-8

 
Cochlea & Eustachia 
by Hans Rickheit 

80-page full color 8" x 10" softcover • $19.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-801-4 

"…Hans Rickheit, a truly unique purveyor of the lovely and sinister." –Joe McCulloch, The Comics Journal

"looks to be equal parts mysterious body horror and Rickheit's typically uneasy blending of the sinister and the comforting." –Jason Giampaoli, Comics Bulletin

"The frighteningly hilarious world of Rickheit's is a deranged cabinet of curiosities… It would all be too oppressive if Rickheit's sense of humor weren't so addictive…" –Publishers Weekly

Vapor
by Max

120-page black & white 7" x 9.75" hardcover • $24.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-460-3 

"Spanish cartoonist Max's graphic novel is ambiguous but powerful, leaving readers to wonder whether Nick is going crazy or finding enlightenment-or perhaps they're the same thing." –Cat Auer, Playboy (This Winter's Best Books)

 
"Max's latest graphic novel translated by Fantagraphics purifies and condenses his cartooning and thinking. Vapor charts the struggles and strange encounters of Nicodemos, a long-haired, long-nosed monk, who has quit the ‘gigantic muddle' of the world to seek transcendence in a desert through self-deprivations." –Paul Gravett  

 

Nancy Loves Sluggo: Complete Dailies 1949-1951
by Ernie Bushmiller

336-page black & white with spot color 8.5" x 8.5" softcover • $39.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-777-2

 

"The Nancy books are beautiful, and that work is such that it will be pulled from shelves and re-examined years after other collections, ostensibly more exciting this very minute, have worked their way to the sales box." –Tom Spurgeon, Comics Reporter

 

"Have you ever taken the time to read and devour Ernie Bushmiller's masterpiece Nancy. Deceptibly simple and oddly corny, it is surprisingly funny and a virtual textbook on comic storytelling." –Andy Mansell, Heroes Online

 

Black Light: The World of L.B. Cole 
Introduction by Bill Schelly 

272-page full color 9.25" x 13.25" softcover • $39.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-762-8

"Black Light vows to burn out your eyes…" –Joe McCulloch, The Comics Journal

 

"His covers are really noir: spirals, figures falling down through space, big spider webs, just great… The colors are all totally primary: just bright red, blue, almost no subtle colors… they really work." – R. Crumb 

 

Heads or Tails (reprint)
by Lilli Carré

200-page full-color 7" x 9" softcover • $22.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-597-6

 
"...[A] significant artist and engaging storyteller." – Robert Kirby, The Comics Journal

 

"Carré's work, fittingly titled Heads or Tails, probes choice, ambivalence and fate; in her stories, there's a flip side to everything, rendered in full and brilliant colour." -Laura Kane, The Toronto Star