Damien MacDonald explores the world’s best comics art including masterpieces by cartoonists from Richard Felton Outcault in 1896 to Chris Ware today.
Posts published in “books”
Stephen King goes deep into his imagination. Fairy Tale is about a seventeen-year-old boy who inherits keys to a parallel world where good and evil are at war.
The TCM Underground book is a movie-lovers guide to 50 of the campiest, kitschy, shocking, and weirdly wonderful cult films you need to see.
When you pick up that first crayon, it could be the path of long misery when you aspire to be a cartoonist.
Explore the man behind Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, and the rest of the Peanuts Gang with this intimate look into the life and times of Charles M. Schulz.
A-Z Record Shop Bags by Jonny Trunk features over 550 graphically arresting record-shop bags, plus informative, humorous histories of the stores and their famous staff, this book reveals a previously undocumented side of British popular culture
The true writer of the popular boy series was Leslie McFarlane who used the pseudonym of Franklin W. Dixon with other writers. This American sleuth boy series was written not by a true blood American but by a Canadian. The Hardy Boys, a project on which Leslie was the main contributor, wrote 19 of the first 25 books between 1927 and 1946, and 21 overall. Just who was Leslie McFarlane? This seems like a mystery that only the Hardy Boys can solve. Ghost of the Hardy Boys: The Writer Behind the World’s Most Famous Boy Detectives explores the true origins of the writings of the Hardy Boys series.
The third Sunday in June is Father's Day became a permanent national holiday when President Richard Nixon signed it into law in 1972. The tie business went through the roof every June after that. Economists estimate that Americans spend more than $1 billion each year on Father’s Day gifts. Did you know? There are more than 70 million fathers in the United States. Author Cian Cruise celebrates fatherhood with, Dad Bod: Portraits of Pop Culture Papas. Let's celebrate dads in pop culture!
Werner Herzog’s The Twilight World revisits Hiroo Onoda’s 30-year war and asks whether we all cling to private jungles of belief in life’s twilight.
Weird to Exist is divided into three intrinsic human acts—to exist, to love, to create—and ultimately touches on how weird it is to do all of that. Also included is Zai’s popular long-form comic Bee Real, which follows one little irritable bee’s enlightening mission to extinguish the sun. With sharp levity and emotional complexity, this colorful collection finds the fun in life’s hard truths.
The Marvel Super Heroes are back! Fans will light up with this second volume of the psychedelic, collectible portfolio featuring 12 frameable black light posters of celebrated Marvel Comics characters, such as Spider-Man, Captain Marvel, Captain America, Doctor Strange, and Black Bolt, illustrated by legendary artists including Jack Kirby, John Romita Sr., Gil Kane, and more.
New York Times best-selling author Nick Hornby of High Fidelity fame has a new book Dickens and Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius that explores the duality of Prince and Dickens in their individual centuries. So far apart but yet so much alike.
Innovations for Learning (IFL) Canada, a global non-profit that works to level the playing field for emerging readers in high-need communities, and Symcor, a leading Canadian organization that enables secure data exchanges, expand their partnership with the development of a new original storybook series. Ice Fishing with Nimkii tells the true story of Nimkii Lavell, the land-based Learning Lead with the Wiikwemkoong Board of Education, who ties education to traditional Anishinaabek outdoor activities.
Remember when long-haired British rock ’n’ rollers made teenage girls swoon ― and their parents go crazy? Britmania plunges into the period when suddenly, America went wild for All Things British. This profusely illustrated full-color hardback, subtitled “The British Invasion of the Sixties in Pop Culture,” explores the movies (A Hard Day’s Night, Having a Wild Weekend), TV (The Ed Sullivan Show, Magical Mystery Tour), collectibles (toys, games, trading cards, lunch boxes), comics (real-life Brits in the DC and Marvel Universes) and, of course, the music!
All you need are basic drawing tools and shapes to cartoon! The book features dozens of drawing projects and step-by-step instructions perfect for beginning and aspiring artists, cartoonists, illustrators, pen and graphite artists, and many others. Learn to draw cartoon characters and more using geometric shapes with Cartooning Made Easy: Circle, Triangle, Square by Margherita Cole.
