.

Here it is, the stunning conclusion of new titles shipping in February!

Since this is Oscars weekend, I’ve included some award winners below!  Hugo!  Edgar!  Carnegie!  Stoker!  Even Shamus!  (No, not that one!)

Lots of adaptations!  One is a comic based on a movie based on a prose novel!

If I overlooked something, let me know in the comments!

Titles have links embedded!

Pictures and texts are from the publishers.  Many websites also have previews available!

And now, my boilerplate:

So, here’s what caught my eye.  Please comment below, and please feel free to mention titles I may have marginalized or overlooked.  My tastes are eclectic, but there’s stuff which doesn’t interest me, or doesn’t evoke much of a response.  I respect everyone who manages to publish something, but with some 400 graphic novel titles a month, I have to be selective.

CAVEAT:  As I discovered while doing the publisher posts, that some titles have been canceled or postponed.  The titles below, the information is subject to change.  Some may already be out and on sale, some may be vaporous.  Covers and text are supplied by the publishers.

I am employed as a bookseller.  Nothing I say here or anywhere else online has any connection to my employer.  I know my employer can take umbrage at any association people may make between my private and professional activities, so I’m careful to let sleeping despots lie.

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Silent Partner

Jonathan Kellerman, Ande Parks, Michael Gaydos
$23.00
9780440423638

Author Bio: JONATHAN KELLERMAN is one of the world’s most popular authors. He has brought his expertise as a clinical psychologist to more than two dozen bestselling crime novels, including the Alex Delaware series. With his wife, the novelist Faye Kellerman, he co-authored the bestsellers Double Homicide and Capital Crimes. He is the author of numerous essays, short stories, scientific articles, two children’s books, and three volumes of psychology, including Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children, as well as the lavishly illustrated volume, With Strings Attached: The Art and Beauty of Vintage Guitars. He has won the Goldwyn, Edgar, and Anthony awards, and has been nominated for a Shamus Award.

ANDE PARKS is the critically acclaimed author of the graphic novels Union Station and Capote in Kansas. He lives in Kansas with his wife and children.

MICHAEL GAYDOS has illustrated major comic book series for Marvel and DC and collaborated with superstar writer Brian Michael Bendis on the Alias series.

Summary: Jonathan Kellerman is already the master of the psychological thriller and has conquered the bestseller lists, with more than 40 million copies of his novels in print. Now Kellerman is set to win over new fans—and give his longtime readers something special—with this graphic novel adaptation of his bestselling novel Silent Partner. With stylish, black-and-white, noir-inspired art from award-winning artist Michael Gaydos, the Silent Partner graphic novel will bring new life to this classic Alex Delaware story. In Silent Partner, Alex investigates the murder of his ex-lover, a mysterious, alluring woman with a troubled past. His investigation will take him to the seamy side of Hollywood and its glamorous ultrarich…to the dark and twisted corridors of the mind.
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A Devil and Her Love Song, Volume 1

Miyoshi Tomori
$9.99
9781421541648

Author Bio: Miyoshi Tomori made her debut as a manga creator in 2001, and her previous titles include Hatsukare (First Boyfriend), Tongari Root (Square Root), and Brass Love!! Her current series, A Devil and Her Love Song, is running in Margaret magazine.

Summary: Meet Maria Kawai–she’s gorgeous and whip-smart, a girl who seems to have it all. But when she unleashes her sharp tongue, it’s no wonder some consider her to be the very devil! Maria’s difficult ways even get her kicked out of an elite school, but this particular fall may actually turn out to be her saving grace…

Maria’s frank nature gains her more enemies at her new school, but her angelic singing voice inadvertently catches the attention of Yusuke Kanda and Shin Meguro. Can these boys mend her hardened heart, or will they just end up getting scorched?
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Girl Genius Omnibus, Volume One : Agatha Awakens

Phil Foglio, Kaja Foglio
$34.99
9780765331328

Author Bio: PHIL and KAJA FOGLIO are the cocreators of the Hugo Award–winning and Eagle and Eisner Award–nominated webcomic Girl Genius. Phil Foglio illustrated Robert Asprin’s MythAdventures series, and Kaja Foglio contributed art for Magic: the Gathering. Kaja and Phil were married in 1993. They have a son and a daughter, and live in Seattle.www.studiofoglio.com

Summary: The Industrial Revolution has become all-out war as mad scientists, gifted with the Spark, unleash their insane inventions on an unprepared Europe. For centuries, the Heterodyne family of inventors kept the peace, but the last Heterodyne disappeared twenty years ago, leaving their ally Baron Wulfenbach to maintain order with his fleet of airships and army of Jaeger Monsters.

