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In ''The Status Revolution,'' Chuck Thompson argues that class signifiers have flipped, so that what was once luxurious is now out and what was once lowbrow is now in. THE [...]

For 44 years, Ernie Bushmiller's ''Nancy'' was the most meat-and-potatoes strip on the funnies page, a streamlined and glistening machine for delivering one dopey gag every day, no more and [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In SPIN's nearly 25-year history, some truly crap bands have achieved glory while more deserving--or just less lucky--artists languished on the fringes. You can find some of their [...]

Starbucks headquarters--an old Sears warehouse in Seattle, now crowned with the head of the ubiquitous Starbucks mermaid--exemplifies the company's legendary brand-mindedness and precision. The conference room has two posters on [...]

The critical manner in which contemporary comics like 'War Comics' and 'DMZ' address the Iraq War through imaginary civil war metaphors in their content is presented.

Quimby the Mouse Written, drawn, and designed by Chris Ware Fantagraphics Books, Seattle 70 pages; illustrated; $24.95 The Acme Novelty Date Book Written, drawn, and designed by Chris Ware Drawn [...]

JERUSALEMBy Alan Moore1,266 pp. Liveright Publishing. $35. Brilliant and sometimes maddening, ''Jerusalem'' is Alan Moore's monumentally ambitious attempt to save his hometown, Northampton, England -- not to rescue it from [...]

IF YOU STEALBy Jason208 pp. Fantagraphics, $29.99. The Norwegian artist who goes by the single name Jason is the most deadpan comedian in comics. His stories are almost always rooted [...]

When Natalie Portman told Zach Braff in the 2004 movie 'Garden State' that the Shins song 'New Slang' would change his life, it changed the shape of the Portland, Ore., [...]

Anyone who's been keeping an eye on the independent comics world for the last year or two can't help but have noticed a certain, well, migration. A growing number of [...]

At past BookExpos, graphic novel publishers struggled to gain a toehold with retailers and librarians who weren't quite sure exactly what a graphic novel was. That wasn't a problem this [...]

Comics can tell certain kinds of stories that prose, photographs and films can't. They can also tell familiar stories in drastically different ways. The artists of some of this season's [...]

Lucy Knisley has eaten well all her life, and everything she tastes is apparently a madeleine for some happy memory. She grew up with a mother who worked for David [...]

The article considers the character of Catwoman in the Batman superhero comic books and motion pictures, focusing on the performance of actress Anne Hathaway in the role in the 2012 film "The Dark Knight Rises," directed by Christopher Nolan. Hathaway's performance is compared to that of actress Michelle Pfeiffer in the 1992 film "Batman Returns," which Hathaway states had a great influence on her as a child. Differences between Catwoman and other recurring characters in Batman films, comic books and graphic novels are considered. Catwoman's status as a sex object is examined. Catwoman's contribution to the theme of "The Dark Knight Rises" is considered.

The article presents several calendars of events discussing entertainment offerings for the Fall of 2010, including motion pictures, books and music releases.

A calendar of summer release dates for books, films, music and television is presented which includes the release of the film "Toy Story 3" starring Tom Hanks and the book "The Passage," by Justin Cronin in June 2010 and the film "The Girl Who Played with Fire" starring Noomi Rapace in July 2010.

Ellen Forney's greatest strength as a cartoonist is her gift for explanation -- getting information across with vigor, wit and visual inventiveness. That inspiration may have come at an awful [...]

SORRY PLEASE THANK YOU By Charles Yu 222 pp. Pantheon Books. $24.95. The useful but terrible thing about growing up with geek culture is that it teaches you very early [...]

BUILDING STORIES By Chris Ware Illustrated. Unpaged. Pantheon Books. $50. The most despairing image in Chris Ware's magnificent new graphic novel, ''Building Stories'' -- and there are plenty of candidates [...]

