Never read a graphic novel before? Haven’t read a comic book in years?

Here’s some brand new stuff that came out the week of October 14 that I think is worth a look-see for someone with little to no history with comics. That means you should be able to pick any of these up cold without having read anything else. So take a look and see if something doesn’t grab your fancy. If so, follow the publisher links or Amazon.com links to buy yourself a copy. Or, head to your local friendly comic book shop.

[And yes, I'm nearly a month behind. You don't have to rub it in.]

Disclaimer: For the most part, I have not read these yet, so I can’t vouch for their quality. But, from what I’ve heard and seen, odds are good they just might appeal to you.

Blood + Water – $17.95
By Judd Winick & Tomm Coker
128 pages; published by DC Comics’ Vertigo Books; available at Amazon.com

Adam Heller is dying, but before he can take the big dirt nap, his best friends offer him a chance at immortality and he takes it. Now Adam is a vampire living it up on the wild side and it’s everything he could ever want. But the eternal party crashes to a bloody halt when an ancient monster awakens from the dark, forgotten places of the world and comes looking for Adam. The startling reason this monster has come looking for him may be the most horrifying realization of all.

I read this story when it originally came out in individual comic book issues back in 2003. (I can’t believe that was 6 years ago.) I find Judd Winick to be kind of a mixed bag as a writer, but this was one of his good ones. And as I recall Tomm Coker’s art is even better. It was so solid, I was kind of surprised a sequel never materialized. Maybe this collected edition is a hint that one is finally coming. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a preview. If anyone finds one, post it in the comments below.

Heavy Liquid – $24.99
By Paul Pope
240 pages; published by DC Comics’ Vertigo Books; available at Amazon.com

“Pope has embellished his stylish love story with heart-stopping action and adventure. …Pope’s drawing and page design … is both technically assured and wonderfully expressive.” —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

“This has the potential to attract a large audience, including serious readers, science-fiction buffs, artists, and would-be graphic novelists.” —SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL

In a future where New York has evolved into a sci-fi metropolis, “S,” a man addicted to “heavy liquid,” a substance that is both a drug and an art form, finds himself trapped in a mystery littered with love and drugs. This new edition features bonus sketch material, new coloring and more.

Another one from Vertigo’s vaults, this was originally released in early 2000. Paul Pope is one of the art form’s more exceptional storytellers and artists and this has been on my must-get list for some time. It’s great to see this re-released. DC Comics has a pretty skimpy preview here in PDF.

The Fixer and Other Stories – $19.95
By Joe Sacco
216 pages; published by Drawn and Quarterly; available at Amazon.com

“Sacco is one of the most astute war-zone correspondents working today” –Rolling Stone

“A searing and amusing look at the motley collection of reporters, war profiteers, criminals, soldiers and hapless civilians trapped in war zone.” –New York Times

“Sacco doesn’t try to lay claim to the truth. He’s simply telling one man’s story, and it makes for an excellent book.” –Washington Post

“Sacco demonstrates that the narrative arts, including comics, can gather up complicated social truths with a gradual patience that often eludes the camera.” –Boston Globe

Using old-fashioned pen and paper, award-winning cartoonist Joe Sacco reports from the sidelines of wars around the world. THE FIXER AND OTHER STORIES is a new softcover that collects Joe Sacco’s landmark short stories on the Bosnian War that previously comprised the hardcover editions of THE FIXER and WARS END.

It must be re-issue week. This reprints material from 2003 and 2005. Joe Sacco is living proof that comics can do and be anything. Even journalism. And fortunately he’s real good at it, too. It’s sorta kinda like NPR in comics.

Blackbeard: Legend of the Pyrate King #1 – $3.50
By Eduardo Sanchez, Gregg Hale, Robert Napton, Jamie Nash and Mario Guevara
32 pages; published by Dynamite Entertaiment

Dynamite presents their most ambitious undertaking yet – BLACKBEARD: THE LEGEND OF THE PYRATE KING #1! Under the stunning John Cassaday, producers Eduardo (writer of The Blair Witch Project) Sanchez and Gregg (producer of The Blair Witch Project) Hale are joined by Robert Napton and Jamie Nash to present the ultimate adventure tale of a bygone age, when pyrates ruled the waters!
Beginning with his childhood and carry through to his bitter end, Blackbeard’s legacy has never been explored as deeply and illustrated as beautifully (by Mario Guevara) than now!

