To start with, a correction: several months ago, I speculated that Josh Simmons' HAPPY #3: ZIRKUS was a reprint of his lauded minicomic CIRKUS NEW ORLEANS. I turn out to have been mistaken; it is in the same vein, but HAPPY #3 was all new material. Apologies to Mr Simmons.

PICK OF THE MONTH

BLANKETS, by Craig Thompson, from Top Shelf Productions
MAY03 2485, pg. 368, $29.95

This pick was a no-brainer. A 600-page original graphic novel is likely to be the indy-comics event of the month. A 600-page OGN by Craig Thompson is likely to be the indy-comics event of the season.

Thompson first came to prominence with his first graphic novel, GOODBYE CHUNKY RICE, a meditation on inseparable friends and what happens when they do, inevitably, get separated. It reminded me a bit of the movie MAGNOLIA in the way it intertwined variations on the theme, describing a different facet of loneliness through each member of the ensemble. (It also reminded me a bit of MAGNOLIA in the way it grabbed for the heartstrings, though thankfully it didn't yank at them with quite as much force). And the art was wonderful to behold, not just because Thompson has a graceful, almost calligraphic line, but because he designs the page as a unit the way far too few cartoonists do. You very rarely see that level of narrative invention yoked to that great a depth of emotion.

BLANKETS, being straight autobiography rather than allegory, has a less fanciful look than GOODBYE CHUNKY RICE, but it's also more richly textured, to convey the gloom of a deep Wisconsin winter and the coziness Craig comes to feel with his first love, Raina. It's wonderfully inviting - it almost makes you wish you could crawl into the comic and spend some time there yourself. As you'll see if you go read the preview pages generously posted by Artbomb and comics reviewer Greg McElhatton. Do go have a look - I can't do it justice.

Which reminds me, Artbomb has also posted a preview of FRANK, which I forgot to mention last month.

ALAN MOORE MEMORIAL SECTION PART THE THIRD

...and part the last, too, because I like Alan Moore as much as the next geek, but this is getting ridiculous...

THE EXTRAORDINARY WORKS OF ALAN MOORE TP, edited by George Khoury
MAY 03 2562, pg. 386, $24.95

It's Khoury's misfortune to have been beaten into print by Gary Spencer Millidge's similarly-named ALAN MOORE: PORTRAIT OF AN EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMAN. The difference between them is that Millidge's book is mostly a tribute, while Khoury's book has some rare work by Moore himself. At least one of these, I know, is highly sought-after: PICTOPIA, drawn by Don Simpson, previously available only in Fantagraphics' legal defense benefit anthology ANYTHING GOES and later in volume one of their BEST COMICS OF THE DECADE (1980-1990).

It comes off like ROGER RABBIT with teeth, and it's an impassioned indictment of the state of the medium, with superheroes growing cruel and dehumanized and crowding out everything else. (It startled me to learn that Moore wrote it in 1986, when the trends he was railing against- vigilantism, attitude, the razing of history - were all just getting warmed up. Hell, Image Comics was still five years away.) Also included are the stories LUST and OLD GANGSTERS NEVER DIE, a couple of unpublished scripts (including the only JUDGE DREDD story Moore ever wrote), and a prose story called SHRINE OF THE LIZARD.

HEROES AND MONSTERS: THE UNOFFICIAL COMPANION TO THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, by Jess Nevins, from Monkey Brain Books
MAY03 2711, pg. 403, $18.95

This was an internet annotation project that got completely out of hand. Casual readers of LXG (or THE LEAGUE, whichever Hollywood would have us call it this week) may not be aware that not only are the heroes taken from Victorian popular literature, but so is virtually everything else. The purpose of the guide is to save you from having to read your own weight in musty century-old pulp, as Moore has, just to catch all the references. (Alternately, you could just go see the movie, which promises to be, to put it kindly, much less taxing.)

