Author: delta

Best of 2019: Ash Ave Comics Staff Picks

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The year has come to a close, and while we can’t read everything, here’s what we read and loved that was published in 2019. Happy New Year, see you in 2020!

Drew’s best comics of 2019

Criminal (Image)
Dark Knight Golden Child (DC)
House of X/Powers of X (Marvel)
Sara (TKO)
Hard Tomorrow (Drawn & Quarterly)
BTTM FDRS (Fantagraphics)
PTSD (:01 First Second)
Sobek (Shortbox)
Grunt: The Art and Unpublished Comics of James Stokoe (Dark Horse)
Spider-Man Life Story (Marvel)
DCeased (DC)

 

Angela’s picks

Ghosted in LA (Boom)
Faithless (Boom)
Die (Image)
Smashed (Viz)
SFSX (Image)
Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me (:01 First Second)
Pumpkinheads (:01 First Second)
Skull Face Bookseller Honda-san (Yen)
Let’s Make Ramen! (Ten Speed)
This Was Our Pact (:01 First Second)
Way of the Househusband (Viz)
Far Sector (DC)
Stargazing (:01 First Second)

 

Sierra’s selections~

Eve Stranger (IDW)
Female Furies (DC)
Fairlady (Image)
Harleen (DC)
DCeased (DC)
Murder Falcon (Image)
Crowded (Image)
Come into Me (Black Mask)
Batman Last Knight on Earth (DC)
Sabrina the Teenage Witch (Archie)
Space Bandits (Image)
Joker by John Carpenter (DC)
Pretty Violent (Image)
Silver Surfer Black (Marvel)
Once and Future (Boom)
Strayed (Dark Horse)
The Plot (Vault)
Moutainhead (IDW)

Comic Book Club January Meeting: Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles

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It’s our first Comic Book Club meetup of 2020! For our January meeting we’re discussing Mark Russell and Mike Feehan’s Eisner nominated fresh take on the classic Hanna Barbera character Snagglepuss. Following this we’re reading Chip Zdarsky and Mark Bagley’s Spider-Man Life Story for our February meetup.
Our meetings begin at 6 PM, and we recommend attendees BYOB (be it beer, beverage, or brisket).  Our reading group selections are available in the shop, so drop by to purchase a copy of Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles for our January meetup. Listed below are our next two months of readings, and a photo and summary of the January selection:

Sunday, January 5: Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles

Sunday, February 9: Spider-Man Life Story

It’s 1953. While the United States is locked in a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union, the gay Southern playwright known as Snagglepuss is the toast of Broadway. But success has made him a target. As he plans for his next hit play, Snagglepuss becomes the focus of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. And when powerful forces align to purge show business of its most subversive voices, no one is safe! Collects the six-issue miniseries, plus the backup story from the SUICIDE SQUAD/BANANA SPLITS SPECIAL #1.

Untidy Secrets Storytelling – Lost in the Supermarket

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—BACK FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY —
★★★UNTIDY SECRETS STORYTELLING★★★
 
The theme for this months storytelling is: “Lost in the Supermarket”. Storytellers interpret this theme in interesting and original ways.
 
Storytellers for this night:
Lilly May
Britt Kemp
Ashley Naftule
El Camino
Bri Valdivia
★★★
 
This event is all ages and BYOB (though storytelling will have adult themes). Ash Avenue Comics & Books has some chairs available at first come first serve basis but feel free to bring your own chair or stand. Please contact the shop if you need a chair(s) reserved.
 
★★★
 
Untidy Secrets Storytelling’s goal is to encourage literature through unusual and interesting means (storytelling, small press, self publishing, zines, and more). If you’re a writer, bring your printed work to swap and connect with others. If you’re a storyteller come out and connect with other storytellers and writers.
 
If you’re interested in telling a story at this event message the Untidy Secrets Storytelling page. See you there!

Comic Book Club December Meeting: Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth

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We’re already at the end of the decade, the 2010s are coming to an end as the Ash Ave Comic Book Club soldiers on!  We are concluding 2019 with one of the most acclaimed works of comics released in the 21st century, Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth a collection of stories from his series Acme Novelty Library (which to be fair was published serially in the last century), and is the winner of The American Book Award, 2001; The Guardian First Book Award, 2001; The Harvey Awards’ Special Award for Excellence in Presentation and Best Graphic Album of Previously Published Work, 2001; The Eisner Awards’ Best Publication Design and Best Graphic Album: Reprint, 2001; and The Angoulême Festival’s Prize for Best Comic Book and Prix de la critique, 2003. We’ll begin 2020 with the acclaimed miniseries Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles from Mark Russell and Mike Feehan.

Our meetings begin at 6 PM, and we recommend attendees BYOB (be it beer, beverage, or brisket).  Our reading group selections are available in the shop, so drop by to purchase a copy of Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth for our December meetup. Listed below are our next two months of readings, and a photo and summary of the December selection:

Sunday, December 1: Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth

Sunday, January 5: Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles

This first book from Chicago author Chris Ware is a pleasantly-decorated view at a lonely and emotionally-impaired “everyman” (Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth), who is provided, at age 36, the opportunity to meet his father for the first time. An improvisatory romance which gingerly deports itself between 1890’s Chicago and 1980’s small town Michigan, the reader is helped along by thousands of colored illustrations and diagrams, which, when read rapidly in sequence, provide a convincing illusion of life and movement. The bulk of the work is supported by fold-out instructions, an index, paper cut-outs, and a brief apology, all of which concrete to form a rich portrait of a man stunted by a paralyzing fear of being disliked.

Comic Book Club November Meeting: Hard Tomorrow

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Ash Ave Comic Book Club’s November meeting will be a discussion of Eleanor Davis’ latest graphic novel Hard Tomorrow, released in early October by Drawn & Quarterly. We’ll be following this up with another critically acclaimed graphic novel, Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware, which we will be discussing for our final meetup of 2019 in December.

Our meetings begin at 6 PM, and we recommend attendees BYOB (be it beer, beverage, or brisket).  Our reading group selections are available in the shop, so drop by to purchase a copy of Hard Tomorrow for our November meetup. Listed below are our next two months of readings, and a photo and summary of the October selection:

Sunday, November 3: The Hard Tomorrow 

Sunday, December 1: Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth

Hannah is a thirty-something wife, home-health worker, and antiwar activist. Her husband, Johnny, is a stay-at-home pothead working-or “working”-on building them a house before the winter chill sets in. They’re currently living and screwing in the back of a truck, hoping for a pregnancy, which seems like it will never come. Told with tenderness and care in an undefined near future, Eleanor Davis’s The Hard Tomorrow blazes unrestrained, as moments of human connection are doused in fear and threats.