New Comics - April 19th - Part Two

Continued from yesterday...

• Hank Ketcham's Complete Dennis The Menace 1953-1954 (Fantagraphics) - There's no question that this is a fabulous series, worth buying every volume. There's no question that Mr Ketcham is a tremendous illustrator, one of the daily greats, even considering his various assistants. There's no question that I'm going to buy more of these volumes. The thing I want to point out to everyone, though, is the quality of the book design that Fantagraphics has achieved in the last couple of years. Jacob Covey has done a beautiful job on this title, surpassing Seth's design work on the Peanuts books, which are also quite attractive. His work on the line of pin-up girl books has been wonderful as well. I'm happy to see that Fantagraphics has signed on such a talented designer for these projects.
• Mom's Cancer (Image/Harry Abrams) - Artist/writer Brian Fies presents a perfect opportunity to talk about the misnomer webcomic. In my experience, the strips and stories that are given this designation are simply comic strips or stories in the comic format. They don't need the designation webcomic anymore than the rest of the comics need the designation paper comic. I'm sure there are creations out there that fit the bill of webcomic, but I'm not familiar with them. Achewood and Penny Arcade are comic strips. This comic is a comic. It doesn't even have computer lettering. I know I'm being nitpicky, but this is a blog, after all. That said, I look forward to reading this. The part of it I've read looked terrific, even if, like last week's Little Star, the story is somewhat relatable to my life.
• Simpsons Comics 116, 117 (Bongo) - I actually read this title every month. I've always been a fan of "funny" comics, and this title was consistently decent, which I consider high praise for a TV tie-in. And when this title was written by Ian Boothby (I haven't seen his name in the credits lately, but I hope he returns), it was actually quite good.
• Rich Johnston's Holed Up (Avatar) - I ordered this on relist, thinking I might as well contribute a couple bucks to the guys coffers, since I read his column every week (I don't really need to tell you about it, do I? I just assume that if you'll read a shitty little blog like this, I just assume you already read all the big names). I hope this title's funny as well.

To be continued...