Read in October

And that's another month down. Here's what I read this time around, with links to my reviews (in the cases where I've managed to finish those reviews).

• Osamu Tezuka, Black Jack, Vol. 1 (10/1/08)
  
• Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney Official Casebook, Vol. 1: The Phoenix Wright Files (10/2/08)
  
• Josh Karp, A Futile and Stupid Gesture: How Doug Kenney and National Lampoon Changed Comedy Forever (10/3/08)
  
• Mitch Clem, Nothing Nice to Say, Vol. 2 (10/5/08)
  
• Scott Meyer, Help Is On the Way: A Collection of Basic Instructions (10/5/08)
  
• Miwa Ueda, Papillon, Vol. 1 (10/6/08)
  
• Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book (10/6/08)
  
• Jim Butcher & Ardian Syaf, The Dresden Files: Welcome to the Jungle (10/6/08)
  
• Gaku Tsugano, Nagaru Tanigawa, & Noizi Ito, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Vol. 1 (10/7/08)
  
• Idumi Kirihara, Hitohira, Vol. 1 (10/8/08)
  
• Richard Stark, Dirty Money (10/8/08)
  
• Rutu Modan, Jamilti and Other Stories (10/9/08)
  
• Masashi Kishimoto, Naruto, Vol. 26 (10/10/08)
  Naruto and Sasuke have a fight, nobody wins, Triangle Man.
  
• Jim Davis & Dan Walsh, Garfield Minus Garfield (10/11/08)
  
• Danny Shanahan, Bad Sex! (10/12/08)
  
• Jim Davis, Garfield: 30 Years of Laughs & Lasagna (10/12/08)
  
• Atsuhi Ohkubo, B.Ichi, Vol. 1 (10/13/08)
  
• Song Yang, Wild Animals, Vol. 1: Key Trafficker (10/14/08)
  
• Douglas Brown, Just Do It (10/14/08)
  
• Jack Ziegler, How's the Squid? (10/14/08)
  
• Ken Akamatsu & Ran, Mao-Chan, Vol. 1 (10/15/08)
  
• Guy Delisle, Burma Chronicles (10/16/08)
  
• Glenn Dakin, Abe: Wrong for All the Right Reasons (10/17/08)
  
• Sarah Vowell, The Wordy Shipmates (10/17/08)
  
• Paul Gravett, editor, The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics (10/20/08)
  
• Yukako Kabei & Shiori Teshirogi, Kieli, Vol. 2 (10/21/08)
  
• KwangHyun Seo & JinHo Ko, Croquis Pop, Vol. 2 (10/22/08)
  
• Satoko Kiyuduki, Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro, Vol. 2 (10/23/08)
  
• Masashi Kishimoto, Naruto, Vol. 27 (10/24/08)
  The end of "Book One" has about a hundred page of denouement, with all of the characters heading off into the hiatus on their own paths. And then there's a hundred-page adventure of Naruto's sensei Kakashi, telling the story of how he got his sharingan eye.
  
• Tom Vanderbilt, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What It Says About Us) (10/25/08)
  
• Marguerite Abouet & Clement Oubrerie, Aya of Yop City (10/25)
• Jessie Reklaw, The Night of Your Life (10/26)
  
• Mari Matsuzawa & Mamizu Arisawa, Inukami!, Vol. 1 (10/27/08)
  
• Jason Lutes, Berlin, Book Two: City of Smoke (10/28/08)
  
• Chip Kidd, Geoff Spear, Saul Ferris, Anne Ishii, & Jiro Kuwata, Bat-Manga! The Secret History of Batman in Japan (10/29/08)
  
• Timothy Truman & Tomas Giorello, Conan, Vol. 6: The Hand of Nergal (10/30/08)
  
• Matthew Stover, Caine Black Knife (10/30/08)
  
• Enrico Casarosa, The Venice Chronicles (10/31/08)
  
• Art Spiegelman, Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@#*! (10/31/08)
  A reprint -- oversized like the original -- of Spiegelman's 1978 Breakdowns album, with all of his '70s experimental (very experimental, very formalist) comics, along with a long introduction in comics form and a pretty long prose afterword as well. I don't think the center of Breakdowns has aged very well -- it's artiness for the sake of itself, which works better on a wall in a gallery than on a printed page -- but it's interesting to see, and the new material is more conventionally accessible. (The old stuff deliberately avoids linearity and other story virtues, so it's silly to complain that it does so...but it is tough to read, and one wonders whether the effort is worth it.)
  

Reviews of a lot of those books -- to fill in the so-far-missing links -- will be coming over the next ten days, while I'm off on vacation. I wouldn't leave you folks without content for a whole week!