I know, I know, I’m late this month, and I missed last month, for which I sincerely apologize. It was kind of a shitty month anyway, and its sole highlight will get a mention here, so it’s all good, right?
I’ll spare you the Tim Tebow speech and dive right in:
BLACKSAD VOLUME 1 HC (Dark Horse, $29.99)
As announced at the San Diego Comic Con earlier this year, Dark Horse is reprinting all three volumes of the hardboiled anthropomorphic detective series in a deluxe oversized hardcover. These have been unavailable to English-speaking audiences since original US publisher iBooks went out of business a couple of years ago. Beautifully illustrated, and a winner of several European awards, Blacksad is a highly accomplished genre work that should not have been languishing in reprint limbo for this long. Check out this preview and you’ll see why.
MESMO DELIVERY (Dark Horse, $9.99)
Another reprint, this time of the American debut by the Brazilian artist Rafael Grampá, which was originally published by AdHouse Books just last year. The story, which centers on two truckers who make special kinds of deliveries, is a bit slight, but heavy on style and gore, and Grampá’s art, an unholy fusion of Geoff Darrow and Frank Quitely, is simply stunning. The new edition comes with a new cover, a new introduction by Brian Azzarello, a sketchbook section, and pin-up art from Eduardo Risso and Craig Thompson, among others.
THE BRONX KILL HC (DC Comics/Vertigo, $19.99)
See, I’m what you would call a hardcover fetishist and even I think they are marketing the Vertigo Crime line the wrong way. A line of books that is designed to recall old pulp paperbacks should mirror their format and price range as well. Otherwise, the currently $20 hardcover-only line will have a hard time finding and maintaining an audience, regardless of the quality of material. Which, so far, hasn’t exactly been blowing my skirt up. Ian Rankin’s Dark Entries and the upcoming The Chill by Jason Starr are both supernatural thrillers, rather than crime stories, and the blatant mislabeling aside, it kind of irks me that they would get two of today’s most popular crime novelists and have them write John Constantine-type stories (literally, in Rankin’s case) instead of what they do best. I hope this is more along the lines of what we were initially promised.
JOE THE BARBARIAN #1 (DC Comics/Vertigo, $2.99)
Grant Morrison being back at Vertigo makes people happy. His fans rejoice because that is where he has arguably done his best work, while his detractors breathe a sigh of relief because he is temporarily not involved in messing with their beloved superheroes. He is joined by Sean Murphy, a promising young artist, whose debut graphic novel Off-Road I rather liked, for a project Morrison describes as Home Alone meets Lord of the Rings, and which strikes me as the perfect premise for Morrison’s unbridled imagination. And the fact that this was recently expanded from 3 issues to 8 only seems to confirm that.
DAYTRIPPER #2 (DC Comics/Vertigo, $2.99)
The Brazillian twins Gabriel Bá and Fabio Moon established themselves as two creators to watch out for with De:Tales, a collection of short stories which recalled Paul Pope’s tales of urban romance with touches of South American magical realism. A few years later (and with a couple of high-profile projects under their belt), Daytripper sees them returning to Brazil, as they attempt to chronicle a man’s life over the span of 10 issues, in what appears to be yet another leap in their maturation as storytellers.
HICKSVILLE: NEW DEFINITIVE EDITION (Drawn & Quarterly, $19.99)
Dylan Horrocks’ near-forgotten semi-classic about a small town where everyone reads and treasures comics is back in print, and rightfully so. Horrocks may not be the cartoonist that most of his D&Q peers are, but his understatedness and warmth make this celebration of the art form a lot less elitist than it could have been in someone else’s hands, and therefore required reading for everyone claiming to be a comic book lover.
KING OF THE FLIES VOLUME 1 (Fantagraphics, $18.99)
The first volume of Mezzo and Pirus’ suburban horror trilogy finally gets a US release, after only a couple of chapters saw the light of day in Heavy Metal magazine half a decade ago. If you’ve missed your regular dose of Charles Burns after Black Hole ended, these preview pages suggest that this is bound to scratch that particular itch.
NEXT MONTH: On time!
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