Graphic novel news

From the official press release:

WHAT'RE YOU LOOKIN' AT?!?
By Johnny Ryan - 176 pages - $16.95 - ISBN 1-56097-621-7
Collecting the first five Fantagraphics issues of Angry Youth Comix, and more! Featuring Johnny Ryan's signature creation, Loady McGee (and straight-man Synus O'Gynus), a misanthropic, acne-scarred hustler who finds himself in scams that would make Wimpy proud, and responds to almost everything with an endless stream of wisecracks, puns, and X-rated double entendres. Loady's ridiculous crackpot schemes serve as perfect comic set-ups, and Ryan's art is crammed with visual gags and existential asides that brings to mind the great Will Elder (MAD magazine). Needless to say, this is not politically-correct stuff, nor is it for children. Ryan's in-your-face humor spares no prisoners, as these stories indicate: "Hipler," a riotous satire of our "extreme makeover" era and celebrity culture; "Ku Klux Kuties," which tests just how far the usual doe-eyed visual tropes can be taken and still make you go, "Aww."; and Ryan's most infamous strip to-date, "The Gaytriot," which caused a p.c.-stir when it was included in The Comics Journal's otherwise-sincere and serious "Cartoonists on Patriotism" volume in 2002. It also features an all-new Gaytriot epilogue! Plus, 16 pages in color!

IN MY DARKEST HOUR
By Wilfred Santiago - 128 pages - $14.95 - ISBN 1-56097-591-1
The Age of Anxiety has never been better depicted in comics form than in In My Darkest Hour, a modernist, mainstream graphic novel that explores the inner life of its protagonist, Omar Guerrero, a 28 year-old Latin American transient, who confronts his pervasive feelings of inadequacy, anger, guilt, and escalating alienation. The first full-length graphic novel from Pop Life collaborator Wilfred Santiago, told in a lovely two-color format.

ZIPPY: FROM HERE TO ABSURDITY
By Bill Griffith - 128 page - $19.95 - ISBN 1-56097-618-7
This new Zippy collection features approximately a year's worth of strips, from November 2003 through November 2004, including full-color Sundays. Follow Zippy as he weaves in and out of "Bushmiller Country" (the land formerly inhabited by Ernie Bushmiller's classic Nancy comic strip) and - as if things weren't strange enough - he suddenly begins spouting Japanese, French, Russian, Farsi, Hungarian, Greek, Finnish and Latin! Zippy meets aliens, revisits Levittown (his birthplace) with Griffy, confronts the evil "Ziggy" and frolics with advertising icons like Reddy Kilowatt, Mr. Bubble, Colonel Sanders and the long-forgotten Unifax Astroboy. Oh, yeah, and he takes a long, hot bath (without Mr. Bubble). Also featured, a 3 page series of Zippyesque "art history lessons". Each strip shows the work of different well-known fine artistes of the recent past depicted on banners in a circus sideshow. Various customers contemplate the displays, a little unsure about whether or not to enter the tent. See the "Crying Picasso Girl"! The Rene Magritte "Apple-Face Man"! Edward Hopper's "Haunted Housewife"! Alberto Giacometti's "Dead Man Walking"! The series ends with Zippy & Griffy finally going in to "expose the con game", only to confront a guy who convices them he's psychic healer Gary Spivey!! New Sunday strips include visits to other comics genres, including '50s sci-fi, Romance Comics ("Young Lust" redux!) and Irving Tripp's "Little Lulu".