Big Questions #9 and Don't Go Where I Can't Follow

Yowza! Literally straight from the printing press - we've just received our order of Big Questions #9 and Don't Go Where I Can't Follow, both by crowd favorite Anders Nilsen.
Everything you see on this D&Q page about Anders is available at Lucky's except Big Questions #6.

October 25 New Titles

Mega-orders of smaller press books and comics coming in early
next week - from Drawn and Quarterly, Fantagraphics, NBM,
Bodega, Dark Horse, and much more...even Acme Novelty Library #17!
Here's the calm before the storm:

RUNAWAYS #21 
BART SIMPSON COMICS #32               
BATMAN HUSH VOL 1 TP                   
EMILY THE STRANGE #1                       
LITTLE LULU VOL 12
PUT THE BOOK BACK ON SHELF (Belle and Sebastian Comic)
SEVEN SOLDIERS #1
SIMPSONS BUST-UPS SER 3 ASST
SIMPSONS CLASSICS #10
SOCK MONKEY COLLECTED WORKS
SOCK MONKEY TP
SUPERMARKET TP
TEEN TITANS GO #36
ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #101
VENOM VS CARNAGE TP  

Wednesday Oct. 18 New Comics

Wednesday, aka New Comic Day in the "biz".

100 BULLETS VOL 1 FIRST SHOT LAST CALL TP
100 BULLETS VOL 2 SPLIT SECOND CHANCE TP
100 BULLETS VOL 3 HANG UP ON THE HANG LOW TP
100 BULLETS VOL 4 FOREGONE TOMORROW TP
ARCHIE #570                                             
BLACK DOGS GRAPHIC SHAKESPEARE KING LEAR GN
BLACK DOGS GRAPHIC SHAKESPEARE MACBETH GN
CONAN #33
FABLES VOL 1 LEGENDS IN EXILE TP
FRANK MILLER SIN CITY VOL 4 THAT YELLOW BASTARD
FRANK MILLER SIN CITY VOL 5 FAMILY VALUES 2ND TP
FRANK MILLER SIN CITY VOL 6 BOOZE BROADS BULLETS
FRANK MILLER SIN CITY VOL 7 HELL & BACK 2ND TP
HAUNTED MANSION #1
HONEY TALKS STRIPBURGER COLLECTION
JUGHEAD #177
LOEG VOL ONE TP
LOEG VOL TWO TP
PREACHER VOL 1 GONE TO TEXAS TP
PREACHER VOL 2 UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD TP
SANDMAN #1 SPECIAL EDITION (MR)
SCOOBY DOO #113
SEVEN SONS GN
SIMPSONS COMICS #123
SUPERMAN RED SON TP
ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #35
WALKING MAN GN
Y THE LAST MAN VOL 1 UNMANNED TP

Back into the music biz at Lucky's

There's so much exciting stuff happening locally, Lucky's has decided to jump back into the music game. We cut back after a couple of unfortunate break-ins several years ago, and have recently only had a limited quantity of vinyl LPs in stock. Well, starting last week we'll be building up our compact disc and LP inventory, focusing on but not limited to many of the excellent Canadian and local bands out and about. Here's our newest batch of new titles and restocks:

Artist	Title	Retail	Format
Black Mountain	Black Mountain	15.99	LP
Bonnie "Prince" Billy	The Letting Go	15.99	LP
Death From Above 1979	You're A Woman, I'm a Machine	12.99	LP
Destroyer	Destroyer's Rubies	16.99	CD
Destroyer	Destroyer's Rubies	17.99	LP
Destroyer	City of Daughters	15.99	CD
Destroyer	Thief	14.99	CD
Destroyer	We'll Build Them a Golden Bridge	14.99	CD
Dinosaur Jr.	Green Mind 180g	26.99	LP
Fugazi	In On the Kill Taker	13.99	LP
Fugazi	The Argument	13.99	LP
Hecker, Tim	Harmony in Ultraviolet	15.99	CD
Public Enemy	It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back	39.99	LP
Sinoia Caves	The Enchanter Persuaded Disco Isolation	13.99	CD
Smog	Red Apple Falls	13.99	LP
Songs: Ohia	Didn't It Rain	13.99	LP
Songs: Ohia	Ghost Tropic	14.99	CD
Songs: Ohia	The Lioness	14.99	LP
Sonic Youth	Rather Ripped	16.99	LP
Sufjan Stevens	Illinois	18.99	LP
Sufjan Stevens	Michigan	14.99	CD
Sunset Rubdown	Shut Up I Am Dreaming	13.99	CD
Sunset Rubdown	Snakes Got A Leg	14.99	CD

