Monkey Covers

Sunday is Monkey Covers day here at YACB. Because there's nothing better than a comic with a monkey on the cover.

This week's comics featured more than one monkey cover, including Tony Harris's wonderful cover to Ex Machina #31.

(Standard disclaimer about gorillas on puppet strings not really being monkeys applies.)

Image courtesy of the GCD. Click on the image for a larger version.

New This Week: October 17, 2007

What looks good at the comic shop this week?


If you missed it the first time around, Jeff Smith's Shazam!: The Monster Society of Evil is a good deal of fun and features the best Mary Marvel pretty much ever, and now it's collected in a handsome hardcover.

Also collected if you missed it in floppies is Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Long Road Home, collecting the first five issues of 'Season 8.'

Floppy-wise you can pick up new issues of Skyscrapers of the Midwest (#4), DMZ (#24), Ex Machina (#31), Fables (#66), Powers (#26), and the debut issue of Cory Doctorow's Futuristic Tales of Here and Now.


Enjoy your new comics!

Twenty-One American Comics Works You Should At Least Be Aware of Before Comparing American Comics to Japanese Manga

Every so often someone out in the comics interwebblogosphere takes it upon themselves to compare "American" comics to manga, generally with the intent of showing why people prefer manga to "American" comics (usually: cheaper per page, longer, greater variety of subject matter). Almost invariably, when they say "American" comics they really mean "direct market super-hero comics" and they completely miss the wide variety of formats, lengths and subject matter of the broad range of comics in the Americas.

On the one hand, it's easy to see how one might be led to believe that American comics = Super-hero comics; if one walks into many comic book specialty stores in this county, they're likely to see super-hero comics dominating the displays.

But it doesn't take that much effort to venture out to see what other American comics are readily available. Now we can't expect everyone to be familiar with the works of Kevin Huizenga or Ariel Schrag or Jason Shiga or Carla Speed McNeil. But the following list of comics from the Americas aren't obscure, low-circulation comics; they're comics that have received plenty of press, been reviewed in non-comics-centric publications, and can be found at any well-stocked bookstore (and many have been turned into movies):

Dan Clowes, Eightball etc.
Dave Sim, Cerebus
Hervey Pekar, American Splendor
Neil Gaiman, Sandman
Frank Miller, Sin City & 300
Phil & Kaja Foglio, Girl Genius
Larry Gonick, The Cartoon History of the Universe
R. Crumb, works
Jeff Smith, Bone
Terry Moore, Strangers in Paradise
Alison Bechdel, Fun Home
Will Eisner, works
Steve Niles & Ben Templesmith, 30 Days of Night
Mad Magazine
Sergio Aragonés, Groo
Los Bros. Hernandez, Love & Rockets
Chris Ware, Acme Novelty Library
Craig Thompson, Blankets
Greg Rucka & Steve Lieber, Whiteout
Jim Ottaviani, works
Bill Waterson, Calvin & Hobbes

What you'll notice about the above works is that they cover a wide variety of subject matter: humor, horror, dark fantasy, memoir, non-fiction, drama, thrillers, steampunk, historical epic. And they come in a wide variety of formats: some are published first as floppies; others are OGNs, some begin their lives as Webcomics.

I'm not suggesting that everyone should have read all of these comics, but you should at least be aware of their existence before writing about "American" comics.

Monkey Covers

Sunday is Monkey Covers day here at YACB. Because there's nothing better than a comic with a monkey on the cover.

Ken Bald draws the cover to 1952's Forbidden Worlds #6, featuring a giant ape which surely is not named Kong scaling a building which most definitely isn't the Empire State Building. Really.

(Standard disclaimer about building-climbing giant apes not really being monkeys applies.)

Image courtesy of the GCD. Click on the image for a larger version.

Fantasy and Science Fiction/Theory Reading Group

Last night was the annual book selection meeting for the Fantasy and Science Fiction/Theory Reading Group to which I belong. Once a year we meet to decide what the books will be for the coming year; basically everyone brings a few recommendations, makes pitches, and then we vote. It's kind of like a cage match; no one can leave until we've selected the books for the year.

It's become a tradition to use one selection for a graphic novel; three years ago we did The Dark Knight Returns; two years ago we did Seaguy & We3; and this past year we read Charles Burns's Black Hole.

