But every day is a new day, and this day was Free Comic Book Day, so I drove my two sons (who are now huge and remarkably mature at 15 and 12) to Joker's Child, the shop with the best FCBD shindig close by. Besides the free stuff, I also bought a few books, since I do like to throw money to people who provide free stuff. And, as long as I'm telling you about those books, I'll also mention two other bundles of comics-related book-shaped goodies that I bought over the past few weeks, all thrown together:
Matt Wagner's Grendel Omnibus Vol. 2: The Legacy
reprints the first dozen-plus issues of the major Comico run of Wagner's Grendel in the '80s -- the Pander Brothers-drawn Christine Spar storyline, the short followup with Bernie Mireault art, and the quick single-issue stories that Wagner drew himself -- plus the more recent Diana Schutz-Tim Sale miniseries about Stacy Palumbo (adopted daughter of the original Grendel, Hunter Rose, and mother of Christine Spar). Putting all of the Grendel stories into internal-chronology order makes sense, but I worry that it tends to leach the power out of the best of those stories -- the original short Hunter Rose story, now almost an afterthought in the first omnibus, and the visually exciting Spar story here (which, at least, dominates the volume with its length). However, I'm happy to have a way to get new copies of these stories that I lost in the flood, and doubly so that they're in big, attractive omnibuses. (So I can only quibble so much.)
is credited to series creator Mike Mignola (co-script), John Arcudi (the other half of the script for many years on B.P.R.D.), Tyler Crook (art), and Dave Stewart (colors). I'm two Hell on Earth volumes behind on reading this -- and there are, I think two more volumes out or almost out as well. (That's because, I think, my comics-reading life slammed to a halt with Hurricane Irene, and still hasn't come back -- but I still think and hope and buy books like it will.)
Love and Rockets: New Stories, No. 3
was the new book from The Hernandez Brothers three years ago, and contains the devastating Jaime story "Browntown." I'm still slowly re-gathering the complete Love & Rockets for a re-read, though it's taking longer than expected. (And I reviewed this back when it was published.)
Nemo: Heart of Ice
is the latest "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" story by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill, spinning off from the main story to follow Captain Nemo's daughter and her time captaining the giant sub and its piratical crew.
Julio's Day
is a brand new graphic novel by Gilbert Hernandez, related to his Palomar stories (as I understand it), but not closely.
There finally was a big fat Marshal Law collection -- subtitled The Deluxe Edition -- collecting all of the late '80s - early '90s stories by Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill, the nastiest and most vicious of the revisionist superheroes of that first era of revisionism. (We've since seen some writers that I won't name try to write stories with characters like Sleepman as the heroes, but you can't blame Mills and O'Neill for that -- they just pointed out the disease; they can't cure those who want to stay sick.)
Awkward Universe
is an obscure book by Andy Garcia (who's probably pretty obscure now himself, unfortunately). I loved his Oblivion City comic in the mid-90s, and this was a spin-off; his books are ones that I want to replace post-flood, unlike a lot of superhero drivel that can stay in the landfill.
Similarly, I got the second collection of Scott Saavedra's wacky series, Dr. Radium And The Gizmos Of Boola Boola!
Saavedra seems to have left comics -- I suspect it was actually the other way around, which happens a lot -- but he did some great stuff when comics had space for the nutty and weird.
And speaking of nutty and weird, I also got the sixth trade paperback of Bob Burden's indescribable Flaming Carrot Comics
, published by Image in 2006. This one reprints a later series of stories, not the series's brain-twisting original run, but I also need to rebuild my Bob Burden shelf entirely.
The Legend Of GrimJack, Vol. 8
, by John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake, which I got for the same reason. (As an aside, was the ninth volume ever published? I see there was an ISBN, but I don't see any used copies floating around, which usually means a book that never saw the light.)
And last is the big Ambush Bug
showcase volume, with stories mostly by Keith Giffen, Robert Loren Fleming and Bob Oskner. (I reviewed it for ComicMix when it was originally published.) I still wish there was a color reprint, but, again, I'll take what I can get.
