Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics is a seminal examination of comics art: its rich history, surprising technical components, and major cultural significance. Explore the secret world between the panels, through the lines, and within the hidden symbols of a powerful but misunderstood art form.

    no matter the name, they have been a powerful medium across four continents for decades. This is the history of comics around the world from the late 1960s to the dawn of the 21st century. Comics is a richly illustrated narrative of extraordinary scope. Examples from all over the world include everything from Crumb and Kirby to RAW; from Metal Hurlant to Marjane Satrapi to nouvelle manga; from both the American mainstream and underground to the evolving and influential British scene. The images here are bright and colorful, dark and brooding, arresting and pleasant, all at the same time. An unprecedented collection includes around 260 expertly chosen illustrations, many reproduced in full-page format for more sophisticated analysis.The authors, two uniquely positioned and knowledgeable authorities, are the first to write a broadly comprehensive history of this most accessible, democratic, and occasionally subversive modern popular art form, displaying an intimate familiarity with schools and styles, writers, artists, and companies across countries and generations. In showing us both post-apocalyptic dreamscapes and portraits of the everyday, Comics looks at this thirty-plus year period through a very unique lens.

    From paying taxes and getting up for work to dancing with kittens and starting a band, readers everywhere will relate to the ongoing struggle between Heart and Brain.Heart and Brain: An Awkward Yeti Collection illustrates the relationship between the sensible Brain and its emotionally driven counterpart, the Heart.Boasting more than one million pageviews per month, TheAwkwardYeti.com has become a webcomic staple since its creation in 2012.

    And he's finding his new career quite the challenge, as even his incredible skills aren't enough to indict the local crime lord known as Tenfingers. Could this be a job for Daredevil? Fighting crime in the shadows, prosecuting bad guys in the light, it's a whole new chapter for the Man Without Fear - and it comes with a protégé. Welcome to Hell, Blindspot - you'll soon find that life with DD comes with more than its fair share of Hand ninjas out for your blood!Collecting: Daredevil 1-5 & material from All-New, All-Different.1

    A mysterious new criminal operative called Oracle has declared war on Gotham. Barbara Gordon, a.k.a. Batgirl, and a.k.a. cyber-superhero Oracle in a previous guise, takes exception to someone smearing her legacy.Writing duo and sisters Julie and Shawna Benson, along with breakout artist Claire Roe, reunite the femme fatale crew in Batgirl and the Birds of Prey, Volume 1: Who Is Oracle?!Collecting: Batgirl and the Birds of Prey 1-6, Rebirth

    But we’d be surprised to learn how much these beloved characters were shaped by the cultural and religious traditions of their makers. Superman Is Jewish? follows the “people of the book” as they become the people of the comic book. Harry Brod reveals the links between Jews and superheroes in a penetrating investigation of iconic comic book figures. With great wit and compelling arguments, Brod situates superheroes within the course of Jewish- American history: they are aliens in a foreign land, like Superman; figures plagued by guilt for not having saved their families, like Spider-Man; outsiders persecuted for being different, like the X-Men; nice, smart people afraid that nobody will like them when they’re angry, like the Hulk. Brod blends humor with sharp observation as he considers the overt and discreet Jewish characteristics of these well-known figures and explores how their creators—including Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Stan Lee, and Jack Kirby— integrated their Jewish identities and their creativity. Brod makes a strong case that these pioneering Jews created New World superheroes using models from Old World traditions. He demonstrates how contemporary characters were inspired by the golem, the mystically created artificial superhuman of Jewish lore. And before Superman was first drawn by Joe Shuster, there were those Jews flying through the air drawn by Marc Chagall. As poignant as it is fascinating, this lively guided tour travels from the Passover Haggadah’s exciting action scenes of Moses’s superpowers through the Yiddish humor of Mad to two Pulitzer Prizes awarded in one decade to Jewish comic book guys Art Spiegelman and Michael Chabon. Superman Is Jewish? explores the deeper story of how an immigrant group can use popular entertainment media to influence the larger culture and in the process see itself in new, more empowering ways. Not just for Jewish readers or comic book fans, Superman Is Jewish? is a story of America, and is as poignant as it is fascinating. *** A surprising question, one that takes a certain amount of chutzpah to even raise. To add even a bit more chutzpah, this book considers questions about the Jewishness of more superheroes than just Superman, and offers answers that will surprise many. You mean Spider-Man is Jewish too? Well, actually, yes, but in a very different way than Superman is. And, as we’ll see, the shift between them reflects the evolution of Jewish life in America itself in the generation between the two, the generation that gets us from World War II and the “Golden Age” of comics to the 1960s and the “Silver Age” of comics. The historical turning points of those tumultuous years and others, like the powerful 1950s crusade against comics for supposedly causing juvenile delinquency, turn out to be central to our story because these events, and their great impact on American Jews, appear on comic book pages themselves, and behind the scenes in their production. For it turns out that the history of Jews and comic book superheroes, that very American invention, is the history of Jews and America, particularly the history of Jewish assimilation into the mainstream of American culture.

