That's it, I've had it. No more putting the best face on a meagre crop. Even the fact that it's the fallow start-of-the-year period in Previews-time can't fully excuse the vast crappiness of this month's catalogue. I'll be turning in my lowest-ever order since I started this pre-ordering lark - if I bother turning it in at all, that is. I am not succumbing to the malaise that seems to be afflicting the (gag) Comics Blogosphere - that's much too wishy-washy. No, what's needed now is hate, sweet hate.

Did you see James Sime's column on preordering? I don't want to join the dogpile that's formed on the guy over his chest-thumping rhetoric (the pimp motif, "Comics Kill Nazis", etc.), since clearly he's a proactive and effective retailer, and there's nothing comics needs more than those. But jeez, his Previews comments - I'd have said he must be on drugs, but there aren't enough drugs in all of San Francisco to account for the rapture he purports to feel when reading a new Previews. At the risk of being labelled a nattering nabob of negativity, the comics listed in your average Previews, on the whole, aren't killing Nazis. Quite the contrary, most of them are nursing Nazis back to health, and some are even reanimating the dead ones, so that not only do we have Nazis to deal with, but zombie Nazis, which can just spoil your whole day.

(There's a slogan for our times: COMICS ZOMBIFY NAZIS. Somebody put that on a black t-shirt, preferably with a picture of a gun on it.)

After several years of studying Previews I'd grown inured to the barrage of crap, but really, isn't that a form of complacency? Sometimes you have to take a roll call of the members of the undead wing of the National Socialist Party. Here are just a handful of them - and to make things fair, I won't even bother with the major publishers:

ALL FUNNY ROLE-PLAYING-GAME COMICS: Such as those put out by Dork Storm Press, Kenzer & Company, and Wingnut Games. Newspaper comic strip artists are unaccountably convinced that the game of golf is inherently hilarious; "comics 'n' cards" shop denizens are under the same delusion about role-playing games. I'm sure you folks have a high time, generating loads of gutbusting anecdotes in your circle, but I'm sorry to tell you - the hilarity is non-transferable. Stop trying. Particularly if you can't draw. I flipped through an issue of KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE once. It appeared to have the same panel repeated, three times a page, for as far as I could bother checking.

ALL SERIOUS ROLE-PLAYING-GAME COMICS: Specifically, those published by Black Library. Now these are funny. I can't even get past the titles, which include, this month, HELLBRANDT GRIMM VOL. 2: SOME SWIFT AND BRUTAL HAND, and LIBER CHAOTICA: TZEENTCH. (Tzeentch is not a sound effect - apparently it's the name of the title character, the Lord of Change.) I suppose it's possible that these books are not as dour and sulky as they look. Maybe Hellbrandt Grimm has a habit of accidentally making dates with two different girls for the same night; maybe the Lord of Change dons a gigantic oversize peaked hat and bills himself as the Tzeentch Wizard. But it's not likely.

ALL ROLE-PLAYING-GAME RELATED COMICS OF ANY KIND: This one takes the prize, this month. Here is the bulk of the solicitation for Ben Dunn's NINJA HIGH SCHOOL: TIMEBLAST #2:

"The second issue in the all-new concept in comics: the Video Game Comic (VGC), combining the elements of a RPG video game with the monthly comic series! ...[One of the lead characters] creates a portal to the futuristic world of the HNC when a group of his rivals try to hunt him down. All of them cross over into the dark future NHS world. [Our hero] learns that in the future the RHC rebellion is fighting the oppressive HNC World Order..."

So it's the RHC versus the HNC on the NHS? In this here RPG-style VGC? Eat my HWC, NINJA HIGH SCHOOL.

You're going to think that there were explanations of the acronyms that I unfairly snipped for comedic effect. No. Check for yourself; the comic's listed under Sentai Studios, on page 306. The concept of a "Video Game Comic" is not explained either.

The lead character appears to be a funny animal, did I mention that? But none of the other characters pictured are. Which brings us to our next pit of horrors...

