Friday November 21, 2008
Comics & Graphic Novels: Cartooning
Displayed below are the top selling items for today, Friday November 21, 2008 along with the review customers have voted "most useful".
To find top selling items in for a specific category, use the menu on the left or click here to see all categories.
- Understanding Comics : The Invisible Art by Scott Mccloud
- Garfield Minus Garfield by Jim Davis
- The Ten-Cent Plague : The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America by David Hajdu
- It's A Magical World : A Calvin and Hobbes Collection by Bill Watterson
- The Complete Peanuts 1969-1970 by Charles M. Schulz
- The Complete Peanuts 1963-1966 Box Set by Charles M. Schulz
- The Perry Bible Fellowship : The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories (Perry Bible Fellowship) by Nicholas Gurewitch
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Understanding Comics
The Invisible Art
by Scott Mccloud
(based on 126 customer reviews)
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(Paperback)
Author: Scott Mccloud
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Price: $15.61
You save: $7.34 (32%) off the list price!
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Most useful review as voted by customers:
74 out of 77 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 6/20/02
Nobody takes comic books more seriously than Scott McCloud
I like to take things apart and figure out how they work, except instead of doing internal combustion engines or pocket watches I like to play with books, movies and television shows. In "Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art," Scott McCloud not only takes apart comic books, he puts them back together again. Certainly comics are a neglected art form. Put Superman, Batman, Spawn and Spider-Man on the big screen and there will be some cursory comments about the actual all-in-color-for-a-dime, and names like Stan Lee and Frank Miller will get kicked around, but nobody really talks about how comics work (the exception that proves the rule would be the Hughes brothers talking about adapting the "From Hell" graphic novels). Part of the problem is conceptual vocabulary: we can explain in excruciating detail how the shower scene in "Psycho" works in terms of shot composition, montage, scoring, etc. That sort of conceptual vocabulary really does not exist and McCloud takes it upon himself to pretty much create it from scratch.That, of course, is an impressive achievement, especially since he deals with functions as well as forms. To that we add McCloud's knowledge of art history, which allows him to go back in time and find the origins of comics in pre-Columbian picture manuscripts, Egyptian hieroglyphics and the Bayeux Tapestry. Topping all of this off is McCloud's grand and rather obvious conceit, that his book about the art of comic books is done AS a comic book. This might seem an obvious approach, but that does not take away from the fact that the result is a perfect marriage of substance and form.
This volume is divided into nine chapters: (1) Setting the Record Straight, which develops a proper dictionary-style definition of "comics"; (2) The Vocabulary of Comics, detailing the iconic nature of comic art; (3) Blood in the Gutter, establishing the different types of transitions between frames of comic art, which are the building blocks of how comics work; (4) Time Frames, covers the ways in which comics manipulate time, including depictions of speed and motion; (5) Living in Line, explores how emotions and other things are made visible in comics; (6) Show and Tell, looks at the interchangeability of words and pictures in various combinations; (7) The Six Steps, details the path comic book creators take in moving from idea/purpose to form to idiom to structure to craft to surface (but not necessarily in that order); (8) A Word About Color, reminds us that even though this particular book is primarily in black & white, color has its uses in comic books; and (9) Putting It All Together, finds McCloud getting philosophical about the peculiar place of comic books in the universe.
"Understanding Comics" works for both those who are reading pretty much every comic book done by anyone on the face of the planet and those who have never heard of Wil Eisner and Art Spigelman, let alone recognize their artwork. Which ever end of the spectrum you gravitate towards McCloud incorporates brief examples of some of the artwork of the greatest comic book artists, such as Kirby, Herge, Schultz, etc., as well as work by more conventional artists, including Rembrandt, Hokusai, and Van Gogh. "Understanding Comics" is a superb look at the form and functions of the most underexplored art form in popular culture.
I am using Spider-Man comic books in my Popular Culture class this year and will be using some of McCloud's key points to help the cherubs in their appreciation of what they are reading. If you have devoted hundreds of hours of your life to reading comic books, then you can take a couple of hours to go through this book and have a better understanding and appreciation of why you take funny books so seriously.
Click here to see more reviews for: Understanding Comics
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Garfield Minus Garfield
by Jim Davis
(based on 3 customer reviews)
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(Paperback)
Author: Jim Davis
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Price: $9.60
You save: $2.40 (20%) off the list price!
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Most useful review as voted by customers:
10 out of 11 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 10/28/08
Even Sock Puppets will laugh...
This is my first enounter with Garfield Minus Garfield, and it has left me in awe. The approach of taking Garfield out of Garfield, leaving Jon to his self depreciating monologues is inspired genius.
Dan Walsh, in his foreword, notes that people have written in citing GMG as mirroring bi-polar disorder. Pretty weighty stuff for a comic strip. Who hasn't had thoughts about watching TV for a whole year? Or done silly walks in private just for a private laugh? I haven't put a plunger to my face yet though (yet).