As for things written by Moore, rather than about him, DC has the market cornered this month. From Vertigo, there's SWAMP THING VOL. 6: REUNION (MAY03 0246, pg. 104, $19.95), which collects the last of Moore's groundbreaking run. From ABC, there's the hardcover of PROMETHEA VOL. 4 (MAY03 0223, pg. 100, $24.95).

There's also a trade paperback collection of the anthology TOMORROW STORIES (BOOK 1, MAY03 0227, pg. 101, $17.95). The standout strips are JACK B QUICK (boy inventor in the Tom Swift vein) and GREYSHIRT (knockoff of THE SPIRIT); the rest of it tends to be scattershot MAD-style spoofery, sometimes so loose that you'd hardly believe the notoriously structure-conscious Moore had written it. I like it, because I'm a sucker for that kind of thing, but I can't say I need a permanent edition.

ANTHOLOGY ROUNDUP

SPX 2003: TRAVEL, from the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund
MAY03 2139, pg. 307, $9.95

The Small Press Expo folks started imposing a theme on their contributors with the last edition, and I'm not sure I agree with their decision. If the main purpose of the book is to acquaint readers with the small press scene, as it has been in the past, I should think it best to let the cartoonists play to their strengths. Nevertheless, this continues to be one of the best deals in arts comics (this year, 260 pages for $10), and it all benefits the CBLDF.

DRAWN & QUARTERLY VOL. 5, from Drawn & Quarterly
MAY03 2185, pg. 316, $26.95

The best comics anthology running, bar none. The main attraction for me is a new MONSIEUR JEAN novella by Dupuy & Berberian. There are so many indy comics about kids in their formative years that it gets to be refreshing to read about adults having mature relationships for a change! If you're an Andi Watson fan, you definitely ought to be reading Dupuy & Berberian - he's clearly learned a lot from them, from both the storytelling and the Continental, minimalist art.

Other highlights should include another of R Sikoryak's Classic Comics parodies (this time out, WUTHERING HEIGHTS in the style of EC's horror comics) and a new PAUL story by Michel Rabagliati.

KRAMER'S ERGOT VOL 4, from Alternative Comics
MAY03 1913, pg. 248, $24.95

KRAMER'S ERGOT VOL 3 had quite a bit of filler in it, but some of the longer pieces made up for it - Neil Fitzpatrick's Kochalka-esque NEIL JAM, for example, and CHROME FETUS by Hans Rickheit, who comes off like a Lovecraftian Jim Woodring. If longer is better, then it's heartening that VOL 4 will be 340 pages, up from VOL. 3's 128. (The Comics Journal has just posted a review of VOL 3 on its website. I'd pretty much echo it, except that the reviewer is somehow able to derive pleasure from Joe Grillo's Ft Thunder-stylee '70s-teenage-notebook-doodlings, which are hopelessly beyond me.)

COMICS

DARK HORSE

AMERICAN SPLENDOR: UNSUNG HERO, by Harvey Pekar & David Collier
MAY03 0023, pg. 31, $11.95

I had been wondering recently why there hasn't been an AMERICAN SPLENDOR trade paperback collection since Pekar signed on at Dark Horse ten years ago, especially when 1) Dark Horse is usually so good about this kind of thing, and 2) there's a film adaptation coming out shortly. And here's my answer.

UNSUNG HERO collects the most recent AMERICAN SPLENDOR miniseries, in which Pekar interviews a friend of his, Robert McNeill, about his tour of duty in Vietnam. (It's a big departure for AMERICAN SPLENDOR, which is usually about Pekar himself and usually dwells on the supermundane.) The most illuminating bits, I think, are the ones where McNeill talks about the troubles he faced in that war as a black man - the army brass forbade even the smallest expressions of solidarity with the Black Power movement, and tensions were high enough that even the Viet Cong knew to exploit them in their propaganda.

It's a shame that David Collier's drawing style is so reminiscent of R Crumb's, because he's nowhere near a good enough draughtsman to profit by the comparison, but his art is serviceable nonetheless. All in all, a worthy book.