I don’t really consider a comic by the makers of The Blair Witch Project to be all that big of a selling point, but Dynamite has had a pretty decent track record with properties like The Lone Ranger, Zorro and Sherlock Holmes. I think this is their first comic steeped in history and based on an actual person, and I’m sure liberties will be taken. But it looks like a fun ride nevertheless. Check out the preview at the publisher link above.

MOME Vol. 16 – $14.99
Edited by Gary Groth and Eric Reynolds
112 pages; published by Fantagraphics Books; available at Amazon.com

Since its inception in 2005, Mome has served as a comics McSweeney’s. Whether exposing new talent like Eleanor Davis (author of the recent Stinky by Toon Books); featuring short stories by contemporary graphic novelists like Dash Shaw (The Bottomless Belly Button); bringing the work of international superstars like David B. (Epileptic) to American audiences; or introducing the work of legends like Gilbert Shelton (The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers) to a new generation of readers, Mome is the most acclaimed, accessible, frequent, and reasonably priced anthology on the market despite it’s high production values and mostly color format.

This issue features several of our favorite alternative comic artists of the last 15 years, bringing us great joy. Archer Prewitt is the first, with an all-new “Funny Bunny” strip created in between his active musical career. “The Moolah Tree” is the new Fuzz & Pluck graphic novel from Ted Stearn, following Fuzz & Pluck and Fuzz & Pluck: Splitsville, beginning serialization here. We are equally proud to debut new work from Renée French, whose work is also featured on the front and back cover of this issue. And Nicholas Mahler debuts to ask “What Is Art?” (translated by secret weapon Kim Thompson).

Also: the second chapter of T. Edward Bak’s “Wild Man – The Strange Journey – and Fantastic Accounts – of the Naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller, from Bavaria to Bolshaya Zemlya (and Beyond)”; a new “Cold Heat” story by the team of Ben Jones, Frank Santoro & Jon Vermilyea; Dash Shaw interprets an episode of “Blind Date” into comics form; and new stories from Lilli Carré, Conor O’Keefe, Laura Park, Nate Neal, and Sara Edward-Corbett, with incidental drawings by Kaela Graham.

This highly regarded quarterly anthology is a great survey of some of the industry’s greatest and most innovative creators. If you’ve always wanted to sample quality alternative comics, here’s your first stop. Here’s a great big 12-page preview (PDF).

You Are There – $26.99
By Jacques Tardi & Jean-Claude Forest
192 pages; published by Fantagraphics Books; available at Amazon.com

The satirical masterpiece that ushered in the graphic novel era to European comics, finally available in English—the beginning of an ambitious publishing project introducing one of Europe’s most beloved cartoonists to American audiences. One of the earliest full-length, standalone graphic novels to be published in Europe, and certainly one of the best and most original, Ici Même was serialized in the adult French comics monthly (A suivre) in the early 1980s and then released in book form. A quarter of a century later, this dark, funny, consistently surprising masterpiece has finally been translated into English.

An unexpected yet smoothly confident collaboration between the darkly cynical Jacques Tardi and the playful fantasist Jean-Claude Forest (of Barbarella fame), You Are There is set on a small island off the coast of France, where unscrupulous landowners have succeeded in overtaking the land from the last heir of a previously wealthy family. That heir, whose domain, in a Beckettian twist, is now reduced to the walls that border these patches of land he used to own, prowls the walls all day, eking out a living by collecting tolls at each gate. His seemingly hopeless struggle to recover his birthright becomes complicated as the government sees a way of using his plight for the sake of political expediency, and the romantic intervention of the daughter of one of the landowners (who has her own sordid history with the politician) engenders further difficulties, culminating in an apocalyptic, hallucinatory finale.

Set in Tardi’s preferred early 20th century milieu, You Are There is drawn in his crisp 1980s neo-“clear line” style, gorgeously detailed, elegantly stylized, with impossibly deep slabs of black. You Are There is a feast for both the eyes and the brain.

As we cover in our documentary Dig Comics, the perception of comic books and their corresponding growth (or lack thereof) is notably different in countries other than the United States. This past summer, Dig Comics director/writer/host Miguel Cima discovered firsthand that France has a healthier, more diverse industry. This release from 1979 was apparently a significant moment in the growth of that industry. Here’s an even bigger 19-page preview (PDF).