ANTHROPOMORPHIC COMICS: Yes, I know it's a prejudice on my part, not all of them are pervy, using animal characters as stand-ins for humans is a time-honoured literary device, etc. However, a comic cover that recreates the poster of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, only with cartoon pandas, is creepy. End of argument. Particularly when it adds a nubile panda in her underwear, on her knees and with her hands seemingly tied behind her back. Ick.

The same company (Shanda Fantasy Arts) is also putting out a book this month called FURRY FANDOM, a one-shot that intends to educate us all about the furry genre, "it's [sic] origins... as well as it's [sic] future." We appreciate the overture, guys, but please, feel free to keep this stuff to yourselves.

TITTY COMICS: The female stand-ins in the last Triple A feature here riffed on an issue of Previews, but didn't bother braving the indy section, and I'd guess this sort of thing is the reason why. There are too many offenders to count, but the worst include Harris, home of VAMPIRELLA; Vamperotica; Verotik; and Avatar, a publisher unacquainted with taste even as an abstract concept. (They've just this month started a hardcore porn imprint, Vivid Comics, to which Ninth Art editor Antony Johnston would surely rather you not notice he's contributing. The shame! The ignominy! Our good name dragged wilfully through the sewer!)

Perhaps the most irredeemable is Jim Balent's Broadsword Comics. The human breast has never had a more single-minded student than Balent. He's like the Audubon of tits. Some of his characters have such generous endowments that the rest of their bodies seem to be sort of vestigially attached. They tend to have names like Licky D and Boo Cat. He sells thongs with their pictures on them.

This is why I think Sime must be deranged: he says he actually carries Previews around with him and reads it in restaurants and on public transit. I tried that once, and only once. I would only try it again if I wanted my fellow patrons and passengers to give me a lot of personal space.

Hey, look, Harris is selling an electric guitar with a Vampirella painting on it! That will make you a shoo-in if you ever get to audition for Warrant.

GOTH-RELATED COMICS: Of the type that Slave Labor and Sirius have made trademarks. And it cuts no ice with me if they're self-mocking goth comics, either - by my count, self-mocking goth comics overtook regular goth comics several years back. The proliferation of these things can only have bad results. Case in point: KINDERGOTH #1, from Bloodfire Studios, in which "tattooed, body-pierced kindergarteners [sic] save the word from an alien invasion."

MERCHANDISE PEDDLERS: Comic Cavalcade, Dynamic Forces, Jay Company Comics, New Dimension, SQP. What the hell are they doing in the comics section? They don't publish comics, they just get them signed, seal them in plastic and sell them for absurd multiples of their market value. Give them a section to themselves, so as to shield my tender eyes from overpriced ugliness like the $200 SPIDER-MAN/VENOM DIORAMA STATUE.

ARCHIE COMICS: If they just stuffed these books with nothing but reprints, would anybody notice? There's over 60 years worth of material to draw on, after all. And it would spare them the burden of trying to be hip. (Case in point: the C.S.I. references in ARCHIE'S MYSTERIES.)

Did you see those recent news stories about the Archie characters being used in an anti-substance abuse campaign in upstate New York schools? Yeah, that's just what the youth of today relates to - ancient cartoon teenage scolds who never drink or, despite the constant dating and necking that goes on, fuck.

Did you know that there are several online comics reviewers who regularly review Archie comics? I find this unfathomable. It'd be like travelling the country and reviewing various McDonald's. Why couldn't these people have been doing something more productive with their space, like warning me that HUMAN TARGET: FINAL CUT was a piece of shit?

CROSSGEN: Now that CrossGen's business structure is no different from Marvel or DC, can we stop pretending that the content of their books was ever different either? Titles like THE FIRST and NEGATION are indistinguishable on their face from any run-of-the-mill superhero comics you care to name. And their featured book this month, KISS KISS BANG BANG, pulls the same stunt that RUSE did: rip off one of the world's best-known fictional characters (James Bond, Sherlock Holmes); partner said character with the proverbial "strong female lead"; give the pre-existing concept half a twist, even if it doesn't make much sense; then sit back and reap the accolades from a diversity-starved comics fandom. It's a stunt that works, but unfortunately for CrossGen, "the accolades from a diversity-starved comics fandom" pretty much translates into "the usual chirpy reviews from Sequential Tart".