THE DARK HORSE BOOK OF HAUNTINGS, by various
Hardcover: MAY03 0021, pg. 28, $14.95

Mignola supplies the cornerstone piece of the book, so this could be seen as an exercise in riding HELLBOY's coattails. But the supporting line-up is none too shabby: it includes P Craig Russell (illustrating a story by Dark Horse publisher Mike Richardson), Gary Gianni, Evan Dorkin & Jill Thompson (together! the mind boggles), and Uli Oesterle (a sweet and wistful German cartoonist who's done some books for Bries).

For those whose HELLBOY lusts are still unsated, there's also another book starring the HELLBOY second bananas, B.P.R.D.: DARK WATERS, a one-shot by Brian Augustyn and Guy Davis (MAY03 0020, pg. 27, $2.99).

DC

AT DEATH'S DOOR, by Jill Thompson

True, it couldn't be more blatant of a cash grab: take the new hot comics craze, shojo manga, and find a way to wedge the SANDMAN franchise into it. But I am powerless before the charms of the effervescent Jill Thompson. It's clear she's done her homework, too - to my admittedly untrained eye, it looks like she's got the idiom absolutely sussed. So it's a cash grab, but it's an adorable one.

RED #1 (of 3), by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner
MAY03 0230, pg. 101, $2.95

Like Ellis' RELOAD, it's a one-person-vs-the-whole-federal-government shoot-'em-up. (Also like RELOAD, a main character craves cigarettes within the first handful of pages. I would be willing to subsidize a renewed cigarette habit on Ellis' part if he'd just stop dwelling on the damn things in his comics.) Hamner posted the first four pages on this board, and it looks really good so far - the art's got just enough cartooniness to keep things lively without sacrificing credibility. And I'm tickled by the fact that his new CIA director somewhat resembles John Ashcroft in a toupee.

AIT/PLANETLAR

SWITCHBLADE HONEY, by Warren Ellis and Brandon McKinney
MAY03 1905, pg. 248, $9.95

This began, Ellis says, as a reaction against the weird antiseptic nature of STAR TREK. If STAR TREK was WAGON TRAIN in space, this sounds like THE DIRTY DOZEN.

The premise: Earth, in fending off an alien invasion, has been obeying the civilized conventions of warfare - and has lost. So the army cobbles together a crew out of court-martialed malcontents, gives them a ship, and tells them to make like the Viet Cong. This puts Ellis in familiar territory - he's a well-known space buff, and his favorite character type is the 'necessary monster' - and he ought to be able to make a great show of things.

ALTERNATIVE COMICS

FANCY FROGLIN VOL. 1: SEXY FOREST, by James Kochalka
Softcover: MAY03 1909, pg. 248, $12.95
Hardcover: MAY03 1910, pg. 248, $24.95

The happy-go-lucky adventures of a priapic frog. The cheerfully obscene Fancy has been a CBLDF poster boy, and some of the proceeds from this book will go to the CBLDF.

AMAZE INK/SLAVE LABOR GRAPHICS

KITSUNE TALES #1, by Woodrow Phoenix & Andi Watson
MAY03 1918, pg. 249, $4.95

SAMURAI JAM, by Andi Watson
MAY03 1945, pg. 252, $14.95

SAMURAI JAM was Watson's very first comic, and it is about "skateboarding, punk rock, and hockey". KITSUNE TALES isn't written by Watson, but it is drawn by him and it stars a character from his second comic, SKELETON KEY. It is described as "SAMURAI JACK meets the Brothers Grimm". You can read a preview of it here.

DRAWN AND QUARTERLY

FIVE IS A PERFECT NUMBER, by Igort
MAY03 2186, pg. 316, $29.95

This is an Italian import, a noir piece about an elderly hitman forced to come out of retirement to avenge the death of the son who succeeded him. Put that way, it sounds too spicy to be a D&Q book, but one can see from the art, handsomely printed in blue-grey and black, that it's got that sense of stillness and regret that D&Q values so highly.

