Fresh off the boat from swinging London is issue six of NoBow Magazine. For their first double issue NoBrow asked over 60 artists to contribute work to the theme of Doubles or Doppelgangers. With contributions from Tom Gauld (The Gigantic Robot), Kevin Huizenga (Ganges), Blanquet (Toys in the Basement), Malachi Ward (Utu) as well as new narrative work from Nobrow stalwarts Jon McNaught (Birchfield Close, Pebble Island), Jack Teagle (Jeff: Job Hunter) and Luke Pearson (Hildafolk) and the formidable talents of Michael Deforge and Ignatz newcomer award winner Joseph Lambert, among many, many others. Illustration submissions from the likes of Sean Lewis, Roman Muradov, Golden Cosmos, Gwenola Carrere, Andrea Kalfas, Viviane Scwartz, Katia Spitzer, Luke Best and many many more!
We’ve also got the newest issue of the excellent Mother’s News in; and, while supplies last, anyone whose order ships out from the Wow Cool shop via Media or Priority Flat Rate mail gets a free copy. The last couple issues flew out of here pretty quick. For those who don’t know, Mother’s News is a free monthly newspaper out of Providence, RI. It features regular comic strips by Michael DeForge, C.F., Brian Chippendale, Mickey Z. and many other that you can’t find elsewhere.
There are many new books that should be arriving any day, in the meanwhile we’ve recently added some older gems, including: fresh stock of Eric Haven’s The Aviatrix and Andy Ristaino’s Tunnel; Scott C.’s Double Fine Action Comics Volume 1; Tom Gauld’s The Gigantic Robot; the very fine second and third issues of the anthology Pencil Fight; and a Craig Thompson rarity in the Dark Horse magazine Reveal.
In other news, there is finally some proper art in the shop header, courtesy of Andy Ristaino.
Lady Starlight is profiled in the online magazine IN*TANDEM, with many pull-quotes and video loops by Jason Martin. Jump to page 95 for the action. Has she traded in the Jack Daniel’s for donuts? Denim for diamonds? What is going on?
Sarah, as Mike Kirsch, has been one of the most distinctive voices in punk for many bands you may know (Fuel, Sawhorse, Pinhead Gunpowder, John Henry West, Torches To Rome, Bread And Circuits, Please Inform The Captain This Is A Hijack, Baader Brains, Mothercountry Motherfuckers, etc.). She not too long ago came out as a proud trans-woman, and almost immediately was confronted with these terrible health problems. Money is badly needed.
Details:
Our good friend Sarah Kirsch was diagnosed over summer with Fanconi anemia, a rare genetic disorder that causes leukemia and other cancers. Despite being put through the f’n ringer by chemotherapy, a bone marrow transplant and very long hospital stays, Sarah is staying strong and fighting hard, finally out of the hospital and at home with her amazing partner Jess and loving full-time caregivers and friends, Paul and Ilya.??
Aside from the unconditional emotional and physical support Sarah has received from her devoted extended family and friends, donations to date have been enormously helpful in lightening the financial burden of this kind of illness. The demand for supplies not covered by insurance is, however, unending and deepening — from food to cleaning supplies to lotion to kleenex to parking at the hospital… and this is to say nothing of larger caregiving expenses.
It is all adding up and multiple life savings have already been depleted. ??If you’re able and would like to contribute in this way, please check out our WePay account below. There is no donation too small, every $ helps.??
Sarah was bandmates with our own Joshua Baker in Sawhorse. I was going to use some more recent video, but couldn’t resist this classic clip of the mighty Fuel. Most of this post was lifted straight off of Maximum RockNRoll.
There are a couple of Kickstarter projects that are near and dear to us that could use your support as they near the final hour.
UPDATED: Crap Hound 6 met it’s goal at the last minute with little to spare. Congratulations! Thanks to everyone who pledged! Previously: With mere hours to go Crap Hound #6: Death, Telephones & Scissors! is still short of it’s goal (as this is being written, might not be true as you read this).
Already past its goal with a couple days to go, but still needing some extra help to safely up the print run to a thousand is Injury Comics #4. Please help these guys out.
As the seasons renew and the days last longer, lo!, there are new books in the shop and I stay up later to tell you about them. We have lifted the curse of a seemingly endless array of books published in 2008, which made up the bulk of additions to the shop last month, and moved on to actual new things.