New titles Oct 16 - D&Q and McSweeney's

Just in today:
New:
Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip
Restocks:
Better of McSweeney's vol. 1
Wholphin vol. 2
Louis Riel sc by Chester Brown
Little Man sc by Chester Brown
Chester Brown appearing Oct 18 and 20 at the Vancouver Writer's Festival
Drawn and Quarterly Showcase vol. 3 (vol. 4 in stock too)
Get a Life by Dupuy and Berberain
Bone vol. 1 Out From Boneville (vol. 2 - 4 in stock too)
War's End by Joe Sacco (Palestine, Safe Area Gorazde, The Fixer, But I Like It all in stock too)

eBay, Amazon, and Lucky's

I somehow feel compelled to explain why we have so many items listed in our eBay store and not yet on our website. It's simply a matter of reaching more potential customers. Something our in-town customers may find annoying, or not, is that we don't offer the same discounts in store that we do online. Online discounts are meant as a way to offset shipping costs for the customer, and are essential to our being at all competitive with the giants like Amazon, and Amazon. Who do you want to support, big ol' Amazon, or us - little ol' Lucky's? Many of our customers are from places not served, or not served well, by local comic shops - remote areas like 100 Mile House, Oakland, Vladivostok, and Fukuoka. So if you live in Vancouver, please take solace in the fact that your item will arrive quite quickly, and you're saving a trip to the store. If you live in Vancouver, we will arrange free hand-delivered shipping for orders over $50.00.

Anders Nilsen's Big Questions #3, 4 and 5 have arrived!

We received a limited supply of Big Questions #3, 4 and 5 from Mr. Nilsen in Chicago. He has reprinted these issues himself and made them available to his reverential public. Exciting. Wonderful news.
At this time Anders is not reprinting #6 because of the difficulty of recreating a centerfold inset.
Copies of #3, 4 and 5 will be $5.00 U.S., $6.00 Canadian.

Welcome to October new titles

Prepare to be tempted by a flabbergasting array of new releases in stock at Lucky's. Starting with this week:

Best American Comics	Illustrations of Pets
32 Stories	Illustrations of Prehistoric Mammals
Believer 37	Illustrations of Horses
Greetings From E Street	Dreams of Rarebit Fiend
Crumb: A Book of Postcards	Dore Gallery
Housekeeping vs. the Dirt	Dore Bible Illustrations
Jokes and the Unconscious	Bird Illustrations
North American Indian Designs	Tintin Destination Moon
1001 Songs: the Great Songs of All Time	Tintin Land of the Black Gold
Monster Nation	Tintin Prisonsers of the Sun
Yeti Mag #4	Tintin The Black Island (l'Ile Noir) french hc
Comic Art Magazine #8	Tintin the Black Island english
I Don't Want to Think About It Right Now	Tintin the Blue Lotus
Mountain Man…McSweeney's Lists	Tintin the Broken Ear (L'Oreille Cassee) french hc
Orpheus Zine #3	Tintin the Broken Ear english
McSweeney's 20	Tintin the Calculus Affair
5000 Animals	Tintin the Secret of the Unicorn
Bust 41	Tintin the Shooting Star
Sweeter Side of R. Crumb	Puro Muerto
Intelligent Jokes	Jimmy Corrigan sc
Clumsiest People in Europe

We are currently working on creating "add to cart" buttons for shopping on our site, and are offering many titles at discounts of 10 - 20% in our Ebay store.
Call (604-875-9858) or email to reserve copies now.

