Incoming Books: 28 May

The impending holiday meant that we were all allowed to flee the office somewhat earlier than usual today, and I took advantage of that opportunity to drop into a comic book store very near the Port Authority Bus Terminal (where I then stood, uncomfortably, in line, for over half an hour, while waiting for a bus -- now that I don't take buses regularly, every trip to PABT means a longer and less comfortable ordeal).

And here's what I grabbed and took home. (Well, I also paid for it, but that's less interesting.)

Daniel Clowes's new book Wilson has already been reviewed several places online, and apparently features a main character who is even more misanthropic, obnoxious and grumpy than usual for Clowes, which would be a massive feat if true. I've been reading Clowes's comics since the early days of Eightball, which is something like twenty years now, so I'll be interested to see if he really has reached a new height of bile.

I discovered Molly Crabapple with her turn-of-the-last century murder-mystery webcomic Backstage (co-written by her regular collaborator John Leavitt), so I've been looking for the first Crabapple-Leavitt graphic novel on paper, Scarlett Takes Manhattan since I heard it was being published late last year. I finally saw a copy in person -- and learned that it's substantially racier than Backstage, not that I mind a bit -- and made it mine.

I used to read Marc Hansen's Ralph Snart comics back in the nineties, and they were fun slabs of superdeformed raging-id weirdness. So when I saw his slim graphic novel Doctor Gorpon (featuring a minor character from Snart) going for a cheap price, I grabbed it. This book is from 2004, so it's been sitting around for a while -- and also doesn't quite answer the question of what Hansen is doing now, if anything -- but I haven't read any of Hansen's stuff for a decade at least,
so it was worth the few bucks Midtown Comics was asking for it.

I was very impressed by Matt Kindt's graphic novel Super Spywhen I saw it in 2007 (and reviewed it for ComicMix), so I jumped on the new companion volume, Super Spy: The Lost Dossiers. It looks to be much more companion than standalone, but that's OK, too.

Another book that was on the ol' sale rack was Rene Lott's 2009 graphic novel Festering Romance, which has been lingering on my "look for it and maybe buy it" list for a while. I almost bought it twice at full price, so I couldn't resist it this time.

Roger Langridge is in the middle of an incredibly entertaining series of Muppet Show comics for Boom!, in which he channels Henson, Oz & company from the late '70s and pours them into comics form. (I don't know how he does it, but I was very impressed by the second collection recently.) And I saw that the fourth collection was being solicited in Diamond a month or two ago -- which I took to mean that the third collection was already out. And so it was, so I found On the Road today.

GrimJack: The Manx Cat (by Grimjack creators John Ostrander and Tim Truman) is both a new story in a series I've been reading since I was a teenager and a book co-published by my ComicMix friends/colleagues/estranged cousins. (Someday I may even get back to reviewing for them; I keep thinking I should, but then I do something stupid like declare I'll review a book every day here and use up all of my time.) This is yet another book -- DC Comics has lots of them, and other comics publishers have more than their fair share -- that has a vastly different cover on the book in my hands than any I've seen online, though, and that pains me as a book marketer who wrangles with datafeeds to my own online accounts far too often. Hey, comics publishers! Can you please get the cover art for your books correct, please? Danke.

And last for this trip was Dash Shaw's new graphic novel (and reprint of the online strip that I only read bits of) BodyWorld. I thought this came out a few weeks ago, but I finally saw a copy of it now, and so I own it now.
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Listening to: Emily Jane White - Liza
via FoxyTunes