COMICS FOR PEOPLE WHO LOVE COMICS: That's what it says on the cover of all comics published by Claypool. Must not be many people who love comics, then. I mean, I suppose somebody must be buying, say ELVIRA, since it's apparently been running for 129 issues, but I've been in dozens of comic shops over the years and never once spotted a copy. I did have the misfortune to once spot a copy of Peter David's SOULSEARCHERS AND COMPANY, though. It was doing a SANDMAN parody, and I like parody, so I scanned through it. All I remember now is that David's version of Death was - get ready to gut-laugh - renamed Deaf, and she spent the issue doing nothing but hollering "HUH?" and "WHAT?" Move over, Harvey Kurtzman!

David is also responsible for such comics for people who love comics as THE WEDDING OF POPEYE AND OLIVE, his own weight in STAR TREK tie-ins, and CAPTAIN AMERICA GOES TO WAR AGAINST DRUGS. These are just some of the reasons why people who love comics are not to be trusted.

RETRO-SUPERHEROES: Especially Future Comics, whose credo seems to be "if we can just do it like we did it in the '70s, we'll have '70s-level sales!" The poor bastards will try anything, at this point; I expect any day to hear that the creators have given up on print and instead will go to individual readers' houses and act out the stories, insisting that this is the business model they had in mind all along.

SUPERHERO PARODIES: Thankfully scarce, this month. Some months they're thick as bedbugs. Nevertheless, we do get the debut of POSSUM AT LARGE from Old School Comics, starring "Jake... an omnipotent possum with a vivid imagination whose nightmares have become prophesy," and his stick-figure-ish teenage chum FlyBoy. Comical possums everywhere are unconsolabobble with mortrificashun.

ANYTHING BY MARK MILLAR: I've been reading some of THE PIRATES AND THE MOUSE, Bob Levin's recent book on the underground comics Air Pirates collective, and it's made me even less impressed with the concept of Millar's THE UNFUNNIES than I was to begin with. You want to do something genuinely daring, Mark? Use the real Hanna-Barbera characters, instead of analogues. Now that would be "uncompromising"!

'80S NOSTALGIA: No need to chew over this stale topic again, but even though the trend has passed its peak, the books take up an inordinate amount of space in Previews. What annoys me chiefly is that, between the advertising sections of Devil's Due (GI JOE, and now VOLTRON), newly split off from Image, and Dreamwave (TRANSFORMERS, TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES), it's now easier to miss Drawn & Quarterly's listing than ever.

PRETENTIOUS ART COMICS: Thought I wouldn't get to these, didn't you? What gets me is the frequent fetishization of the packaging. Not to stray into Scott Kurtz territory here, but often you'll see a publisher (let's use Highwater as a totally random example) put out some beautifully designed art object of a book, bound by hand and in an oddball size, with a silk-screened cover on fancy stock, printed in metallic ink on thick parchment-style paper with rounded corners... and then you open the thing, and it looks like the cartoonist drew it on an Etch-A-Sketch with their feet.

HONORARY MENTIONS

GODSPEED: THE KURT COBAIN GRAPHIC: Graphic what? Who knows? The cover tells you all you need to know - Kurt is on his knees, apparently distraught that his angel wings are moulting, and crying himself a river, or at least a reasonably sizable lake. All this signals that we are in the realm of hagiography. One suspects that if Kurt were alive to see it, he'd probably kill himself all over again.

