Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith IDW Publishing ($17.99) By S. Clayton Moore 30 Days of Night is set in the long, dark world of Barrow, Alaska, but colors its victims in ghastly shades of red as well, so don't read this slick little volume at night. The unique setting lends this vampire story a novel […]
Mark Waid, Scott Beatty, Butch Guice, Mark Perkins, Laura DePuy, et al. CrossGen Comics ($15.95) by Rudi Dornemann The founders of CrossGen Comics entered the comics marketplace with the goal of appealing to an audience beyond superhero fans and habitual comics specialty-shop patrons, and over the past few years it's been interesting to watch their […]
Paul Carter Harrison, Victor Leo Walker II, Gus Edwards, eds. Temple University Press ($27.95) by Justin Maxwell A thorough and well-made anthology, Black Theatre: Ritual Performance in the African Diaspora successfully illustrates how Black theatre is, as Paul Carter Harrison says in his prefatory essay "Praise/Word," not a "mere reaction to oppression," but an endeavor to […]
Jason Webster Broadway Books ($23.95) by John Toren Flamenco, one of the world's great art forms, is also among the grittiest and most abjectly fatalistic. We therefore accompany Jason Webster in his attempts to penetrate its inner heart with a degree of skepticism. He informs us early in his narrative that he studied Arabic in […]
Bruce Feiler William Morrow and Company ($23.95) by H. E. Everding To accompany Bruce Feiler on this journey to understand the roots of the three monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) as well as his own identity, the reader travels through place (e.g., the Negev, Jerusalem, Savannah, GA) and time (four millennia), always in the […]
Edited by Diane Keaton powerHouse Books ($29.95) by Andrea Balenfield Anybody who's ever looked over their shoulder at that eerie clown painting in their local dive-bar or past-its-prime restaurant will appreciate this book, as actor/director/writer Diane Keaton has here assembled a bevy of the best this odd genre has to offer. Many of the paintings […]
George Cotkin The Johns Hopkins University Press ($39.95) by Christopher Luna Existentialists argue for personal responsibility in the face of what Walter Kaufmann identified as the four elements of this philosophy: "dread, despair, death, and dauntlessness." But as George Cotkin's overview of existentialism's influence upon American culture points out, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Simone […]
What's Your Poison? Dale Pendell Mercury House ($21.95) by Sarah Fox "Lastly, it was never my intention to write for everyone. In which case, I would say, you have scored substantial success. Thank you, Sweetheart. Good night now." Thus ends the Preface to the long-awaited Pharmako/Dynamis, the second in a proposed trilogy of books investigating […]
Aaron Cometbus Last Gasp ($14.95) by Jocko Weyland Just after Ronald Reagan's first inauguration, Aaron Cometbus and his friend Jesse decided to start a fanzine. They were thirteen years old. A year later Jesse moved away but Cometbus kept going and has now been regularly self-published for twenty years, garnering a widespread following that falls […]
Koigi wa Wamwere Seven Stories Press ($15.95) by Kevin Carollo I suffered a prison and detention term, but that is out of the past and I am not going to remember it . . . If I wronged you forgive me, if you wronged me, I forgive you . . . Let us forgive and […]