Super powered humans started appearing 30 years ago. Now, they are everywhere. Bob Moore, Private Eye, dares to investigate those who could incinerate him with a thought. When he is called to help a super from his past, however, he’ll be pushed to his limit. When supers and the police think there is no crime, can he get to the truth? Will he want to for the man that destroyed his marriage?

Bob Moore is a private investigator with a select clientele – ‘Super’s',those with special powers who are a part of everyday society. He reluctantly takes on a case to investigate the alleged disappearance of Doc Arts patients despite the general skepticism and his dislike of the man. Just as Moore decides to quit he witnesses a gruesome death and Moore is determined to find the callous murderer. Read the rest of this entry »

The Killing Joke, one of favorite Batman stories ever, stirred a bit of controversy because the story involves the Joker brutally, pointlessly shooting Commissioner Gordon’s daughter in the spine. This is a no-holds-barred take on a truly insane criminal mind, masterfully written by British comics writer Alan Moore. The art by Brian Bolland is so appealing that his depiction of the Joker became a standard and was imitated by many artists to follow.

This classic, infamous story in the Batman saga has been recolored with a more effectively cooler palette and set into context with an introduction and an afterword. Escaped from Arkham Asylum, villain deluxe Joker shoots Barbara “Batgirl” Gordon as part of his plan to drive her police commissioner father insane. Intending to prove that anyone can go mad after “one bad day” as he describes in his putative origin story, the Joker also kidnaps and torments Commissioner Gordon. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s phonics! It’s comics! It’s awesome! Perfect for early adn developing readers, each paperback indlues three exciting, easy-to-read stories! Level 1 titles feature easy-to sound out words, simple sentences, strong picture clues and beginning sight words.

Level 2 introduces varied consonant combinations, longer sentences and intermediate sight words. No foe is too mean, to big or too smelly for these four regular kids that have extraordinary talents!

This book contains 3 stories about 4 kids who are the Fearless Four. One uses gum (named Gum Bo), one uses yo-yos (named Yo-Yo Girl), one uses his undies or gives wedgies (named Wedgie Boy), and the fourth whines all the time (named Whiner). Read the rest of this entry »

Inge’s gathering of “Schulz’s major prose writings” attests the cartoonist’s consistency. He wrote without drawing as limpidly as he did with. His sentences are as chaste and precise in diction, as direct in address, and as lucid in meaning as the words he put in the Peanuts gang’s speech and thought balloons.

His stylistic peers are Hemingway and the best of the lean, clean, mostly crime-fiction writers who followed Papa. But he’s never as passive as Papa, never as sentimental as those crime-fictionists. He sounds ingenuous and comradely, one person talking to another, engaged but uncontentious. Read the rest of this entry »

The story concerns a group called the Crimebusters and a plot to kill and discredit them. Moore’s characterization is as sophisticated as any novel’s. Importantly the costumes do not get in the way of the storytelling; rather they allow Moore to investigate issues of power and control–indeed it was Watchmen, and to a lesser extent Dark Knight, that propelled the comic genre forward, making “adult” comics a reality.

The artwork of Gibbons (best known for 2000AD’s Rogue Trooper and DC’s Green Lantern) is very fine too, echoing Moore’s paranoid mood perfectly throughout. Packed with symbolism, some of the overlying themes (arms control, nuclear threat, vigilantes) have dated but the intelligent social and political commentary, the structure of the story itself, its intertextuality (chapters appended with excerpts from other “works” and “studies” on Moore’s characters, or with excerpts from another comic book being read by a child within the story), the finepace of the writing and its humanity mean that Watchmen more than stands up–it keeps its crown as the best the genre has yet produced. Read the rest of this entry »

The most powerful characters in two universes collide as DC’s premier super-heroes meet Marvel’s. Collected in a gorgeous two-volume oversized slipcased hardcover is perhaps the most eagerly anticipated and memorable crossover of all time, as the Justice League of America unites with The Avengers.

Superman, Batman, and the other members of the JLA join forces with Captain America, Iron Man, and the many other Avengers to fight a threat so immense it threatens two entire dimensions. The second hardcover in this deluxe set features art and articles chronicling this historic crossover–which has been over twenty years in the making. Read the rest of this entry »

There will be standing room only for Matt Groening’s newest Simpsons Comics collection of comedy classics. This big, bulky, boffo book will have you bemused, boggled, and beside yourself with belly laughs.

Join “Our Favorite Family” as: Lisa joins a babysitter’s union only to uncover an insidious plot against the youth of Springfield; Homer “steals” Ned Flanders’s swimming pool, leading to a full-scale siege on Evergreen Terrace; the whole family’s Thanksgiving is threatened by Bart’s greed, Lisa’s protests, and Homer’s run-in with crazed, butter-fed turkeys; Lisa explores the subterranean catacombs under Springfield Elementary School; Grampa’s ownership of a WWII tank hurtles Springfield towards the brink of destruction; Homer and Moe’s other regular customers open a rival bar; Read the rest of this entry »

Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver, the visionaries responsible for the blockbuster GREEN LANTERN: REBIRTH and THE SINESTRO CORPS WAR, comes the start of an explosive and jaw-dropping epic that will reintroduce to Barry Allen, the modern age Flash who single-handedly birthed the Silver Age of comics!

“Flash: Rebirth” has so many plot twists and major revelations (including, at last, an explanation of how the “speed force” that all Flashes draw upon works) that it’s difficult to suggest how good this story arc is without dropping any spoilers, so let’s just say that in the aftermath of the Final Crisis, Barry Allen returns to Central City, which is more than happy to welcome back its original Flash. The moment Barry confronts his first supercriminal, though, things go catastrophically wrong. Read the rest of this entry »

Buffy Season Eight Volume 6 showcases the first failure of the Slayer legion. Vampires have solid footing at the top of the totem and Slayers have been crushed to the bottom – in short, no one likes Buffy anymore… least of all this season’s mysterious Big Bad, Twilight, who is hot on her magical trail! Now that it’s the world against Slayers, Buffy must find a way to return the status quo to… status quo – and keep her girls alive long enough to do it! Enter Oz, the only person/werewolf Buffy knows who is down with the suppression of magic, and can take the Slayer army off of Twilight’s magic-specific radar.

With Oz’s assistance the Slayers and Wiccans try to become “normal” through meditation and hard labor – although, not everyone sees the advantage of being magicless, namely, Willow, Giles, and Andrew. Read the rest of this entry »

Masterpiece Comics adapts a variety of classic literary works with the most iconic visual idioms of twentieth-century comics. Dense with exclamation marks and lurid colors, R. Sikoryak’s parodies remind us of the sensational excesses of the canon, or, if you prefer, of the economical expressiveness of classic comics from Batman to Garfield. In “Blond Eve,” Dagwood and Blondie are ejected from the Garden of Eden into their archetypal suburban home; Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray is reimagined as a foppish Little Nemo; and Camus’s Stranger becomes a brooding, chain-smoking Golden Age Superman. Other source material includes Dante, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, bubblegum wrappers, superhero comics, kid cartoons, and more.

Sikoryak, clearly a man who enjoys a challenge, not only finds astonishing parallels between characters from highbrow literature and pop culture, but he paintstakingly draws each cartoon parody in a line-perfect recreation of the original’s style, right down to the flat, four-color palette that comics were stuck with in the pre-computer era. It’s a virtuoso performance. Read the rest of this entry »