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Crash Site, the debut graphic novel from British cartoonist Nathan Cowdry, is the story of Rosie, a young drug trafficker who uses her lovelorn talking dog, Denton, to mule drugs across international lines. When Rosie and Denton's return flight to England goes down and they find themselves stranded in the Amazon basin (with fifty grand worth of coke in Denton's stomach), well, getting busted becomes the least of their concerns as they try to find their way out. Did we mention that Rosie is also wearing a pair of anthropomorphic underwear she calls Pants Dude, and that he may have other plans for her and Denton? Crash Site is a darkly funny, character-driven graphic novel that calls to mind the sense of humor of Simon Hanselmann, with a Tarantino-level appetite for gratuitous acts of sex and violence and use of flashbacks to allow the story to unfold. Cowdry's confident storytelling skills, attractive artwork, and sense of comedic timing makes Crash Site a winning recipe for fans of adult humor.

Named to NPR, Las Vegas Weekly, Graphic Novel Reporter, The Casual Optimist, Comic Book Resources, Attentiondeficitdisorderly, Hypergeek, and Robot 6's Best of 2010 lists.Sven, a semi-aimless Scandinavian artist who has ended up in Montpellier, France on a futile romantic pursuit, enjoys nocturnal raids into other people's homes, disguised as a werewolf. The way he figures it, the disguise will give him an extra few moments' advantage vis-à-vis any startled home owner if things get ugly... but he hasn't taken into account the existence of a society of real Montpellier-based werewolves who do not take kindly to this new pretender. So while Sven spends his days playing chess and poker with his friends, sketching his way through his picturesque chosen hometown, and coping with romantic dilemmas - both his and those of his best friend, the Breakfast-at-Tiffany's-obsessed Audrey, who has girl troubles of her own - little does he realize that a genuine threat to his life, and for that matter his humanity, is closing in on him. Werewolves of Montpellier is a lycanthropic thriller, a romantic comedy, and an existential drama - beware the full moon!
"Another werewolf story to warm the cockles of your heart!" - John Landis

A very funny, very deadpan, and very poignant comedy of romance, featuring the classic romantic trio of mad scientist, monster, and bride of monster, presented in the same elegant format as Jason's previous popular graphic novel The Iron Wagon, a two-color process (black and grayish blue) on tinted paper with an uncoated cover stock printed in three simple colors, complete with flaps. Also includes a running commentary by the loyal hunchbacked assistant.

A moody twenty-something wallowing in depression after a breakup with his long-time girlfriend, finds himself drawn into a paranoid's worst nightmare after his best friend is murdered and the blame is pinned on him. With the help of a single mother who spontaneously throws in her lot with him (not to mention her precocious daughter), he sets out to clear his name. Soon new relationships are forged, dark secrets from the past are revealed, and the real killer comes back into the picture...with a vengeance.

A blank-eyed, silent meditation on young love thwarted and re-kindled. Tell Me Something picks up the stylized anthropomorphic characters of Jason's earlier works, as well as the challenge of all-pantomime to weave a yarn of young love thwarted and re-kindled. Switching smoothly between two time periods, alternating moments of tenderness and sadness with slapstick and irony, Tell Me Something is a virtuoso technical achievement as well as a funny and sad tale of romance and treachery.

Originally serialized in 2008 in the New York Times Sunday Magazine "Funny Pages" section, the title story of this collection might be the world's first (and likely last) chess western. Also included, "Emily Says Hello," is a typically deadpan Jason tale of murder, revenge and sexual domination. The wordless "&" tells two tales at once: one about a skinny guy trying to steal enough money to save his ill mother, and the other about a fat guy murderously trying to woo his true love. The two stories collide on the last page, in Jason's inimitable genre-mashing style. Also included, "Early Film Noir" can best be described as The Postman Always Rings Twice meets Groundhog Day. But starring cavemen. And finally, "You Are Here" features alien kidnappings, space travel, and the pain and confusion of family ties, culminating in an enigmatic finale that rivals Jason's greatest twists. This collection of new and previously unpublished work shows one of the world's most acclaimed graphic novelists at his funniest, wryest, and most poignant.

The new graphic novel by Jason is both a playful take on the classic detective story. A detective happens to find a lost cat and finds that he and the woman to whom he returns it have a lot in common. They agree to meet again... but she's disappeared. Isolation and memory intertwine in the longest story by Jason to date.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, and James Joyce walk into a Parisian bar... no, it's not the beginning of a joke, but the premise of Jason's unique new graphic novel. Set in 1920s Paris, The Left Bank Gang is a deliciously inventive re-imagining of these four literary figures as graphic novelists! Yes, in Jason's warped world, cartooning is the dominant form of fiction, and not only do these four literary giants work in the comics medium but they get together to discuss the latest graphic novels from Dostoevsky to Faulkner ("Hasn't he heard of white space? His panels are too crowded!"), and bemoan their erratic careers. With guest appearances by Zelda Fitzgerald and Jean-Paul Sartre, and a few remarkable twists and turns along the way, and you've got one of the funniest and most playful graphic novels of the year. Like Jason's acclaimed Why Are You Doing This?, The Left Bank Gang is rendered in full spectacular color.

