Pax Avalon: Conflict Revolution by Steven "Reece" Frisen is a mess of a book.

I've had a copy of J.T. Yost's Xeric Award winning book, Old Man Winter and Other Sordid Tales for at least a couple weeks now.  And it's got some good stuff in it - easy to see why it caught the eyes of the Xeric Grant folks.  The first tale, "OId Man Winter" is new (the other stories in the book have all appeared elsewhere previously) and is a well-done small story with a lot of emotional punch about an old man's small circuit in life.  It has the feel of a good character-driven indie movie and I'd recommend the book and future work from Yost on the basis of it alone.

This article was originally published on webcomics.com in 2008.

The old guard of boundary-pushing, technologically-empowered, makers of web-native, interactive, experimental comics have largely moved on to other things. Sure, most of them are still involved in making comics, one way or another. But they’ve left the work of exploring just how much farther technology can take us to the next generation.

Happily, B. Shur has stepped up to continue that work, and is busily taking comics in fascinating new directions.

Waltz With Bashir (subtitled "A Lebanon War Story") by Ari Folman and David Polonsky is a graphic novel adaptation of the animated film of the same name.  I have not seen the film yet (although I fully intend to - the trailer looks quite intense).  Ari Folman, wrote, produced, and directed the animated documentary and wrote this graphic novel version as well.  David Polonsky was the art director and chief illustrator for the movie from which the art in the comic comes from (it's not entirely clear whether the images in the book are altered in any way from their appearance in the movie).  It is Folman's own story and it appears it is a pretty faithful attempt to chronicle his attempts to fill in his memories of his own military service in the Israel-Lebanan war.

Tales from Outer Suburbia is the latest book from uber-talented artist Shaun Tan, following his wordless graphic novel, The Arrival.  Tan is not really an experimental cartoonist - these are highly satisfying books that don't really feel like they're pushing formalist boundaries and yet his two books each refuse to stay within the expectations of the "graphic novel" format.  I'm not sure Scott McCloud would concede that either one is actually a comic!

Sara Varon is becoming hopefully a bit more well known at this point having several published comic books released now.  Although she has a nice website she has not really published anything in an online format.  Given her interest in telling tales most interesting to young children I'm not sure whether the lack of a web presence is a bad idea or not.

In this month's installment of "The Travels of Dr. Haus" our intrepid hero travels abroad to review the webcomic Mistakes of Youth.

With the news that Faith Erin Hicks is getting close to completing a new graphic novel, The War At Ellsmere, it might seem odd to be running a review of her previous graphic novel, Zombies Calling.  Really I should have reviewed this when it came out last fall from Slave Labor Graphics or more recently when it won a Joe Shuster award for Hicks (although I did get a chance to interview Hicks right after that news came out so I guess I'm not a complete slacker.)  But you know what, I'm doing it now.  So um, there!  I mean over there... look over there!

Oh, you're still here I see.  I guess a little bit of Grover-style misdirection isn't going to work with you, is it?

I've had You So Loco: the Second Crying Macho Man Collection book by Jose Cabrera to read and read again this summer and it's about time I get on my ass and write the review for it.  I interviewed Jose Cabrera about his comic earlier this year and my impression of his work hasn't changed much.  He likes to take bits of pop culture (and political figures as well) and mix them up, usually with a visual pun.

I have never met the man named Bleedman, but I imagine that if I met him in real life, he'd be bursting with an epic amount of jittery energy. Like his veins are filled with an unholy combination of Vault, Red Bull, Pop Cola, and Nestle Crunch. His anime-insired drawings are always kinetic ... maybe even hyperkinetic, threatening to throw Newton's First Law of Motion to the ground. An object at rest doesn't stay at rest, boy-ee! With that in mind, you'd think that Sugar Bits, a webcomic about sugar, treats, and mountains of candy would be right up his alley.