New Titles late August

Oh man, the new stuff just keeps rolling in...I'll try to catch you up on most of them here:
Siberia by Nikolai Maslov
The Rabbi's Cat by Joann Sfar
"Also Known As" vol. 1 by 12oz Prophet
Doris Danger vol. 1
Nog a Dod, edited by Marc Bell
Bone vol. 4
Kings of the Road by Ragnar
Vampire Loves by Joann Sfar
Neal Cassady: the Fast Life of a Beat Hero
most of the Global Hobo mini-comic catologue - amazing stuff you should come and browse!
Lilman Makes a Name for Himself by Caleb Neolon
The Gremlins by Roald Dahl
Skibber Bee-Bye by Ron Rege Jr

...more arriving soon, stay tuned.

Jeremy Eaton...

Wow, just got in copies of Jeremy Eaton's "Jackass", of which Jim Woodring says "JACKASS...inaugurates an entirely new branch of the craft." And I think he means that in a really good way, because this little book is fantastic. Published by Jason T. Miles.

August New Titles

Lots of great stuff in this month, and more to come...orders from D & Q, Fantagraphics, and NBM due in next week.
Art Out of Time: Unknown Comics Visionaries, 1900-1969, edited by Dan Nadel
Mouse Guard # 1 - 4
Sloth by Gilbert Hernandez
McSweeney's 20
Dark Adaptation by Lorenz Peter
MOCA Postcards by Marcel Dzama, Mark Ryden, and Royal Art Lodge
We Are On Our Own by Miriam Katin
Louis Riel soft cover by Chester Brown
Little Nemo (Taschen collection) 1905 - 1914 by Winsor McCay
Monologues for the Coming Plague by Anders Nilsen
I Am Going To Be Small by Jeffrey Brown

New Titles July

Tons of new stuff in, lots of great restocks, go Portugal!

• The Believer: The 2006 Music Issue (tracks from Destroyer and Calexico!)
• The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2004 and 2005
• McSweeney's 19 (#18, 17, 15 and 13 also in stock)
• Acme Novelty Library # 3, 11, 12, 14 and 16 by Chris Ware
  
• Monologues for the Coming Plage by Anders Nilsen
• The Brick Testament: Stories from the Book of Genesis and The Ten Commandments
• The Book of Joe by Joe Coleman
• Secret Mystic Rites by Todd Schorr
• Good Bye, Chunky Rice, new edition, by Craig Thompson
• The Fate of the Artist by Eddie Campbell
• Lots of Asterix and Tintin
• Little Nemo 1905 to 1914 hc
• Giant Robot #42
• God Made Dirt and Dirt Don't Hurt, 2nd edition
• DF: Idiots on Parade
• Baby Make Me Breakfast
• Baby Fix My Car
• R. Crumb Draws America
• R. Crumb Draws the Blues
• It Feeds Itself: Eric White
• 2W Box Sets E, I and J
• Posada: 150 Years
• Crickets #1 by Sammy Harkham
• Babel vol. 2 by David B.
• Insomnia vol. 2 by Matt Broersma
• They Found The Car by Gipi
• Comics Journal # 276 and 275
• Dungeon vol. 1 and 2 by Safr and Trondheim
• The Squirrel Mother Stories by Megan Kelso
• Little Star by Andi Watson
• The Ticking by Renee French
• The Most Special Day of My Life by the Clayton Brothers

Enough for now, hopefully you'll find something you like....

Best Comics and Graphic Novels of 2005

In case you missed it, and in case you care, check out this list of Time Magazine's top 10 graphic novels of 2005. Agree, disagree, whatever, they're all available at Lucky's.

