September 2001

Selective highlights and researched insights into the most interesting new comics offered in each month's Previews catalog (without spoilers).
About these pages, and other months' books

Super/Action

Humour/Fun

SF

Fantasy

All Ages

Les/Bi/Gay

Smut

Beyond Genre

Listings here are in reverse order by publisher. Prices and page count are mentioned if it's outside the arbitrary industry "norm" for pamphlets (i.e. 24-32 pages, $2-4). Items I think are especially worth checking out are offset in boxes.

CATALOG SECTION
SPECIAL: I guess they don't expect plain old readers to buy this, so they stuck it with the catalogs and order forms that retailers order. But since it seems to have fallen upon us readers to help promote (and thereby rescue) the comics industry ourselves, I recommend that each of us buy a bundle (or more, depending) of Archie Halloween ashcans, and give them out to trick-or-treaters. I've been giving away comics every Halloween since I moved into a street-level apartment a few years ago, and the kids love it. The main problem I have is finding enough stuff in my collection that the under-10 set (and their parents) will like. This should help solve that nicely. And at $3 for a bundle of 25, it's not much more expensive than raiding my collection.

COMICS/PREMIER SECTIONS
2-D Graphics
NEW SERIES: Combining a superhero theme with serious issues like sexual assault, Captain Awareness sounds like it could turn out rather preachy. After all, the core of the superhero genre is a simplistic concept of problem-solving that only small children really buy into, and this doesn't sound like it's aimed at that age group. But it's a worthwhile message and it's good to see someone trying to use the medium for educational purposes. Danny DeAngelo is the writer, and with strong talent like George Pérez, Norm Breyfogle, Dick Giordano doing the stories and pin-ups by a bunch of other "name" artists, it can't be too bad. $6 for 48 pages.

Tony Raiola
REPRINTS: Way back in the 1920's the publishers of Little Orphan Annie produced a series of hardcovers, reprinting stories originally seralised in the daily newspaper strip. Bucking the World and The Haunted House are two of them, reproduced in paperback. God only knows why Previews says they're by Milt Caniff; they're actually by Annie's creator, Harold Gray. Each is 96 pages for $10. (A third reprint book also exists, but isn't offered here.)

Titan Books
COLLECTION: Judge Dredd: Death Aid is another reprint of an old 2000 A.D. story by Garth Ennis with art by Carlos Ezquerra. $15 for 80 pages.

Phosphorescent
This book is re-solicited from the previous catalog.
NEW SERIES: The Watch is a series that's already been out for several issues in its native Australia. Coinciding with its debut on the world stage, they're relaunching the series, so us folk "up over" won't be lost. This is writer Christian Read's first superhero series, about a world in which riches were - briefly - the key to super powers, and now super powers - in the hands of the noble and the ignoble - are the key to fame and fortune. Read describes it as "a political story", trying to apply the genre to a different kind of tale. Andrew Phillips is the artist, and the first dozen pages of #1 are available online in PDF.

Pakkins
GRAPHIC NOVEL: The final volume of the Pakkins' Land trilogy is coming. Forgotten Dreams features all new material, and concludes the story begun in the two earlier series (and their collected editions). $16 for 128 pages.

Oni
NEW SERIES: Magic Pickle is a story by Scott Morse that has some fun with the superhero genre, starring a child who discovers a super-powered cucumber living under her floor. Four issues.
LIMITED SERIES: Kissing Chaos features some rather nice toned art by Arthur Dela Cruz, and what sounds like an interesting character drama. The release schedule and format is a bit odd: 16 pages, digest-size, every 3 weeks... which works out to about the same pages and pace as a 22-page monthly, but in 8 installments rather than 6. The first issue is $2; #2-8 will be $2.25.
COLLECTION: The Marquis: Danse Macabre is a dark and spooky story that should play well to creator Guy Davis' strengths. 192 pages for $19.

New Suit
NEW ANTHOLOGY: New Thing sounds like it'll appeal to fans of art comics, featuring work by creators from around the world, including (in the first volume) Nick Bertozzi (US), Tomer Hanuka (Israel), Katja Tukiainen (Finland), and Yuko Shimizu (Japan). Their tag line is "fiction, reality, fever dreams, comics". Each volume will have its own theme (the first one being "identity"). 96 pages for $10.