STRANGERS IN PARADISE: Proof positive that self-publishing is not in itself a mark of virtue. I gather it's a terribly earnest porridge of soap opera, crime drama, quasi-lesbian intrigue, and rotten poetry, but I'll never know for sure because I wouldn't open this book unless I had a hazmat suit on. I have a severe allergic reaction to Sensitive New Age Guy-ism. And, Christ, you mean to tell me it's been going on for ten years? Mark of a fraud: they refer to this book as 'alternative.'

FARO KORBIT #2, from APC: A strong contender for Worst Title of the month. Even CrossGen wouldn't name a comic FARO KORBIT. In this issue, "De Monique turns the Las Vegas Grand Prix into an abbatoir [sic]" in a story they had to call "Grand Prix of Death." Diamond says it's Certified Cool!

See? All this hate, and I haven't even touched on the Big Four. Or on manga! In my near-total ignorance of the field, I haven't even begun to delve into the vast tranches of crap dwelling within manga!

Ah, but time and space are short. I am contractually obligated to make with the love. Let's get it over with, shall we?

DARK HORSE

THE GOON: ROUGH STUFF, by Eric Powell
NOV03 0024, g. 23, $12.95

About a big ugly jamoke who beats the crap out of zombies and other shambling twilight horrors. Doesn't seem to have a brain in its head, but it is exuberantly cartooned, which is no small thing.

COMICS: BETWEEN THE PANELS, by Steve Duin and Mike Richardson
Hardcover: NOV03 0035, pg. 27, $34.95

The attempted encyclopaedia of comics history gets a lower price and a new, hopelessly tacky sub-Alex-Ross painted cover that's enough to make you wish they'd kept the price where it was and actually hired Alex Ross instead.

DC COMICS

GLOBAL FREQUENCY: PLANET ABLAZE, by Warren Ellis and various
NOV03 0260, pg. 108, $14.95

Collects the first six issues of the 12-issue miniseries. Each issue was a stand-alone story, each with a different artist. The idea is that there's a clandestine network of ordinary humans with various specialties (not superheroes, Ellis pointedly specified - though once you introduce magicians and soldiers with bionic arms, it's a fairly fine distinction) who may be called on at any time to quietly deal with catastrophic threats. I'm afraid I honestly can't tell you much about it, since I stopped reading after the third issue. That was the one in which [SPOILER AHEAD, OBVIOUSLY] a member of the Global Frequency thwarts an alien invasion with the power of love.

Let me repeat that, for those who might have glossed over it: a member of the Global Frequency thwarts an alien invasion with the power of love.

Ellis tries to gussy it up by making the aliens (gawd help us) mimetic in nature, and by making the love that which dares not speak its name, but still, it was a crap, hackneyed idea and not helped one bit by Steve Dillon's astonishingly dull and plain art job. I was obligated to buy the next two issues, thanks to preordering (which is just one of the reasons it's a stupid idea), but I only scanned through them - all I remember is that one ended with a truly awful hard-boiled Bond-style quip, and the other contained an explanation of magick-with-a-k, presumably for the benefit of those who'd never read a comic by a British person before.

Not to my taste at all, and I'll be very grateful when Ellis is off the action kick. Still, it's earned him a TV deal, so what do I know?

Meanwhile, at Vertigo, they're actually doing more than just playing catch-up with the TPB program. There's an original hardcover graphic novel called LOVECRAFT (NOV03 0275, pg. 110, $24.95), written by Hans Rodionoff and Keith Giffen, and drawn by Enrique Breccia, son of Argentinean comics titan Alberto Breccia. As you might guess, it's about the life of old HP, and frankly I'm amazed that Vertigo hasn't done it before now. I don't trust Giffen, but the art looks wonderful.

Also this month is MY FAITH IN FRANKIE (#1 of 4, NOV03 0280, pg. 111, $2.95), written by Mike Carey (LUCIFER) and drawn by Sonny Liew (the recent Xeric-winning MALINKY ROBOT) and Marc Hempel (TUG AND BUSTER). It's a comedy about a teenage girl with her own personal deity. Intriguing.

