Humanoids has brought the infamous sexy sci-fi French comic Barbarella back into print in two options: a high-priced print edition or a much more reasonable digital version. The print book is described as the Deluxe Coffee Table format, limited to 1,200 numbered copies, and priced at $80, while the same story digitally is $6. In January, the publisher plans to release a combined volume with both book one and book two called The Wrath of the Minute-Eater. I suggest, if […]

Regular blog readers know that I’m not a fan of horror. (I’m terribly squeamish and identify too sympathetically with victims.) However, thanks to the wonder of a review copy, I found myself appreciating The Shadows of Salamanca more than I expected. It’s fun to see how Europeans incorporate American culture into their works, and here, it’s the creepy small town with a secret. Writer Christophe Bec and artist Stefano Raffaele present the story of Sarah and David. They’ve left the […]

I mentioned Vixens, Vamps & Vipers: Lost Villainesses of Golden Age Comics last month when it came out, but I didn’t discuss it in depth because I was reviewing it for another site. That review is now posted at the Washington Independent Review of Books, in case you’re curious to find out more about this anthology of Golden Age comic stories featuring distinctive bad girls. Or check out editor Mike Madrid’s previous volume, Divas, Dames & Daredevils: Lost Heroines of […]

New publisher Black Mask Studios is gradually building its slate of titles. Some of the ones I’ve seen so far have been horror, so not my thing, but I was intrigued by Critical Hit, written by Matt Miner and drawn by Jonathan Brandon Sawyer. Although it’s apparently a sequel to a series I’ve never seen called Liberator, I didn’t feel left out. [Note: I’ve since been informed that Black Mask is doing a lot more than horror — it was […]

Build Your Own Website: A Comic Guide to HTML, CSS, and WordPress is a useful starting point for the very basics of getting started with your own website, particularly if you want to use WordPress. It’s got a cute comic in it featuring Kim (and her dog Tofu), an artist who wants to put a portfolio on the web. Unfortunately, as written by Nate Cooper and drawn by Kim Gee, the two have little to do with each other. Each […]

As a followup to last year’s Divas, Dames & Daredevils: Lost Heroines of Golden Age Comics, Mike Madrid now has a companion volume out. Vixens, Vamps & Vipers: Lost Villainesses of Golden Age Comics focuses on some of the bad girls and evil women published from 1940-1950. Below you’ll find an image of the 22 villains featured in the book. Each gets a short text profile and a reprinted story (in black and white, which is an unfortunate limitation of […]

Now that I’m living in Madison, Wisconsin, with its progressive history and more recent union-busting legislation (and the subsequent protests, which included a failed election to recall Governor Scott Walker, legislators fleeing the state to avoid a vote, and thousands of people occupying the State Capitol), I’m more aware of labor disputes and the complicated history of worker/management relations. So I was fascinated to discover On the Books: A Graphic Tale of Working Woes at NYC’s Strand Bookstore from Microcosm […]

The Incredible Plate Tectonics Comic is a great idea, but I had some problems with the execution. Learning about geology in comic format seems like a good match, since the science is known for being visual, what with earthquakes and volcanos and such, plus exploded diagrams of the earth’s content. Unfortunately, the authors — writer Kanani K.M. Lee is a Yale professor of geology and geophysics, while the work of artist Adam Wallenta can be seen at his website — […]