Comic book adaptations of television shows have been around since the beginning of the medium. Before that, there were a few comic books based on movies. Today comic book publishers gravitate to well-known brand names. Some of them at one time were television shows. American TV Comic Books 1940s-1980s by Peter Bosch celebrates the halcyon days of adaptions of television shows to comic book form.
Quentin Tarantino's next book is a nonfiction dispatch from a lifelong movie fanatic. “Cinema Speculation,” to be published Oct. 25, will center on “The Getaway” and other films from the 1970s that influenced him during childhood. The book, announced Friday by Harper, comes a year after the best-selling novelization of his movie “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”
Late Fragments Flares, My Heart Laid Bare, Prose Poems, Belgium Disrobed by Charles Baudelaire as translated by Richard Sieburth brings together Baudelaire’s late fragmentary writings, aphoristic in form and radical in thought, into one edited collection for the first time.
The title ‘SURRENDER: 40 Songs, One Story’ refers to the book’s 40 chapters, which are each named after a U2 song. Bono has also created 40 original drawings for ‘SURRENDER’ which will appear throughout the book. Bono—artist, activist, and the lead singer of Irish rock band U2—has Bon’s written a memoir: honest and irreverent, intimate and profound, Surrender is the story of the remarkable life he’s lived, the challenges he’s faced, and the friends and family who have shaped and sustained him.
Now I know why Cleveland rocks. I recently discovered editorial cartoonist Ron Hill from Solon, Ohio who parodies Dr. Seuss in his new collection of editorial cartoons. His fourth book is cleverly titled, One Bird Two Birds Red Bird BluesBird from publisher Act 3. You will have to order this one online if you are not from the Cleveland area.
The good folks of Korero Press are at it again. Their newest book, Rayguns and Rocketships: Vintage Science Fiction Book Cover Art, promises thrills to the eyes. The compiled collection of vintage sci-fi artwork will inspire futurists at heart. The future that was and never to be. Get ready to blast off into the further outskirts of your imagination. Korero Press has your ticket punched for the greatest visual adventure from the comfort of your reading outpost. Keep an eye on Rayguns and Rocketships: Vintage Science Fiction Book Cover Art, it lands in your favorite book store in early December 2022.
DC League of Super-Pets the animated movie should be a romp. It is scheduled to be released on July 29, 2022, by Warner Bros. Pictures. Adventure abounds with the backstories of the paperback collection of super-pet stories. Tails of the Super-Pets is a great catch-up before the animated movie. The animated feature boosts the motley cast including Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Kate McKinnon, John Krasinski, Vanessa Bayer, Natasha Lyonne, Diego Luna, Thomas Middleditch, Ben Schwartz, and Keanu Reeves. Marc Maron voices the dastardly Lex Luthor. I figured they would make him voice Streaky, the Super-Cat.
Pacing the floor of her Cwmbran home during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic and government lockdown, Nicola Jane John felt frustrated. Unable to indulge in her favourite hobby - swimming - her nervous energy was rubbing off on her husband, who had a brilliant idea. He locked his wife in his study with a chilled bottle of wine and told her not to emerge until she’d put pen to paper and come up with a story for their local newspaper.
Yoga can be an intimidating thing for some. The Lighter Side of Yoga by Mike Nevitt is a whimsical look at yoga. We all want to make peace with our inner selves and the universe around us. Practitioners of yoga have to realize you have to have humility and humor for any kind of commitment to the higher plain of meditation. Modern yoga brings in many sets of unique individuals who interject yoga into their complicated lives. Mike Nevitt with his comical one-panel illustrations brings out these multi-faceted individuals who enter the world of yoga with their unique blend of expectations. Yoga should be a thing of fun, Mike is up to the task. There are giggles galore from page to page. Yoga should not be painful, the only pain you will suffer is the laughter that will make your cheeks hurt.