Hey! We just got the new Daniel Clowes The Death-Ray! Come and get yours!
1. Best American Comics 2011 ed. by Abel/Madden with guest editor Alison Bechdel (Houghton) $25.00 – Thanks to everybody that came out to see Alison Bechdel this past weekend!
2. Optic Nerve #12 by Adrian Tomine (D&Q) $5.95 – Two pitch-perfect stories of rejection, imperfection, and relationship drama, each ending on a surprisingly uplifting note. “Hortisculpture” pushes Tomine into a stylistic camp with Sammy Harkham, Jordan Crane, Chuck Forsman and Kevin Huizenga – perhaps more than ever before. The story works with a “Chalky White”-ish suburban everyman and his tempered ambitions, but camps up the visual style into a Marmaduke-y newspaper strip aesthetic. The effect is similar to the trickiness of his wedding planning comics. The second half is a repolishing of his “Amber Sweet” college girl mistaken for porn star plot. Plus we get a glimpse into Tomine’s sad-sack mailbox, and some self-aware griping about putting out comics issue by issue. -EF
3. Habibi by Craig Thompson (Pantheon) $35.00 – New from the author of Blankets.
4. OK OK You Smote Me Stories by Al Burian (Quimby’s Exclusive) $35.00 – The author of Burn Collector made a zine especially for us to publish and sell.
5. Laphams Quarterly vol 4 #4 Fall 11 $15.00 – The theme this issue: The Future.
6. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (Houghton) $13.95
7. AdBusters #98 Nov Dec 11 $8.95
8. Serial Killers Unite #8 $2.00 – No (edible) bones about it, this one’s for all mayhem-intrigued true crime “fans.” Letters from serial killers for reals. All sorts of things run through one’s mind when reading it, the least of which, it’s not surprising we always sell out of this zine when it comes in. Is it exploitation? Shocking? Strangely “normal” prisoner correspondance? Descriptions of killers you haven’t heard of? Do you feel dirty and freaked out reading it but then you can’t put it down? Is “entertaining” a dirty word for this? Are we hard-wired to take pleasure in gossip but then we experience cognitive dissonance because we don’t want to seem shallow so we call it a “sociological document?” The answer to all these questions: YES. Come get your copy now. -LM
Like nothing else we carry, this Australian zine reprints correspondence with convicted serial killers…this issue is letters (and fudge recipes?!) from John Canaday, Arthur Bomar, John Eichinger, and William Suff. Creepy Stuff. -EF
9. Mark Twain’s Autobiography 1910-2010 by Michael Kupperman (D&Q) $19.99 – Porny grody weirdo version of Twain. Truly a tale to thrizzle.
10. Piano Rats by Franki Elliot $10.00 – Elliot’s poems dissect the 9,000 year gap between the breakfast and the bus ride, the eons between bodies and the slick sopes of memory. -EF