Lastly, John Rozum's MIDNIGHT, MASS returns for a second series, entitled HERE THERE BE MONSTERS (#1 of 6, NOV03 0279, pg. 111, $2.95). The thing I'm most embarrassed about having written in this column was a florid anticipation of the original series, which turned out to be about on the level of network television. Entertaining, sure, but hardly earthshaking. The art looks more interesting this time around, but the colouring's still drab, and I still wish they'd let cover artist Tomer Hanuka (BIPOLAR) draw the whole thing.

IMAGE COMICS

KANE VOL. 1: GREETINGS FROM NEW EDEN, by Paul Grist
NOV03 1264, pg. 142, $11.95

Image's plan is to reprint the extant KANE collections, and then start in with the new material Grist has been stockpiling. We've sung the praises of KANE a lot here at Ninth Art. It's a straight genre piece (cops & robbers dept, precinct-house drama subsection), but it's an exceptionally well-executed genre piece - the art is stark and elegantly simple, the storytelling is clever, and the action is nimbly choreographed, with just the right amount of comic relief. I eagerly await the new stuff.

DESPERATE TIMES #0, by Chris Eliopoulis
NOV03 1254, pg. 137, $2.95

Their recent superhero line may have bombed, but if Image can't be Marvel or DC, they can at least be Keenspot. DESPERATE TIMES is a newspaper strip that isn't in newspapers, because, according to the creator, the syndicates kept insisting it be watered down. I'm afraid that's more a comment on the gutlessness of the modern funnies page than on the quality of the strip - judging from the available samples, aside of a touch of MAN SHOW-ism, it's as innocuous as they come. As for the art, it's a good thing Bill Watterson is in hermitage, because if he were to stumble across this strip he'd blow his top over how completely Eliopoulis has swiped his style. It's been blurbed by current Image comic strippers Frank Cho and Scott Kurtz, but anybody reading this is likely not to trust Kurtz's taste, at least not after hearing about...

PvP #6, by Scott Kurtz
NOV03 1266, pg. 144, $2.95

This issue covers the strips in which Kurtz, out of nowhere, went on the attack against alternative comics. Lord knows there's plenty to lampoon in the field, but Kurtz just doesn't have the first idea of what he's talking about. The critique is on the "my kid could do that" level. The one specific reference to a comic in the storyline is to R Crumb's 'Keep On Truckin'', which just proves that Kurtz is ignorant of the distinction between underground and alternative. It's like reading a takedown of the Strokes from somebody who hasn't got any musical touchstones that postdate the British Invasion.

Kurtz then followed that storyline with a fake comic sequence called PIRATE VS NINJA, which was apparently a loose parody of James Kochalka's ROBOT VS MONKEY. (Kurtz has even induced Kochalka to paint a cover for this issue.) Unfortunately for Kurtz, the joke's on him: Kochalka's cuteness and simplicity have made him one of the few indy artists that Wizard feels safe in lauding, and when he catches shit, it's usually from the Comics Journal crowd, and it's often for opportunistic stunts like, well, painting this cover.

Later Kurtz revived the storyline in order to attack Fantagraphics' plea for financial help, on the grounds that these surly elitists had some nerve to beg to be fed from the fannish hands they had bitten. But anybody who read the plea for comprehension would have noticed that they'd pitched it not at mainstream fandom, but at their "loyal readers", those who already "respected what Fantagraphics stands for" and had "enjoyed our books". I mean, it was a hard thing to miss. Yet Kurtz still doesn't seem aware how wide of the mark he was. (And he made another Keep On Truckin' reference!)

It's kind of a shame, since PvP is a pretty solid strip, in the same way that, say, HAGAR THE HORRIBLE is a pretty solid strip. The cartooning could stand to be a lot more dynamic but the character designs are interesting, and Kurtz's punchlines are certainly a lot stronger than his crony Frank Cho's. He's got a weakness for fart jokes, but he really isn't too crass and on other issues he seems pretty sensible. But he seems determined to lash himself to the mast of this anti-art-comics nonsense and go down with it.

