Guarnido's sumptuously painted pages and rich cinematic style bring the world of 1950s America to vibrant life, with Canales weaving in fascinating tales of conspiracy, racial tension, and the "red scare" Communist witch hunts of the time. Guarnido reinvents anthropomorphism in these pages, and industry colleagues no less than Will Eisner, Jim Steranko, and Tim Sale are fans!Whether John Blacksad is falling for dangerous women or getting beaten to within an inch of his life, his stories are, simply put, unforgettable.* Dark Horse is very proud to present the first three Blacksad stories in a beautiful hardcover collection, completely relettered to the artist's specifications and with the latest album, Red Soul, in English for the very first time.* This internationally acclaimed series has won nearly a dozen prestigious awards — including the Angoulême Comics Festival prizes for Best Series and Best Artwork-and is a three-time Eisner Award nominee.

    and The Power of the Dog now gives us a fierce and funny new novel—and a blistering new take on the Mafia story.Frank Machianno is a late-middle-aged ex–surf bum who runs a bait shack on the San Diego waterfront when he’s not juggling any of his other three part-time jobs or trying to get a quick set in on his longboard. He’s a stand-up businessman, a devoted father to his daughter, and a beloved fixture in the community.Frank’s also a hit man. Specifically: a retired hit man. Back in the day, when he was one of the most feared members of the West Coast Mafia, he was known as Frankie Machine. Years ago Frank consigned his Mob ties to the past, which is where he wants them to stay. But a favor being called in now by the local boss is one Frank can’t refuse, and soon he’s sucked back into the treacherous currents of his former life. Someone from the past wants him dead. He has to figure out who, and why, and he has to do it fast.The problem is that the list of candidates is about the size of his local phone book and Frank’s rapidly running out of time.And then things go really bad.

    Plus all the bonus features you've come to know and love: sketchbook, scripts, interviews, galleries, original designs, and a special Best of the Letter Column. This is where the story begins. A must-have for your comic library.

    So when Rino and his cronies come up with a plan to reverse their fortunes, Cristiano wonders if maybe their lives are poised for deliverance after all. But the plan goes horribly awry; on a night of apocalyptic weather, each person will act in a way that has irreversible consequences for themselves and others, and Cristiano will find his life changed forever, and not in the way he hoped." As God Commands is a story of life at the crossroads of hope and despair.

    It's a message kids hear every day. But it's not God's message.Just like Punchinello, we all want to fit in-to be accepted by the crowd. But at times that may mean either looking and acting like others or risking being rejected.God's truth is simple and unchanging, reminding us that it's not what we have that counts, but whose we are. This is a truth the lovable Wemmick, Punchinello, hears again at the knee of Eli, his creator.Punchinello's hard-learned lessons show us how important it is to be who we were created to be, and why that matters. Let the two wonderful tales You Are Mine and If Only I Had a Green Nose-as 2 Books in 1-help you remember these important things: you were made the way you are for a reason, and there is Someone who will always help you be you-wonderfully you.Book Details: Format: Hardcover Publication Date: 9/7/2006 Pages: 64 Reading Level: Age 4 and Up

    Meanwhile, on the surface, world powers and secret societies vie for control of what may be the most important discovery in all of human history. Set in the tense and tumultuous 1930s, the action-filled Hollow Earth Expedition is inspired by the literary works of genre giants Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jules Verne, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The subterranean action is powered by Ubiquity, an innovative roleplaying system that emphasizes storytelling and cinematic action.

    His wife had left him for another man, and he had discovered them together--murdered. Drowning himself in gin, one night he stumbles across a parked car where a man and a woman are plotting the kidnapping and murder of the man's wife. At first he thinks he should turn them in, but there is some real money involved here, and he makes the liquor-fueled decision to follow them and work a double-cross of his own. But Lew doesn't figure on Clarkson, brother of his dead wife's lover. Clarkson wants to bring him back to pay for the death of his brother. But there's no turning back on the plan now--Lew has got to see this one through to the end.A TASTE FOR SINJim Phalen is obsessed with Felice. He can't get enough of her wild ways, her wicked charms. She is hot like no woman he has ever met before. They're quite a pair. Unfortunately, Felice is married to bank manager George Anderson. But Felice has a plan--to kill her husband one night while he works at the bank and steal all the money. Jim thinks the idea is crazy. But the more he figures it, the more he thinks that it just might work. He knows he had to have Felice. Just the thought of her drives him nuts. But can he create the perfect plan to possess her, and steal the money, too? It's crazy alright--but it just might work.