NBM
GRAPHIC NOVEL: Amnesia is a story by John Molloy about a young reporter and her inspiration, a filmmaker and novelist, who discover that they have a connection of some sort through the sudden onset of both memories and dreams. 64 pages for $10.
GRAPHIC NOVEL: Far West is an earlier work by Richard Moore, creator of the current series Boneyard. It's set in an American Old West populated with creatures from out of traditional European and modern fantasy, starring an eflin gunslinger. 112 pages for $14.
GRAPHIC NOVEL: No one can accuse Ted Rall of looking at the world through rose-colored glasses. 2024 is a kind of 1984 for the new millennium, a cynical look at where society is headed (or perhaps where it already is). Previously issued in hardcover; now it's 96 pages in paperback for $10.

Mighty Gremlin
SET: I can personally recommend the Electric Girl starter pack, which includes the first five issues of the series for only $11. It's a fun series by Mike Brennan starring teenaged Virginia, who has mild electrical powers, an invisible companion named Oogleeoog, and a pet dog Blammo.

Meanwhile
NEW SERIES: I hope that "Chairoscuro" is a deliberate misspelling of "chiaroscuro" ("kee-AR-oh-SKOO-roh", a term referring to certain uses of value contrast in a painting) because that's how it appears on the cover, so it's not just a catalog typo. Creator Troy Little does use the technique, however, so he knows what he's talking about even if not how to spell it. The series is serialising the story of an artist trying to make his mark with limited resources, which may be something the creator knows well also. [NOTE: The spelling mistake was corrected - on the cover and anywhere else in the book - before it shipped.]

Marvel
Note: Marvel solicits paperback collections a month further in advance; see last month's picks for collections shipping in September.
LIMITED SERIES: Origin - which will finally establish the early life of Wolverine - has been discussed enough in the fan media, but I figure it's also noteworthy to people who haven't been paying attention to Marvel in a while. It's by Paul Jenkins and Andy Kubert, which is in its favour. Six issues. Paperback collection inevitable.
NEW CREATORS: It comes a few months late for the celebrated X-book overhaul, and a few months early to be heralded as a centurial milestone, but Cable is getting a new creative team with #97. David Tischman (who's already co-writing a geopolitically-aware series for Vertigo with Howard Chaykin) is taking a similar angle on this series, and artist Igor Kordey's Yugoslavian background should add an interesting perspective to it.
COLLECTION: The overhauled X-Force has been getting a mixed bag of reviews, which I don't know what to make of. With Peter Milligan and Mike Allred doing it, it sounded like a sure hit (at least critically) and definitely different from the traditional X-drek, and I'm not sure if the negative reactions are due to it being differently bad or differently good. The first 5 issues of the new run are being reprinted for wider evaluation, under the unimaginative title New Beginnings, 112 pages for $13.
COLLECTION: The overhaul of Uncanny X-Men by Joe Casey and Ian Churchill has gotten more consistent reviews, though to be honest I haven't followed them as closely because I'm less curious about it. Poptopia is the first reprint of the new (not to be confused with "New") series, collecting the first 160 pages for $17.
LIMITED SERIES: Thor: Godstorm looks like both Silver Age fanboy Kurt Busiek and illustrator Steve Rude working in Kirby-doing-legends mode, which should be top-notch stuff if that's what you like. It's 3 issues.
LIMITED SERIES: Avengers: Celestial Quest is "a sprawling saga" written by former series writer Steve Englehart, with enough name-dropping in the solicitation to to let you know who this is for: long-time Marvel readers. The art looks good, by Jorge Santamaria, and it'll run 8 issues. (I try to focus on just the positive stuff here, but I have to interject that this is an example of why I hope Marvel continues making movies featuring more of their characters. The X-Men and Spidey books - of all things - are finally both accessible and possibly interesting to new readers. But the core "Heroes" books still cater primarily to people who have been reading them since the Johnson administration, or collecting back issues since the Carter administration. DC is guilty of the same thing, but Marvel seems to be the most in denial of it.)
SPECIAL ISSUE: Ostensibly to mark the character's 35th birthday, Black Panther is getting the "100-Page Monster" treatment, adding a bunch of reprints to the usual 22 pages of excellent new material, for a total price of $3.50.
COLLECTION: Spider-Man: Tangled Web reprints the first three stories from this various-creators series: about a man who tries to reproduce the accident that gave Spidey his powers (by Garth Ennis and John McCrea), about a member of the Kingpin's gang (by Greg Rucka and Eduardo Risso, and "Flowers for Rhino" (by Peter Milligan and Duncan Fegredo, finishing up this month in the serials). 144 pages for $16.
COLLECTION: Spider-Girl reprints the first 8 issues (plus #0) of the only series to survive the collapse of the next-generation MC2 line (lasting over three years already), thanks largely to vocal fan support. This series by Tom DeFalco and Pat Olliffe gets great reviews as just a fun, old-school super-hero series that (in part because of its setting in a different timeframe slightly out of official continuity, and its original purpose of attracting new young readers) doesn't suffer from the Universal references that tend to bog down so many. 208 pages for $20.
COLLECTION: The Sentry got wrapped up in some controversy when comics "news" organisations reported Marvel's phony promotional story about the character's history as if it were fact, and some people actually believed it. The story itself - about a Silver-Age character who somehow got retconned out of Marvel continuity - was reportedly pretty good, and spawned a few follow-up team-ups with "real" characters. Both the mini-series by Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee and the follow-ups are reprinted; 240 pages for $25.