The Act-I-Vate Primer – $24.99
Edited by Dean Haspiel, Nick Bertozzi, et al.
160 pages; published by IDW Publishing; available at Amazon.com

In the tradition of the acclaimed and groundbreaking anthology, Flight, the ACT-I-VATE Primer showcases a wide array of stories and talent -18 innovative creators, 16 intriguing properties, one beautiful book – and all-new, never-before-seen stories and art!

act-i-vate.com is the premier comic art collective on the Internet, featuring many renowned cartoonists who produce all-new material on a regular basis. The ACT-I-VATE PRIMER is a PRINT EXCLUSIVE anthology by many of the Act-I-Vate creators. None of the material in this book will appear on the Act-I-Vate website for at least one year from publication date.

There is a lot of good comics work being doing online and Act-I-Vate.com is one of the best hubs to find it. This anthology is another fine sampler. Here’s a 16-page preview.

That’s it for this week. Tougher than usual to whittle it down to a halfway digestible list. Yay comics!

hey kids. this is a quick one. pal anders nilsen put together an art auction to raise money for grass roots efforts to help influence the passing of universal health care. lots of amazing artists contributed some righteous art that you can own. artists include: anders nilsen, genevieve castree, ivan brunetti, jeffrey brown, chris ware, lilli carre, kevin huizenga, dan clowes, and tons more. original art, prints, photos, books, etc. you can go here to check it out. but check it out quick. the auction ends in a week.

There’s a little bit of the future and the past in this quick final installment of our interview with The Lagoon author. We discuss the ways in which Lilli Caree’s fascination with sound has affected her comics, the power of a resolution-free ending, and why Hans Christian Andersen’s short story about a sad little Christmas tree is good fodder for a comic.

[Part One][Part Two]
Beyond the clear role that it played in The Lagoon, do you feel that your interest in sound has played affected your comics work?

I guess I’ve never thought of it as such. I don’t really see a connection between my initial interest in that and The Lagoon, but I guess it does create an environment, and it’s an interesting thing to play with, both in sound mixing and visually.

I brought The Lagoon to a panel I was on and found that people tended to interpret it in very different ways. That seems to keep with the thematic openness of Woodsman Pete. How important is the general lack of resolution to your books?

It definitely doesn’t offer that kind of ‘aha!’ ending, which a lot of people look for in a book—and I look for, sometimes. But I guess that’s just not the kind of book it is. I’m not interested in giving it a clear resolution like that. I was thinking of it more as a poem. I don’t want people to walk away with the same interpretation of it. I want people to have different readings on the whole thing.

What drew you to the Hans Christian Andersen story that you’re working on?

That was asked of me. I got to choose from several stories and I chose that one. But I love that story. It’s just so ridiculously dismal. I was kind of surprised that that was an option, and I leapt for it. it’s really interesting—I’ve never illustrated another person’s story, let alone a genius like Hans Christian Andersen. So well see.

What’s the project?

I don’t know much about publishing or what’s okay to talk about yet.

What drew you to the most dismal option available?

I wasn’t drawn to it because it was so bad. I just love that story and was surprised that they included it. in essence, this little tree is just waiting to be taken in. and then he does get cut down and taken into the home for Christmas, and he’s loving every minute of it. he overhears the Humpty Dumpty story and gets put in the attic and tells all of the mice the Humpty Dumpty story over and over again. They get kind of sick of it, and he’s just waiting to get dressed up for Christmas again. And they finally come up, and he gets excited to go down, but they just take him down to the alley and cut him up. The end! Although much more eloquently told.  I was also living in the moment. I don’t know why I got so excited about it…

–Brian Heater

For a book so invested in the poetry of sound, The Lagoon seems somehow quiet. Siren songs and metronomes and the whooshing of wind fill the its pages, but the book’s important moments, more often than not, seem to exist in the spaces in between, those quiet panels when its cacophonies have been temporarily extinguished.

It’s fitting then, in a sense, that when I first approach the book’s author, Lilli Carre, about doing an interview, she was a bit hesitant. She soon admitted that she had never actually done one via phone, and while I finally convinced her to give it a shot, I largely expected that, like The Lagoon, Carre would keep many of her answers to herself.

As it turns out, however, for all of her fears of coming across as muddled, Carre had plenty to say with regards to her methods and works, from The Lagoon to its predecessor Woodsman Pete, to the more sporadic work she’s done in the field of animation.

Are you on a regular 9 to 5 work schedule?

No. I have a really weird, open schedule.

What do you tend to do during the day?

