Incoming Books: Comic Shop(s) Trip

I hadn't been to my usual comics shop in close to two months, so I decided to hit it on Friday -- but, first, I checked out their competition -- Jim Hanley's Universe, on 33rd Street across from the Empire State Building. (I think Hanley's might be a better store for me in a perfect world -- it's organized as aisles of shelves, with books and comics mostly in alphabetical order by title, instead of having The Wall of new comics and everything else being secondary -- but it took me a while to figure out how it was organized or to find anything. It's a store desperately crying out for some signage.)

I went to Hanley's because there were a number of things -- three of which are listed below -- that I'd neglected to pre-order at my usual shop (Midtown Comics) and which I never ever saw there. So I finally got tired of waiting, and bought them at Hanley's. As life must always be ironic, though, there were a couple of books that I saw at Hanley's -- notably The Fart Party, Vol. 2, second collection of Julia Wertz's very funny webcomics -- that I didn't buy there, because I decided to let Midtown have my business on those...and then they weren't there, either. (You just can't win.)

Anyway, I went to two comic book stores within an hour, buying a pile of stuff for my sons and these things for myself:

Scott Pilgrim Versus The World, the second in the series by Bryan Lee O'Malley -- I liked the first one, so I figure I might as well catch up with it.

The Complete Peanuts 1971-1972 by Charles Schulz, of course. How could I quit now? This is one of the ones I've been waiting to find at Midtown -- I've even asked about it once or twice, but I'd never actually seen it in person.

Little Nothings, Vol. 2: The Prisoner Syndrome by Lewis Trondheim. Again, I really liked the first volume of this series -- this collects diary comics by the French comics creator, originally published (in French) on the web and then collected (in France) and then eventually translated for us monoglots. Again, I never saw it at Midtown despite looking a couple of times.

I Killed Adolf Hitler by Jason -- after reading Low Moon in the New York Times Magazine and The Last Musketeer during Eisner deliberations, I thought it was about time I read some more Jason. And this is supposed to be his best book, so why not? I suspect I'm going to have trouble swallowing the background -- it's a world in which murder-for-hire is as common and legal as plumbing-for-hire, which strikes me as something that only really works in satire -- but I like Jason's deadpan wit, so I'll give him an advance on suspension of disbelief.

First Time written by Sibylline with art by various folks -- arty European comics about sex. I'm going to pretend that I'm a massive Dave McKean completest, and so I bought this for his story at the end of this book. Everyone else in the book seems to be identified only by first names, so either they want to distance themselves from this work or Euro-cartooning is utterly overrun by creators (like Jason, above) who have dispensed with the need for a surname. I wonder which it is?

----------------
Listening to: Rilo Kiley - Accidental Deth
via FoxyTunes