(You can see some sample pages at D&Q's website, and also at Igort's, though there they're unlettered. As D&Q's ad rightly notes, it contains shades of David Mazzucchelli.) The book has already been a smash hit in Europe, and D&Q is expecting great things for it here.

FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS

THE IRON WAGON, by Jason
MAY03 2237, pg. 332, $12.95

This is a murder mystery, adapted by Jason from a 1908 novel by a fellow Norwegian (Sven Elvestad, aka Stein Riverton) that has never been translated into English, and that anticipated a notorious twist ending of Agatha Christie's. Fantagraphics promises it to be a "stew of passion"; this will make a nice change of pace from Jason's last book, SSHHHH!, which was more a stew of dispassion.

Jason's MAUS-ishly anthropomorphic characters are notable for their total lack of affect, and over the course of a book as long as SSHHHH! it's enough to make you start looking for a bridge to pitch yourself off of. Nevertheless, Jason is a very fine cartoonist, and I very much look forward to this.

DICKS AND DEEDEES, by Jaime Hernandez
Hardcover: pg. 332, $18.95

I suppose Jaime Hernandez must make the occasional mistake. I suppose he must use more lines than necessary every once in a while, or fail to properly balance a composition, and perhaps on rare occasions his hand might even jog. I keep telling myself that to repress the urge I get to saw my own poor drawing hand off whenever I read his work. This book collects some of Jaime's stories from PENNY CENTURY and the relaunched LOVE & ROCKETS, and by now Jaime's characters have built up so much history that reading about them is like getting a letter from old friends.

Also from the Hernandezes: a new issue of LOVE & ROCKETS (VOL. 2 #8, MAY03 2231, pg. 330, $3.95).

THE COMICS JOURNAL #254
MAY03 2230, pg. 329, $6.95

This month's exhaustive interview is with Will Elder, Harvey Kurtzman's favorite collaborator and a humor cartoonist without peer. He is a perfect mimic, and a wellspring of jokes in his own right - his MAD stories had so many gags crammed into the background (for which the technical term is 'chicken fat') that even grizzled MAD aficionados like me continue to discover some we'd overlooked, on each rereading.

The interview should be great fun, especially if it covers the elaborate practical jokes of Elder's youth. (Like the time he collected some cast-off meat and bones from the local butcher shop, along with an outfit of children's clothes, scattered them on the railroad tracks, and wailed, "Louie! Oh, Louie, no!")

BLACK IMAGES IN THE COMICS, by Fredrik Stromberg
MAY03 2234, pg. 330, $15.95

A scholarly book that covers everything from TINTIN IN THE CONGO to THE BOONDOOKS. It's such a rich vein for inquiry that I'm amazed it hasn't been handled at length before, actually. (It's still shocking to read THE SPIRIT today, and realize that the bug-eyed, blubber-lipped, dialect-spouting Ebony White was considered unobjectionable as far late as the '50s.)

HIGHWATER BOOKS

CRUMBUMS, by Brian Ralph
MAY03 2288, pg. 342, $12.95

This is the sequel to CLIMBING OUT, which was the sequel to CAVE-IN, which every indy comics critic has read except for (cough, cough) me. Apparently these are mostly wordless, allegorical, rough-hewn little comics in which monkeys, cavemen, mummies, punks and other humanoids wander around in caverns or in post-apocalyptic landscapes, and it's all poetic 'n shit. Highwater calls them "universally adored," and that's not hyperbole by much. Soon, I promise, I'll get to them soon...

LIGHTSPEED PRESS

FINDER VOL. 5: DREAM SEQUENCE, by Carla Speed McNeil
MAY03 2326, pg. 348, $20.95

Carla Speed McNeil has a rarely matched knack for getting inside her characters' heads. With Magri White, protagonist of DREAM SEQUENCE, she has a head start - anybody can get inside his head. Magri, a stunted personality, so introverted that he comes off as nearly autistic, has built an elaborate fantasy world that he can retreat into, and thanks to the wonders of modern technology, so can anybody else with the proper software.

