Previews

Vancouver-based Colin Upton is something of a Canadian comics legend. He's been producing rough-hewn, Rabelaisian mini comics since the 80s that deal in equal parts with autobiography and history. A few years ago he was diagnosed with diabates, which prompted a massive lifestyle change, resulting is so much weight loss that when I saw a picture of the new Colin I didn't even recognize him.

Wow! Lots of great books coming out this month!

While comics dealing with cancer have usually been true life tales -- Mom's Cancer or Our Cancer Year -- AN ELEGY FOR AMELIA JOHNSON takes a more unusual tack, following the two best friends of a dying woman — a slightly egotistical documentary director and a self-absorbed journalist -- as they journey to bring her last words to the people she cares about. But if you think this is going to be a weepy about a saintly sick person...you are wrong.

Longtime readers of The Beat will know we are big fans of Toby Cypress's strange but beautiful art, seen on things like Killing Girl and The Schizophrenic. It turns out he's launching his own small press company, Punkrock*Jazz to publish his own work, starting with the long -awaited RODD RACER a Fritz Lang/Frank Robbins/Milton Caniif story about fast cars, crizy cities and a young racer who gets more than he bargained for. Back in the day, they would have called it "Widescreen" but then the screens got too small.

An astonishing icepunk adventure by the great French cartoonist Jacques Tardi is coming in March from Fantagraphics. It looks incredible.

Here's a small preview of DENIS KITCHEN'S CHIPBOARD SKETCHBOOK, which presents some of his distinctive work from another medium -- cardboard! The book, published by BOOM!, goes on sale tomorrow. Following on the heels of...

Dynamite has provided first looks at several of their March covers. DEAN KOONTZ’S NEVERMORE #1 (of 6) Written by DEAN KOONTZ w/ KEITH CHAMPAGNE Art by LENO CARVALHO Covers by DARICK ROBERTSON (50%), TYLER WALPOLE (25%) & LENO...

It's one of the more notable aspects of the Franco-Belgian comics scene that there's no stigma either way for comics experimentalists to create genre work. Thus the trailblazing cartoonists of L'Association have variously worked on children's comics and most light-hearted fare with great success. Such a work is Lewis Trondheim's DONJON, which NBM has been publishing in the US. DONJON is a sprawling satirical fantasy about anthropomorphic warriors in a magical, ludicrous kingdom. It's a darkly whimsical epic that's a mash-up of D&D, CEREBUS, GROO, and any number of works by headliners Trondheim and Joann Sfar.

Back to the previews, we're proud to present a peek at Bryan Talbot's Grandville Mon Amour, a steampunk talking animal mystery mash-up, or as Talbot puts it:

Grandville Mon Amour pits Detective Inspector LeBrock of Scotland Yard against an old adversary and ruthless urban guerrilla, Edward "Mad Dog" Mastock. It's a fast-paced, Hitchcockian steampunk thriller.

If you've been following Talbot's career at all you know he's one of the most eclectic storytellers in the medium, producing a string of amazing graphic novels that show a range of emotion and imagination few can match -- from Grandville to The Tale of One Bad Rat to Alice In Sunderland and the previous Grandville. This is no exception.

On the occasion of Veterans day, what better book to preview than the extraordinary LUCKY IN LOVE by George L. Chieffet and Stephen DeStefano. The story follows Lucky Testatuda, a young man from New Jersey who discovers a lot about life and love in World War II. Stationed in the Air Force in the Pacific Theater, life for Lucky is a mix of worrying about death, inflicting fiery death upon others, and confronting the differences between fantasy and reality.

Continuing our month of previews, here's a peek at WOLVERINE #4, the continuation of the "Wolverine Goes to Hell" storyline by Jason Aaron and Renato Guedes. In this issue "Hellverine" tussles with Colossus and...

Continuing our previews of ELMER, the graphic novel by Gerry Alanguilan, available this month from SLG.