After his existential thriller (Why Are You Doing This?), his Parisian famous-writers crime caper (The Left Bank Gang), and his time-travel story (I Killed Adolf Hitler), Jason's fourth full-color album may feature his loopiest premise yet. Set in the present time, The Last Musketeer stars the by-now centuries old musketeer Athos, who has been reduced to a suavely dressed but useless near-panhandler trading on his now almost extinct fame. All this changes when one day the Martians attack Earth. Suddenly there is a need for swashes to be buckled, and Athos leaps back into the fray with a vengeance. The Last Musketeer is a vintage sci-fi adventure with a unique twist from an internationally acclaimed cartoonist.

Five years ago, little Gwenny's father found, a map inside a bottle with instructions on how to reach the mysterious (and titular) Isle of 100,000 Graves and its legendary treasures - and then he vanished. Now Gwenny, having stumbled across another bottle-shipped map, enlists the dubious help of a shipful of pirates and sets out to find the island and her long-lost dad. Little does she realize that the Isle comes by its ominous name honestly, as the location of a secret school for executioners and torturers, where apple-cheeked youngsters are taught the finer points of extracting information from prisoners... and then putting an end to their lives in a wide variety of gruesome ways. And they've reached the point in their studies where theory should ideally give way to practice, so an influx of uninvited visitors comes as a blessing to the faculty. This story is a comedy, albeit a dark one.

In this full-color graphic novel, Jason posits a strange, violent world in which contract killers can be hired to rub out pests, be they dysfunctional relatives, abusive co-workers, loud neighbors, or just annoyances in general-- and as you might imagine, their services are in heavy demand. One such killer is given the unique job of traveling back in time to kill Adolf Hitler in 1939... but things go spectacularly wrong. Hitler overpowers the would-be assassin and sends himself to the present, leaving the killer stranded in the past. The killer eventually finds his way back to the present by simply waiting the decades out as he ages, and teams up with his now much-younger girlfriend to track down the missing fascist dictator... at which point the book veers further into Jason territory, as the cartoonist's minimalist, wickedly dry sense of humor slows down the story to a crawl: for long patches absolutely nothing happens, but nobody can make nothing happening as riotously entertaining as Jason does... and finally, when the reader isn't paying attention, he brings it together with a shocking, perfectly logical and yet completely unexpected climax which also solves a mystery from the very beginning of the book the reader had forgotten about. As always, I Killed Adolf Hitler is rendered in Jason's crisp deadpan neo-clear-line style, once again augmented by lovely, understated coloring.

For his ninth Fantagraphics graphic novel, Jason returns to his two-tone mute roots with The Living and the Dead, a George A. Romero-esque zombie comedy that he intends to be the middle installment of his "horror trilogy" begun with the Frankenstein monster love triangle of You Can't Get There From Here. Jason's elegant deadpan style somehow manages to make the gruesome gore and splatter effects almost... charming - and yes, it is a sweet love story at heart. If you read only one book in which a zombie devours a baby this year (even Romero never quite summoned up the nerve for that), read this one!

A collection of full-color graphic novellas, Athos in America takes its title from the lead story, a prequel of sort to the graphic novel The Last Musketer, in which the seemingly ageless swashbuckler turns up in a bar in 1920 New York and relates the tale of how he went to Hollywood to play himself in a film version of The Three Musketeers. Also included: "The Brain That Wouldn't Virginia Woolf," "Tom Waits on the Moon," and "So Long Mary Ann."

Before Joe Sacco crafted his two major works of "cartoon journalism," Palestine and Safe Area Gorazde, he created a number of shorter pieces, ranging from one-page gags to 30-page "graphic novelettes." This massive book finally collects the entirety of Sacco's earlier journalistic and autobiographical work, plus a sizable serving of his satirical strips, many of them never before collected in book form. The centerpieces in Notes from a Defeatist are a triptych of war stories: "When Good Bombs Happen to Bad People," a history of aerial bombing that specifically targets civilian populations; "More Women, More Children, More Quickly," in which Sacco relates his mother's harrowing experiences during World War II in Malta; and, most personally (and closest to Sacco's later work), "How I Loved the War," Sacco's impassioned but sardonic reflection on the Gulf War, the surrounding propaganda and media circus, and his own ambivalent feelings as both a spectator and commentator: The book derives its title from this sequence, which has acquired a painful new relevance in the past half-year. Notes from a Defeatist also includes a roadie's-eye view of an American punk band's eventful European tour, a reminiscence of an awful season spent in his native Malta, and much more. Notes from a Defeatist is a fantastic primer to Sacco's work.

