TopShelf

Two larger new editions of Craig Thompson's autobiographical graphic novel Blankets came out yesterday from Top Shelf, reprinting the Eisner Award-winning book about Thompson's first love as a young man from a deeply religious family. Thompson newest work, the much-anticipated Islamic-lore-inspired Habibi, hits stores in a few week from Pantheon Books, and to celebrate both works we're holding a

This week, Top Shelf released the latest volume of Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. In Century: 1969, Moore and O'Neill continue their tour of 20th century literature, and to say that it's something I was looking forward to is a bit of an understatement...

Craig Thompson's multiple Eisner, Harvey and Ignatz Award winning graphic novel Blankets needs little formal introduction these days. The author's coming-of-age tale has been winning over fans since 2003, after all. Still, if you're new to comics or just haven't made the time commitment to absorb Thompson's 592 page exploration of love, faith, art and growing up in the Midwest, we're pleased to fi

Fans of Paul Tobin (Spider-Girl, Marvel Adventures) and Colleen Coover (X-Men: First Class, Girl Comics) rejoice! The comics supercouple is launching an all-new independent comic on Top Shelf 2.0 today called Gingerbread Girl, about a 26-year-old woman named Annah Billips who either has an imaginary sister she created during her parents' divorce...

This week is Banned Book Week in America, and while we've heard a lot of stories recently about the media being cowed by their pervasive fear of the word "Mohammed" and over-protective parents demanding that the dictionary be banned from their school's library, it's nice to be able to celebrate at least one story in 2010 about free speech winning the day...

Kathryn and Stuart Immonen are the power couple of fun comics, with their separate work on Marvel books like "Nextwave" and the recent "Patsy Walker: Hellcat" miniseries exhaling breaths of anarchic and whimsical fresh air into the often overserious superhero world...

Top Shelf's release of "Ax" can be seen as an assault on two common myths. The first myth is that anthology books don't work. The second myth is that manga is all spiky hair, flowery romances, and ninjas. Within "Ax'''s four hundred pages are over thirty stories that explode everything you might have thought about what manga is...

The story of the three little pigs and the big bad wolf typically demonstrates the value of...well, building materials, but as exemplified by comic creators J.D. Arnold and Rich Koslowski's "BB Wolf and the 3 LP's," when the fairy tale is turned on its head, it can communicate much more serious themes such as racism, murder and revenge...

This morning, Top Shelf announced the long-awaited next installment of Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen saga, shocking fans and retailers alike with the news that not only would O'Neill not be drawing it, but that after last year's "Century: 1910," Moore's scripts were jumping ahead almost 80 years for "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: America 1988.

Foreign art can be inherently enticing for its foreignness. We all look to fiction and art to transport us to another world, another reality, another point of view, but much as memoir and autobiography hold in them a special titillation of getting to see something real and private, art from other cultures brings with it a promise that, no matter how successful the art may be at transporting or