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 [...]

This do-it-yourself manual is a must-have for anyone who wants to break away from Western consumerism and reclaim their home nesting skills, but is not sure where to start. Make Your Place: Affordable, Sustainable Nesting Skills is a handwritten and illustrated manual on everything from a home herbal first aid kit, to chemically free home-gardening, and espouses “the idea that DIY is about making even the tiny bits of our lives intentional: we focus our energy on what is right for us, rather than what is dictated by a market or culture.”

Originally published in Verbicide issue #25
MudScout Media, 112 pages, hardcover, $28.00
As roller derby leagues pop up all over North America, it is clear that this sport of women racing around a track on skates has been resurrected and redefined with 2k flair. The degree of originality and artistic expression is shown as each team member [...]

Originally published in Verbicide issue #25
Chronicle Books, 276 pages, paperback, $19.95
I am torn on this book and Fulbeck’s slant on tattooing. Fulbeck tries to argue — through portrait photography, hand-written mini-biographies by the tattooed people themselves, and short interviews — that tattoos still belong to the outlaw, the rocker, the biker, and the shunned. In [...]

Akashic Books, 132 pages, trade paperback, $22.95
Pat Graham’s Silent Pictures is an exhilarating collection of both black & white and color music photography that captures musicians in their element, both onstage and off. Having toured with musicians for the large part of 20 years, the fact that Graham seemed to be in the right place [...]

MudScout Media, 25 pages, postcards, $13.00
Every war is different, but Jfry Craig’s War Made Me Do It, a 25-page postcard anthology, exposes the universal losses that every one feels as wars takes their toll on the human condition. This text-free book tells a story of censorship, isolation, blindness, gender struggles, power, and sexuality. The artistic [...]

Akashic Books, 205 pages, trade paperback, $14.95
K.E. Silva’s first novel, A Simple Distance, tells the story of Jean Souza and the two worlds she inhabits: San Francisco and the fictional West Indian island of Baobique. As an attorney in the US, Jean is every bit the intellectual and introspective woman who prides herself on her [...]