![](\"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/513JXX8-jLL._SL500_AA240_.jpg\")
<\/p>\nLet\u2019s take a quick look to see what\u2019s arrived in the mail here at the Geek Compound. <\/p>\n
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Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!<\/span> by Art Spiegelman<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n Promo copy:<\/span><\/p>\n The creator of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus<\/span> explores the comics form…and how it formed him!<\/p>\n This book opens with Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!<\/span>, creating vignettes of the people, events, and comics that shaped Art Spiegelman. It traces the artist’s evolution from a MAD<\/span>-comics obsessed boy in Rego Park, Queens, to a neurotic adult examining the effect of his parents’ memories of Auschwitz on his own son.<\/p>\n The second part presents a facsimile of Breakdowns, the long-sought after collection of the artist’s comics of the 1970s, the book that triggers these memories. Breakdowns established the mode of formally sophisticated comics that transformed the medium, and includes the prototype of Maus, cubist experiments, an essay on humor, and the definitive genre-twisting pulp story "Ace Hole-Midget Detective."<\/p>\n Pulling all this together is an illustrated essay that looks back at the sixties as the artist pushes sixty, and explains the obsessions that brought these works into being. Poignant, funny, complex, and innovative, Breakdowns<\/span> alters the terms of what can be accomplished in a memoir.<\/p>\n More Speigelamn is always a good thing.<\/span><\/p>\n My Brain is Hanging Upside Down<\/span> by David Heatley<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n Promo copy:<\/span><\/p>\n One of the most promising young talents in cartooning makes his debut with a dazzling collection\u2013part freakish dreamlife, part quirk-o-rama autobiography, all genius.<\/p>\n Long a fixture in comics anthologies, David Heatley’s deceptively crude, wickedly observant drawings have begun showing up on the New York Times<\/span> op-ed pages and the cover of the New Yorker<\/span>, introducing him to a vast new audience, Now, in My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down<\/span> (title courtesy of the Ramones song), we are treated to the full range of Heatley’s remarkable, wildly unique voice and vision.<\/p>\n My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down<\/span> is Heatley’s life story told in six different but connected narrative threads. "Sex History" describes every sexual encounter dating back to kindergarten, with details that would make a therapist blush. "Black History" is an unflinchingly honest meditation on his own racism. "Portrait of My Mom" and "Portrait of My Dad" are beautifully paced vignettes, skewering and celebrating his lovably dysfunctional parents. "Family History" tells the story of his family from his great-great-grandparents’ lives and closes with the birth of his own children. Woven in and around the larger pieces are "dream comics" that expand on the same themes with a baffling unconscious logic. Every inch of My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down<\/span> is filled with visceral art and emotionally resonant storytelling at once stunning, truthful, and uncomfortably hilarious.<\/p>\n \n Bat-Manga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan<\/span> by Chip Kidd<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n Promo copy:<\/span><\/p>\n The two hottest genres in comics gleefully collide head-on, as the most beloved American superhero gets the coolest Japanese manga makeover ever.<\/p>\n In 1966, during the height of the first Batman craze, a weekly Japanese manga anthology for boys, Shonen King<\/span>, licensed the rights to commission its own Batman and Robin stories. A year later, the stories stopped. They were never collected in Japan, and never translated into English. Now, in this gorgeously produced book, hundreds of pages of Batman-manga comics more than four decades old are translated for the first time, appearing alongside stunning photographs of the world\u2019s most comprehensive collection of vintage Japanese Batman toys.<\/p>\n This is The Dynamic Duo as you\u2019ve never seen them: with a distinctly Japanese, atomic-age twist as they battle aliens, mutated dinosaurs, and villains who won\u2019t stay dead. And as a bonus: Jiro Kuwata, the manga master who originally wrote and drew this material, has given an exclusive interview for our book.<\/p>\n More than just a dazzling novelty, Bat-Manga!<\/span> is an invaluable, long-lost chapter in the history of one of the most beloved and timeless figures in comics. <\/p>\n This amazing and massive collection\/retrospective is a MUST HAVE for all Batman fans. A fascinating piece of forgotten Batman\/manga history!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Let\u2019s take a quick look to see what\u2019s arrived in the mail here at the Geek Compound. Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*! by Art Spiegelman Promo copy: The creator of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus explores the … Continue reading ![](\"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/61Zq3JhQZbL._SL500_AA240_.jpg\")
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