At Transylvania Polygnostic University, Agatha Clay dreams of being a scientist, though her trouble concentrating dooms her to be a lowly minion. When Agatha shows signs of having the Spark, she grabs the attention of the Baron—and the Baron’s handsome young son, Gilgamesh.

Swept up to the Airship City, Agatha finds herself surrounded by the greatest minds of her generation, as well as palace intrigue, dashing heroes, and an imperial cat. Agatha may be the most brilliant mind of her generation and the key to control of the continent, but first, she has to survive.
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Atmospherics Color Edition

Ellis, Warren
$7.99
9781592911455

Summary: You may have seen Warren Ellis’ ATMOSPHERICS before, but never like this!Available at fine comic book shops everywhere, the ATMOSPHERICS Color Edition graphic novel presents Ellis’ psychological thriller in fully painted color, wholly remastered by artist Ken Meyer, Jr.

An event of unparalleled horror happened in the town called Helen, and the only survivor is Bridget Rhinehart. When the entire populace was ripped apart, turned inside out in the style of cattle mutilations, how could one woman live survive? Unless… Bridget herself was somehow responsible. Is she who she claims to be, an escapee of an alien attack? Or is she dangerous, a mass murderer of innocent people and FBI agents? And do her interrogators want the truth, or a scapegoat to pin the massacre on?

We’ve happily provided a preview of the ATMOSPHERICS Color Edition graphic novel below, but we also encourage you to familiarize yourself with Ken Meyer, Jr., the highly skilled artist whose full-color painting gave new life to this science fiction / horror classic.
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The Secret World of Arrietty (Film Comic), Volume 1

Yonebayashi, Hiromasa, Keiko Niwa
$16.99
9781421541167

The Secret World of Arrietty (Film Comic), Volume 2

Yonebayashi, Hiromasa, Keiko Niwa
$16.99
9781421541174

Author Bio: Born in 1973 in Ishikawa-ken, Japan, Hiromasa Yonebayashi studied Commercial Design at the Kanazawa College of Art. In 13 Yonebayashi joined Studio Ghibli and worked as an “in-between” animator on Princess Mononoke (1997) and My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999), and as Key Animator for Spirited Away (2001), “The GHIBLIES Episode 2” (2002), Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), and Ponyo (2008). He was also the Assistant Supervising Animator for Tales from Earthsea (2006).Yonebayashi has also worked on short films for the Ghibli Museum, Mitaka. He was the Director of Animation for the “Mei and the Baby Cat Bus” (2002), the Supervising Animator for “Imaginary Flying Machines” (2002), and also storyboarded and directed “Evolution” (2008), a short film documenting the “Films Go Round” exhibit.

Yonebayashi makes his debut as the director of a feature-length animated film with Studio Ghibli’s latest production, Arrietty.

Summary: Reads R to L (Japanese Style) for A.Arrietty isn’t your ordinary fourteen-year-old girl–she small enough to make her home under the floorboards of a typical house, “borrowing” what she and her family needs from the giants in whose shadows they live. A young boy named Sho befriends Arrietty, but when adults discover the Borrowers, Arrittey and Sho must work together to save her family. Based on the classic novel by Mary Norton, The Borrowers, Arrietty is a delight for all ages.
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Jinchalo

Matthew Forsythe
$17.95
9781770460676

Author Bio: Matt Forsythe works and lives in Montreal. His illustration work has appeared in numerous magazines, including The Walrus and The Wall Street Journal.

Summary: Jinchalo is Korean for “Really?” and that question (formulated variously as “What is and what isn’t?” “What is real?” and “What is imagined?”) is at the heart of this book. A companion to Matthew Forsythe’s vastly successful Ojingogo, Jinchalo stars the same little girl as its heroine. When the mischievous shape-shifter Jinchalo hatches from a mysterious egg, he starts our heroine adventuring anew. Magical troubles drag the pair out of the safety of her home, through the small village where she resides, up, up, and away. In the course of their flight, they visit a robot garden, follow a vine into the clouds, and leave the village far behind.

These comics are firmly rooted in Korean folktales and stylistic conventions, with a playful, joyous drawn line. Jinchalo welcomes readers back into Forsythe’s Miyazaki-tinged dreamscape where spotted octopi fly and bears give piggyback rides, where hummingbirds are larger than people and a sad furry monster wearing a bowler hat lurks around every corner. Forsythe uses page space innovatively in this wordless, panel-less book, and his storytelling is compelling for all ages, both simple and intricately detailed.
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Is That All There Is?

Joost Swarte, Chris Ware
$35.00
9781606995105

Author Bio: Joost Swarte lives in the Netherlands and online at joostswarte.com.