These days I’m kind of indulging a bit. I’m working on my own stuff at the moment. I work two to three days at a movie rental place here as a clerk. And the rest of the time I work on illustration, comics, and that sort of thing. But I might have to switch to a more regular schedule soon.

Part of me misses working retail. Do you enjoy that process at all, or is it more just something that you have to do for money?

Well, I do enjoy it. for one because I just enjoy weird movies and I love being around creepy customers. It’s a social environment to counter all of the time spent alone, staring at paper. I think it actually keeps me kind of sane. I think I need a kind of structure like that, outside the realm of the things I make myself do for myself. It’s necessary for me, I think.

Do you make a mental catalog of the sort of weirdos who come through the door?

Well, maybe that’s too harsh to call them all “weirdos.” There are random people who do pop in and out, and I do think that movies draw a kind of interesting crowd, but I wouldn’t say I catalog it too much. I just enjoy it.

Was this ability to work two or three days a week afforded to you by having had back to back books out on Fantagraphics and Top Shelf?

Uh, no. That really has nothing to do with it. It’s really most the random illustration jobs that I get. And it’s just kind of living cheaply in general. It is kind of an indulgence to not work a 9 to 5 job. Which, I might do that again, sometime soon. I need to finish some things I’m working on now. I think I kind of like that, too, on occasion, so there isn’t so much pressure on working on stuff independently, in terms of making money and lifestyle. I think that just to relieve that pressure would be nice.

What percentage of the stuff that you work on during the day is illustration and what percent is comics?

It really depends on if I have work lined up or not. If I’m not getting any illustration work, then I’ll just work on comics for the whole day.

Do you always have a comics project waiting, if you don’t have other work lined up?

Yeah, kind of. I don’t know how that worked out, but yeah. There’s always some sort of long-term project boiling up. I’m really excited now that I’m in the Mome anthology, because then it’s a sort of a constant venue that I have for my work. So it’s exciting for me to now think about that.

Is that the deal with Mome? Whenever you have new stuff it will appear in the new issue?

I believe so. I’m actually not totally sure because I’m going to be in the next one for the first time. My understanding of it is that, once you’re in it, you’re allowed to contribute to each issue, quarterly. I’m not sure if they accept everything or everything or how that works. But, regardless of that, it’s just sort of a great motivation to make more short stories, basically.

So your work for the new Mome is a one-off?

It was 32 pages—the story was actually for something else, actually, that then got cancelled. That was pretty heartbreaking, actually [laughs]. So I was just sitting on this full-color story and I didn’t really know how to put it out, and then it ended up that it could be included in Mome. That was really exciting to me.

Was The Lagoon your first long-form piece?

Um, well, I kind of think of Woodsman Pete as being one continuous story. I think of that as being my first long-form story, even though it’s sort of broken up into vignettes. I think the bits and pieces all connect in a way that sort of makes it all one piece. But I guess, yeah, more distinctly, as one united story, The Lagoon is the longest thing I’ve done and my first “official” long story.

Was Woodsman Pete broken up that way because it was issued as minis?

Yeah. I was submitting them to the school paper. And as I was thinking of it more as a book after putting out the second mini comic, I started thinking about them as a whole and including the Paul Bunyan character and tying the stories together.

So working on a long-form piece is really something you’ve been interested in for as long as you’ve been doing comics?

Yeah, it’s exciting. I still don’t know know how to do it well [laughs].

In the literary sense, The Lagoon reads like a short story. Do you think of it that way, at all?

Yeah, somewhere between a poem and a short story, I’d say. Certainly not like a novel. It’s weird comparing comics to books, in terms of novels and short stories, because what defines “short?” you can read a comic so quickly, and so much of The Lagoon is this sort of ambient feeling and sound. I don’t know if that makes it long or short or what. But the content is definitely that of a short story and it kind of resolves itself more as a poem.

The use of sound in the story was an interesting choice, particularly given that it was created using a silent medium. Is it hard to rely so heavily on sound in a comic book?

I wasn’t pulling my hair. It was fun. I liked playing around with it as a visual, throughout the story and trying to figure out ways to visualize it. I really wanted to create a certain sound, and I felt like sound was the way to do that.  I had to spell it out, but when you’re reading a book, you really hear it in your head. I really wanted to create that kind of space. I don’t know if it worked for other people, but when I read those sounds, with the pacing from panel to panel, I feel like it created a mood that I really wanted.