Marvel: Max
Marvel is launching their new "mature readers" imprint this month. The name doesn't exactly say "mature" to me, seeming more like a 1990's "teenager" tag... which I guess describes the audience they're aiming for: guys who were teens in the 90's. It will feature stories set in the same Marvel Universe, but with more violence, sex, and naughty words than are considered suitable for kids and young teens.
They're also unveiling their new non-Comics-Code-Authority rating system, which bears an uncanny resemblance to the MPAA rating scheme of G, PG, PG13, and R. (Marvel is presumably steering clear of an analog to NC17. {shrug}) The default (no label) is "all ages"'; "PG" is for stuff the widdle kiddies shouldn't see, but no one else will mind; "PG: violence", "PG: language", etc. is a little harsher; and "Explicit Content" will indicate gratuitous violence, language, etc... not "explicit sex". So far they aren't including these ratings in the solicitations; if they do, I will not be reproducing them here, since I am nobody's parent and it's not my responsibility.
NEW SERIES: Alias is not a super-hero series. It's a crime series starring a former super-heroine, one of those fourth-stringers who - in the grand tradition of crime fiction - has dropped out of "legitimate" work and become a private eye. It's written by - no surprise, considering the genre and publisher - Brian Michael Bendis, and illustrated by previous Bendis collaborator Michael Gaydos (whose storytelling work I'm not familiar with, but has done work with Bendis and for The Crow appears from his online portfolio to be a very strong illustrator, and would have been an excellent choice for cover artist himself).
LIMITED SERIES: If you're familiar with Garth Ennis, you know what to expect from Fury, starring ol' Nicky: as the censored sample art confirms, there will be exploding heads. Darick Robertson is drawing them for this 6-issue series.
LIMITED SERIES: U.S. War Machine presumably doesn't contain the kind of "explicit content" Chuck Austen is best known for; this one will feature superhero violence. The format is in some ways the antithesis of where the industry has been heading: hyper-serialised in weekly installments of only 12 pages, for only a buck and a half each, and in toned monochrome. It'll run through the end of November.

Mandalay
NEW SERIES: Tales of the Cherokee is written and illustrated by Gene Gonzales, artist of the (unfortunately-short-lived) all-ages series Browser & Sequoia. This series will retell some of the myths and legends of the Cherokee people and promises to be educational as well as entertaining.

Lightspeed
COLLECTION: The third volume of the excellent character-focused sci-fi series Finder by Carla Speed McNeil is on the way. The King of the Cats reprints #15-18, and is 120 pages for $14.

Landwaster
GRAPHIC NOVEL: I've seen a little bit of Jason Marcy's superhero/humour work, which tended a bit toward stoopid gastrointestinal gags, but it had a certain style to it, and the solicitation of the autobiographical Jay's Days sound like it may be a bit more interesting. An unspecified number of pages for $17.