    For 50 years Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine has offered its readers a wide range of the finest crime and detective stories available and stands today as one of the foremost magazines of mystery and suspense. In anticipation of AHMM's golden anniversary, Ms. Landrigan invited readers to nominate their favorite stories, and this collection is packed with popular authors and well-known characters, including Lawrence Block's Matt Scudder, Bill Pronzini's Nameless Detective, and Sara Paretsky's V. I. Warshawski. Linda Landrigan is editor-in-chief of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, She lives in New York.

    Common motifs include crime and punishment, the upheaval of traditional moral values, and a pessimistic stance on the meaning of life and on the place of humankind in the universe. Spanning the 1940s and 1950s, the classic film noir era saw the release of many of Hollywood's best-loved studies of shady characters and shadowy underworlds, including Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep, Touch of Evil, and The Maltese Falcon. Neo-noir is a somewhat loosely defined genre of films produced after the classic noir era that display the visual or thematic hallmarks of the noir sensibility. The essays collected in The Philosophy of Neo-Noir explore the philosophical implications of neo-noir touchstones such as Blade Runner, Chinatown, Reservoir Dogs, Memento, and the films of the Coen brothers. Through the lens of philosophy, Mark T. Conard and the contributors examine previously obscure layers of meaning in these challenging films. The contributors also consider these neo-noir films as a means of addressing philosophical questions about guilt, redemption, the essence of human nature, and problems of knowledge, memory and identity. In the neo-noir universe, the lines between right and wrong and good and evil are blurred, and the detective and the criminal frequently mirror each other's most debilitating personality traits. The neo-noir detective -- more antihero than hero -- is frequently a morally compromised and spiritually shaken individual whose pursuit of a criminal masks the search for lost or unattainable aspects of the self. Conard argues that the films discussed in The Philosophy of Neo-Noir convey ambiguity, disillusionment, and disorientation more effectively than even the most iconic films of the classic noir era. Able to self-consciously draw upon noir conventions and simultaneously subvert them, neo-noir directors push beyond the earlier genre's limitations and open new paths of cinematic and philosophical exploration.

    . . . This is a must have for all [Bruen’s] fans.”—Jon Jordan, Crimespree Magazine“If you love complex, thought-provoking work, then you’ll find something in this collection to intrigue you. If you love Bruen, there’s no doubt you’ll already have cracked the spine.”—Russel McLean, Crime Scene ScotlandEarly novellas, short stories, and poetry by the two-time Edgar Award–nominated author of The Guards and London Boulevard. Includes All the Old Songs and Nothing to Lose, considered Ken Bruen's first foray into crime fiction.

    . . the roster of writers interviewed in these pages includes those who have won Edgar, Shamus, Anthony and Macavity awards. The interviews were conducted in person, or by phone, or both. Significantly, none of the interviews were placed before the authors for approval, massaging or tweaking of answers. The interviews were recorded on tape and are presented without rejuxtaposition or revision on the part of the novelists. This is how the writers spoke, what they said, casually, candidly and, more importantly, on the fly.

    Unlike the analytical detectives of nineteenth-century fiction, such as Edgar Allan Poe's detective Dupin, the new detectives encountered cases not as intricate logical puzzles but as stark challenges of manhood. In the stories of these characters and their criminal opposites, John T. Irwin explores the tension, within ideas of American masculinity, between subordination and independence and, for the man who becomes his own boss, the conflict between professional codes and personal desires. He shows how, within different works of hard-boiled fiction, the professional either overcomes the personal or is overcome by it, ending either in ruinous relationships or in solitary integrity, and how within the genre all notions of manly independence are ultimately revealed to be illusions subordinate to fate itself. particular influence of the novel of manners, especially the canonical literary writing of F. Scott Fitzgerald. He goes on to argue that, from the time of World War II, when hard-boiled fiction began to appear on the screen in film noir just as women entered the workforce in large numbers, many of its themes came to extend to female empowerment. Finally, he discusses how these themes persist in contemporary dramatic series on television, representing the conflicted lives of Americans into the twenty-first century.