There were three books wrapped for me under the tree today, and I have to admit that I bought all of them myself. These are they:
The Burglar Who Met Frederic Brown is a new "Burglar" mystery novel by Lawrence Block. It was published this year by Block himself, and I can only hope to be that productive and active when I'm in my mid-eighties. I'm not sure if Block is self-publishing because the big publishers don't make him offers (or offers he likes) or if it's just easier, or some other reason. Frankly, it doesn't matter to me, since I'm a long-time Block fan, though I do wish a big house was behind this, just so there would be a flood of the older Burglar books in paperback and cheap electronic editions to (one hopes) drag in a new batch of readers.
I hadn't planned this, but I'm actually in-between books right at this second, so I might just read this next, starting today.
The Question Omnibus, Vol. 1 is a gigantic bug-crusher of a book - I would frankly have preferred three or five smaller books, but the comics world seems to love the Giant Slab these days - that collects most of the 1988 series by Dennis O'Neil, Denys Cowan and (uncredited on the cover) inker Rick Magyar, colorist Tatjana Wood, and letterer Gaspar Saladino. It has the first twenty-seven (of thirty-six) issues of the main series, and the first annual (and the two closely related annuals that year from
Detective and
Green Arrow). So it does
not have the second annual, the last nine issues, or the five subsequent
Question Quarterlies. I hope and trust a slightly smaller bug-crusher will appear to gather
that stuff - I'm particularly hoping it doesn't wrap that up with later Question material by other hands, but we will see.
I really liked this series at the time, but the time was thirty-plus years ago. So I'll be looking to see if any of the various Suck Fairies have had their way with it since.
And last is
Dungeon: The Early Years, Vol. 3: Without a Sound, the latest in the long-running French epic fantasy comics series. As usual, it's written by Joann Sfar and Lewis Trondheim; art this time is by Christophe Gaultier and Stephane Oiry. (I believe each of them did one of the two albums collected here). Joe Johnson translated it. This also is the first book in this series that I've seen that's album-sized; previous books have all been in a smaller, US-style format.
See my "Dungeon Fortnight" series of posts for more details on the series.
1 comment:
There are several reasons why I've turned to self-publishing, but a big one is the time factor. I finished the new Burglar book April 30 and it went on sale October 18. That's at least a year sooner than if I'd placed it with a commercial publisher.
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