Image
NEW SERIES: Noble Causes is a creator-owned series by Jay Faerber, whose high-concept pitch is "the Kennedys with super powers". It looks like it will feature a bit more soap-opear melodrama (a la the Carringtons or Ewings) than the real Kennedys have ever actually had, but the concept of a popularly-appointed royal family fits. It's launching with a stand-alone introductory issue entitled First Impressions with the series itself starting in a few months.
NEW SERIES: It's kind of amazing how malleable the concept of "G.I. Joe" is. He was originally an everyman soldier (referring to the standard "Government Issue" matériel), and has morphed with the times. The back cover of the new series features a ninja-esque figure who'd be very unfamiliar to the original G.I. Joe. Writer Josh Blaylock promises some degree of continuity with the previous series, which I understand is well-loved by those who read it back in the day.
SPECIAL: Tellos, the medieval-fantasy series by Todd Dezago and Mike Wieringo is still on hiatus, but Dezago doesn't seem to realise that, as he's written three short stories for it, which are collected in Sons & Moons, and one of which starts setting things up for the return of the ongoing series. 48 pages for $6.
COLLECTIONS: You have your choice of new Zorro or old Zorro. Zorro: The Dailies reprints the 1990's newspaper strip by Don McGregor and Thomas Yeates in its entirety. Zorro: The Complete Alex Toth is a new printing of a collection from a few years ago, reprinting the earlier adventures of this proto-super-hero by guess-who. Either book is 248 pages for $19.
ILLUSTRATED NOVELLA: Delicate Creatures is a fantasy story by J. Michael Straczynski, with illustrations by Michael Zulli. 56 pages only in hardcover, for $10.

Humanoids
LIMITED SERIES: Negative Exposure is an adventure story by Enrico Marini (not "Mirini", as Previews spells it... and everyone else on the net seems to be repeating the mistake without checking), an Italian creator with a hint of (realistic) manga influence in his art. It's about a babe- and trouble-magnet investigative reporter, and will run 6 issues.

Hotel Fred
ONE-SHOT: Fred the Clown is an old-timey duotone strip with a bit of a modern twist, by Roger Langridge, available weekly on the Web. This book is a collection of those strips. Nuff said?

Headless Shakespeare
ANTHOLOGY: Stalagmite is a collection of stories by various indie cartoonists, including Brian Ralph (Cave In), Robyn Chapman (Theatre of the Meek), Jonathan Russell (Wasteland), Constance Kwinn, Kevin Scalzo (Sugar Booger), and Tatiana Gill. 48 pages for $4. [Stalagmites are the ones that point up from the floor of a cave; the ones that point down from the ceiling are stalactites.]

Green Door
Cuckoo isn't a new series, but it's slipped below my radar so far, probably due to not being distributed by Diamond until now. Issues #12 is a combination of new material, plus 16 "best of" pages reprinting pieces from earlier issues as a kind of introduction to new readers. It's an autobiographical series by Madison Clell who has Dissociative Identity Disorder (a.k.a. multiple personalities). The series has gotten strong praise from various places, both within the comics industry (e.g. an Ignatz Award, writer Andrew Vachss) and without (iconoclast doctor Patch Adams, Wired, sociologist Elizabeth Claman). This issue is 48 pages (16 of which are the reprinted material) for $3.

GAGNÉ INTERNATIONAL PRESS
NEW SERIES: Zed is a cute-looking sci-fi story by Quebecker Michel Gagné, about a young scientist whose public demonstration of his new invention goes horribly wrong. Gagné worked on the animation for the movies The Iron Giant and Osmosis Jones (but I won't hold the latter against him, since he didn't write it).

Fantagraphics
GRAPHIC NOVELLA: Hey, Wait... Jason 64 pages for $10.
COLLECTION: Luba in America Beto Hernandez 224 pages for $20.
ONE-SHOT: Beto and Mario Hernandez Tales of Shock City
SET of COLLECTIONS: Roberta Gregory's Naughty Bits keeps on coming, as other underground-type comics series from the 1990's have faded away. It's a brilliant jumble of contradictions: often sexually explicit without being titillating, funny in the midst of being angry, feminist but not very flattering to women (or men). Fanta is offering a set of five collections of Bits, four starring Bitchy Bitch and one featuring her dyke counterpart Bitchy Butch. $48.

Eddie Campbell
ONE-SHOT: OK, I won't be buying this myself, since I found The Birth Caul (an earlier adaptation of one of Alan Moore's performance art pieces by Eddie Campbell) to be as tediously pretentious as... well, your stereotypical performance art piece. From Hell it was not. But that's just me, and I've been known to be "wrong" about such things. Snakes and Ladders sounds like more of the same, so infer from that what you will. 48 pages for $6.

