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Smurfs Vol. 1: The Purple Smurfs

Written by Peyo and Yvan Delporte
Art by Peyo
56 pages, color
Published by Papercutz

I have a confession to make: I was never a big Smurfs fan. It’s not that I disliked them, but rather that I never got swept up in Smurfmania when they made their big splash in the United States. So I watched the occasional episode of their show, and I remember flipping through some of the earlier printings of the Smurfs comic albums at my local bookstore. But I’d certainly never sat down and read one of the books until now, so with Papercutz’s low-priced reissues it seemed a good a chance as any. And you know what? Forget the insipid "la la la la la la" theme song from the animated show, this was a lot of fun.

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Back Later This Month!

Between travel and helping run the Ignatz Awards for this month’s Small Press Expo (SPX), the site is going on a slight break while I’m away from the computer (although not away from comics).

If you’re in the Washington DC area the weekend of September 11-12, do make sure to swing by! It’s a great show, and I say that not as someone who used to run it, but as someone who enjoyed going to the show so much that I wanted to help work on it. Just make sure to bring your wallet, there’s a tremendous amount of great stuff in store for you to buy.

And, as always, thanks for your patience.

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Phoenix Without Ashes #1

Written by Harlan Ellison
Art by Alan Robinson
32 pages, color
Published by IDW

Never let it be said that Harlan Ellison allows an idea to go to waste. For those unfamiliar with the television show The Starlost, it aired in the 1970s for a single season, originally created by Ellison. He withdrew from the series before it aired, though, and took his name off it and the pilot that he’d written. Since then, he’s published the script under the title he’d given it, Phoenix Without Ashes. And now, it’s back for a whole new generation who have probably never heard of it, as a comic-book mini-series. Here’s the thing, though: I’m not entirely convinced it needed to come back.

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Playwright

Written by Daren White
Art by Eddie Campbell
144 pages, color
Published by Top Shelf Productions and Knockabout Comics

I’ve always appreciated that Eddie Campbell isn’t afraid to take on strange projects. In theory, he could have kept writing and drawn Bacchus over the years, which had a built-up audience and a reputation within comics, or stuck with his autobiographical alter ego Alec. But instead, he’s continued to pick up different oddities over the years, the latest of which is Daren White’s script about a socially awkward playwright. It doesn’t sound like something to set the pages on fire, but I figured that Campbell had agreed to it for a good reason. And, of course, he was right. For a book that should have been annoying, White and Campbell make it startlingly compelling.

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Dungeons & Dragons #0

Written by John Rogers and Alex Irvine
Art by Andrea Di Vito and Peter Bergting
24 pages, color
Published by IDW

I have a confession to make: about 25 years ago, I was a big Dungeons & Dragons geek. Played it all the time with friends, read the novels and comics, even helped maintain one of their official areas on a computer network back in the day. But 15 years ago, I fell away from it all and I haven’t come into much contact at all with the game or products since then. So when a copy of Dungeons & Dragons #0 ended up in my mailbox, well, I couldn’t help but get curious. I’d loved the comics by Jeff Grubb, Rags Morales, Dan Mishkin, Jan Duursema, and Tom Mandrake that DC had published many years ago. Could this be my new "gateway drug" back inside?

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Moving Pictures

Written by Kathryn Immonen
Art by Stuart Immonen
144 pages, black and white
Published by Top Shelf Productions

One of the things I’ve come to expect from Kathryn Immonen is that she doesn’t write stories that talk down to her readers. There’s always a lot packed into her scripts, both what’s being directly stated as well as what you have to piece together and infer for yourself. The end result is a reading experience that ends up being that much more rewarding when you hit the conclusion, and that’s something on display in her and Stuart Immonen’s new graphic novel Moving Pictures.

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Sandman Mystery Theatre Vol. 8: The Blackhawk and the Return of the Scarlet Ghost

Written by Matt Wagner and Steven T. Seagle
Penciled by Guy Davis and Matthew Smith, with Daniel Torres
Inked by Guy Davis and Richard Case, with Daniel Torres
224 pages, color
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

Reading a new collection of Sandman Mystery Theatre is a guilty pleasure, but not in the way one normally uses the phrase. Having stopped buying the series during its first year due to finances, there’s a certain amount of guilt now that shows up alongside Sandman Mystery Theatre, that nagging thought that once I had a little more money I really should’ve started reading the series again. Still, when all is said and done, it’s not a bad thing to read it now via collections. If anything, I think some of the slight flaws in the book are better mitigated when read in a large chunk.

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House of Five Leaves Vol. 1

By Natsume Ono
208 pages, black and white
Published by Viz

With House of Five Leaves Vol. 1, another one of the SIGIKKI website’s online strips is making the jump to a print edition. As it’s by Natsume Ono (not simple, Ristorante Paradiso), I knew it wouldn’t be your typical samurai story. What I found, though, was a nice play on the genre where no one is quite what they seem, and I think it’s probably the best of Ono’s works brought into English to date.

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Unsinkable Walker Bean

By Aaron Renier
208 pages, color
Published by First Second Books

Aaron Renier’s debut graphic novel, Spiral-Bound (Top Secret Summer), was a strong splash by the cartoonist; I remember being almost instantly impressed at how strong he was able to convey a sense of adventure and fun into both his script an art. It’s been a long time coming, but his new book The Unsinkable Walker Bean is here. The end result? It’s a book with so many different ideas and concepts that it feels like Renier almost doesn’t have room for them all.

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Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip Vol. 5

Written by Lars Jansson
Art by Tove Jansson
88 pages, black and white
Published by Drawn & Quarterly

I picked up the first volume of Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip solely due to a friend of mine (also named Greg), who grew up reading Tove Jansson’s Moomin books and had utterly fallen in love with them. His descriptions over the years had intrigued me, with promises of whimsy and silliness mixed in with satire and cleverness. That’s exactly what I found in these collections of comic strips drawn for London’s The Evening News. The fourth volume, however, was the first to feature some strips written by Tove Jansson’s brother Lars Jansson, and this fifth volume published the final collaborations between Tove and Lars before Tove quit the strip entirely. This book, then, was a test. Would Lars be able to grow into the strip enough to make me want to read it once Tove was gone?

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