The battle at Niquelo ignited in Sousuke and Kaname a new passion to find each other, but the rest of the world won't make it that easy. While Sousuke fights, waiting for the operation that might bring her back to his arms, Kaname endures new trials at the hands of a jealous tormenter. Everything comes to a head in an abandoned Soviet research town, and the winding tunnels beneath it—tunnels that hosted a catastrophe seventeen years ago, and which might hold the secret to the Whispered themselves!
Sagara Sousuke isn't your typical high school student. He reads military enthusiast magazines; he responds to questions with "affirmative;" he brings grenades to school in his bag. Though everyone at school takes him for a hopeless military geek, Chidori Kaname thinks there might be something more to him. When their plane is hijacked in the middle of a field trip, Kaname's instincts will prove correct: Sousuke is an elite, mech-piloting mercenary... and he's here to protect her!
The secrets of the Whispered have been revealed, but that knowledge has only brought new danger. Leonard has retreated to Merida Island, where he seeks to rewrite reality itself with Kaname by his side. And with Mithril's forces already aching and depleted, Amalgam has occupied a Soviet missile base—with the intent to trigger worldwide nuclear war! It's a two-fronted battle on Merida Island and the mountains of Afghanistan for the penultimate volume of Full Metal Panic!
Clouseau and Mao lead the charge in Afghanistan to prevent nuclear war, while Sousuke and Tessa invade Merida Island, intent on stopping Leonard and his world-changing TARTAROS device. With resources depleted and the very world changing around them, their desperation to find each other is all they have left. Will Kaname awaken from her nightmare? Will Sousuke get through to her in time? Will anyone survive?! All bets are off in the explosive final volume of Full Metal Panic!
Volumes 4-6, now in a collectors hardcover edition, and with a brand new translation! With the defeat of Gauron, Sousuke's life has entered a comfortable rhythm. He's adjusting to school--the occasional car bomb false alarm notwithstanding--and balancing his newly-found normalcy with the needs of his mercenary life. He's even started to turn his thoughts toward the future--a future that might involve Kaname. But that future will soon face a threat, not from North Korean soldiers, Italian mobsters, or Russian spetsnaz... but from the hierarchy of Mithril itself!
What could be more romantic than Christmas Eve on a cruise ship? That's what Kaname is thinking when her school decides to schedule a make-up class trip... at least, until Sousuke declares that he's made other plans. He'll soon find that he's needed, though, as the ship finds itself beset by half-hearted terrorists, killer robots in the hold, and worst of all—a wannabe hero who's seen too much Die Hard! With the specter of Amalgam hanging over everything, can Sousuke probe the mystery behind them, while also keeping Kaname safe from harm?
In the years between the end of World War II and the mid-1950s, the popular culture of today was invented in the pulpy, boldly illustrated pages of comic books. But no sooner had comics emerged than they were beaten down by mass bonfires, congressional hearings, and a McCarthyish panic over their unmonitored and uncensored content. Esteemed critic David Hajdu vividly evokes the rise, fall, and rise again of comics in this engrossing history. "Marvelous . . . a staggeringly well-reported account of the men and women who created the comic book, and the backlash of the 1950s that nearly destroyed it....Hajdu’s important book dramatizes an early, long-forgotten skirmish in the culture wars that, half a century later, continues to roil."--Jennifer Reese,Entertainment Weekly(Grade: A-) "Incisive and entertaining . . . This book tells an amazing story, with thrills and chills more extreme than the workings of a comic book’s imagination."--Janet Maslin,The New York Times "A well-written, detailed book . . . Hajdu’s research is impressive."--Bob Minzesheimer,USA Today "Crammed with interviews and original research, Hajdu’s book is a sprawling cultural history of comic books."--Matthew Price,Newsday "To those who think rock 'n' roll created the postwar generation gap, David Hajdu says: Think again. Every page ofThe Ten-Cent Plagueevinces [Hajdu’s] zest for the 'aesthetic lawlessness' of comic books and his sympathetic respect for the people who made them. Comic books have grown up, but Hajdu’s affectionate portrait of their rowdy adolescence will make readers hope they never lose their impudent edge."--Wendy Smith, Chicago Tribune "A vivid and engaging book."--Louis Menand,The New Yorker "David Hajdu, who perfectly detailed the Dylan-era Greenwhich Village scene in Positively 4th Street, does the same for the birth and near death (McCarthyism!) of comic books inThe Ten-Cent Plague." --GQ "Sharp . . . lively . . . entertaining and erudite . . . David Hajdu offers captivating insights into America’s early bluestocking-versus-blue-collar culture wars, and the later tensions between wary parents and the first generation of kids with buying power to mold mass entertainment."--R. C. Baker,The Village Voice "Hajdu doggedly documents a long national saga of comic creators testing the limits of content while facing down an ever-changing bonfire brigade. That brigade was made up, at varying times, of politicians, lawmen, preachers, medical minds, and academics. Sometimes, their regulatory bids recalled the Hays Code; at others, it was a bottled-up version of McCarthyism. Most of all, the hysteria over comics foreshadowed the looming rock 'n' roll era."--Geoff Boucher, Los Angeles Times "A compelling story of the pride, prejudice, and paranoia that marred the reception of mass entertainment in the first half of the century."--Michael Saler,The Times Literary Supplement(London) David Hajdu is the author ofLush Life: A Biography of Billy StrayhornandPositively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña and Richard Fariña.
All hope is not lost! Mithril might be scattered to the four winds for now, but its members continue to work toward the same goal. While Tessa concocts a plan to strike back at Amalgam, Hunter conspires to create a new ace machine to turn the tide. Meanwhile Sousuke—even with few allies, limited resources, and a body riddled by mortal wounds—remains determined to free Kaname from Leonard's clutches. Can these disconnected factions meet up and begin working together in time?!
Volumes 1-3, now in a collectors hardcover edition, and with a brand new translation In the far-distant future, mankind has traversed the stars and settled distant worlds. But no matter how advanced the technology of the future becomes, it seems the spacefaring nations cannot entirely shed their human nature. Jint Lin finds this out the hard way when, as a child, his home world is conquered by the powerful Abh Empire: the self-proclaimed Kin of the Stars, and rulers of vast swaths of the known universe. As a newly-appointed member of the Abh's imperial aristocracy, Jint must learn to forge his own destiny in the wider universe while bearing burdens he never asked for, caught between his surface-dweller "Lander" heritage and the byzantine culture of the Abh, of which he is now nominally a member. A chance meeting with the brave-but-lonely Apprentice Starpilot Lafier aboard the Patrol Ship Goslauth will lead them both headfirst down a path of galaxy-spanning intrigue and warfare that will forever change the fate of all of humankind.