First up we have Wild Glass Look Back by R. Clint Colburn, a full color sketchbook collection from new publisher Space Face Books. This is a very limited edition at a very reasonable price.
Next is the very latest in the Retrofit series, Noah Van Sciver’s 1999: The Year My World Ended – a possibly slightly ironic (given the year depicted) take on the putting the pathetic loser through a possibly semi-autobiographical hell tale.
Lastly, to prove that April is far from cruel, we give you fear in a handful of dust (wait that’s not right…) No, we give you D.I.Y. Magic by Anthony Alvarado – spawned from his Athur Magazine column and now taken root in heavily illustrated (by Ron Regé, Jesse Moynihan, Malachi Ward, Farel Dalrymple and many others) bound paper form from Portland’s Floating World Books.
Stay tuned for more goodness. This is looking to be an exciting year in funny book land.
I wrote this in the comments to an article on The Beat about Image Comics‘ response to questions about the high frequency of their recent titles going back for second and even third printings (they’re not the only ones, other recent examples include Superbia, the first two issues of Adventure Time and Fanboys Vs. Zombies from Boom.). I posted it a couple days after the original article was published, so I doubt very many people read it. I’ve had a number of concerns lately about comics staying in print and the lack of availability of even fairly recent alternative titles. This is to be the first of a series of related articles. Enjoy.
I don’t have a subscription at my local shop. I don’t do all my new comics shopping at one store (we’re lucky to have several in the San Jose area). I don’t go every week. There are very few titles I buy every issue of. I check out several new books when I shop. Some I just browse. Some I flip through. A few I buy to take home and check out. I often buy books because they feature a favorite artist or writer. I frequently mutter in disgust and put the book back on the shelf when the art on the inside is no match for what’s on the cover. The last time I went at least once a month to the comic shop was when Brian K. Vaughan still had 2 regular series coming out (which was only for a short while after there were three). I often go and don’t find anything I want. Several times in recent months a book I was looking for was not available.
One thing that gets me into shops is online previews and reviews at the various popular comics news sites. I check at least four a day with the rest of my morning news. Some of the most talked about titles of the last many months on these include Image’s Mud Man, Saga, King City, Nonplayer, Orc Stain and Prophet. Saga was easy enough to find. The same shop that had that for me turned me on to Nonplayer. The rest, I have had to hunt all up and down the San Francisco bay to keep up with. If I could easily get Image titles online in print I would do that. It took several months to track down one elusive issue of King City. I don’t buy digital comics. I do read web comics.
Anytime I’m in a shop looking for particular titles it’s a safe bet I won’t find at least one of them. Sometimes the book hasn’t shipped when I thought it had. More often I’m told “we only got one of those, I guess it sold” – as was the case with the much hyped Mud Man #1. Most commonly the shop hasn’t ordered it and the clerk has never heard of it.
I also look for comics my son might like. His favorite is Scooby Doo. It is very rare to find more than the most recent issue available. Shop owners! If you take nothing else away from my little ramble, do yourself just this one favor. Order more Scooby Doo. They’ll sell.
Happy Music Monday with this 1999 clip of Nick Cave talking about the mighty Pop Group. Sorry there was a bit of a blogging blackout here last week. It wasn’t intentional, just slightly less than usual going on. Will try to get a thorough update of all the little bits happening up here on Tuesday.
We have just received a very special package from Mister Michael DeForge containing a stack of his most recent self-published comics: Kid Mafia #1 and the first and second installments of Open Country. These are all printed and hand-assembled by Michael. Also included were what may be the last few copies available in the United States of the classic Koyama Press title from 2010, Spotting Dear. Get ‘em while they are hot folks!
UPDATE: Apparently they were way hotter than anyone thought. Our apologies to everyone that was unable to get copies of these books. Some of them had sold out even before this post was published today. We never expected that much of a response. The power of a single tweet. We will have more copies available when Michael can get them printed and shipped to us.
In other news (updated 3/22): The problem with first class shipping on international orders has now been fixed. Massive apologies to our non-US customers who encountered a lack of the more affordable first class shipping option on check out. This is a problem we thought had been resolved. Apparently that is not the case on all orders. We are working hard to fix it. There is nothing we can do about the high charges for Priority and Express Mail. Rates are calculated by the US Postal Service and no charges are added by us. Thank you to everyone who paid us a visit today. Don’t worry if you missed out. Those books will be back.