Tom Spurgeon's list of the top 50 comics of 2005 is five times more interesting to read though. About 80% of these are available at Lucky's now, and any of them can be special ordered.

Hola and hello

Big changes are afoot, big changes I tell ya. We're trying hard to upgrade, update and generally spice up the website and add more content. Look for backlogs of great gallery pics to come online soon, and we'll be expanding the selections in our Ebay store as well.
You'll notice that most books and graphic novels in the Ebay store are listed at 20% off, and if you're a "bricks and mortar" real live non-virtual customer you may think you're getting ripped off...but the 20% off basically covers shipping for the online customer and makes the price about equal to in-store pricing. We'll see how long it takes for local customers to realize the savings they can garner by paying online and then coming in and pick up in the store.

Matt Moroz

Lucky's gallery is displaying six beauty Matt Moroz silkscreens until November 5. Check them out while you can. Here's the cover art Matt did for the hot-selling new Wolf Parade album "Apologies to Queen Mary". Matt's art and the Wolf Parade album are both highly recommended. We have a few copies left of a collaborative silkscreen print by Matt Moroz, Luke Ramsay, and Chloe Cum - just $20 each.

CITR Radio Shows

Best of...favorite this, favorite that...telling people what you like is good times. In the interest of good times, and telling all y'all what's the good stuff out there, here's a list of my current favorite CITR 101.9 radio shows - the University of British Columbia campus radio station. I've been thinking lately about how many great shows are on CITR right now...I haven't listened regularly for a few years, so I haven't heard all of the shows on the current schedule, so I reserve the right to update this list after new favorites emerge. Here we go. Ready? Set...Go!

Instead of a ranking, I've decided to just make a list of shows I like...it just wouldn't be fair to rank them until I know all the shows well...
We All Fall Down
Ok, Marielle's show is just exactly what one hopes for in a college radio show. Sincerity, screw-ups, friends and relatives dropping in as guests, genuine enthusiasm, lots of great rock'n'roll including plenty of local content...endearing and addictive, you must check it out Thursdays at 1:00pm. See Marielle's playlists at www.weallfalldowncitr.blogspot.com
Nardwuar Presents
Nardwuar. The Human Serviette. The legend, the mini-mega-star, the national treasure. Nardwuar's influence on CITR and Vancouver's music scene is enormous, and his radio show and interviews are still priceless. Fridays at 3:30pm. Do doodle do do...do do.www.narwuar.com
Parts Unknown
Hosted by Chris-R-Iffic (spelling?), this is the place to get the inside scoop on all the local indie rock and rock and pop and rock and gigs and gossip and rock and roll. Discovering Chris's show has brought great joy to my life...for some fleeting moment on Mondays at 1:00pm - the show is called Parts Unknown. Mr Chris is sincere, honest, frequently funny, very knowledgable, and sounds more like Nardwuar than perhaps any other living human - without it being a bad thing. Plays in the band They Shoot Horses Don't They.
Ska-T's Scenic Drive
Mr Ska-T is one helluva guy, pumping Vancouver up with solid ska beats for what - 10 years now? Someday there will be a statue of Ska-T somewhere...someday he will get the recognition he deserves...he certainly has left a formidable aural record for aliens and future civilizations to ponder and admire.
Onomatopoiea ShowGreat guests and interviews...the music, uh, not so much sometimes, but the comic talk is really really good...heard Robert Dayton on today talking about Bunyon, and so much more. He had his Mom there, it was awesome. Robin K kept trying to slow him down so she could get a few words in. It was funny.
These are the Breaks
I don't know who these DJs are, but they spin some mean mean cuts. Highly enjoyable music to be removed from your mind to.