    From Superman's loyal dog, Krypto, to Batman's heroic hound, Ace, this guide to the Worlds Greatest Pets has more than 200 DC characters, including many never-before-seen pets, all illustrated in Art Baltazar's Eisner Award-winning style! With an introduction by legendary creator Geoff Johns, the DC Super-Pets Character Encyclopedia is sure to please comic book lovers young and old.

    The silent king of the Inhumans stars in his first-ever solo series! But it begins with Black Bolt...imprisoned?! Where exactly is he? Why has he been jailed? And who could be powerful enough to hold the uncanny Black Bolt? The answers to both will shock you -and Black Bolt as well! For if he is to learn the truth, he must first win a fight to the death with a fellow inmate -the Absorbing Man! Award-winning science fiction writer Saladin Ahmed (Throne of the Crescent Moon) crafts a story as trippy as it is action-packed, with truly mind-bending art from the one-and-only Christian Ward (ODY-C)! COLLECTING: BLACK BOLT 1-6

    and that same old "grinnin' in the face of hell" attitude, the Man Without Fear is back in action and leading with his face! Mark Waid (Amazing Spider-Man) joins neo-legendary artists Paolo Rivera and Marcos Martin for a new spin on Daredevil that will leave you gasping for air. Having turned his world upside over the past several years, Matt Murdock realizes that justice may not be blind to his past and villains may not be the only ones looking for answers. Bring it on. if Matt Murdock could see what he was doing ... he'd be terrified.Collecting: Daredevil 1-6

    With no country and no allies, what’s left for the Sentinel of Liberty to protect? Just the one thing his foe values most: Zola’s son! Steve has saved the boy’s life, but can he keep him alive against the savage barbarians of Phrox — with the fate of a world hinging on his victory? And when Zola’s terrible experiments on the indigenous creatures give birth to a terrible new foe, the Odd War of Dimension Z begins! No flesh escapes the Patchwork!Collecting: Captain America 1-5

    Representing planets throughout the cosmos, these young heroes must band together to protect the galaxy from space-born threats as great as the universe itself.

    Tapping into the energy field called The Speed Force, he applies a tenacious sense of justice to protect an serve the world as The Flash!The Fastest Man Alive returns to his own monthly series as part of the DC Comics—The New 52 event with the writer/artist team of Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato. The Flash knows he can't be everywhere at once, but he has seemingly met his match when he faces DC Comic' hottest new Super Villain, Mob Rule, who really can be everywhere at once!As Mob Rule wages a campaign of crime across Central City, including an electromagnetic blast that plunges the city into darkness, The Flash learns the the only way he can capture Mob Rule and save Central City is to learn how to make his brain function even faster than before—but as much as it helps him, it also comes with a steep price.Collecting: The Flash 1-8

    As the Caped Crusader begins to unravel this deadly mystery, he discovers a conspiracy going back to his youth and beyond to the origins of the city he’s sworn to protect.Batman has heard tales of Gotham City’s Court of Owls: that the members of this powerful cabal are the true rulers of Gotham. The Dark Knight dismissed the stories as rumors and old wives’ tales. Gotham was his city. Until now.A brutal assassin is sinking his razor-sharp talons into the city’s best and brightest, as well as its most dangerous and deadly. If the dark legends are true, his masters are more powerful predators than the Batman could ever imagine.Collects issues #1-7 of Batman.

    Now she has become the target of both Gotham City’s heroes (who don’t take kindly to a new person wearing the cape and the cowl) and its villains (who want to see the entire Bat-family six feet under).

    Using the powers of the northern lights, Nelvana could fly at incredibly fast speeds, become invisible, and even turn into dry ice! She used her great powers to ward of Nazi invaders, shady fur traders, subterranean mammoth men, and interdimensional ether people.With the aid of her brother Tanero, a demigod cursed to appear as a Great Dane, and her sidekick Mountie Cpt. Keene, Nelvana was a steady force for good for six years before her adventures came to an end in 1947.Now for the first time ever, Nelvana's complete adventures have been collected and reprinted in one single volume!Edited by Rachel Richey and Hope Nicholson with a foreword by Benjamin Woo and an afterword by Michael Hirsh.