Incoming Books: Christmas!

So I got stuff for Christmas. I bought myself Just Cause 3 from the Steam sale and wrapped up a printout of the store page from "Santa" -- because when you have teenage boys, you need to buy yourself the things you want for any chance to actually get them. And one of the books below is similarly from me to me; I bought it to get an Amazon package up to "Add-On" size to get some cables as part of my frantic effort to install a video card in Thing Two's computer last week. [1]

The rest of these books were gifts, and I'm going to list them all here, because that's what I do.

Get in Trouble is the first new collection of stories by Kelly Link since 2006's Magic for Beginners. Link is one of the best short-story writers of all time, and has been relatively quiet the last few years. (I think the fact that she had a young child in that span did a lot to cause that; I hope she finds a way to be a bit more prolific in the next decade.)

SuperMutant Magic Academy is the book version of the now-ended webcomic of the same name, by Jillian Tamaki (also half of the team behind the excellent graphic novels Skim and This One Summer).

Saga, Vol. 5 continues collecting the excellent space-opera comic by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples. (By the way, does anyone out there know what Staples did before this, and if any of it is worth digging up? She does great stuff here, and -- though I don;t usually follow artists -- she has such a great storytelling sense I'm thinking it might be worth bending my rule here.) Also, see my review of Vol. 1 if you've been living under a rock and have never heard of Saga.

Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3 finishes up the big publishing project, organizing and putting out a series of dictations Twain made at the end of his life. I still haven't read the first two volumes -- well, I did read thirty pages or so of the first one, when I got it five years ago -- but now I could read them all straight through if I feel like it.

B.P.R.D: 1946-1948 collects three "historical" stories from the Hellboy universe written by Mike Mignola and John Arcudi, with art by a whole bunch of people and colors by Dave Stewart as always.

And then there's The Complete Cul de Sac with the full five-year run of Richard Thompson's great comic strip in two volumes encased by a slipcase. I think I discovered this strip after it ended, or right as it was about to end, so it will be fun to read it all straight through. And, no, it's not that Richard Thompson. (It's one of those names -- I know, since I have one myself.)


[1] Said efforts ended with my taking that computer to the local shop first thing in the morning on Christmas Eve, and picking it up right as they closed at noon. But I did manage to fix the sound problem that resulted from the installation of that video card, so my tech-support score this month is a respectable 1-1.