I'm missing some good shows, I know I am, I'll be trying to listen to several more that sound interesting as circumstances permit. Peep the playlist at www.citr.ca

Owen Plummer, art-books, and Kami the Spoolmak mascot

What is it with these “art books”? Dang things be cropping up everywhere, spreading like some kind of dirty plague…but a good dirty plague, one that makes you feel like the opposite of what you’d feel like if you were all suffering from some kind of bad ailment. They mollify, edify, enlighten, and educate. They don’t perpetrate, procrastinate, hesitate or get irate. Word to the bird, this shiznit is funky. Take a look at the oeuvre of Owen Plummer, who has taken the deification and representation of the image of Mr. T to unparalleled heights in his Rubber Popsicle Factory series of books. (Please tell me you’ve read “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” and remember the tale of Mr. T growing up by Dave Eggers’ parents’ house and chopping down all the trees on his estate.) Plummer makes a funkified Mr. T the center of an unpredictable variety of one page drawings, accompanied by floating pyramids, big gold chains, ketchup bottles, lightning bolts, igloos, three eyed friendly beasties, and cameos from the “Kami” fish - the unjustly fired mascot of Kamloops.
Poor Kami, he was a happy cowboy hat wearing trout whose six-shooter was deemed a little too violent of an image for the kiddies of the ‘Loops back in the day, and the city ignominiously retired him in the late eighties without so much as a burial. Owen Plummer’s work will doubtlessly resonate with the Kamloops diaspora, separated from their natural homeland and forced to work abroad in the big cities due to economic hardships brought on by the end of the Cariboo Gold Rush in 1862. His images of Kami wild and free, at times standing in the desert, at others times enjoying a ride in a fine automobile, are enough to bring a tear to one’s eye, and lament with much sorrow the passing of one of British Columbia’s finest town mascots. It’s as though Plummer is consoling us, telling us, “It’s all good, Kami has gone on to a better place.”
Plummer has been a beacon of consistency in the production of the Rubber Popsicle Factory books over the past eight years, and has without a doubt had an influence on the growing proliferation and propagation of small, self-published art books being made in Vancouver. His books are practically begging to be bought (for a dollar or two) and stuffed into your back pocket, to be tickled and ruffled and shared with your homies.
Luke Ramsay’s work shares a similar aesthetic to Plummer’s, and if I was to venture another connection, I would say they both seem to be operating in the general realm of the Jason McLean/Marc Bell school of visual representation. The style they all utilize at times is a type of “story within the picture” visual that creates a unique narrative structure – a large picture that contains within it either separate related images or some broader line within the picture that leads your eye through the internals of a drawn image. Perhaps they are Jungians, “Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens.”
Plummer, Ramsay, Marc Bell, and Keith Jones, as the Puffer Group, have worked to together to complete the first four issues of Puffer Extract, a delicious example of what happens when you mix your peanut butter with my chocolate…I mean, when you put four people together who draw in the aforementioned style of the story/joke-in-picture and have them all colliding with one another in the same drawing. These collaborative enterprises can leave you analyzing, guessing, and decoding for as long as you have time to kill.
Art-books are a big little thing in Vancouver, taken up by people who simply like to draw and do it because they can. You can’t stop them. You can’t stop these little books from coming out, so buy them up and spread them all over you floor and let everybody you know roll around in them and enjoy them.

Best Comic Book Movies

There's a poll on our forum about the best comic movie ever made. Choosing my top eight was relatively easy, I didn't give it a whole lot of thought and the only semi-difficult decision I had to make was between Hellboy and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Let me know what you think my glaring oversights were, I feel like I've missed something huge and obvious. I'd have to say my first thoughts on this are that between the Spider-Man and X-Men movies it's close, but I think I enjoyed the X-Men movies more - but it's hard to compare X-Men with American Splendor, which I enjoyed immensely and was a terrific adaptation of Harvey Pekar's work...so all in all, apples and oranges considered, I guess I'm going to chose American Splendor, but I definitely ate more popcorn during the X-Men.
Here it is, my until-I-remember-the-one-I'm-forgetting top comic movies of all-time

1 American Splendor
2 X-Men 1 & 2
3 Spider-Man 1 & 2
4 Batman
5 Superman
6 Ghost World
7 Hulk
8 Hellboy

Go to the Lucky's comic forum and vote! Or just post in the comments - be the first on your block!

