This is pretty much for any books that would plague me if I had to find a genre shelf for them. Maybe they're a hybrid, maybe they straight up elude categorization. Either way they look interesting and we should keep an eye out for them.
You'll see that I'll try to include a little order code with most items (ex:JUL200019). Show some love to your retailer and use those codes when you can, it saves a lot of time on the data entry end of things.
BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH MONSTERS HC
(W) Barry Windsor-Smith (A/CA) Barry Windsor-Smith
Created over a period of 35 years, Barry Windsor-Smith's Monsters is a tour de force of visual storytelling. Part family drama, part espionage thriller, part metaphysical journey, it is an intimate portrait of individuals struggling to reclaim their lives and an epic political odyssey across two generations of American history. Monsters is rendered in Windsor-Smith's impeccable technique, the visual storytelling being the most sophisticated of the artist's career. There are passages of heartbreaking tenderness, of excruciating pain, and devastating violence. It is surely one of the most intense graphic novels ever drawn.
NOV201315
Why this caught my eye:
Besides enjoying Barry Windsor-Smith's art, it's kind of insane that this took him 35 years so there's just a big curiosity factor for me. I've heard some early feedback on it and it sounds more than promising, and I trust in Fantagraphics to do a great job on the final presentation.
HAHA #1
(W) W. Maxwell Price (A/CA) Vanesa R. Del Rey
ICE CREAM MAN writer W. MAXWELL PRINCE brings his signature style of one-shot storytelling to the world of clowns-and he's invited SOME OF THE COMIC INDUSTRY'S BEST ARTISTS to join him for the ride.
HAHA is a genre-jumping, throat-lumping look at the sad, scary, hilarious life of those who get paid to play the fool-but these ain't your typical jokers.
With issues drawn by VANESA DEL REY (REDLANDS), GABRIEL WALTA (Vision), ROGER LANGRIDGE (Thor), and more, HAHA peeks under the big top, over the rainbow, and even inside a balloon to tell a wide-ranging slew of stories about "funny" men and women, proving that some things are so sad you just have to laugh.
NOV200009
Why this caught my eye:
I hate clowns. Like a lot. So I'm not too crazy for the content focus here, but Prince's Ice Cream Man was an interesting series and the list of art talent lining up for this so far is pretty great.
HERNANDEZ HYPNOTWIST HC
(W) Gilbert Hernandez (A/CA) Gilbert Hernandez
Collects (and expands!) the graphic novellas "Hypnotwist" and "Scarlet by Starlight" from Love and Rockets: New Stories in a handsome "Double Feature" package.
In the Eisner Award-winning wordless comic (silent movie?) "Hypnotwist," Hernandez's B-movie star Fritz plays a character who doesn't seem to be going anywhere, until she puts on a pair of glittery pumps. Her wanderings become increasingly surreal as she confronts motherhood, alcoholism, a sinister smiley face, cruelty, and her worst fate: "Killer" cameos! Includes 16 pages of previously unpublished, additional material.
"Scarlet by Starlight" is a B movie that's Star Trek meets Heart of Darkness. "Scientists," or colonizers, are doing research, surrounded by "primitive" fauna they affectionately nickname or treat like pests. Fritz plays Scarlet, a peaceful, catlike humanoid with a mate and children. When she becomes infatuated with one of the scientists, the fragile web of relationships explodes into violence and death, calling into question who the "advanced, civilized" creatures really are.
The two graphic novellas that comprise the book will be published together with two covers, so the two stories each end in the middle of the book (with the one you're not reading being upside down). This very cool, handsome "Double Feature" package will be an essential item for Love and Rockets completists!
NOV201316
Why this caught my eye:
One of the reasons I'm usually hesitant to pull the trigger on any of the smaller Love & Rockets books is because I never know when they'll be collected (and expanded) into a nicer format like this. So yay, this is nice to have it in a big flipbook HC, and yay I love Gilbert Hernandez (the Palomar HC is one of my favorite graphic novels). But...what if they collect it in an even nicer HC down the line.......
MIFFED RUFFIANZ ONE SHOT
(W) Rodger Biyone (A/CA) Rodger Biyone
Master of psychedelic mechanics Rodger Binyone presents Miffed Ruffianz: 32 neon Pantone pages following the blazzzed up, burned out, over-medium Sci-Fi Punk Maniacz taking the localz by storm. Retro-future rock band shredz & medz it's way to battle sworn rivalz, laying waste to the Regularz along the way. Limited printing of 1,000.
NOV201514
Why this caught my eye:
I'm not even sure if half of that solicit was even english or if I had a seizure, but the art looks interesting.
LUNATIC GN WORDLESS STORY
(W) Dan Mazur (A/CA) Dan Mazur
Lunatic is an unusual and striking graphic novel in the tradition of wordless books by the likes of Frans Masereel, Lynd Ward and William Gropper. The word "lunatic" derives from Latin, meaning "of the moon" or "moonstruck," and in this sense it describes the protagonist of this story: from infancy she develops a magical, almost intimate relationship with the moon itself, a celestial being who acts as her friend, lover, mentor. Our heroine is a dreamer, an outsider, never feeling like she quite belongs to this world. We follow her through the stages of life, infancy, childhood, youth and adulthood, at each point guided by the moon toward a fateful journey and an unexpected destiny.
Part fable, part classic adventure in the tradition of Jules Verne, H. G. Wells and Méliès, the tale is told in nearly 200 full-page, wordless images in a variety of media from pencil, pen and ink, ink wash and paint that lovingly evoke the artistic styles of its period setting, and classic illustrators from Charles Dana Gibson and Toulouse Lautrec to Edward Gorey.
OCT201411
Why this caught my eye:
I was checking out some of Dan Mazur's process pages and the project just looks fascinating. This looks like a pretty intense passion project, and it was hiding a bit in the Oct catalog so I just wanted to shed some light on it.
That does it for this batch, next time I'll probably do a little mix of sci-fi and crime/suspense.
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