Comics Confidential

A must-have collection for comics fans and creators everywhere, packed with interviews and original comics by today’s foremost graphic novelists. Respected anthologist Leonard S. Marcus turns his literary microscope to the world of comics, which has lately morphed and matured at a furious pace. Powerful influences from manga to the movies to underground comix have influenced the thirteen artists and writers interviewed in these pages to create their own word-and-picture narratives. Here are their moving, funny, inspirational stories: true tales from the crucible of creative struggles that led each to become a master of one of today’s most vibrant art forms. The book also contains an original graphic short on the common theme of “the city" from each of the artists, a mini-comic set in a cityscape of their choosing—present-day, historical, or imaginary. Featuring interviews with: Harry Bliss Catia Chien Geoffrey Hayes Kazu Kibuishi Hope Larson Danica Novgorodoff Matt Phelan Dave Roman Mark and Siena Cherson Siegel James Sturm Sara Varon Gene Luen Yang

The Simpsons notoriety will be hard to keep under wraps with a collection of comic stories that will catapult them once again onto the world stage.

Relive the days when gangsters ruled the streets in this gripping collection of notorious pre-Code crime comics! True life criminals Al Capone, Legs Diamond, Pretty Boy Floyd, Dutch Schultz, Lucky Luciano, and John Dillinger are featured alongside colorful pulp fiction characters with rods ablaze. These mobsters flaunted their sexy gun molls and ill-gotten gains of big cars and fancy suits, living outside the law until getting their just deserts in the end. Features masterful creators Charles Biro, Dick Briefer, John Buscema, Gene Colan, Jack Cole, Reed Crandall, Fred Guardineer, Everett Raymond Kinstler, Bernie Krigstein, Mort Meskin, Bob Powell, John Prentice, Mike Sekowsky, Leonard Starr, Marvin Stein, Alex Toth, and many others. These Senate-investigated stories are fully restored--over 20 full-comic stories in all! There are over 200 pages of action-packed comics plus an in-depth essay by editor and designer Steven Brower. Brower's comics-related books include From Shadow to Light: The Life and Art of Mort Meskin and Golden Age Western Comics.

This new volume in the Greenwood Press series Reference Guides to the World's Cinema discusses the films and personalities of the Canadian cinema. This guide encompasses the diverse output of both the English and French Canadian communities and includes 175 films and 125 filmmakers and actors. Alphabetically arranged entries discuss important films, actors, directors, shorts, and a number of experimental films. With few exceptions, films are included only if their production company was incorporated in Canada. Similarly, filmmakers and actors represent people who have worked primarily in Canada. This guide will interest scholars, students, and film buffs. Brief bibliographies after each entry provide sources for further reading. Three appendixes provide additional information regarding Canadian born filmmakers and actors excluded from the main text, winners of Canadian film awards, and a listing of the top ten Canadian films.

A New York Times Notable Book Filled with beautiful color art, dynamic storytelling, and insightful analysis, Hillary Chute reveals what makes one of the most critically acclaimed and popular art forms so unique and appealing, and how it got that way. “In her wonderful book, Hillary Chute suggests that we’re in a blooming, expanding era of the art… Chute’s often lovely, sensitive discussions of individual expression in independent comics seem so right and true.” — New York Times Book Review Over the past century, fans have elevated comics from the back pages of newspapers into one of our most celebrated forms of culture, from Fun Home, the Tony Award–winning musical based on Alison Bechdel’s groundbreaking graphic memoir, to the dozens of superhero films that are annual blockbusters worldwide. What is the essence of comics’ appeal? What does this art form do that others can’t? Whether you’ve read every comic you can get your hands on or you’re just starting your journey, Why Comics? has something for you. Author Hillary Chute chronicles comics culture, explaining underground comics (also known as “comix”) and graphic novels, analyzing their evolution, and offering fascinating portraits of the creative men and women behind them. Chute reveals why these works—a blend of concise words and striking visuals—are an extraordinarily powerful form of expression that stimulates us intellectually and emotionally. Focusing on ten major themes—disaster, superheroes, sex, the suburbs, cities, punk, illness and disability, girls, war, and queerness—Chute explains how comics get their messages across more effectively than any other form. “Why Disaster?” explores how comics are uniquely suited to convey the scale and disorientation of calamity, from Art Spiegelman’s representation of the Holocaust and 9/11 to Keiji Nakazawa’s focus on Hiroshima. “Why the Suburbs?” examines how the work of Chris Ware and Charles Burns illustrates the quiet joys and struggles of suburban existence; and “Why Punk?” delves into how comics inspire and reflect the punk movement’s DIY aesthetics—giving birth to a democratic medium increasingly embraced by some of today’s most significant artists. Featuring full-color reproductions of more than one hundred essential pages and panels, including some famous but never-before-reprinted images from comics legends, Why Comics? is an indispensable guide that offers a deep understanding of this influential art form and its masters.

