Heads Up: Indie Comics Previews – November 2011

A monthly column devoted to recommending interesting indie comics for pre-order. Pre-ordering supports indie creators and can often be the difference between a book succeeding or failing. Plus, you usually save money by doing it, too.


 acme novelty library 20

Acme Novelty Library Vol. 20: Jordan Wellington Lint
Chris Ware
Order Code:
SEP100998
Publisher:
Drawn & Quarterly
72 pages – FC – HC
$23.95

Another of Chris Ware’s masterful novels that function as smaller parts of longer works (regardless of what Grant Morrison says). This one focuses on Jordan Wellington Lint, a titan of industry. This book isn’t exactly new–I believe it debuted about a year ago or so (I have some dim recollections of everyone and their brother carrying it around SPX 2010, but that could be an error)–but that doesn’t make it any less interesting or compelling. Ware’s tightly controlled, formal experiments aren’t for everyone, but if you haven’t read his work before, you owe it to yourself to at least try one or two of them.


 burke & hare gn

Burke & Hare
Martin Conaghan & Will Pickering
Order Code: SEP111245
Publisher: Transfuzion
80 pages – B&W – SC
$12.99

Preview

If you’ve seen Sweeney Todd—either the musical or the tiresome Depp/Burton movie—you’ve seen a work inspired by real-life nutcases Burke and Hare. These gentlemen were true-crime celebrities of 1820s Edinburgh. In those days, medical schools were hard up for cadavers to use as teaching tools for their students and paid handsomely for corpses, often stolen from graves (I used this same fact for my Split Lip story School Supplies). Motivated by greed as much as anything else, Burke and Hare met the demand for corpses with a supply of bodies they themselves had murdered. This GN tells their story and includes pinups by Frank Quitely and Gary Erskine.


first law of mad science #1

First Law of Mad Science #1
Mike Isenberg, Oliver Mertz, Daniel Lapham
Order Code: SEP111191
Publisher: Noreon Labs
28 pages – B&W – SC
$3.99

Preview

A sci-fi/horror series about an inventor who creates a set of cybernetic eyes that are so popular and cheap that 40% of the population gets them installed. Of course, something has to go wrong with them and the original test subjects for the eyes meet a dark fate. When they do, the inventor is forced to track down the cause of the malfunction. The solicit promises “ancient civilizations, corporate conspiracies, insane cults, other-dimensional creatures, awesome robots, (and) subterranean cities,” which sounds like a good time to me. The book is another Kickstarter success story; it’s self-published with funding via Kickstarter.


the sigh

The Sigh
Marjane Satrapi
Order Code: SEP110754
Publisher: Archaia
56 pages – PC – HC
$9.95

A new book from the creator of Persepolis always merits a look. Whereas that story was memoir and political history, this one sounds more like a fairy tale. In it, a merchant’s daughter asks her father for a gift. When he can’t find it for her, she sighs so deeply that she attracts The Sigh, a creature that grants her wish. But, as in any fairy tale, things gotten by wishing or by mystical means aren’t free, and later in life The Sigh returns to her girl to claim his reward.


 tales designed to thrizzle #7

Tales Designed to Thrizzle #7
Michael Kupperman
Order Code: SEP111103
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
32 pages – FC – SC
$4.50

Probably the funniest regularly published comic on the market. This installment offers a set of deliriously fun-sounding mashups: Quinception (a combination of classic TV show Quincy, M.E. and Inception), Snake ‘n’ Bacon (indeed a snake and a piece of bacon who team up) revisit the world of Reservoir Dogs, and super-team Twain and Einstein have an adventure. More fun abounds, no doubt.


Sam Costello is the creator and writer of Split Lip, a horror webcomics anthology that Comics Should Be Good has called “the best horror anthology on the internet.” It offers over 500 pages of free comics.

Split Lip: Termites In Your Smile and other stories is available now directly from Sam. It’s 174 pages of comics for $15. Just try to beat that.

Other iFanboy Posts by Sam Costello

On My Own in Indie Comics Series:

Comments

  1. wow, that Lint books looks great. anything w/ mad scientist is ok by me. i also like that you get a little bit of everything in all these books

  2. The Burke and Hare sound interesting, good point about sucess of a book, look at the feature film Creature, no one knew it was coming out and now it holds the lowest theatre box office per screen average.

  3. Definitely interested in the Burke and Hare book. I teach Human Anatomy & Physiology and Forensic Science so it’s like that book was made just for me! Haha, but really, I’ve always been fascinated in the Burke and Hare story, there’s even a movie coming out starring Simon Pegg pretty soon I think.