Jerry Robinson: Ambassador Of Comics Written by N. C. Christopher Couch; illustrated by Jerry Robinson; introduction by Pete Hamill; foreword by Dennis O’Neil Abrams ComicArts Jerry Robinson is described on the cover flaps of Ambassador Of Comics as “one of the living legends of American comics” and it’s something you can’t really argue with. He [...]
Continue reading...Monday, April 12, 2010
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The Art Of Jaime Hernandez: The Secrets Of Life And Death By Todd Hignite, designed by Jordan Crane Abrams Comic Arts (* quote on the title of this piece from Alan Moore) This is one of those pointless reviews I do every so often. Pointless simply because The Secrets Of Life And Death is a [...]
Continue reading...Wednesday, March 31, 2010
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Our crews in our branches and warehouses are beavering away mining comics goodness for you to browse on the shelves tomorrow. Some cool releases in among them, but there’s one that stood out for me, not just because it’s a very large, red-jacketed hardback so it physically does stand out, but because it’s a book [...]
Continue reading...Monday, March 1, 2010
Meanwhile by Jason Shiga Abrams Chocolate or Vanilla? That’s the simple question that starts Meanwhile, Jason Shiga’s wonderfully original take on the “choose your own adventure” idea presented in an ingenious structure full of choices and bizarre scenarios. When Jimmy takes the chocolate option he stumbles upon the lab of a mad scientist Professor K [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, November 19, 2009
Boilerplate: History’s Mechanical Marvel by Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett Abrams Image Boilerplate is a fascinating concept – a mockumentary coffee table book dealing with the heroic exploits of Boilerplate – a Victorian Era mechanical man. He crops up everywhere from his creation in 1893 until his disappearance in 1918; possibly making it to the [...]
Continue reading...Monday, October 19, 2009
How do you go about turning a comic (of the comedian variety) into a successful comics (of the graphical variety)? That was the question facing Stuart Hample in the mid 70s; he’d decided that Woody Allen could make a good subject for a newspaper comic strip while the writer/actor/stand-up/director was still building his now formidable [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, September 22, 2009
The Toon Treasury Of Classic Children’s Comics Selected & Edited by Art Spiegelman & Francoise Mouly Abrams ComicArts The Toon Treasury is a huge (really huge – 350+ pages) hardcover of seemingly every wonderful comic for children from the 30s to the 60s, all lovingly compiled by Francoise Mouly and Art Spiegelman. Okay, not every [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, September 15, 2009
The Art Of Harvey Kurtzman By Denis Kitchen and Paul Buhle Abrams ComicArts “MAD was the first comic enterprise that got its effects almost entirely from parodying other kinds of popular entertainment…. To say that this became an influential manner in American comedy is to understate the case. Almost all American satire today follows a [...]
Continue reading...Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Manga Kamishibai – The Art of Japanese Paper Theatre by Eric P. Nash Abrams Comicarts Imagine if Stan Lee & Jack Kirby had produced their comics as big splash pages on illustrated boards and sent them out to the streets of New York to be shown to children by specialist performers. Imagine being a child [...]
Continue reading...Friday, August 7, 2009
Whatever Happened To The World Of Tomorrow by Brian Fies Abrams ComicArts (The beautiful overlay to the hardcover of World Of Tomorrow – perfectly done.) Whatever Happened To The World Of Tomorrow is Brian Fies’ reaction to the oft quoted cry of “where’s my flying car and jetpack?” that we’re all familiar with. But Fies [...]
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Thursday, September 16, 2010
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