Unexpected Holiday Shopping Guide!
Recovering from a turkey induced coma I return to the blogosphere. Not that anyone reads this regularly anyways… The holidays have been uber busy between working at the comic shop, getting stuff together for Christmas (ie presents/shopping and travel arrangements), and being sick off and on I haven’t had much time to breathe, but here’s some of the cool stuff I remember. Most notably InBound 4 was released and is currently selling like hotcakes! And people love their hotcakes especially when its getting to be so freakin’ cold outside! My friend Che, who has some great work in the book, has copious details all over his blog and you can check that out here. The book looks fantastic, and is a departure from the layouts of earlier editions of the Inbound series. It’s really well designed and put together. Did I mention that the books theme is the history of the great city of Boston? WELL IT IS! Such a great topic with so much good ingredients to work with. And the book’s split into time periods so there’s not to much jumping around thru time to confuse you. It also includes work from AIB alums and current students. It’s definitely a great gift idea this holiday season their literally flying off the shelves so if you see one snatch it up quick before it disappears.
Speaking of great gift ideas I’ve noticed a few other books in the store that are really hot this holiday season in addition to Inbound 4. Three books in particular stand out. Each of which I personally have not read, but have only heard good things about. Firstly Asterios Polyp is a big heavy hardcover that for its size and weight as a book is flying from the rack at an incredible rate of speed. I don’t know much about it but I tried to read this NY Times book review and it only confused me. All that I got was that this book took a decade to make and it’s a grand modernist gesture in graphic novel format, but in the immortal words of LeVar (Reading Rainbow) Burton “Don’t take my word for it!” you can check out the book review here.
Again another book I probably wont read anytime soon but is being ripped off the shelves by the eager masses is Logicomix. Like AP it’s also quite a large book but this one went straight to paperback. The more “logical” choice in my opinion. If your going to be lugging this book around the less awkward it is to carry the better right? We’ve had people come in looking for both these books and seeing the size of them decide against it. My guess is they’d rather read it on their Kindle… Truth be told both of these books look gorgeous on the inside so if your the kind of person who buys graphic novels purely for artistic value these are both a safe bet. I’m getting side tracked though back to Logicomix… So again I turn to the NY Times book review to cover my ass for not having read the book. This one looks to be about alot of the things I dread in life. Logic, Philosophy, and Mathematics… So if you like to over think things into the ground this might be the book for you. Just be sure you’ve got fresh batteries in your scientific calculators. You can read the review for yourself here.
Lastly my favorite of the three. This one seems to be disappearing faster then we can get them into the store. If you are at all familiar with R. Crumb you know his work can get pretty intense. Well if your like me you never thought you’d hear the words R. Crumb and the Bible in the same sentence, but here is it the beginning of something that could be and probably already is an amazing endeavor. R. Crumb’s book of Genesis! That’s right he’s planning on doing his own entirely illustrated interpretation of the Bible book by book. Crazy if you ask me, but If anyone could do it it would be R. Crumb. Especialy after looking thru the book myself it’s amazing to see the work he’s put into it. If you’ve never been one to actually sit down and read the bible this will make it a bit easier and in some cases harder. This books already on it’s second or third printing and Crumb is apparently already trying to fix and re-do some of the panels inbetween print runs. So if you see this book in store anywhere snatch it up quick before it’s gone or otherwise your best bet is to find it online. Also to go along with the other reviews there’s one you can read here.
If what your looking for leans more towards traditional comicbook tomfoolery then you should probably check out Chew released by Image comics. The first collection was just recently released in paperback including the first five issues of the series entitles “Taster’s Choice”. The single issues themselves are awful hard to track down seeing that this book was a quick hit. Online infact some of the first issues are going for hundreds of dollars! The story itself revolves around Tony Chu a cop working for a special division of the FDA. After an outbreak of avian flu kills thousands of people around the country all poultry is outlawed and the FDA special crimes division is in charge of uncovering all underground black market poultry dealings but that’s not all. Agent Chu is Cibopathic, that is, he receives psychic impressions from whatever he eats. Which means “-he’s a hell of a detective, as long as he doesn’t mind nibbling on the corpse of a murder victim to figure out whodunit, and why.” ( From the description on the back of the book) So if you couldn’t tell I actually read this one, and so I can tell you it’s legit. Solid art and story all around for a fun and enjoyable read. It’s wicked good and I highly recommend it!
April 16th, 2010 at 12:23 am
Whats up I have been checking out your site for the past few days and it is very interesting, do you have a RSS feed?