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.
"Oh man, so much great stuff to splurge on this week. Let's start withSpacehawk, Basil Wolverton's fabulous, fantabulous astronaut superhero from the alleged Golden Age. Lots of bizarre aliens and shifty-eyed villains in this one. Then there's the second volume of Ernie Bushmiller'sNancy (which I praised… the other week), and the second volume of Walt Kelly's Pogo Possum, Bona Fide Balderdash." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6
Nancy Likes Christmas: Complete Dailies 1946-1948
by Ernie Bushmiller
336-page black & white 8.5" x 8.5" flexibound softcover • $26.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-599-0
"…Nancy Likes Christmas: Complete Dailies 1946-1948, for the all of us in all of us." – Joe McCulloch, The Comics Journal
"Thor's pick of the week" – Midtown Comics
"It's a great book…a perfect book. In an ideal world, this is what you'd find in hotel rooms instead of Gideon Bibles. This is far better than what the world deserves…well, I deserve it, at any rate — I'm not sure about the rest of you. But you should get a copy anyway." – Mike Sterling
Pogo – The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips Vol. 2: "Bona Fide Balderdash"
by Walt Kelly
356-page black & white/color 11.25" x 9.25" hardcover • $39.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-584-6
Pogo – The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips Vol. 1-2 Box Set
by Walt Kelly
664-page black & white/color 11.5" x 9.5" x 3" two-volume slipcased hardcover set • $69.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-629-4
"As is so often the case, my splurge would be from Fantagraphics: The second volume of Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips, a steal at $39.99. I’m old enough to remember when Pogo ran in the Sunday paper, although I never understood it then. Later on, I picked up some of the paperbacks and really came to appreciate Walt Kelly’s sense of humor. I’d love to read them all." – Brigid Alverson, Robot 6
"Pogo certainly belongs on any informed list of the top 5 newspaper comic strips of all time. The artwork is stunning, the pacing is fast, the characters simply come alive on the page; the plot-lines are crazy and labyrinthine and above all hilarious. The dialog is pitch perfect – even the lettering ads to the strips characterizations and somehow, along the way, you will learn quite a bit about potent political satire especially as the specter of McCarthyism weighed down on life in 1950s America. The comics really are that good and Fantagraphics does the Kelly oeuvre proud with beautiful production values and insightful introductory material. Buy this book – or put it on your Christmas wish list." – Heroes Aren't Hard to Find "Staff Picks"
"Fans of lush cartooning and wordplay… — not really exclusive tribes there — can satiate themselves with Pogo – The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips Vol. 2: "Bona Fide Balderdash", which I'm told ain't malarkey." – Joe McCulloch, The Comics Journal
272-page full-color 9.25" x 13" flexibound softcover • $39.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-550-1
"I picked up Fantagraphics’ Spacehawk Halloween mini-comic this year and selfishly did not give it to a Trick or Treater, because I loved how strange and awesome Basil Wolverton’s pulpy space comic is. That’s why I’m splurging on the full Spacehawk collection ($39.99) this week." – Michael May, Robot 6
"All who hungered for an enormous 9.25" x 13" color softcover compiling the entirety of Basil Wolverton's Spacehawk will have their fill in this latecoming Best of 2012 Reprint Project, I'm not kidding." – Joe McCulloch, The Comics Journal
"Excitement couldn't be higher!" – Bergen Street Comics