"CHARLESGATE CONFIDENTIAL is terrific" - Stephen King A breathtakingly clever, twist-filled narrative that moves from 1946 to 1988 to 2014 and back again, CHARLESGATE CONFIDENTIAL establishes Scott Von Doviak as a storyteller of the first order A group of criminals in 1946 pull off the heist of the century, stealing a dozen priceless works of art from a Boston museum. But while the thieves get caught, the art is never found. Forty years later, the last surviving thief gets out of jail and goes hunting for the loot, involving some innocent college students in his dangerous plan - and thirty years after that, in the present day, the former college kids, now all grown up, are drawn back into danger as the still-missing art tempts a deadly new generation of treasure hunters. A breathtakingly clever, twist-filled narrative that moves from 1946 to 1988 to 2014 and back again, CHARLESGATE CONFIDENTIAL establishes Scott Von Doviak as a storyteller of the first order, and will leave you guessing until the very last page.

"Trots and Bonnie is hilarious, poignant, raunchy, gorgeously drawn, and more relevant than ever. Shary Flenniken is an absolute genius." —Roz Chast In the 1970s and 1980s, National Lampoon was home not only to some of the funniest humor writing in America but also to many of its best cartoons. One of the greatest was Trots and Bonnie by Shary Flenniken, a comic strip that followed the adventures and mishaps of the guileless teenager Bonnie and her wisecracking dog, Trots. Bonnie stumbles through the mysteries of adulthood, as Flenniken—one of the few female contributors to National Lampoon—dissects the harsh realities of American life. Dating, sex, politics, and violence are all confronted with fearlessness and outrageous humor, rendered in Flenniken’s timeless, gorgeous artwork. After all these years, they have lost none of their power to shock and amuse. This collection, handpicked by Flenniken and with an introduction by the New Yorker cartoonist Emily Flake, is the first book of Trots and Bonnie ever published in America, a long-overdue introduction to some of the most stunning and provocative comics of the twentieth century.

One day in 1942, a kid who liked to draw responded to an advertisement in the New York Times. He carried his portfolio to a young, upstart publishing company, landing a job on the spot. That company would become Marvel Comics ...Allen Bellman participated in the early years of popular characters like Captain America, the Human Torch, and the Sub-Mariner. One day he left the comics field and never looked back. Five decades later, an intrepid "Golden Age" comic book collector located him. Allen received a hero's welcome from comic book historians, and now appears at conventions nationwide, proclaiming "I was there!" Herewith, his circuitous journey back to comics ...In the pages of Timely Confidential, Allen recalls growing up in Brooklyn, and commuting to the McGraw-Hill building (and later the Empire State Building) every morning to work at Timely Comics; friction between different divisions among artists and writers; brushes with celebrities; Martin Goodman's failed expansion into Broadway plays; his departure from the comic industry in the 1950s; a second career as a graphic designer and photographer; a move from the New York City area, capital of publishing worldwide, to the Florida tropics; his return to the world of comic book fandom nearly six decades after leaving the field.