Summary: By appropriating and subverting Tintin creator Hergé’s classic “clear line” style, Joost Swarte revitalized European alternative comics in the 1970s with a series of satirical, musically elegant, supremely beautifully drawn short stories — often featuring his innocent, magnificently-quiffed Jopo de Pojo, or his orotund scientist character, Anton Makassar.

Under Swarte’s own exacting supervision, Is That All There Is? will collect virtually all of his alternative comics work from 1972 to date, including the RAW magazine stories that brought him fame among American comics aficionados in the 1980s. Especially great pains will be taken to match Swarte’s superb coloring, which includes stories executed in watercolor, comics printed in retro duotones, fiendishly clever use of Zip-a-Tone screens, and much more. (There’s even a story about how to color comics art using those screens, with Makassar as the teacher.)
Other noteworthy stories include Swarte’s take on an episode from Hergé’s early days, a Fats Domino story, a tribute to the legendary “Upside-Downs” strip, and a story titled simply “Modern Art.”
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At the Mountains of Madness (Illustrated Classics)

H.P. Lovecraft, Ian N. J. Culbard
$14.95
9781402780424

Author Bio: In 2006, Ian N. J. Culbard surpassed thousands of other writers and had his work published in Dark Horse Comics’ New Recruits anthology. He has since appeared in the anthology series Dark Horse Presents, Judge Dredd Magazine, and 2000 AD. Culbard is an acclaimed animation director. This is the third full-length graphic novel for which he has created the art, having previously collaborated on The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Hound of the Baskervilles with Ian Edginton.

Summary: I am forced into speech because men of science have refused to follow my advice without knowing why.

H.P. Lovecraft’s terrifying horror story gets an illustrated interpretation by one of today’s finest graphic novel artists. Geologist William Dyer–the narrator of this novella–is desperate to stop a research team planning a journey to Antarctica. He himself led a disastrous mission there, only to discover evidence of blood-chilling evil from beyond Earth. Will the new expedition continue its plans? And what will happen if they go?

Once again, as he did in The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Hound of the Baskervilles, Ian N. J. Culbard has created an unforgettably powerful retelling of a classic tale.
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Amazing Mysteries : The Bill Everett Archives, Volume 1

Blake Bell, Bill Everett
$39.99
9781606994887

Author Bio: Bill Everett, the creator of the Sub-Mariner and the co-creator of Daredevil, died in 1973.

Blake Bell is the author of Strange & Stranger (a retrospective of Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko), Fire & Water: Bill Everett, The Sub-Mariner, and the Birth of Marvel Comics; Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives; I Have to Live With This Guy!, and Strange Suspense and Unexplored Worlds (two volumes in The Steve Ditko Archives). He lives in Toronto, Ontario with his son.

Summary: The 1939 creation of the Sub-Mariner for the first issue of Marvel Comics assures Bill Everett a place in history. Co-creating Daredevil, the Man Without Fear, for Marvel Comics in 1964 gave Everett a link to one of the most popular superheroes of the past 50 years. And producing over 400 additional pages of superhero-related work in the very early days of the Golden Age of Comics (1938-42) makes Bill Everett a legend.

This book collects over 200 pages of this never-before-reprinted work from titles such as Amazing Mystery Funnies (1938), Amazing-Man Comics (1939), Target Comics (1940), Heroic Comics (1940), and Blue Bolt Comics (1940). These titles feature an endless array of great vintage Everett characters such as Amazing-Man, Hydroman, Skyrocket Steele, Sub-Zero, The Chameleon, and many more, all produced by Everett shop Funnies, Inc. for such clients as Centaur, Novelty Press, and Eastern Color, and all displaying Everett brilliant cartooning and energetic storytelling.

Edited and compiled by best-selling author and comic-book historian Blake Bell (Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko), Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives is a stunning companion to Bell 2010 critically acclaimed Everett biography and art book, Fire and Water: Bill Everett, The Sub-Mariner and the Birth of Marvel Comics. This volume follows the format of Bell Steve Ditko Archives series; never-before-reprinted, beautifully restored, full-color stories from one of comic books- greatest visionaries and most accomplished artists. Also includes an introduction by Bell that delves even deeper into Everett life, fiery personality, and the history of the era. The resultant package enhances Everett place in history as one of the first and best comic-book creators of all time.
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Bye Bye Babylon: Beirut, 1975–1979

Lamia Ziade, Olivia Snaije
$24.95
9781566568777

Author Bio: Born in Lebanon, Lamia Ziadé is an internationally acclaimed artist and illustrator. She has worked as a fabric designer for Jean-Paul Gaultier and Issey Miyake, had a number of solo exhibitions in Paris, Munich, Los Angeles, and Shanghai, and has published several books for adults and children, including L’utilisation Maximum de la Douceur (written by Vincent Ravalec, Seuil 2001), Rayon Beauté (Le Rouergue, 1998), and Souliax (written by Olivier Douzou, Le Rouergue, 1999). She is a regular contributor to the French magazines Vogue and Jalouse among others. She lives in Paris.