The graphic novel selection for next year is Jeff Smith's Bone (yes, the whole 1300 page one-volume edition!) Bone won out over my recommendation, the new Finder: Sin-Eater hardcover. Still, Bone should make for a good read and a good discussion.

One of my prose suggestions was picked for the coming year: Towing Jehova by James Morrow. Other picks for our reading enjoyment are:

Elizabeth Kostova, The Historian
Richard Matheson, I Am Legend
Russell Hoban, Linger Awhile
Robert J. Sawyer, Rollback
Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Joshua Mowll, Operation Red Jericho
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
Barry Hughart, Bridge of Birds

Should be another interesting slate for the coming year.

New This Week: October 10, 2007

What looks good at the comic shop this week?


A new volume of Yotsuba&!, one of the funniest comics ever. Volume four lived up to my high expectations, so I'm looking forward to volume five (and only a couple of months later!)

There's a ton of other manga this week too, but right after Yotsuba&! on my list is the first volume of Aqua, Kozue Amano's prequel to Aria.

If you're looking for large expensive deluxe hardcovers, the $99 Absolue Sandman vol. 2 should fit the bill just fine.

James Sturm's America collects three graphic novellas by Sturm; I've not read "The Revival" or "Hundreds of Feet Below Daylight" yet, but "The Golem's Mighty Swing" was darn good.

Ghost Stories, the second volume in Jeff Lemire's Essex County trilogy, hits the streets. I really liked the first volume, so I look forward to reading this one as well.

I'm pretty sure the story in Green Arrow/Black Canary #1 will be tosh, but it's got art by Cliff Chiang, so I'll be buying it for the pretty pictures.


There's plenty of other comics, so be sure to get yourself down to the local comic store tomorrow and check out what's new on the shelves!

YAMR: Halloween Spooktacular 2007

It's October, and that means it's time for our third annual Halloween Spooktacular on Yet Another Music Radio!

Tune in and listen to more than one hundred tracks, including music by:

3, The 5 Browns, 16 Horsepower, Adam Sandler, Amber Benson, Aqua, Astor Piazzolo, Austin Lounge Lizards, Ben Colder, Benjamin Chan, Bing Crosby with Victor Moore & Boris Karloff, bis, Bob Ridgely, Bobby "Boris" Pickett & the Crypt-Kickers, Bobby Please, The Bonzo Dog Band, Boris Karloff, The Born Losers, Carl Orff, Castle Kings, Chantal Kreviazuk, Charlotte Martin, Chris Kevin & The Comics, Christophe Beck, Chubby Checker, The Crewnecks, Danny Elfman, Darling Violetta, The Daylighters, The Diamonds, Don Hinson & The Rigamorticians, The DVDs, Earl Patterson, The Edgar Winter Group, Edie Brickell & New Bohemians, Edvarg Grieg, Evanescence, Frank Sinatra, The Friars, The Fuzztones, Gene Moss, The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, Inkubus Sukkubus, Jack & Jim, Jack Marshall, James Marsters, Jenny Lewis with The Watson Twins, Jimmy Dee, Jocelyn Pook, J.S. Bach, John Carpenter, John Ford, John Williams, John Zacherle, Jonathan Elias, Juliana Hatfield, K's Choice, The Keytones, kidneythieves, The Legendary Invisible Men, Leroy Bowman, Little Richard, The Mancini Pops Orchestra, Mark O'Connor, Martinibomb & The Coconut Monkeyrocket, Matt Pond PA, Matthew Sweet, Mike Oldfield, The Modernaires, Modest Mussorgsky, the Mutton Birds, Natacha Atlas, Neil Norman, Neko Case, Nerf Herder, Nicole Blackman & John Van Eaton, North American Halloween Prevention Initiative, Otis Redding, The Phantom Five, Phantom Planet, Poe, Ralph Marterie & His Marlboro Men, Rasputina, Ray Lewis, Rose Chronicles, Roy Clark, Sarah McLachlan, The Scattered Pages, Sheb Wooley, Soupy Sales, Southern Culture on the Skids, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Steve Martin, Sufjan Stevens, The Swingin' Neckbreakers, Tarantula Ghoul and The Cryptkickers, The Tarantulas, Tegan and Sara, They Might be Giants, Thought Gang, Vic Mizzy, Vince Guaraldi Trio, Wojciech Kilar & Zombie Ghost Train.

Over six hours of music to get you in the trick-or-treating mood!