Worn Tuff Elbow by Marc Bell

WEARING A TUFF ELBOW
published in Only Magazine #10, December 10-16


Touch your elbow. You know - the loose, worn, tough part, the part where human nerves decided a long time ago that they no longer wanted to transmit the painful sensation of skin being pinched between a sharp elbow bone and a table top. Twist that elbow skin, get it all worked in, ask your little brother to squeeze you there with some pliers. Then mourn the loss of a miniature civilization that lived in the dry caverns of this mysterious region before you so callously destroyed it. Your elbow didn’t need a pinching or a rubbing – it just needed anywhere from 200-250% moisturization! Them little fellers in there’ll be just fine! Before long you’ll be lugging talking bodiless legs around like Santa with his big ol’ bag and tossing them onto your growing pile of PEI potatoes. Marc Bell cranks up the absurd-o vision from first pages of his new comic Worn Tuff Elbow - so much so that the book jelly rolls its way into the absurdified air of Bill Griffith’s Zippy the Pinhead, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, Jim Woodring’s Frank comics, and the work of Dave Cooper. The sack ‘o potatoes bit is just a warm up for the real juice of the story - Monsieur Moustache’s dictatorial attack on the Little People of Bagtown, and Wilder Hobson’s apparent confusion (is he playing the fool? Is he a fool? Is he Marc?) at this state of affairs. There are plenty of other subplots including but not limited to class warfare, Goblin Powder, a pantaloon obsession, and a chilling Orwellian finale to temper all those chuckles.
Bagtown is populated by a cacophony of outrageous characters like Legba, the many-legged creature-thing that speaks mystical missives frantically recorded by a confused audience of strange little buddies. In Legba we see the insidious influence of local artist and wild man Shane Ehman; no doubt those who are familiar with Ehman’s work or have seen him throw down a spontaneous rhyme (I believe the kids call it “rapping”) will recognize his influence in Legba’s ramblings…and then fans of Ehman are rewarded with the unthinkable, a full page of his drawings adorn the back page! Published by Fantagraphics no less! Bell’s unrestrained expression of imagination is one of the things that really launches the comic into the pantheon of whacked-out Absurdism, and defines Bell’s style (see his Shrimpy and Paul book published by Highwater, any of the Shrimpy strips in various periodicals, or his numerous mini-comics). While Jim Woodring accomplishes his imaginative vision in Frank painting mostly wordless surreal fantasies, Bell effectively extends his creativity to wild liberties with language – liberties that somehow always seem strangely appropriate and calculated to both perplex and amuse. This is no quick draw piece of work either, the details in the lines are impressive, and each frame is packed with visual narrative devices that owing to the simplicity of black lines on white paper, manage to be somehow full and sparse at the same time.
Worn Tuff Elbow is a refreshing breath of lunacy and humor in a medium that has become overly concerned with opposing extremes of depressing realism and rehashed formulaic superhero plots – both with the goal of making the next hit movie adaptation. The comics medium needs humor like this – have we forgotten what it is to laugh? Did I just say that? Will you forgive me? I appreciate the work of talented artists like Seth and Adriane Tomine, but I’d love to see a fresh wave of “funnies” lighten up the modern comic atmosphere. Bell uses the comic to do things only comics can do – words and pictures working together to create a scene that no animated cartoon, hideous computer graphics, or live theatre adaptation can do. Maybe it would work in claymation. Look, the puffery of this puff piece should perhaps be reigned in a tad, but if you are someone who has given up on comics because you are bored with the medium, or too impatient to wait for your favorite title to come out, or think there’s nothing funny or mature enough for you out there – Worn Tuff Elbow is calling you back and clucking like a chicken telling you “Comics can be fun! Comics are fun!”

Worn Tuff Elbow is available at fine comic shops everywhere - get yours at Lucky's.