Welcome, consider this dam burst...

I want to take a moment to discuss the best books of the year, or should I say, the best Graphic Novels of the year and my experience with two of them.

First is The Fixer by Joe Sacco, which is, of course, as excellent as they all say. You can read much better reviews than I can offer, but let me say this was my first experience with Sacco's work, which lead me to read Notes From a Defeatist (also released this year, but without the 'best of' backing experienced by The Fixer) which is equally excellent (and maybe a little better, to me, as much of it is not as heavy as The Fixer, which is no slight, but reading of war atrocities vs. hanging with a band touring Europe lends itself to a more "enjoyable", though less heady, reading experience.

All this is pushing me towards Palestine, which is to be read over the weekend. I wanted to follow up with Safe Area..., but I've been told it's out of print, which seems to be a real lapse on the publishers part if true.

Which leads to another critical darling, Louis Riel by Chester Brown, another critics darling of '03. I've been trying to get a copy for a month from a coupe of sources. Both tell me it's out of stock at their distributor level, which also seems to be a real lapse... on someone's part, not sure if the publisher can be blamed for this one. Sure, I may be able to hit Amazon for it, but I was trying to throw the Direct Market a few dollars, and look what it gets me...

More when my order from Atomic Books shows up.

/joe