This is great book that will make you and your sock puppet laugh. [...]
Tim Lasiuta
Click here to see more reviews for: Garfield Minus Garfield
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The Ten-Cent Plague
The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America
by David Hajdu (based on 28 customer reviews)
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(Hardcover)
Edition: Revised
Author: David Hajdu
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Price: $17.16
You save: $8.84 (34%) off the list price!
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Most useful review as voted by customers:
66 out of 70 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 3/18/08
"I think Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic-book industry!"
So thundered psychiatrist Frank Wertham in his 1954 Seduction of the Innocent, a book which accused comic books of breeding juvenile delinquincy (quoted on p. 6 of Hajdu's book). Today, Wertham's comparison between Hitler and comic books seems ludicrous. But at the time, millions of Americans took it seriously, and it brought down the comic book industry.
David Hajdu's wonderful The Ten-Cent Plague is a history of the culture war over comics that spanned the decade after the second world war. By the mid-40s, he claims, comic books were beyond doubt the leading form of popular entertainment, selling an astounding 80 to 100 million copies each week. Some 650 titles were released each month, and the industry employed around 1,000 writers, artists, and editors. The leading comic book publisher was EC, headed by the genius William Gaines.
The genre in those days, lead by EC, focused primarily on horror and crime, and some of the covers, interior artwork, and story lines could get gruesome: pools of blood, severed heads, stony-faced and scary killers. The artwork and storylines could get sexy too: heroines in filmy negligees, the occasional cleavage or bare foot showing. Middle class parents, egged on by a few religious leaders and political conservatives, began to express concerns, and those concerns grew into a national crusade against the "corrupting" influence of comic books. Editorials raged against them, politicians speechified against them, the Senate held hearings, and schools and churches sponsored comic book bonfires.
In an effort to salvage what it could, the comic book industry organized the Comics Magazine Association of America in 1954, and promised to watchdog its product by promoting "wholesomeness and virtue" (p. 319). But the resulting CMAA Code, written to placate the blue-noses, destroyed the comic book. Cops and other authorities were never to be depicted with "disrespect." No comic book could use the words "horror" or "terror" in its title. All "lurid, unsavory, or gruesome illustrations" were forbidden. Ditto on the depiction of the "walking dead, vampires, ghouls, werewolfs, and cannibals." Ditto on "words or symbols which have acquired undesirable meanings" (pp. 291-292).
You get the drift. The enforcement of this Code transformed comic books into "funny books." Interesting art and storylines disappeared in the wake of the Code, to be replaced with comics about anthropomorphized animals. But the kids (and adults) who'd avidly read the old comic genre wanted little to do with its antiseptic replacement. By the mid-1950s, title release per month had dropped to one-third its mid-1940s level, and 8 out of 10 comic writers, artists, and editors were out of work. Most of the titles released by EC disappeared overnight.
William Gaines rebelled against the death of the comic by publishing MAD, which in a roundabout way (sketched by Hajdu in his final chapter) inspired the underground revival of the comic book in the late 1960s. But before that resurgence, one of the most brutal massacres of any culture war fought in America gutted an entire genre of popular art, and in the process intimidated and de facto blacklisted hundreds of talented artists.
Hajdu's book is a fascinating, frightening read. My guess is that few of us--even those of us who, like me, were kids during the comic book purging era--are familiar with the witch hunt that Hadju chronicles. It's well worth knowing about, particularly in an era when a new front of the current culture wars seems to open almost every week.
Click here to see more reviews for: The Ten-Cent Plague
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It's A Magical World
A Calvin and Hobbes Collection
by Bill Watterson (based on 76 customer reviews)
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(Paperback)
Author: Bill Watterson
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Price: $11.53
You save: $5.42 (32%) off the list price!
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Most useful review as voted by customers:
36 out of 37 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 1/4/00
The hardcover edition is the only way to go on this treasure
For over a decade, Calvin and Hobbes was a part of our families. We came to know Calvin and his suave stuffed tiger, Hobbes. We shared in his divine 'love' for his mother's cooking. We got the warm fuzzies as he and Susie Derkins played out their young romance through insults and secret G.R.O.S.S. meetings. We laughed at Calvin's vivid imagination through installments of Tracer Bullet, Stupendous Man, and the incomparable Spaceman Spiff (zounds!). And we cried and smiled through tears as Calvin learned the value of life and the pricelessness of a true friend. Calvin and Hobbes encapsulates every special moment of childhood, and can melt away the hard shell of even the most jaded and bitter individual. This comic strip is a celebration of life, and while it saddens me to realize that I'll never be able to share future adventures with them, I can always go back and relive those past moments again trough wonderful collections such as this. Since this book is the final collection, you owe it to yourself to own it in hardcover form. I can't recommend this book (or any of the others) enough. If there's a child somewhere in your soul, all of these books are absolutely essential.