When we meet him he's such a sensation that a lucrative corporation has sprung up around him, and while it cossets him it's also careful to keep him from confronting his demons. But then they start to confront him. Suddenly the inside of Magri's head is a hazardous place to be...

Not only does all this allow McNeil to make some shrewd observations on the artistic temperament and the urge for escapism, but it also lets her indulge in her wildest visuals to date. The virtual reality metaphor is an apt one, because FINDER is an immersive experience like little else in comics.

Fortunately, you don't have to take my poor word for it; McNeil, being a shrewd person, traditionally puts the first issues of all her big story arcs on line for all to see. Go read and get hooked.

OLIO PRESS

CASTLE WAITING VOL. 2: SOLICITINE, by Linda Medley
MAY03 2357, pg. 351, $17.95

A superlative all-ages title. What the book does is make space in the familiar world of fairy tales for the empowerment of women - and usually such efforts end up being leaden PC bores, I know, but CASTLE WAITING couldn't be further from that sort of thing. Medley has an agreeably gentle touch and a pleasantly relaxed day-to-day sense of pacing, and she lets the story speak for itself. She also has a highly refined drawing style, which gives substance to even the book's most improbable creatures.

By the way, Medley had to put CASTLE WAITING on an indefinite hiatus just a couple months ago. If you'd like to see the book return, now would be a good time to show your support.

ONI PRESS

MARIA'S WEDDING, by Nunzio DeFilippis, Christina Weir, & Jose Garibaldi
MAY03 2360, pg. 352, $10.95

DeFilippis and Weir's last book was SKINWALKER, a grisly thriller about a serial killer; here they are following it up with a light familial comedy. How is it that the writers with that kind of range all seem to end up with Oni? Anyhow, it looks cute, and you can read a substantial preview at the invaluable Artbomb.

QUEEN & COUNTRY: DECLASSIFIED VOL. 1, by Greg Rucka & Brian Hurtt
Softcover: MAY03 2352, pg. 354, $8.95
Hardcover: MAY03 2353, pg. 354, $20

The best espionage series in comics (yes, I know, there's almost no competition, but still) continues apace. QUEEN & COUNTRY: DECLASSIFIED focuses on Paul Crocker, back before he became a section head, to explain how he turned into the hotheaded half-sane cuss we know from Q&C proper.

TOP SHELF PRODUCTIONS

UNLIKELY, by Jeffrey Brown
MAY03 2487, pg. 368, $14.95

Brown's first graphic novel, CLUMSY, was well received and said to raise memories of Chester Brown's (no relation) autobio work. (Jeffrey draws much less well than Chester, but the awkwardness of the art serves the awkwardness of the story, or so it's said.) The appeal of this sort of thing is pain laid bare, and the subject of UNLIKELY, namely the loss of young Jeffrey's virginity, promises to deliver that in spades.

BOOKS SECTION

THE COMPLETE FAR SIDE SLIPCASED EDITION, by Gary Larson
MAY03 2734, pg. 406, $125

No, that's not a misprint: $125 is the real price. This deluxe package collects every FAR SIDE cartoon ever published (over 4,000, says the solicitation, including 1,100 never before collected), including some commentary and other bonuses, and an introduction by Steve Martin. Frankly, this sounds to me like a surfeit of FAR SIDE - Larson repeated himself a lot; he never quite had the range of Gahan Wilson or B Kliban, the two gag cartoonists whose influence he most clearly bore. Still, though, I remember the strip fondly enough that I was tempted by this set - until I saw the price tag, anyway.

Chris Ekman is a political cartoonist.

This article is Ideological Freeware. The author grants permission for its reproduction and redistribution by private individuals on condition that the author and source of the article are clearly shown, no charge is made, and the whole article is reproduced intact, including this notice.