Reviewing the Mail: Week of 3/29

This week's collection of books to review is all comics, so I'll even throw in a few things I picked up at my comics shop, since they fit the inadvertent theme.

How to Love is a collection of "graphic novellas" from Actus Independent Comics, distributed by Top Shelf Productions in the US. (Actus is an Israeli publisher.) It's in an odd format -- hardcover, 9 1/2" x 7" turned "landscape" -- and features stories by six creators. (That includes the only Israeli cartoonist I previously knew about -- Rutu Modan, of Exit Wounds fame -- which probably only proves I wasn't paying attention.) How to Love will be published in August -- and no on-line bookseller is listing it yet, which may mean it will be very difficult to find. On the other hand, August is some time away, so I expect it will show up eventually.

Spiral: The Bonds of Reasoning, Vol. 3 is the third in a manga series by Kyo Shirodaira and Eita Mizuno about a young detective and the mysterious "Blade Children" that he's trying to stop; I reviewed the second volume at ComicMix some weeks ago. This one is being published by Yen Press in April, so it's probably shipping to stores already.

Also from Yen Press is Kieli Vol. 1 by Yukako Kabei and Shiori Teshirogi. From the description on the back cover, it sounds oddly religious -- there's a reference to a race of immortal warriors who were "eradicated in the name of God" and to the title character, who sees ghosts and yet is a budding atheist. I'm not sure whether to expect a mildly Shintoist setup, or the kind of confused take on Christianity that shows up now and then in manga. (I guess I'll find out when I read it.) This is also an April book, so it should be available everywhere pretty quickly.

Too Cool To Be Forgotten is the new graphic novel from Alex (Box Office Poison) Robinson, coming from Top Shelf in July 2008. It's substantially shorter than Robinson's previous work and focuses entirely on one character: Andy Wicks, who accidentally hypnotizes himself back into his geeky, gangly high-school self in 1985.

I've seen a number of things specifically for kids this week -- and they all seem to come from France, for whatever reason. One is Emmanuel Guibert's Sardine in Outer Space 5, subtitled "My Cousin Manga and Other Stories." I haven't read the series before, but anything like this aimed at kids needs to have individually standalone stories, so I'm not worried about confusion. (I might be worried about the fact that "My Cousin Manga," on the cover, seems to have giant marshmallows jammed onto her stick-like legs, but I'm sure there's a good explanation for that.) This one is coming from First Second in June 2008.

Also from First Second, and also for kids, is Lewis Trondheim and Eric Cartier's Kaput and Zosky, about two incompetent alien do-gooders. I recently enjoyed Trondheim's diary comic collection, Little Nothings, so I'm quietly hopeful about this. (And, after I check it out, it will got to my sons for the acid test...whether they pick it up at all.)

Moving on to books I actually paid money for, there's Dungeon: Zenith, Vol. 1 : Duck Heart (Dungeon), by Joann Sfar and the ubiquitous Lewis Trondheim. I picked this up on Jeff VanderMeer's suggestion, and because I liked Little Nothings so much. This is the first in the series, I think -- there were also books called "The Early Years," "Twilight," and "Parade," so it was hard to tell -- and it's about a giant D&Dish castle, stuffed full of monsters and treasure, that adventurers keep trying to loot. And, apparently, also about this duck who gets mistaken for a barbarian warrior and has to protect the Dungeon. (This one was published in 2004, for those keeping track.)

And then there's Gumby. What can I say about Gumby? Some outfit called Wildcard Ink got Bob Burden to write and Rick Geary to draw all-new comics adventures of Art Clokey's clay character, and they're wonderfully bizarre, if very irregular. (In many senses of that last word.) Now there's been enough of them -- three issues, I think -- to fill up a small trade paperback, and so here it is. Gumby says that it was published in December of 2007, but I think it only made it out into stores last week. Whenever it was, it's Gumby, damnit, and it's utterly indescribable and a hell of a lot of fun. Where else will you find a villain being foiled by the ghost of Johnny Cash?

Last for this week is Michel Rabagliati's new book Paul Goes Fishing, just published by Drawn & Quarterly. I still haven't managed to read Paul Moves Out, but I loved Paul Has A Summer Job when I read that last fall, so I just grabbed this new one when I saw it was already out.