Summary: Tragedy and innocence coexist in this delicate reconstruction of the author’s childhood during Lebanon’s civil warIn 1975 I was seven years old, and loved the Bazooka bubble-gums my mother would buy for Walid and me in Spinney’s supermarket… Beirut in the 1970s is a paradise. Wealthy families ride escalators and fill shopping carts with imported food and luxury products from Paris and New York. Lamia Ziadé, seven years old, dreams of banana splits, American candy, flying on Pan Am Airways and visiting the local cinema. Considered by the elite the “Paris, Las Vegas or Monaco of the Middle East,” Beirut was in reality a powder-keg, waiting for a spark. On April 13, 1975 Lamia and her family returned from lunch in the countryside to find a city in flames.

Looking back on the golden days before the war, and its immediate, devastating effects, Bye Bye Babylon positions an elegiac and shocking narrative next to a child’s perspective of the years 1975–79: of consumer icons next to burning buildings, scenes of violence and sparkling new weapons painted in vivid Technicolor—war as pop.

It is both a lament for a home transformed by a destructive madness, and an inventory of the concrete objects of her childhood: the objects, details and fragments of memory which combine to capture the impossible reality of war. Part artist’s sketchbook, part travel notebook and part family album, Bye Bye Babylon is a unique graphic memoir, and an important visual record of a terrible war.
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Elric: The Balance Lost, Volume 1

Moorcock, Michael
$14.99
9781608860487

Summary: Fifty years ago, Michael Moorcock introduced readers to Elric of Melibone, the last prince of a doomed city kept alive though the unholy sorcery of his runesword Stormbringer. Elric now returns to comics in Elric: The Balance Lost written by Chris Roberson and with an afterword by Neil Gaiman. Elric: The Balance Lost follows the anti-hero Elric as he teams up with two more incarnations of the Eternal Champion – Corum and Dorian Hawkmoon – as they restore the universal balance.
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The Life and Death of Fritz the Cat

R. Crumb
$19.99
9781606994801

Author Bio: Born in Philadelphia, R. Crumb is the author of numerous comic works and one of the pioneers of underground comics. His books include Kafka, The Complete Crumb Comics (17 volumes), The R. Crumb Sketchbook (10 volumes), R. Crumb Draws the Blues, The Book of Mr. Natural, the #1 New York Times bestseller The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb, R. Crumb: The Complete Record Cover Collection, and many more. He lives in the south of France with his wife, the artist Aline Kominsky-Crumb.

Summary: Created by an adolescent R. Crumb in the late 1950s, Fritz the Cat rose to fame — along with his creator — during the underground comix revolution of the 1960s, and remains Crumb’s most well-known character and an internationally recognized icon of 1960s culture.Fritz is a feline, freewheeling chiseler who allowed Crumb to express some of his most acidic commentary on American culture. Tragicomedy, farce and satire all rolled into one, The Life and Death of Fritz the Cat chronicles the very best of Fritz’s adventures from his early days as an idealistic college student to his ultimate fate as a jaded, burned-out superstar, including Crumb’s infamous send-off of the character in the wake of Ralph Bakshi’s animated feature film, an experience and project that completely dissatisfied Crumb.

Finally collected in a single volume, these Fritz stories are a funny, insightful, authentic record of a tumultuous period in American life, with humor and compassion by the most well-respected cartoonist of all time.
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Kevin Keller

Dan Parent
$19.99
9781879794931

Author Bio: Dan Parent (born 1964 in St. Albans, Vermont) is an American comic book artist and writer best known for his work for Archie Comics. A graduate of the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art, Parent began working for Archie immediately after graduation. His writing of the Love Showdown series from 1994 received widespread attention. Parent has also illustrated Felix the Cat, Barbie, Disney Adventures, and a wide variety of other titles.

Summary: This is Archie’s first direct-to-hardcover collection of new stories, featuring the popular Kevin Keller, Archie’s first gay character. His first comic book appearance sold out immediately and marked the first time Archie has gone back to print on a comic book title—his stories continue to receive a steady stream of positive press and we expect this deluxe affordable hardcover edition to do well in both mainstream and specialty markets.

The secret is “out” and Kevin Keller is here, starring in his very own deluxe oversize hardcover graphic novel!
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