One last note: he's put a quote insulting the book on the cover and labelled it as being from The Comics Journal. But it's not from the magazine; it's from a TCJ editor on their message board. I can't help thinking that's deceptive.

MARVEL COMICS

The store at which I bought Previews didn't include the Marvel supplement, so I am freed from the obligation of commenting about it. Hurray!

I'm kind of hopeful that Marvel Previews will go away soon. You see, when it debuted a couple months back, it really didn't have much new of interest to promote. The most interesting thing in the catalogue, for the wrong reasons, was that Marvel had only just gotten around to fixing its X-STATIX solicitations to reflect their craven last-minute censorship of the much-publicized Princess Di storyline. Notable debuts included a CABLE & DEADPOOL series to be written by Fabian Nicieza, with covers by Rob Liefeld (it's 1991 all over again!), and WOLVERINE: THE END (unfortunately for Marvel, rumourmonger Rich Johnston got his hands on initial pages for the project by the original creative team, which looked much more interesting than what was actually being published). Not a stellar month.

The main thing the first catalogue existed to promote was the first trade paperback collections of almost all the Tsunami titles. Tsunami was a line that wasn't really a line, though it was marketed like one, the titles of which were kinda sorta manga-influenced, except when they weren't. It was mostly Bill Jemas' idea, and when he got kicked upstairs, the trade paperbacks were cancelled, ostensibly due to low direct market orders (though creators of certain books claim their orders were actually quite healthy).

Only they may not be cancelled for real - it's possible they'll be resolicited in manga digest size- but they'll be offered to bookstores only, not to the direct market. Maybe. Or maybe bookstores will get the digest size and comic stores will get the regular size versions. Assuming the books are published at all. Nobody has any idea at the moment, least of all Marvel.

It's all a giant farrago, and since Marvel Previews is somewhat implicated, I'm hoping it's the next of Bill's bright ideas to be taken out back and shot. I'll bet there's a freshly-dug plot for it right next to Epic's.

Oh, hey, look - there's a Marvel comic worth plugging!

STARTLING STORIES: THE INCORRIGLE HULK, by Peter Bagge
NOV03 1491, pg. 12 of MARVEL Previews, $2.99

This is a one-shot, like MEGALOMANIACAL SPIDER-MAN from last year, wherein Bagge used Spider-Man to caricature in turn both the character's creators, alliteration-abusin' & attribution-arrogatin' Stan Lee, and right-wing Randian recluse Steve Ditko. This one deals with the Hulk's dating life. If you miss HATE, there's no reason not to have a look at this.

ACTIVE IMAGES

SKIDMARKS: THE COMPLETE BIC CYCLE, by Ed Hillyer (aka Ilya)
NOV03 1949, pg. 196, $12.95

Hadn't heard of this before. Ilya is one of the products of the '80s British small press scene, a contemporary and a chum of Eddie Campbell. It's to Campbell's ALEC stories and to LOVE & ROCKETS that the tales in this book seem most often to be compared, which is some awfully lofty company. His cartooning looks mighty appealing, too, from what few samples of it I could find online (mostly in this interview). This will bear investigating.

CRAZY MAMA PRODUCTIONS

THE REVENGE OF THE VAMPIRE BED & BREAKFAST, by Elena Steier
NOV03 2180, pg. 228, $3.95

A very odd duck, this. The main characters are take-offs of classic monsters (Vladu, the lead, is "a 350-year-old vampire who still lives with his mother"), and the drawing style resembles Larry Gonick's in his whimsical moods. On first glance, it looks like what we've got here is Li'l Munsters. But in fact, it's a political vehicle; in this issue, our heroes are menaced by the Defense Department, Christian fundamentalists, and Ken Lay's overgrown, disembodied, rampaging brain. Steier clearly believes these menaces are all of a piece. This book is highly unlikely to win any converts, I'm guessing, but it may well be entertaining to those already on Steier's side.

