Microcosm Publishing, 176 pages (vol. 1)/168 pages (vol. 2), paperback, $8.00 (ea.)
Bert and Holly Davis shared a legacy of independence born out of less-established life — or maybe a life established differently.  Dwelling Portably is a mini-revelation of an invisible society of people whose elders of the time briefly stepped into the literary light for [...]

Dark Horse Comics, 112 pages, hardcover, $22.99
When did I first hear of Brian? 2001? I think so — Myspace was the leading social media outlet and I remember seeing his amazing posters. He had done a Toys That Kill show flyer, and that led me to browse through the rest of his art. We did [...]

Akashic Books, 225 pages, trade paperback, $15.95
“Predictable” would never be a word used to describe an Arthur Nersesian novel.  In his eight previous novels (among them The Fuck-Up, Suicide Casanova, and Unlubricated), outrageous situations and sudden turns of events seem to be everyday situations for his characters.  These unexpected twists and turns of the plot [...]

Akashic Books, 280 pages, trade paperback, $14.00
It isn’t spoiling anything to say that the 20 stories in Joe Meno’s 2008 collection Demons in the Spring — originally issued in a limited hardcover run of 4,000 copies from Akashic Books in 2008 and set for re-release in paperback on August 1, 2010 — won’t leave the [...]

Akashic Books, 250 pages, trade paperback, $15.95
During the weeks I was reading Jesus Boy a lot of people asked me if I was reading the Bible. I had to explain that the author chose to make the book look like a Bible for some perverse reason, and that I would never voluntarily read the Bible. [...]

Raw Dog Screaming Press, 140 pages, hardcover/trade paperback, $12.95
The stories in Bradley Sands’ latest collection, My Heart Said No, But the Camera Crew Said Yes!, released in April by Raw Dog Screaming Press, fall into the class of pop culture populated by movies directed by guys like Wes Anderson, and the plotlines to television shows [...]

Garrett County Press, 60 pages, hardcover, $10.36
This is a cute 6” x 7” book presenting all 44 presidents as if they were archiving Facebook profile pictures and status updates. It’s very clever as well as informative.  Did you know that John Adams (our second president) was the first president never to have owned slaves in [...]

Awkward and Definition, Touchstone, 133 pages,  softcover, $15.00
Potential, Touchstone, 224 pages, softcover, $15.00
Likewise, Touchstone, 359 pages, softcover, $16.00
In the summer of 1995, at the age of 15, Ariel Schrag decided to make a comic about her life. As she explained in her diary:
“This summer is gonna be cool! I AM GOING to write a [...]

Image Comics, 32 pages, soft cover, $3.99
Liberty Comics, a fundraising vehicle for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, features several creators offering their own idiosyncratic meditations on freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and cartooning:
Garth Ennis and his crew from The Boys supply a characteristically gratuitous-yet-endearing mutilation of some iconic heroes. Darwyn Cooke [...]

Bone Print Press, 160 pages, paperback, $10.00
This self-published fist of short stories and oddball notes was surprising at every bend in Denis Sheehan’s prose. I get the feeling I am reading about ‘80s escapades most of the time, lived by a divorced father of one lovely precocious girl — and then sometimes I don’t.
“Track,” a [...]

Akashic Books, 150 pages with 140 color illustrations, trade paperback, $22.95
Does a skilled rendering of a chimp on a bicycle, turtles raising a flag (a la Iwo Jima), or a sasquatch pushing a tricked-out lawnmower appeal to you? How about a bear wearing tube socks while running with a pair of scissors? This is the [...]

Also-Ran, 264 pages, paperback, $18.00
At 264 pages, Joseph Larkin’s Arcade of Cruelty is either the longest one-note joke I’ve ever read, or a masterstroke of Andy Kaufman-like commitment to pathetic absurdity. At its core, the book is a professionally produced autobiographical emo diary, featuring chapter after chapter of crude doodles, defaced yearbook photos, and scrapbooked [...]

Microcosm Publishing, 96 pages, paperback, $5.00 (ea.)
Autobiographical comics in the vain of Snake Pit are often hit or miss for me, and, to be honest, after my first read, I was ready to tear into author Ben Snakepit for producing one of the most lazy, uninspired entries into the genre in quite some time. And [...]

Microcosm Publishing, 268 pages, trade paperback, $12.00
This is the second pressing of this anthology, and what you get crammed inside is Avow zine’s issues 11 through 16 and selections from the first 10 issues. I’m not sure why they chose to include only a few pages from the first 10 issues; I feel like I’m [...]

self-published, 132 pages, trade paperback, $10.00
I Will Name Them Such as Enemies!, a collection of short stories by Ryan Brosmer, has both threads of paralleling personality tones and nuances of oppositional moral mirrors, written in raw and honest words of experience that few would venture to utter. Even fewer would manage to describe these events [...]