Drawn & Quarterly
SERIALISED GRAPHIC NOVEL: While I tend to rant that stories should be published in single volumes, I admit that there are economic - and sometimes bookbinding - reasons that's often impossible. Atlas by Dylan Horrocks would be one such case. While the anticipated 1000 pages is but a fraction of the length of Cerebus, it would still pose a challenge to just sit on it and put it all together when it's done. And at least it's going to be doled out in 80-page installments rather than the 22-page chapterlets most serialised stories come in. As for the story itself, it's a companion of sorts to Hicksville (also re-listed this month; buy it if you haven't already), taking place in part in the peculiar comics-loving New Zealand town of Hicksville and evidently trying to take on some Big Questions in the whimsical way Horrocks does. It will be the life story of Emil Kopen and a chunk of the 20th Century. Each "issue" is just $4 (which means the whole thing is probably going to cost only about $32).

Desert Island
NEW SERIES: Super Deluxe Cocopiazo Daniel Warner

DC Universe
NEW SERIES: Suicide Squad (not to be confused with the legendary Suicide Squid) is one of the handful of titles that readers continue to point out as a highlight of DC's post-Crisis renaissance, and whose cancellation nearly a decade ago they still mourn. It's finally returning, under the direction of fan-polarising writer Keith Giffen, who promises to remain true to some of John Ostrander's vision of the concept (focusing on the characters, some of whom will sometimes die), but with his own approach. Relative new-comer Paco Medina will be penciling it.
ONE-SHOT: With an are-they-or-aren't-they duo like Harley & Ivy, a title like Love on the Lam, a gay-friendly-but-straight young writer like Judd Winick, and a pin-up artist like Joe Chiodo, I can imagine some P.R. execs at Time/Warner/AOL being nervous about this book. Sounds like good clean fun to me. 48 pages for $6.
COLLECTION: Batman: Dark Victory, Jeph Loeb's and Tim Sales' sequel to The Long Halloween, is being reprinted. This look back at a mystery in Batman (and now Robin's) early career is nearly 400 pages for $30, which is a darn good price for a hardcover. If you can't budget that, however, a disclaimer in the solicitation implies that a paperback edition will be out sometime next year.
NEW ARCHIVES SERIES: The original Blackhawk team is being added to DC's Archive Editions line. The early-1940's angle on multiculturalism was a bit stereotype-laden, but as an effort to unite American readers around a multinational response to the Axis powers' aggression, it was a step in the right direction. This volume reprints the earliest stories from 1941 and 1942, including some written by Will Eisner. 240 pages in hardcover for $50.
REPRINT: A little more affordable is a "fascimile edition" of the first Flash Annual, reproducing the book from 1963 that introduced Kid Flash, Elongated Man, and Gorilla Grodd, featuring the work of John Broome, Robert Kanigher, Carmine Infantino, Lee Elias, Joe Giella (currently doing the somewhat slower-paced Mary Worth strip), and Frank Giacoia. 80 pages for $7.
SPECIAL: Looking instead to the future, another Flash: Secret Files book is being offered, with the usual assortment of character profiles, short pieces, and teasers about upcoming stories. Includes a Chase appearance written by D. Curtis Johnson. 48 pages for $5.

DC: Vertigo
GRAPHIC NOVEL: I, Paparazzi (which I hope is intentional grammatic irony; "paparazzi" is plural) is a new book by Pat McGreal and Stephen John Phillips. It's the story of a paparazzo who gets sucked into discovering a dark secret underlying our society. It's done using digitally modified photographic art, which seems an appropriate medium for this story. It's 96 pages in hardcover for a somewhat uncomfortable $30.
LIMITED SERIES: War Story is a series of four self-contained graphic novellas written by Garth Ennis set in the midst of World War II, each with a different illustrator. With Ennis writing, you can be pretty sure that "graphic" will be an accurate adjective. Johann's Story is the first, about a German tank commander trying to surrender to the advancing Americans, penciled by Chris Weston. The coming books will be illustrated by Dave Gibbons, John Higgins, and David Lloyd. Each book will be 64 pages for $5.
COLLECTION: The first four issues of American Century are being reprinted. Scars and Stripes, by Howard Chaykin and David Tischman with art by Marc Laming, tells how former war hero Harry Block goes rogue in Korea of 1950, setting him on the road to life outside the law. 96 pages for $9. For those debating whether to buy the series month to month or wait for collected editions, the promptness and modest size of this reprint suggests that it's an effort to make the opening issues easier to find, as a way to get more readers for the monthly, rather than an indication that they've commited to ongoing collections. So if you decide to order this because you've heard it's good, you might want to grab #5 and up as they come out.

DC: Misc.
GRAPHIC NOVEL: A Life Force is the latest addition to DC's line of Will Eisner reprints. Eisner has told several stories weaving a rich tapestry of a single New York City neighbourhood during the Depression, and this is one of those. 144 pages for $13.

