Graphic novel news

Read Grovel's latest graphic novel review - Y: The Last Man Book 3 - One Small Step.

Tom Strong fans can now pick up Book 5 of the series in paperback, out in the UK from Titan Books. Writing duties are handled by a raft of Grovel favourites, including Ed Brubaker and Brian K. Vaughan. If Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was more your thing, you could keep yourself ticking over with Heroes & Monsters, the annotations to the first volume, written by Jess Nevins and now also out in the UK courtesy of Titan Books.

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Read Grovel's latest graphic novel review - The Four Constables: Volume 1 by Tony Wong and Andy Seto.

The revamped Swamp Thing seen in the latest graphic novels (Bad Seed and Love in Vain) has, if anything, been moving further away from the character's roots. The third volume in the series, Healing the Breach, comes full circle however, as Swampy has to deal with people and events from his past, not least of all, the person whose persona he originally took on. Scripted by Joshua Dysart and with art by Enrique Breccia, Ronald Wimberly and Richard Corben, it's published by Titan Books in the UK and DC Comics in the US.

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The second volume of Garth Ennis's War Stories is now out in the UK from Titan Books, as well as in the US from DC Comics' Vertigo imprint. The book contains four stories, illustrated by veteren artists on the British comics scene - David Lloyd, Cam Kennedy, Carlos Ezquerra and Gary Erskine. All four take place in World War II and span numerous battlefields in Spain, North Africa, the North Atlantic and the skies over Germany.

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Titan Books is releasing the UK version of the second volume in Grant Morrison's four volume epic Seven Soldiers of Victory, already out in the US through DC Comics. Following directly on from Volume One, this book charts the progress of Klarion the Witch-Boy, the Manhattan Guardian, Zatanna and Shining Light as their individual plots start to intertwine. The remaining two volumes are promised before the end of 2006.

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Gilbert Hernandez's Palomar was one of the hottest graphic novels of 2003. Luba: The Book of Ofelia is the follow-up, the second volume of Hernandez's intended trilogy. It follows Luba and her cousin Ofelia as they start new lives in America, but the same longings from their previous lives still infect them and Ofelia's intention of writing a memoir backfires as she finds herself haunted by ghosts from the past. Published by Fantagraphics, keep an eye out for our impending review.

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Before there was John Constantine, of Hellblazer comic and Constantine movie fame, there was Johanna Constantine. Originally written into a Sandman story by Neil Gaiman, Johanna is a distant relative of John's, practising magic and battling demons in the second half of the 18th century. In this Hellblazer spin-off, Andy Diggle takes the character's reigns and steers her on a mission for King George III, to find a mysterious box, shipwrecked on the bottom of the Arctic Sea.

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Read Grovel's latest graphic novel review - Top 10: The Forty-Niners by Alan Moore and Gene Ha.

A batch of great looking books has just arrived from First Second, so look for reviews to start feeding into these pages very soon. The publisher's early line-up looks fantastic.

First up is A.L.I.E.E.E.N. by Lewis Trondheim, a comic book aimed at young readers (12 and up), which claims to be a children's book from another planet, read by the kids of little green men from other worlds. Trondheim's partner in the fabulous Dungeon series, Joann Sfar, also has two books out: Vampire Loves features a romantic hero with a twist - he's dead and likes to suck peoples' blood; while Sardine in Outer Space is a children's book (six and up) mixing swashbuckling with sci-fi, which Sfar wrote and illustrated with Emmanuel Guilbert.

The Lost Colony by Grady Klein has been dubbed 'an Asterix for America', following life in a 19th century American colony. With its charming illustration and hidden depths, this should be a series to watch. If you're after something more immediately sophisticated, Eddie Campbell's The Fate of the Artist looks like a fascinating work, as Campbell looks for clues to help solve the mystery of his own disappearance.

Lastly comes a book that seems destined to significantly add to the landscape of deeply moving political comic books. J.P. Stassen's Deogratias charts the life of a young boy in Rwanda, around the time of the genocide that saw 800,000 people slaughtered in less than 100 days.

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Order from Amazon.com/Amazon.co.uk

Order from Amazon.com/Amazon.co.uk

Order from Amazon.com/Amazon.co.uk

Order from Amazon.com/Amazon.co.uk

Order from Amazon.com/Amazon.co.uk

Will Eisner's comic adaptations of literary classics are coming back via NBM Publishing. Herman Melville's Moby Dick - the story of the hunt for a great white whale - is the next on the rosta and should have just appeared in the shops this week. The book is kept short and the layout clear - ideal for introducing people to comics or sneaking some more traditional classics into the palette of an avid young comics reader.

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Read Grovel's latest graphic novel review - Countdown to Infinite Crisis: Villains United.

With his next book due out from Pantheon in 2007, Craig Thompson's first graphic novel Good-bye, Chunky Rice has been repackaged by the publisher and is set to be re-released on Tuesday. If you haven't already come across it we can heartily recommend it - read our review by clicking on the book cover below.

There's a new manga series from Del Rey launching this month called Pichi Pichi Pitch, based on a popular Japanese anime and targeted at teenage girls. Lucia runs a popular local swimming pool but trouble starts when she falls for a dashing young surfer boy. Nothing particularly wrong with that you may think, but the trouble is, Lucia's actually a mermaid princess on a mission to save the oceans. How's she going to fit in any time for romance?

Also out from Del Rey this month is volume 9 of Clamp's Tsubasa; volume 5 of lazy otaku group Genshiken; volume 5 of the orchestral Nodame Cantabile; and volume 4 of Guru Guru Pon-Chan, the puppy who can turn into a girl.

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Order from Amazon.com/Amazon.co.uk

Order from Amazon.com/Amazon.co.uk

Order from Amazon.com/Amazon.co.uk

Order from Amazon.com/Amazon.co.uk