Hey folks! In addition to all of the great manga that we’re getting this week, we just received our shipment of October Shonen Jump and Shoujo Beat VIZ titles… as well as the new VizKids books. As a reminder, all of our in-print VIZ manga is sold for U.S. Cover Price.

Here’s a list of new VIZ manga that are now in stock:

Baby & Me V16
Bakegyamon V4
Choco Mimi V2
Eyeshield 21 V28
Gentlemen’S Alliance V10
Happy Happy Clover V3
Hoshin Engi V15
Kimi Ni Todoke V2
Knights Of The Zodiac V27
La Corda D’Oro V11
Leave It To Pet V3
Legend Of Zelda Four Swords Advenures V2
Muhyo & Roji Bsi V13
Nora Chronicle Of Devildom V7
One Piece V22
Pokemon Diamond And Pearl Adventure V5
Pokemon Adventures V3
Reborn V13
Rosario Vampire V9
Skip Beat V19
Slam Dunk V6
Strawberry 100% V10
Wild Ones V8
Yu Gi Oh R V1
Yuyu Hakusho V18

Hey folks! I totally, totally missed it in my little round-up of this week’s books, but Bart Simpsons’s Treehouse Of Horror #15 is out this week. Why is this the most important news of the week? Because while the Treehouse Of Horror one-shots always feature some of the best and most interesting artists working in the biz, this year features guest-editor Sammy Harkham of Kramers Ergot, and a slew of awesome artists from the Kramers crew.

Basically it’s a must-buy. $4.99, 48 pages, awesome.

– Chris

Hello folks! We’re pleased to report that the excellent webcomics strip collection NEVER LEARN ANYTHING FROM HISTORY by Kate Beaton is now back in stock. Beaton has done a number of events with us, and although she’s moved back to the wilds of Halifax we’ll be sure to keep her books and t-shirts available for all y’all.

We’ve just received some new books from Drawn & Quarterly, as well as a restock on John Stanley’s NANCY, which we’d sold out of last week. Here’s some info:

Talking Lines
By R.O. Blechman

Talking Lines is the first ever comprehensive short story collection of R. O. Blechman, one of the most prolific and influential visual artists of the twentieth century. This oeuvre of his graphic stories is, at once, jocular, wry and profound. Blechman ruminates on such various topics as nuclear weapons, war,wiretapping, Christopher Columbus, Leo Tolstoy, William Shakespeare and Virginia Woolf. The stories have appeared in the seminal magazine Humbug (edited by Harvey Kurtzman), The Nation, Nozone (edited by his son, Nicholas Blechman), The New York Times and The New York Times Book Review.

Blechman is a modern master of all things visual whose timeless intellect and stripped-down artistry propels his nonstop relevancy. He is one of the few artists who has been able to balance the commercial and the artistic in a polished and unparalleled career that heralds him as one of the great cartoonists, the author of one of the first modern graphic novels, an Emmy and Cannes Film festival award-winning animator with a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, a Hall of Fame Art Director and even as a blogger for the Huffington Post.

Hardcover/6.5X9 inches/272 pages
ISBN: 9781897299852
$36.95 CDN

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Aya: The Secrets Come Out
Abouet & Oubrerie

Aya has captured the hearts of North American readers of all ages for the rare portrait it paints of a vibrant, happy, bourgeois Ivory Coast in the 1970s, based upon Marguerite Abouet’s youth in Yop City. Not only is Aya complemented with Clement Oubrerie’s gorgeous artwork but the volumes offer a slice-of-life peek into African culture: complete with recipes, glossaries, and wardrobe instructions for turning one’s pagne (brightly colored fabric) into a skirt, headwrap or baby carrier. Engaging and fun, the universal stories in Aya provide a much-needed context for today’s all-too-common unfortunate and heartbreaking news stories.

Aya is the winner of the Best First Album award at the Angouleme International Comics Festival, the Children’s Africana Book Award, and the Glyph Award; was nominated for the Quill Award, the YALSA’s Great Graphic Novels list, and the Eisner Award; and was included on ‘best of’ lists from The Washington Post, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and School Library Journal.

Praise for Aya:
“Based on Abouet’s remembrance of her childhood in Abidjan…the story, along with French illustrator Oubrerie’s artwork, brings to life an Ivory Coast not seen before–a place overflowing with vibrant, rich textiles, new words, music, food, and lively characters filled with humor, love, and the hope for a better life.” -Library Journal, starred review

Hardcover, 128 pages, 6.75 x 9.5 inches, color.
ISBN: 9781897299791
$19.95 CDN

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Nancy Volume One
By John Stanley

Created by Ernie Bushmiller, the beloved Brillo-headed Nancy starred in her own comic book series for years, written by arguably the greatest children’s comics writer of all time, John Stanley. Most famous for scripting the adventures of Marjorie Henderson Buell’s Little Lulu, John Stanley is one of comics’ secret geniuses. He provided a visual rough draft for all the comics he wrote and then handed off these “scripts” for someone else to render the finished art. No matter what comic he was writing, he breathed life into his characters. In Stanley’s comics, Nancy is no longer a crabby cipher, but a hilarious, brilliant, scheming, duplicitous, honest, and loyal little kid–a real little kid. Her adventures with her best friend, the comically destitute Sluggo, involve moneymaking schemes to afford ice-cream sodas, botched trips to the corner store for Nancy’s Aunt Fritzi, and comically raucous attempts to remove loose teeth.

