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 By Moto Hagio
288 pages, black and white, with some color
Published by Fantagraphics
I never did read the issue of The Comics Journal that interviewed Moto Hagio, and printed one of her stories in English. I understand that it was that issue that convinced the rest of Fantagraphics to publish a "best-of" collection of Hagio’s work, though, and that it talked a great deal about her importance in helping define the shôjo ("girl’s comics") genre in Japan. Here’s what I do know, though. Going into A Drunken Dream and Other Stories blindly, it’s ultimately a book that sucked me into its stories and made me want to read a lot more of Hagio’s comics. A mixture of romance, science-fiction, and family drama, these ten story compilation is one of the strongest examples I’ve seen of the depth and breath that the shôjo genre can contain.
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 By Sergio Ponchione
32 pages, two-color
Published by Fantagraphics Books
One of the things I love about Fantagraphics’s Ignatz Series of comics is how they’ve brought artists and styles from all over the world into a single line. Invariably, half of the books are by artists I’ve never heard of, like Italy’s Sergio Ponchione. I recently bought his Grotesque #2-3, which contained a two-part story, "Cryptic City." His off-beat style of story and art bring to mind almost instantly creators like Richard Sala, and made one thing almost instantly clear: I need to buy Grotesque #1, and soon.
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 Adapted by Jacques Tardi
From the novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette
80 pages, black and white
Published by Fantagraphics
Until now, my only exposure to Jacques Tardi was the reprinting of some of his It Was the War of the Trenches stories in the pages of Drawn & Quarterly volume 2. It’s been fifteen years and those stories have still stuck with me, so when I heard about Fantagraphics’s plans to publish a line of Tardi’s books in English, I was pretty excited about the prospect. The first of Fantagraphics’s new Tardi reprints is West Coast Blues, a crime noir story adapted from a novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette. It’s a smart choice to lead the line. West Coast Blues is just the right mixture of action, suspense, and surprise to keep just about any reader’s attention.
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 By E.C. Segar
200 pages, black and white, plus color
Published by Fantagraphics
Like most readers below a certain age, I only knew Popeye from his more modern-day incarnations; in my case an animated version from late ’70s television, and Robert Altman’s infamous live-action movie in 1980. I’d never, however, read the original E.C. Segar strips, and two years ago I picked up the first Popeye collection from Fantagraphics, at which point its huge, oversized dimensions made a semi-permanent home on my coffee table. Finally, though, I got around to giving the book a whirl. I’m definitely not waiting two years until I read the next book.
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 By Hal Foster
120 pages, color
Published by Fantagraphics Books
"Prince Valiant? Really?" That was more or less the response I got when my boyfriend discovered I’d bought Prince Valiant Vol. 1: 1937-1938. From there, he explained why this was such a bad idea, and what a dull, boring comic it was. And you know something? I understood where he was coming from. I remember Prince Valiant strips growing up being an exercise in dullness, like all the serial strips that I didn’t care to follow. But after seeing Dave Gibbons and Ryan Sook pay homage to Prince Valiant in Wednesday Comics #1, well, I just had to give it another shot. As it turns out, it was a good decision.
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 By Lilli Carré
80 pages, black and white
Published by Fantagraphics Books
When you hear a title like The Lagoon, you might end up thinking about a dark, murky sort of experience, thanks to the titles of works like Creature from the Black Lagoon. When I picked up Lilli Carré’s The Lagoon, though, I found myself very pleasantly surprised to find something entirely different; a forbidden love story that despite being a print book, has a real sense of music to it.
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 By Charles M. Schulz
342 pages, black and white
Published by Fantagraphics Books
When I was a little kid, I used to regularly scour my library for collections of Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts. The books would always be ragged and dog-eared, which if anything was a sign that I was hardly the only one reading them over and over again. So when Fantagraphics began their Complete Peanuts line a few years ago, I was over the moon. Reading the comic strips from the 1950s was a real thrill, with so many of them rarely or never reprinted, and even more of them new to me. Now that I’ve finally hit the 1960s strips, though, I can’t help but feel that I’ve entered the real Golden Age of Peanuts.
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 By Igort
32 pages, two-color
Published by Fantagraphics Books
Sometimes, it’s good to be patient. That’s what immediately leapt to my mind this summer when Fantagraphics Books (in association with Coconico Press) released Baobab #3, part of their Ignatz Series line. Created by Ignatz Series founder Igort, it’s been two years since the last issue, and my first inclination was if I’d waited this long for another installment, maybe I should just wait out a few additional years for an inevitable graphic novel collection. All it took was one quick glance at the comic, though, and I realized that two years was a long enough wait.
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 Written by Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez, and Mario Hernandez
Art by Gilbert Hernandez and Jaime Hernandez
104 pages, black and white
Published by Fantagraphics
In late 1991, a good friend of mine handed me a stack of Love and Rockets comics with the comment, "You have to read these." I’ve been a fan of the Hernandez Brothers’s comics ever since then, with the only real constant being that I never would know what to expect next. Now they’ve finally left the single-issue comic format behind, releasing Love and Rockets: New Stories as a thick annual format, giving each of the brothers more room in a single release. And the end result? Well, let’s just say that once again, they’ve shown that I really had no idea what to expect.
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 By Gilbert Hernandez
32 pages, black and white
Published by Fantagraphics Books
A “fill-in” in the comics world usually refers to a series where guest creators step in to work on an issue to keep the production schedule moving forward. In other industries, though, “fill-in” has a very different meaning. For example, a “fill-in” in a transit system has to do with adding in a station to the middle of an existing line, such as a train or subway system. It’s with that in mind that I think of Gilbert Hernandez’s New Tales of Old Palomar as being a fill-in; not because it’s a different creator working on the book, but because Hernandez is stepping back to an earlier point in his long-running series of stories and inserting these new adventures into the middle.
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