[Continued in Part Two]

–Brian Heater

A black triangle to one side of the nose is a graphic trademark of Lilli Carré. It drew my attention when I read The Lagoon, and after a while it becomes something you see but don’t notice. It’s like recognizing a person, oh that’s Lillie Carré. When I first encountered her trademark nose, I kept looking at Grandpa where he says, “I couldn’t make up a song that pretty, you know that!” The tip of Grandpa’s nose meets his laugh line and flattens the effect of the rendering to make the black triangle look like a hole. An optical effect where the positive and negative shapes swap places.

Carré draws figures with the push and pull of black and white. Transitions between the two poles often employ the artist’s brush in the manner of woodcut illustrations. In woodcut, the tool gouges out the black. Her brush feathers in the black. The gouge and the brush. Hard metal. Soft fiber. They’re strong opposites and they can create a very similar graphic style. Black and white. There’s no crosshatching. The white shapes are as necessary to define the figure and ground as the lines, patterns, and black ink. With this balance, Carré creates a pleasurable line of sight through the book. Her story dances on the surface and has a depth that one must put on a diver’s size thinking cap to plummet.

A lagoon has murky, unclear water. You can’t see into it. Half our life is spent asleep, and that half is awash in dreams. Dreams communicate with symbols. We don’t get the symbols from printed text in a dream. The symbols are images resonant with meaning. We unpack the meaning when we wake up. The picture of a lagoon symbolizes a lagoon. The lagoon symbolizes? Okay, it’s a lagoon where a creature lives. The creature is not a figment of one character’s imagination. The neighbors all come out to hear the creature sing at night. Given that the creature sings, I would say that the lagoon symbolizes the creative power of the subconscious from which dreams and desires emerge.

When the story opens, Zo can’t stand Grandpa’s singing. She says, “It sounds like a wet cat.” Grandpa tells Zo about the creature from the lagoon who sings the song and puts her to bed. Zo wakes up to a song coming from the lagoon. She follows it out and finds Grandpa sleepwalking. “Wet the felines. Only in July, when it’s hot,” Grandpa says. Zo brings him home and puts Grandpa to bed saying, “I thought the song was kinda nice.”

This episode can stand on it’s own; it introduces the song as a problem and Zo overcomes it. There has been an initiation. When you’re young, the folks’ record collection is boring. And then, somehow, you’re able to appreciate those tunes from the 60s and 70s. The records didn’t change. The person changed. But what changed? Did they grow a new organ capable of appreciating music? A new sense suddenly developed? No. The mind, the consciousness of the individual expanded. The barriers to expanding the consciousness are fear. Largely, fear of the unknown. The creature in the lagoon contains the beautiful song and is at once something to be feared.

The next episode has Zo playing the creature’s song on the piano. “Well, Grandpa made it up, but I learned how to play it,” Zo says. Mom wants her to stop. “Your father is a complete loon,” Dad says to Mom as he watches Grandpa in the yard picking flowers. Now that the fear of the creative unconscious are overcome, there is another gatekeeper: authority. The parents must be overcome for Zo to play music and for Grandpa to pick flowers in peace.

Dad tells Zo a bedtime story that is archetypal of the hero’s need to overcome fear. When the beast is slain, the creative anima can be enjoyed – as represented by union with the princess. The frontispiece shows the Zo handing a flower to the creature. She contacts and befriends the power that can teach her to express her deepest desires, destroy the oppressive authority that limits her, and put her in contact with the authority that will release her creative potential. Zo must overcome: fear, power, death. The creature is still dangerous; our consciousness runs from pure to foul as a change of breeze. The creature sets a fire in the woodpile and yet, with Grandpa to oversee her, the house is safe.

The Lagoon is the created structure to contain the creative impulse. The book sits on the shelf with a promise. The girl holding a yellow diver’s helmet surrounded by turquoise plants and red flowers. A graphic simplicity that reads: I am going into the deep water. I have the necessary tool and there’s beauty growing all around me.

–Arthur Smid

Not everything around this place is all about supporting consumerism. So, to prove it, here’s a post about something you probably can’t buy now that it’s out of print.

Deep Sea Diving by Lilli Carré is a short graphic novella about a man and his connected obsession with the sea and grooming his lawn. I just about fell right in love with this when I first saw these excerpts a few years back. While you can’t find Deep Sea Diving anywhere since it’s out of print, you can find more by Carré here and here.