Digging those fall vibes and digging these #NCBD releases. You can find these titles in any decent store near you, or on any decent website (like ours!)
Band for Life
by Anya Davidson
Band for Life is the story, told in comic strip form, of a noise rock band and their community of friends and acquaintances based in an alternate reality version of Chicago. Though beset with disaster at every turn and frequently reduced to squabbling, they stick together because the band is the fulcrum of their otherwise confounding lives, and together they help each other find their way. Fusing elements of the classic British sitcom The Young Ones, as well as classic kids comic strips like Charles Schulz’s Peanuts and John Stanley’s Melvin Monster, Band for Life is a work of dark humor, but also infused with genuine affection for its cast; in many ways it is a love letter to creative people compelled to create, with no hope of financial reward.
Moolah Tree
by Ted Stearn
As Simpsons creator Matt Groening says, “This epic tale of a hapless li’l bear and his defeathered friend is why I love comics. All hail the peculiar Fuzz and Pluck and their creator, Ted Stearn!”
Pluck, an irritable and featherless rooster, and his best pal, the awkwardly unsocialized but lovable teddy bear known as Fuzz, met long ago in a garbage truck. A tenuous if decidedly co-dependent friendship between Fuzz & Pluck followed, sending them on a series of not-so-heroic adventures. But now, we find them on a ramshackle barge, slowly drifting out to sea. How did they get there? How will they escape? The answer lies in the book’s title, but the true fun is in the Picaresque and often Swiftian adbsurdities that our heroes find themselves in along the way. Ted Stearn’s work is rich with pathos, wit, farce, existentialism and drama. Sometimes cruel but always funny, like a Winnie the Pooh for adults.
It’s All One Case: The Illustrated Ross Macdonald Archives By Kevin Avery, Paul Nelson and Jeff Wong
In 1976, the critic Paul Nelson spent several weeks interviewing his literary hero, legendary detective writer Ross Macdonald. Beginning in the late 1940s with his shadowy creation, ruminating private eye Lew Archer, Macdonald had followed in the footsteps of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, but ultimately elevated the form to a new level. “We talked about everything imaginable,” Nelson wrote—including Macdonald’s often meager beginnings; his dual citizenship; writers, painters, music, books, and movies he admired; how he used symbolism to change detective writing; his own novels and why Archer was not the most important character — “my God, everything.” Commemorating last year’s centenary of the innovative and influential author’s birth, in a handsome, oversized format, It’s All One Case provides an open door to Macdonald at his most unguarded. Featuring in full color the covers of the various editions of Macdonald’s more than two dozen books, facsimile reproductions of pages from his manuscripts, magazine spreads, and many never before seen photos of Macdonald and his friends (such as Kurt Vonnegut), including those by celebrated photojournalist Jill Krementz. It’s All One Case is an intellectual delight and a visual feast, a fitting tribute to Macdonald’s distinguished career.