Eisner award-winning writer and artist BRANDON GRAHAM (KING CITY, PROPHET,MULTIPLE WARHEADS) presents a self-contained graphic novel of distant,far-future science fiction. To rescue El, a young woman who hasunknowingly entered a competition for immortality, supercriminal Brik Blokjourneys to the palace-world of Skycradle. He disguises himself bymind-transferring into the body of a genetically engineered butler and beginsmaking plans to steal an aristocrat's finger-keys Meanwhile, thewalking-cities on the desert-world of Crown Majesty are being picked off by anunseen force!
Infamous criminal Brik Blok makes a desperate crash landing on the artificial palace-world of Skycradle, where he transfers his mind into the body of a vat-grown butler to remain undetected. In his new butler body, he sets off to save El, a young woman who has unknowingly entered a deadly competition for immortality.
"The story traces the lives and techniques of Alex Raymond (Flash Gordon, RipKirby), Stan Drake (Juliet Jones), Hal Foster (Prince Valiant), and more, dissecting their techniques through recreations of their artwork,and highlighting the metatextual resonances that bind them together"--Page 4 of cove
The Japanese believe that until the age of three, children, whether Japanese or not, are gods, each one an okosama, or "lord child." On their third birthday they fall from grace and join the rest of the human race. In Amelie Nothomb's new novel, The Character of Rain, we learn that divinity is a difficult thing from which to recover, particularly if, like the child in this story, you have spent the first tow and a half years of life in a nearly vegetative state. "I remember everything that happened to me after the age of two and one-half," the narrator tells us. She means this literally. Once jolted out of her plant-like , tube-like trance (to the ecstatic relief of her concerned parents), the child bursts into existence, absorbing everything that Japan, where her father works as a diplomat, has to offer. Life is an unfolding pageant of delight and danger, a ceaseless exploration of pleasure and the limits of power. Most wondrous of all is the discovery of water: oceans, seas, pools, puddles, streams, ponds, and, perhaps most of all, rain-one meaning of the Japanese character for her name. Hers is an amphibious life. The Character of Rain evokes the hilarity, terror, and sanctity of childhood. As she did in the award-winning, international bestesller Fear and Trembling, Nothomb grounds the novel in the outlines of her experiences in Japan, but the self-portrait that emerges from these pages is hauntingly universal. Amelie Nothomb's novels are unforgettable immersion experiences, leaving you both holding your breath with admiration, your lungs aching, and longing for more.
You think Mike Hammer is tough? Just wait until you see the punishment he delivers when he sets out to find the killer of a guy trying to go straight. A guy who parked his kid in Mike Hammer’s arms—and left him there an orphan. Luscious, eager dames, dynamite-packed action that starts in cheap bars and goes right to the D.A.’s office, and a guided tour of the seamiest—as well as the swankiest—spots in New York, make this one of Mike Hammer’s most thrilling adventures to date.
A hardboiled novel about life in the American underground, from the pool halls of Portland to the cells of San Quentin. Simply one of the finest books ever written about being down on your luck. Don Carpenter’s Hard Rain Falling is a tough-as-nails account of being down and out, but never down for good—a Dostoyevskian tale of crime, punishment, and the pursuit of an ever-elusive redemption. The novel follows the adventures of Jack Levitt, an orphaned teenager living off his wits in the fleabag hotels and seedy pool halls of Portland, Oregon. Jack befriends Billy Lancing, a young black runaway and pool hustler extraordinaire. A heist gone wrong gets Jack sent to reform school, from which he emerges embittered by abuse and solitary confinement. In the meantime Billy has joined the middle class—married, fathered a son, acquired a business and a mistress. But neither Jack nor Billy can escape their troubled pasts, and they will meet again in San Quentin before their strange double drama comes to a violent and revelatory end.
“The first satisfying end-of-the-world novel in years . . . an ultimate one . . . massively entertaining.”—Cleveland Plain-Dealer The gigantic comet had slammed into Earth, forging earthquakes a thousand times too powerful to measure on the Richter scale, tidal waves thousands of feet high. Cities were turned into oceans; oceans turned into steam. It was the beginning of a new Ice Age and the end of civilization. But for the terrified men and women chance had saved, it was also the dawn of a new struggle for survival—a struggle more dangerous and challenging than any they had ever known. . . . “Take your earthquakes, waterlogged condominiums, swarms of bugs, colliding airplanes and flaming what-nots, wrap them up and they wouldn’t match one page of Lucifer’s Hammer for sweaty-palmed suspense.”—Chicago Daily News
A handbook to the visual and verbal universe of Brandon Graham. Beloved for his graffiti-inflected science fiction comics, Brandon Graham has developed a punning, humorous and sexy universe of machines, logos, women and bumbling men, all cast in an alternate Sci-Fi universe. Walrus, Graham's first art book, collects drawings and sketchbook comics spanning 2009-2011, and allows readers a glimpse into his creative process and obsessions. Here we glimpse everything from the puttering pace of domestic life to high energy drawing riffs to homages to cult comic book characters.