EUREKA PRODUCTIONS

GRAPHIC CLASSICS VOL. 8: MARK TWAIN, by various
NOV03 2321, pg. 276, $9.95

The inclusion of "The Mysterious Stranger", one of Twain's late, deeply bitter philosophical works, bodes well - it means they're not giving us the bowdlerized image of Twain as a harmless, avuncular storyteller that we here in the States get sold from our earliest schooldays. I just hope they've also included some of his blistering anti-imperialist tirades, which couldn't be much more timely these days. There are a couple dozen illustrators listed as usual, so it's impossible to tell who's most prominent in the book; among those listed Dan O'Neill, Shary Flenniken, Skip Williamson, Mary Fleener, and as always, Rick Geary.

FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS

TELL ME SOMETHING, by Jason
NOV03 2324, pg. 276, $6.95

A 48-page 'graphic novella'. The bad news is that this looks like more of the same as HEY, WAIT and SSHHHH; blank-faced, MAUS-style anthropomorphic creatures stumble through their lives, resigned to the ungovernable onrush of events. The good news is that even more of the same would be very good indeed. Jason's work is heartbreaking, which is not something you can often say of a comic.

UNDERWORLD VOL. 5: MY LITTLE FUNNY, by Kaz
NOV03 2322, pg. 276, $9.95

The latest collection of the very-long-running, surrealistic, degenerate alt-weekly humour strip.

CLASSIC PIN-UPS: JACK COLE
NOV03 2323, pg. 276, $19.95

Not long after he stopped working on his most famous creation, PLASTIC MAN, and not long before he did his Kurt Cobain impression, Jack Cole became one of the most popular gag cartoonists in the then-new PLAYBOY. The solicitation is a little vague, but this book doesn't seem to collect any of the PLAYBOY material, but rather the cartoons he did immediately prior for a long-forgotten magazine called HUMORAMA.

THE COMICS JOURNAL WINTER 2004 SPECIAL, edited by Gary Groth
NOV03 2325, pg. 280, $19.95

This issue's all-star line-up of interviewees is: Jules Feiffer, Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware, and the late Al Hirschfeld (whose name is misspelled in the solicitation - tsk tsk). Once again, the solicitation is vague - it's not clear whether they're interviewed separately or as part of a panel or roundtable. The special also includes a comics anthology section, but they don't tell us what the theme is this time out. It is all shrouded in mystery. Woooo!

NBM

THE BRISTOL BOARD JUNGLE, by Mark Kneece & Bob Pendarvis
NOV03 2472, pg. 300, $11.95

Kneece and Pendarvis teach comics creation at the Savannah College of Art & Design, and this is a story about them teaching comics, assisted by some of the students they taught. Cute idea. Probably short on drama, though. You can read some preview pages here.

DUNGEON: THE EARLY YEARS, by Christophe Blain, Lewis Trondheim, & Joann Sfar
NOV03 2473, pg. 300, $2.95

A prequel to the ongoing epic-length sword-and-sorcery spoof, this time adding Christophe Blain - whose books THE SPEED ABATER and ISAAC THE PIRATE were recently translated by NBM - to the mix.

ONI PRESS

KILLER PRINCESSES, by Gail Simone & Lea Hernandez
NOV03 2498, pg. 304, $9.95

The 'killer princesses' of the title are Faith, Hope and Charity, airhead assassins who belong to a secret sorority sworn to preserve the status quo by ridding the world of geniuses. It is very much to Simone's credit that she makes this premise halfway plausible, especially given how supremely ditzy she's made the girls. They've got the attention spans of a sparrow that's flown into one too many windowpanes. It's all good fun, though I must admit I don't find Lea Hernandez's sometimes-sketchy, manga-inflected artwork too pleasurable to read.