The Gaza strip? No problem! Deepest Serbia? A cakewalk. Those were easy. But now the time has come to follow award-winning cartoon journalist Joe Sacco on one of the most dangerous beats (and we mean "beats" literally) of all... namely the world of rock 'n' roll. The centerpiece of the book is "In the Company of Long Hair," the early '90s graphic novelette Sacco created on the subject of his raucous European tour with the punk band the Miracle Workers. Although already published in other Sacco collections, "Long Hair" appears here for the first time in an expanded version with an added 15-page section of his original sketches and notes, and a bound-in CD featuring songs from the Miracle Workers' live shows of the timeincluding a blasting version of the Iggy Pop classic "I Got a Right." As for the rest of the book: In a series of hilarious and sharply observed vignettes, Sacco turns his pitiless pen on all strata of Rock 'n' Roll, from old rockers ("The Stones and Me," a diehard fan's lament, and its sequel, "Suffering for the Stones") to new (the abovementioned Miracle Workers); from salacious gossip ("Who's Sleeping With Who") to how-to ("Woodstock in your Own Home"), from portraits of typical rock creatures ("Record Producer," "The Musician Who Wanted to Save the World," "The Rock Journalist") to self-deprecating autobiographical stories ("Why I Let my Hair Grow" and "So You Want to Meet a Rock 'n' Roll Star.").

In Pictopia is the legendary comic created in 1986, written b y the era's most adventurous mainstream comics writer and drawn by a bevy of indie cartoonists - helmed by Don Simpson, with Mike Kazaleh, Pete Poplaski, and Eric Vincent. Presented here for the first time, scanned from the original line art and full-color painted boards, in an appropriately oversized format. Pictopia is the allegorical city inhabited by old, forgotten, but once famous and iconic comics characters, now considered pitiable has-beens by the popular new comics characters who are cheerfully and inevitably taking their places in the pop culture panteon of celebrity. It is both a paean to timeless, beloved comics characters and a scathing critique of the then-contemporary comics sub-culture.

In this new volume of cartoons, Twilight of the Assholes, reality gets ever bleaker and Kreider's humor becomes increasingly apocalyptic, deranged, and hilarious. He juxtaposes the Biblical Christ with His blonde, flag-draped, machine-gun-toting American incarnation in "Jesus vs. Jeezus," proposes a third political party that represents Americans' real values in "The Sex Party," draws the dead Saddam Hussein as a mischievous invisible imp still causing trouble, and envisions the officials of the Bush administration getting their comeuppance in the grisly fashion of Dick Tracy villains. And he finds two cartoons' worth of "Reasons to Look Forward to the Next Terrorist Attack." Also included is his infamous entry into Iran's Holocaust cartoon contest, "Silver Linings of the Holocaust."

In this pen-and-ink graphic novel, in 1964, Bobby Bailey is recruited for a U.S. military experimental genetics program that was discovered in Nazi Germany 20 years prior. His only ally, Sergeant McFarland, intervenes to try to protect him, which sets off a chain of events that spin out of everyone's control. As the titular monsters multiply, becoming real and metaphorical, literal and ironic, the story reaches its emotional and moral reckoning. Windsor-Smith has been working on this passion project for more than 35 years, and Monsters is part intergenerational family drama, part espionage thriller, and part metaphysical journey. Trauma, fate, conscience, and redemption are just a few of the themes that intersect in the most ambitious (and intense) graphic novel of Windsor-Smith's career.

In this collection of classic comic book stories, Huey, Dewey, and Louie earn a trip to the North Pole in a submarine - and Donald stows away! Fortunately, when they find themselves stranded, Gyro Gearloose invents a flying sled! Then, when Donald announces that he's taking the nephews to South America, he pledges to protect them from all the dangers in "the wildest part of the jungle" - including a sheer mountain cliff, a raging river, and a swarm of crocodiles. But who is saving whom? This book has 170 pages of story and art, each meticulously restored and newly colored, as well as insightful story notes by an international panel of Barks experts.

Kramers Ergot is the premier comics anthology of the twenty-first century. Since its inception in 2000, it has revolutionized the medium, introducing new talents, solidifying aesthetics and standing as a state-of-the-medium book. Kramers Ergot has always been a reflection of editor Sammy Harkham's current interests in comics past and future. So it is in this spirit, with this new volume, that he severs the anthology from many of the formal and stylistic elements with which it made its name. Whereas past issues were oversize, colorful and filled with a variety of artists all designed to overwhelm the reader with raw power, Kramers Ergot 8 is a complete shift both aesthetically and physically. The size of the book is smaller, to encourage a more intimate reading of the material, and the content reflects a focus on substantial works from a small group of no more than a dozen artists who, rather than being aesthetically disparate, reflect a more specific and unified aesthetic space of discipline, sophistication and quiet power. Among the contributors are Anya Davidson, Leon Sadler, Ben Jones, CF, Sammy Harkham, Tim Hensley, Kevin Huizenga, Takeshi Murata, Robert Beatty, Chris Cilla, Gabrielle Bell, Frank Santoro & Dash Shaw, Johnny Ryan and Gary Panter. It also includes a 40-page reprint of the 1970s comic strip "Wicked Wanda" by Frederic Mullally and Ron Embleton as well as an introductory essay by Ian Svenonius. Packaged in clothbound covers designed by artist Robert Beatty, this is the essential comics title of 2011.