, because it is -- particularly the title song and their cover of "Brand New Key."
by Nigel Auchterlounie -- a collection of comics from the blog of the same name (which is also the name of the title character, who is not nearly as autobiographical as he started out). Auchterlounie has a distinct, quirky cartoony art style and an amusingly slanted view, and I keep hoping he's going to get so famous that everyone will remember how to spell his name. This is, I think, his only book-really-printed-on-paper, and it's difficult to find in the US (Auchterlounie is British). But I saw Spleenal on a shelf for the first time ever today, and now It Is Mine.
by Mike Baron and Steve Rude -- one of my favorite people-took-great-pains-to-point-out-the-vanishingly-tiny-ways-it-wasn't-a-superhero comics from the '80s and '90s, which has been reprinted in a series of classy hardcovers that I keep thinking I need to collect and read. This one was shopworn and cheap, and now I have three of the series, which is a start.
by Gabrielle Bell -- Bell is one of the best of the current crop of autobio cartoonists; she does stories on 
by Paul Pope -- I had mostly forgotten that 
-- This is part of a massive Library of America series that looks to reprint all of Roth's work in those wonderful little green cloth books in their matching tan slipcases. I already have a couple of them, and I have periodic wishes to read all of Roth, so I'd better have as many of his books on hand as possible. Besides, this has The Great American Novel in it, and I've got at least three reasons to want to read that.
by Apuleius, translated by Robert Graves -- One of the great bawdy, crazy, supernatural, bizarre classics, as translated by one of the best writers of the 20th century; I think I had a copy of this before the flood, so it's time to replenish.
by Roy Morris, Jr. -- This is the standard biography of Bierce for this generation, and Bierce is probably my favorite American writer. (I had an older Bierce bio sitting on the shelves unread at the time of the flood -- I think Richard O'Connor's late-60s take.)
by Deborah Blum -- I might have heard of this in passing before, but I picked it up because of the title and cover (yes, all of those people who claim that covers do not influence their decisions are lying -- possibly to themselves, but definitely lying). It's the non-fictional tale of how poisoning stopped being such an easy way to kill people around 1920 in New York when science (and some particular forensic scientists) caught up to human ingenuity, not for the first or last time.
by Paul Collins -- The first major non-fiction book by the author of 
by Geoffrey Household -- I'm pretty sure I've been recommended this book several times (though I also keep mixing it up with Rogue Herries, which other than one word is apparently nothing like it): it's a thriller from just before WWII, told in what seems to be a very cold and distanced manner by a first-person narrator who nearly dies on page 2.
by Lisa Lutz -- I had this book before the flood; in fact, I had this very edition (trade paperback with all the eyeballs) before the flood. And, since I finally read 
edited by Alexandra Lydon & Laura Kindred -- A collection of short, funny stories about bad sex, which originated as a comedy show, by a whole bunch of people (mostly women, and mostly using what seems to be their real names). If I didn't have two teen/tween boys in the house, this would be an awesome bathroom book, but I guess I'll find some other way to read it.
by Rose Maculay -- I have the sense that every literary person two generations older than me has read this book, and hardly anyone at all since then. That's an interesting phenomenon, no matter the actual merits of the book, so I snatched up this nice New York Review Books edition.
by Kim Newman -- I was a big fan of the original Anno Dracula (an alternate-historical vampire novel in which pretty much every 19th century fictional vampire appeared -- it's from 1992, and so predated both the ongoing vampire boom and Alan Moore's multiple projects doing pretty much exactly the same thing), but I somehow missed this third book in the series the first time around (in 1998). But the wonderful thing about books is that it's never too late to read any of them.
by Stewart O'Nan -- I had a copy of this pre-flood, and I want to read it before I read O'Nan's Emily, Alone (which is a sequel to WYWH), so I clearly had to buy it today.
by John Updike -- Somehow, someday, I will read some Updike; I feel weird admitting that I still haven't touched any of his work yet. Maybe this smallish omnibus of four books about a Rothian literary writer will do it.
by Jincy Willett -- This is supposed to be very funny, and very inside-publishing, and I had a copy of it before the flood (which, I think, I got free, back in those halcyon bookclub days when the books flowed like water).
and 
by P.G. Wodehouse -- I had about three shelves full of the Overlook editions of Wodehouse pre-flood, and I definitely need to replace and complete that set. So I buy a couple whenever I get a chance. These are two minor Wodehouse books, true, but they're also two Wodehouse books I've never read, which is pretty good.