SWIFTY MORALES PRESS

REAL STUFF, by Dennis Eichhorn and various
NOV03 2558, pg. 310, 2558

Autobio comics in which stuff actually happens. Like Harvey Pekar, Eichhorn is a writer who has attracted most of the biggest names in indy comics to draw his stories (included in this volume are Peter Bagge, Chester Brown, Dave Cooper, Jason Lutes, Joe Sacco, Seth, and Jim Woodring). But unlike Pekar, he's not out to find meaning in quotidian life - he's an adventurous, two-fisted kind of guy, and his stories are full of sex, drugs, violence and dangerous fun. Or at least that's what they tell me. I haven't read any of them myself, mainly because REAL STUFF ended in 1995 and hasn't been collected until now. And what kind of NinthArtketeer would I be if I didn't wait for the trade?

TOP SHELF PRODUCTIONS

HAPPY #4: FEMALE, by Josh Simmons
NOV03 2617, pg. 314, $3.50

More freakshow material in the vein of #3 and of Simmons' earlier minicomic CIRKUS NEW ORLEANS.

THE OCTOPI & THE OCEAN, by Dan James
NOV03 2620, pg. 314, $6.95

According to the solicitation, this is a wordless story about a young, "spineless-yet-resilient" boy who is for some reason plunged by his "selfish parents" "deep within the timeless ocean, directly between a pack of artifact-guarding sharks and a manipulative civilization of marriage-seeking octopi." Also factoring in somewhere are "the postal system, and a cockroach tree". Er, right. This is James' premier graphic novel, and you can read a 10-page preview here.

BOOKS SECTION

COMIC BOOK NATION: THE TRANSFORMATION OF YOUTH CULTURE IN AMERICA, by Bradford W Wright
NOV03 2908, pg. 345, $19.95

An academic study of how commercial comics affected the zeitgeist and vice versa, which means this is not the place to look for appreciation of the medium for its own sake. This is the new paperback edition, with a new chapter called "Spider-Man at Ground Zero", and a new postscript.

THE SEUSS, THE WHOLE SEUSS, AND NOTHING BUT THE SEUSS: A VISUAL BIOGRAPHY OF THEODORE SEUSS GEISEL, by Charles D Cohen
Hardcover: NOV03 2915, pg. 345, $30

THE BOY ON FAIRFIELD STREET: HOW TED GEISEL GREW UP TO BECOME DR SEUSS, by Kathleen Krull, with illustrations by Steve Johnson & Lou Fancher
Hardcover: NOV03 2916, pg. 346, $16.95

DR SEUSS: AMERICAN ICON, by Philip Nel
Hardcover: NOV03 2917, pg. 346, $27.95

For some reason, there's a whole clutch of Seuss biographies solicited at once. FAIRFIELD STREET is a picture book, aimed at young kids, while AMERICAN ICON sounds like it focuses on textual analysis and WHOLE SEUSS on the visuals.

THE BOOK OF BUNNY SUICIDES, by Andy Rile
Hardcover: NOV03 2938, pg. 347, $10

Subtitled "Little Fluffy Rabbits Who Just Don't Want to Live Any More". Looks like it wants to be the 101 USES FOR A DEAD CAT of our time.

FROM HANGING CHAD TO BAGHDAD, by David Horsey
NOV03 2939, pg. 347, $16.95

A new collection by one of the more substantive of the modern daily-newspaper political cartoonists.

THE ONION PLATINUM PRESTIGE ENCORE GOLD PREMIUM COLLECTOR'S COLLECTION
NOV03 2940, pg. 348, $49.95

A box set of the indispensable fake newspaper's previous collections: THE ONION, AMERICAN'S FINEST NEWS SOURCE; OUR DUMB CENTURY; and DISPATCHES FROM THE TENTH CIRCLE.

RED, WHITE, BLACK & BLUE: A (TH)INK ANTHOLOGY, by Keith Knight
NOV03 2942, pg. 348, $11.95

Knight is best known for his usually genial strip THE K CHRONICLES, but he also does (TH)INK, a topical single-panel cartoon with a focus on racial issues. This is the first collection.

Chris Ekman is a political cartoonist.

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