Gorgeous art you can gaze at on your couch or on the bus.

Saga is a wonderful, adult comic that I am currently completely freaking out over. The graphic novel compilation of issues 1-6 came out in October SO GO GET IT NOW. Issue 7 comes out in November (right now). It’s SO GOOD. The story is total sci-fi fantasy gloriousness and the art is amazeballoons.

Here are a couple cool interviews about it: 1) with Brian Vaughan (creator/writer) and 2) another with Fiona Staples, the artist (the art is BREATHTAKINGLY AWESOME).

And speaking of awesome art, this version of Little Red Riding Hood, illustrated by Daniel Egnéus is also incredibly stunning. Modern, operatic, and cerebral. My students weren’t that into it, but I was blown away. (More here as well.)

Graphic Novels: The Northlanders series by Brian Wood & Ryan Kelly.

Wow, where have these been all my life? Whipped through volumes 1 (Sven the Returned) and 2 (The Cross + the Hammer) yesterday and can’t wait to read more. The art is GORGEOUS, super dark and lush and green and red. The stories are great. The hero/anti-heroes are compelling and twisted and brave and hurt.

So.Good.

These are begging to be movies. (Curses.) But if they get Skarsgard to play Sven, I’d go. (Wrong coloring I know. But…)

Today’s Lunch-time Comics Run

So I’m not quite sure how this happened, but somehow I find myself once again making a weekly run to the comics shop to pick up new books. (This happened once for a year or so in NYC and it was ALL Barbara’s fault, you hear me, girl???? But eventually it went by the wayside.)

  • Local #12, the FINAL issue from Brian Wood – A dude who works at the shop got me totally hooked on this series, so much so that in trying to track down the old issues, he wound up bringing in his own copies for the store to sell to me. Now that’s dedication! Presumably it will be released as a graphic novel/compilation, but if you see the single issues, I’d highly recommend them.

  • Angel: After the Fall #8 – They’re not quite as good as the Buffy Season 8s, but I’m enjoying them. (But like Buffy Season 8, they continue on from the point of the TV series’ end, so no point in reading them if you didn’t watch all the way through.) This month will have two issues released.

  • DMZ “On the Ground” (the graphic novel/compilation of DMZ #s 1-5) – Since I am loving the aforementioned Local so much, I thought I might need to check out other Brian Wood books. So I bought issues #30 and #31 of DMZ last week. Totally intriguing. America’s second civil war has taken place. New Jersey & Inland = the Free States. Brooklyn/Queens/Long Island = The United States of America. Manhattan = The “DMZ“. I liked what I read/saw so far, so now I’m starting from the beginning.

Last week: Buffy Season 8 #15 (I also bought Secret Invasion #3 but that might have been released earlier, can’t remember.)

Next week: Runaways #30