Due out in April from First Second is Gene Luen Yang’s newest book, Prime Baby. It’s 64 pages for $6.99 in paperback. However, there’s no need to wait — the story was originally serialized in The New York Times Magazine and you can still read it all online. Based on doing so, I have to admit, I still don’t get Yang’s work. I know he’s highly acclaimed for American Born Chinese, but I couldn’t recommend or finish it because of […]

Kaput and Zosky are evil aliens who want to conquer other planets but are terrifically bad at just about everything. As expected from a Lewis Trondheim project (with additional art by Eric Cartier), they’re also wonderfully cartooned and flat-out hilarious. Often, Kaput and Zosky do end up ruling, but it’s by accident, and then they can’t get rid of their new status fast enough, since they have no sense of achievement when that happens. They land on planets with gambling […]

Life Sucks when you’re a vampire without the exotic bearing, the classy clothes, and the family fortune. Dave only wanted a job as a convenience store night manager, but his boss, Radu, turned out to be a bloodsucker in more ways than one. Dave got turned into a thrall so Radu could order him around without paying him. Dave’s now a vampire, and it’s nothing but a drag. He used to be a vegetarian, but even now, he refuses to […]

Little Vampire contains three stories for all ages: “Little Vampire Goes to School”, “Little Vampire Does Kung Fu”, and “Little Vampire and the Canine Defenders Club”. The first two were previously published individually in 2003, but the latter, the most heart-warming, is newly translated. They’re as straightforward as their titles suggest, with charm that permeates situations any kid can relate to. In the first, the Little Vampire wants to go to school, so his ghost and monster friends make it […]

Four of Joann Sfar’s graphic novellas are collected in English as Vampire Loves, featuring Ferdinand, a depressed vampire with an unlucky love life. As the book opens, Lani, a tree-girl, is attempting to return to Ferdinand. She cheated on him with his friend, but she’s willing to come back, although she takes no responsibility and blames him for not trusting her. He doesn’t want her back, but he hopes she returns, even leaving the door open when he goes out […]

The Professor’s Daughter is a slim, lovely tale, much like its heroine. The daughter of a famous Egyptologist, her adventures begin when she takes the mummy of a Pharaoh, dressed like a Victorian gentleman, out on a walk. They have so much in common, you see, both having to deal with the strict professor treating them like possessions (with more justification in one case, perhaps). Joann Sfar (The Rabbi’s Cat, Dungeon) writes and Emmanuel Guibert illustrates. The two have worked […]

Eddie Campbell’s latest, The Fate of the Artist, is more experimental than his previous works. It’s something of a grab bag, with comic pages, fake strip clippings, prose pages with inset doodles, and photo comics, among other techniques, suggesting the detritus of a cluttered, but fascinating, mind. The reader may not be sure what to make of the title page subtitle and caption: “His Domestic Apocalypse: An Autobiographical Novel, with Typographical Anomalies, in Which the Author Does Not Appear as […]