The mighty tabloid from Philadelphia returns! They met their (way too modest) goal on the first day and have now set a secondary goal of $1,500 to double the print run. From the same team that brought you the mighty Rub The Blood. Get on over and Kickstarter this monster!
The latest issue of Desert Island’s excellent tabloid comics anthology Smoke Signal is out now and available for free from the store in Brooklyn or for a mere $3 online. It’s 28 pages, color and black and white, printed in an edition of 2000. Includes work by Brian Ralph, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Kamagurka and Seele (Cowboy Henk), Gabrielle Bell, Glenn Head, cover art and five pages of “Belligerent Piano” by Tim Lane and much more. Be sure to look for Wow Cool’s full color ad in this issue featuring art by Andy Ristaino.
Desert Island is located at 540 Metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211 | Map
Our fine friends at Sparkplug Books are getting set to publish three new titles – the first big batch since founder Dylan Williams’ passing last year – and they need your help to make it happen. There is an excellent array of reward items, including original art and t-shirts. Get yourself over to Indiegogo and help them out.
The stylish poster above was designed under great duress (seriously, it’s been a pretty heavy week here) by Wow Cool’s own Marc Arsenault (me). How often do you get to draw Nixon, Elvis and George Kuchar together?
Howdy folks. We’ve got the newest issue of the excellent Mother’s News in; and, while supplies last, anyone whose order ships out from the Wow Cool shop via Media or Priority Flat Rate mail gets a free copy. The last couple issues flew out of here pretty quick. For those who don’t know, Mother’s News is a free monthly newspaper out of Providence, RI. It features regular comic strips by Michael DeForge, C.F., Brian Chippendale, Mickey Z. and many other that you can’t find elsewhere.
From 2008 – but new to Wow Cool – is Microsoft’s Zune Arts sole publishing project: The Lost Ones. We received a stack of these direct from author Steve (30 Days of Night) Niles, who was nice enough to sign them for us. This 80-page full color graphic novel is surely one of the stranger entries in any of the contributors bibliographies. On board for the cover art and the final quarter of the story is Gary Panter. Also contributing are Morning Breath, Dr. Revolt and Kime Buzzelli.
In other shop news: The WowCool.com server has been upgraded. We are all kinds of faster and smoother now. The shopping cart software has been upgraded to the most recent version. Thousands of changes, adjustments and additions have been made to the product listings. Best news of all – especially for our non-US customers – the shipping calculations have been massively improved, accommodating the most recent overhaul by the USPS of their shipping rates and regulations. Rates for everyone will now (in most cases) appear from the cheapest to the more expensive options. As always, we recommend Priority Flat Rate as the most reliable – and in many cases, most affordable – option. Thanks for shopping with us. Wow Cool, global leaders in the freaky and the messed up.
Erin is my hero. Go listen to her awesome Life During Wartime radio show, which she’s been co-hosting for over 15 years. The shows used to be released on cassette back in the ’90s. This is the video of the week over on Maximum RockNRoll, where Erin and I are both fairly lazy contributors.
OMG, the cameraman is quite in love with Erick Lyle and Anandi in that concert video! Erin rocked the drums with our own Joshua Baker in Things I Hate and Chased and Smashed (as seen in the video, duh). The Chased and Smashed – 30 Seconds Over Hillsboro EP is still available right here.
Ted May is all done with the fourth issue of his Injury Comics series. The catch is, he’s without a publisher at the moment. The book’s all done – featuring contributions from Jeff Wilson and Mike Reddy – they just need to be printed. And, yup, Ted needs your help to do that.
Dropping onto shelves later this month: Simon Gane illustrates writer Brian Wood’s tale of lost Viking history. Foot soldier Mads gives a grunt’s-eye view of the famous Siege of Paris where hundreds defended against thousands, and political maneuvering was as important as the clash of the shield wall. Even while they fight off the invading horde, Mads and company still have to make it through the brutal winter to survive. Collects Northlanders 37-39 “The Siege of Paris” + #40 “The Hunt” – illustrated by Matt Woodson, and #41 “Thor’s Daughter”, illustrated by Marian Churchland. Also, as mentioned recently, Simon will be the regular artist on the new Godzilla series starting in May.
Print
– March 20, 2012