Drawn & Quarterly will launch several kid-friendly volumes of Nancy and Nancy and Sluggo as companion volumes to Melvin Monster and Dark Horse’s Little Lulu volumes. The books will be designed by Seth (The Complete Peanuts; Melvin Monster; Clyde Fans; It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken) to fill a children’s comic niche that has been largely ignored for the last few decades.

Hardcover, 144 pages, 7.75 x 11 inches
ISBN: 9781897299777
$25.95 CDN

APPLY NOW TO EXHIBIT AT TCAF 2010

Hi folks! Christopher Butcher here, Director of the 2010 Toronto Comic Arts Festival, being held May 8th and 9th 2010 in Toronto, Canada. I just wanted to let you know about a pretty exciting change to TCAF for our 2010 event, and that’s our new policy of an open-application process for exhibition space.

Previously, exhibition at TCAF was by invitation only, as we strove to bring the very best creators in the medium to exhibit in Toronto. We’re very proud of all of our previous exhibitors, and we enjoyed curating the sort of show we always wanted to attend ourselves. But quite simply, 2010 isn’t 2003, and the comics medium and industry has grown in so many interesting directions and is producing so much great work that even we’re having trouble keeping up. So we’ve opened up the process so that all creators are welcome to apply to exhibit at the 2010 Toronto Comic Arts Festival, in the hopes that we can continue to be a great home to a diverse and talented group of authors, artists, and speakers.

You can find the application info at http://www.torontocomics.com/. Please note, if you’re a full-line publisher or will require multiple tables at TCAF 2010, please instead contact us at registration@torontocomics.com.

Unfortunately even with our increased space for 2010, there’s no way we’d ever be able to accommodate every creator who applied to exhibit at TCAF. Rather than treating the exhibitors in a “first come, first served” fashion that may exclude some great people, we’re instead keeping registration open until November 15th, 2009 and will then select our exhibitors from the total pool of applicants. The TCAF Executive Committee will choose the cartoonists we think would be the best fit for the Festival. TCAF is still (and will likely remain) a show with a juried exhibition space, but we did want to give everyone a level playing-field on which to have a chance at participating.

Applicants will be contacted beginning December 1st to let them know them know whether or not they’ve been accepted as exhibitors. TCAF 2010 is presented by Toronto Public Library and The Beguiling, and will be held May 8th and 9th 2010 at Toronto Reference Library.

So whether you’re a previous exhibitor or are hoping to exhibit for the first time, feel free to fill out the online application. Hopefully we’ll see you in 2010!

Thanks,

– Christopher Butcher, Festival Director, Toronto Comic Arts Festival

The following comics and graphic novels are scheduled to ship The Beguiling Books & Art on Wednesday, September 16th, 2009. All Prices listed in U.S. Funds. Variant prices are generally accurate to what we will be charging in store, but all disputes between prices will defer to the stickered, in-store price.

Click here for the complete list: /090916shipping.txt

THIS WEEK’S SPECIAL:

JUL090494 DARK REIGN: THE LIST: DAREDEVIL ONE-SHOT 3.99 ONLY $2!
This week only, we’ll be offering DARK REIGN: THE LIST: DAREDEVIL for only 2 bucks, down from its regular price of $3.99. Marvel seems to be insisting that these DARK REIGN one shots are important for not only regular readers of the series but also DARK REIGN readers of the Avengers books, Spider-Man, etc. So, jump on board with this one for just $2 (plus tax). Offer valid until September 22nd, 2009.

Other items of note:

JUL090676 ARCHIE #601 2.50 – The second part of the Archie-proposes-to-Veronica storyline.

JUL090015 BEASTS OF BURDEN #1 (OF 4) 2.99 – Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson tell an amazing story of a group of spooky crime-solving dogs and a cat. It’s really great stuff, all new stories featuring the characters from the DARK HORSE BOOK OF… anthologies. Don’t miss it.

JUL090144 BLACKEST NIGHT #3 (OF 8) 3.99 – Only a couple of weeks late! Score!

JUL090458 CAPTAIN AMERICA REBORN #3 (OF 5) 3.99 – Another much-requested comic book.

JUL090408 WALKING DEAD #65 (MR) 2.99 – Man I am just enjoying every issue of this.

JUN090256 ALCOHOLIC SC (MR) 14.99 – The popular graphic novel, now in soft-cover.

JUN090203 BAD GIRLS TP 14.99 – This one kinda got lost over the years, but we’re excited to see this DC mini-series featuring art by Toronto’s own J. Bone features a group of teen-girl superheroes, aimed at a teen-girl audience. Who’da thunkit? Anyway, it’s not too bad at all, check it out.

MAY090177 BATMAN CACOPHONY HC 19.99 – Huh, I can’t believe it took DC this long to get that first Kevin Smith Batman series collected. Anyway, for Kevin Smith fans, here it is.

JUL090890 LOCKE & KEY HEAD GAMES HC VOL 01 24.99 – Despite the somewhat stupid numbering, this is actually the collection of the second Locke & Key mini-series, Head Games.

JUN091122 OISHINBO GN VOL 05 VEGETABLES 12.99 JUN091123 PLUTO URASAWA X TEZUKA GN VOL 05 12.99 – We’ve got these in stock right now, actually. Run don’t walk for two of my favourite comics being published today!

Hey folks,