DC: Paradox
COLLECTION: The Remarkable Worlds of Phineas B. Fuddle (a fun kind of cross between Around the World in 80 Days and a modern time-travel-paradoxes story) is being reprinted in a single volume as the gods intended. It's written by ace moviemaker Boaz Yakin with art by the talented Erez Yakin. 192 pages for $20.

DC: WildStorm
GRAPHIC NOVEL: Forgiveness is a Star Trek: The Next Generation story about the 21st-century man who invented transporter technology and a chance encounter with the crew of Picard's Enterprise. It's written by former science teacher and noted sci-fi novelist David Brin. Scott Hampton seems an odd choice for the art, since his watercolor art has an old-fashioned feel that doesn't fit the usual look of TNG, but it's definitely nice to look at. The books is 96 pages in hardcover for $25.
COLLECTION: For those with a smaller budget than that, Star Trek: The Next Generation - Enemy Unseen reprints two recent mini-series and a one-shot starring Picard and crew: Perchance to Dream by Keith DeCandido, Embrace the Wolf by Christopher Golden and Tom Sniegoski, and The Killing Shadows by Scott Ciencin. 224 pages for $18.
LIMITED SERIES: Taleweaver weaves together feudal Japanese customs and life on a distant planet. It's written by Leonard Banaag (about whom I can find nothing) and penciled by Philip S. Tan (ditto). The information in the solicitation seems to strongly imply how the story will resolve itself, but it looks like it could be pretty good. 6 issues.
NEW SERIES: Yes, it's another spin-off from The Authority, as WildStorm tries to do with the word "The" what Marvel once did with the letter "X". The Establishment is written by Ian Edginton and illustrated by Charlie Adlard, featuring a government-sanction covert superhero team.
COLLECTION: Brian Augustyn's and Humberto Ramos' Crimson, the only Cliffhanger series to actually come out on a schedule, is staying true to form even after it's ended. Redemption, collecting the last six issues of the series, is being offered to come out about six months after the previous collection. 160 pages for $15.

Dark Horse
GRAPHIC NOVEL: The Big Hoax is another of Dark Horse's "Venture" translations of European books, published jointly with Strip Art Features. It's written by Carlos Trillo and illustrated by Roberto Mandrafina, a story about an ex-cop in Latin America who finds himself drawn into a web of intrigue surrounding a local saint who turns out to be quite the opposite. 128 pages for $11.
GRAPHIC NOVEL: Otto Porfiri: Drama on the Cliff is also a "Venture" book, one in a series of graphic novels starring the eponymous chubby private detective. The stories are written and illustrated by Franco Saudelli, an artist notorious for his erotic work (especially involving women-in-bondage scenes), some of which has been published by Fanta's Eros imprint. This books is merely "for mature readers", so I'd expect it to be relatively tame. 88 pages for $10.
MULTI-MEDIA: Bryan Talbot's Heart of Empire (plus its predecessor The Adventures of Luther Arkwright) is being reissued in a special CD-ROM edition, which includes the entire graphic novel at each stage of its production (pencils, inks, and fully colored) along with ample comentary (mostly related to the book) by Talbot. (Adventures is included without commentary, as it was published.) It's $40, which is a decent price just for the two books, regardless of the medium and the extras. Adventures is also back in print (on paper), and available for order separately for $17.

Comic Library Intl
GRAPHIC NOVEL: Or rather a "comic novel", as Click Track is actually subtitled. Scott Roberts

Colonia
COLLECTION: Jeff Nicholson tried selling out a few years ago, with Father and Son, a series about a hard-working Boomer and his slacker Gen-X son. It was pretty good, but not successful enough apparently. Everybody's Favorite Sell-Out reprints the four issues that came out, plus an unpublished story and omited pages. 120 pages for $10.

Absence of Ink
NEW ANTHOLOGY: Absence of Ink Theatre is a multi-creator, multi-story, generally-multi-issue anthology with rotating features. Folks on the net may recognise reviewer Rob Vollmar

A Fine Line
GRAPHIC NOVELLA: Bosom Enemies: Bearing Our Losses is the second book featuring Donna Barr's "other" human/horse characters: not the centaurs of Stinz's clan, but an American and a German soldier, both captured and transformed to have horse haunches, then forced to serve together as steeds for horse-headed "humans". The original book reprinted earlier 'zine stories with some new material; this one is all new. $6 for 64 pages.

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