Click here to see more reviews for: It's A Magical World
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The Complete Peanuts 1969-1970
by Charles M. Schulz (based on 11 customer reviews)
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(Hardcover)
Author: Charles M. Schulz
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
Price: $19.13
You save: $9.86 (34%) off the list price!
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Most useful review as voted by customers:
9 out of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 10/8/08
"Curse this stupid war! Curse you, too, Red Baron!"
This new edition will prove to be another classic 2 year period. Snoopy will continue his charade as the World War I Flying Ace (as pictured on the cover). Charlie Brown's beloved little red haired girl moves away (he still has to feed his dog amidst a broken heart and Linus gives him a little boot for not getting to know her when he had the chance!). Lucy ponders the meaning of life. Snoopy is the 1st dog to go to the moon and is left at the Van Pelts while Charlie and Sally Brown are on vacation. Charlie Brown has the chance to meet Joe Shlabotnik at a baseball banquet dinner and brings Linus and Snoopy (Snoopy flirts with Peggy Fleming). Linus reads the entire geneology of Jesus at a Christmas paegant (Lucy sarcastically suggests he read the entire book of Genesis while he's at it). Peppermint Patty tries selling a pumpkin after Halloween at no avail, so she tries to make a pie. Frieda pressures Snoopy to go rabbit chasing with the threat of reporting him to the head beagle if he doesn't comply. She's also Lucy's competition in hanging around Schroeder's piano (and of course, the musical maestro isn't crazy about either one of them, so he has 2 heads to remove from his piano instead of one!). I guess he hadn't forgotten the kite-eating tree incident! Peppermint Patty is forced to hang up her sandals at school because of the new dress code (Snoopy tries kissing away the tears and Franklin concludes "Any rule that would make a girl cry would have to be a bad rule!"). Sally complains about having to write a report on George Washington and hopes something about him pops up on television (this was years before the public heard about the internet). She also writes a report on Abraham Lincoln ("He was the 16th king and married Lot's wife"- now don't ask me where she did her research!). Snoopy gets elected Head Beagle the year after his threat from Frieda (his office doesn't last long) and nominated Rookie of the Year (and has lots of autographs to sign from admiring bird fans). In 1970, one bird makes his formal debut after being christened "Woodstock" (named, of course, after the rock festival held one year before). Both he and Snoopy are afraid to go to sleep after Peppermint Patty tells them vampire stories. So get this volume soon or you might get reported to the head beagle!
Click here to see more reviews for: The Complete Peanuts 1969-1970
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The Complete Peanuts 1963-1966 Box Set
by Charles M. Schulz (based on 20 customer reviews)
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(Hardcover)
Author: Charles M. Schulz
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
Price: $32.97
You save: $16.98 (34%) off the list price!
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Most useful review as voted by customers:
33 out of 33 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 9/24/07
About the whole series of "The Complete Peanuts" books
If you've not seen any of the books from this series and aren't sure about getting them, here's my advice: if you're a fan of the Peanuts comis strips, these books will become treasures to you -- buy them. They are absolutely beautifully made volumes (indeed, there is a certain whimsical, understated elegance about their presentation), and the reproductions of the strips are perfect. The first 4 volumes were a Christmas surprise for me a couple of years ago from my grandmother, and the latest volumes (I believe usually 2 per year) are now the Christmas presents I look forward to most. They are a true joy, and well more than worth the money. There's no need to comment on the strips themselves: they're the wonderful cartoons you remember (plus a whole bunch you may never have seen). For me, one of the greatest delights is being able to read the strips in the order in which they were first published, so as to contextualise them both within the narratives of the strips as a group and within their historical context (since, in the corner of each strip, is the day & month when it originally appeared).
These books are amongst my prized possessions, and will be from now on. I can't recommend them highly enough, and thank the publisher for putting such love and attention into their creation. And, of course (and most of all) thanks to good ol' Charles Schulz for writing them!The Complete Peanuts 1963-1966 Box SetThe Complete Peanuts 1959-1962 Box SetThe Complete Peanuts 1950-1954 Boxed Set
Click here to see more reviews for: The Complete Peanuts 1963-1966 Box Set
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The Perry Bible Fellowship
The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories (Perry Bible Fellowship)
by Nicholas Gurewitch (based on 56 customer reviews)
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(Hardcover)
Author: Nicholas Gurewitch
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Price: $10.17
You save: $4.78 (32%) off the list price!
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Most useful review as voted by customers:
20 out of 23 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 11/14/07
Great book, but not that much extra stuff
Let me say first off that Nicholas Gurewitch is an amazing writer and artist, and his work is spectacular. Some previously black & white strips were colored for this book, and they look great.
My only problem with this book is that there really aren't a lot of extras. There are a couple pages of "lost comics" and that's it. I was hoping for some commentary, some extra comics exclusive to the book. At the end of the book I was a little underwhelmed.
But don't be put off from buying this book. It's still an excellent piece of work.
Click here to see more reviews for: The Perry Bible Fellowship
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