Lord Takeyama

Written by Shane L. Amaya
Art by Bruno D’Angelo
48 pages, black and white
Published by Terra Major

What is it about the samurai era of Japan that entrances so many people? Maybe it’s the code of honor that was famously practiced during that time. Maybe it’s the weapons and battles of the time period, so similar yet different from our own. Maybe it’s the myths and legends of Japan that often go hand-in-hand with this earlier time. In the case of Lord Takeyama, writer Shane L. Amaya doesn’t seem to take any chances and uses all three to great effect.

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A Sort of Homecoming #1

Written by Damon Hurd
Art by Pedro Camello
24 pages, black and white
Published by Alternative Comics

The experiences of our childhood are always interesting when filtered through the perception of adulthood. Things often fall into place, or simply gain new meaning. In reading Damon Hurd and Pedro Camello’s A Sort of Homecoming one can’t help but reflect on your own past even as the central character does the same with his—with hopefully more cheery results.

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Queen & Country #18

Written by Greg Rucka
Art by Carla Speed McNeil
32 pages, black and white
Published by Oni Press

“You ain’t seen nothing, yet.” There are times where that feels like the catchphrase of Queen & Country from Oni Press. You can almost see creator Greg Rucka sitting at his keyboard with a big grin on his face as he writes each new storyline, raising the stakes and increasing the intensity. And just when the reader thinks they can stop and catch their breath… Rucka proves them wrong. This is the way a spy thriller should be, after all.

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Gyo Vol. 1

By Junji Ito
200 pages, black and white
Published by Viz

Junji Ito is Japan’s master of horror comics, but it’s only recently that his work has appeared in English in the forms of Tomie and Uzumaki. With each new work that’s translated, Ito’s powers of terror and suspense grow stronger. What’s surprising about his new work Gyo is not that it’s as scary as ever, but that as the next major work after Uzumaki, Gyo is almost a deliberate reversal of what he did in Uzumaki.

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Little Lit: It was a Dark and Silly Night…

Edited by Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly
48 pages, color
Published by HarperCollins

There’s a stronger relationship between illustrated children’s books and comics than most people consciously realize. Both of them involve a series of images that, coupled with text, tell a story. The only real structural difference is that children’s books usually employ narration boxes instead of word balloons, and comics use panels much more often than children’s books. Still, the overlap between the two is pretty strong, and maybe that’s what Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly had in mind when they invented their Little Lit series, with children’s books and comics creators coming together to form an anthology of stories for both children and adults.

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Human Target #2

Written by Peter Milligan
Art by Javier Pulido
32 pages, color
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

When Peter Milligan and Edvin Biukovic brought The Human Target back as a mini-series back in 1999, Milligan’s take on a man addicted to professional impersonations took the comic world by storm. After the original mini-series and a graphic novel also by Milligan, The Human Target is back once more under Milligan’s guidance, this time as an ongoing series. In an era where hidden faces are feared instead of creating fascination, though, will The Human Target still have a place to fit in?

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Between the Sheets

By Erica Sakurazawa
208 pages, black and white
Published by TokyoPop

As more and more manga comes overseas into English-speaking countries, there are phrases you hear thrown around a lot. Shonen (“boy’s manga”) and shôjo (“girl’s manga”) are two of them, with people quickly pointing out which story elements make a book meant for which gender. Well, if you read Erica Sakurazawa’s Between the Sheets, the question then becomes: What’s the name for women’s manga?

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Southpaw

By Scott Morse
128 pages, orange and white
Published by AdHouse Books

Some of the best “all-ages” books are ones that have different appeals to different ages, while still being enjoyable. As a child, you can read and enjoy the book on a very simple level. As an adult, you might see more to the story, an added level of understanding and recognition. It’s great because you can keep reading the book throughout your life, always enjoying what you picked up on early read-throughs, but still finding more lurking beneath the surface just waiting to be discovered. That, to me, is one of the big appeals of Scott Morse’s Southpaw.

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Lone #1

Written by Stuart Moore
Art by Jerome Opeña
32 pages, color
Published by Dark Horse

What is it about the wild west and zombies? The number of books that have merged the two (Deadlands, Jonah Hex, Priest, etc.) seems to grow by the hour. So I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that Dark Horse’s new science-fiction apocalyptic western has… you guessed it… zombies.

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Fancy Froglin’s Sexy Forest

By James Kochalka
64 pages, color
Published by Alternative Comics

At this year’s SPX, James Kochalka was overheard describing the creative process for his web strip Fancy Froglin. “Every week I draw a new page,” he said, “and then I show it to my wife Amy. And every week she says, ‘I don’t get it.’ So I ask her if that means she doesn’t like my comics, and she says, ‘Not Fancy Froglin.'” Well, I don’t know about you, but that was all I had to hear to buy a copy (once I stopped laughing, that is).

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