The Canadian artist Guy Delisle has made a career of moving to foreign places and drawing casual vignettes on cross-cultural confusion. Over the past few years, he's documented his tenures [...]

Lynda Barry's excitable, bittersweet cartoons and collages are practically a cultural fixture, like little black dresses or ''The Simpsons.'' So it's a welcome surprise to discover she actually had a [...]

Nobody's sure who invented the caricature. It might have been Leonardo da Vinci, whose studies of ''bizarre heads'' led his admirers to the realization that distorted aspects of physiognomy could [...]

BIG QUESTIONS Or, Asomatognosia: Whose Hand Is It Anyway? Written and illustrated by Anders Brekhus Nilsen 592 pp. Drawn & Quarterly. Cloth, $69.95. Paper, $44.95. Sometime in the late 1990s, [...]

Byline: BY DOUGLAS WOLK / ILLUSTRATION BY ULISES FARINAS THE BATTLE BEGINS With its brilliant screen and smooth interface, the iPad could evolutionize comic books. It could also destroy the [...]

Forty years ago, the pioneering cartoonists of the underground comix movement turned the topics polite society didn't speak about -- sex, drugs, neurosis -- into the stuff of their confessional [...]

There's nothing quite as creepy as a creepy drawing: almost real, but just wrong enough to suggest it's wearing only the torn-off skin of reality. Charles Burns's comics are fluid, [...]

BODYWORLD Written and illustrated by Dash Shaw Unpaged. Pantheon Books. $27.95. 'This book is for 'ideal readers' only!!!' declares the copyright page of Dash Shaw's new graphic novel, 'BodyWorld.' He's [...]

Megan Kelso is best known for elegant, small-scale comics (like ''Watergate Sue,'' serialized in The New York Times Magazine) with a historical or memoiristic bent. So it's surprising and wonderful [...]

As the modern-day American newspaper comic strip slowly chokes to death, done in by shrinking spaces and exhausted franchises, its more vibrant ancestors are living in renewed luxury. Comic strips [...]

WE WERE A MOVING TRAIN--we just pressed 'pause,' ' says Sleater-Kinney singer-guitarist Carrie Brownstein, explaining why the beloved alt-rock trio broke up at the peak of its success and why [...]

Kyle Baker's graphic novel SPECIAL FORCES (Image, paper, $16.99) reads at first like a nearly straightforward military fantasy, drawn with a peculiar hybrid of hyperrealistic precision and nutty exaggeration. Eventually, [...]

ASTERIOS POLYP Written and illustrated by David Mazzucchelli Unpaged. Pantheon Books. $29.95 Modernism came late to comics. Cartoonists are naturally stylistic chameleons, selecting and altering visual techniques to serve their [...]

''YOU'LL NEVER KNOW'' Book 1: ''A Good and Decent Man.'' Written and illustrated by C. Tyler Unpaged. Fantagraphics Books. $24.99 What happened to Carol Tyler's father as a staff sergeant [...]

In the tense, murky years before America entered World War II, its young couldn't get enough tales of costumed mystery men. SUPERMEN! The First Wave of Comic Book Heroes 1936-41 [...]

BREAKDOWNS Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*! By Written and illustrated by Art Spiegelman Unpaged. Pantheon Books. $27.50 THE ALCOHOLIC By Jonathan Ames. Illustrated by Dean Haspiel 136 [...]

THE EDUCATION OF HOPEY GLASS Written and illustrated by Jaime Hernandez 114 pp. Fantagraphics Books. $19.99 LOVE AND ROCKETS New Stories No. 1 Written and illustrated by the Hernandez Brothers [...]

STRANGE AND STRANGER The World of Steve Ditko By Blake Bell Illustrated. 216 pp. Fantagraphics Books. $39.99 When an anonymous donor recently gave the Library of Congress Steve Ditko's original [...]

JACKIE ORMES The First African American Woman Cartoonist. By Nancy Goldstein. Illustrated. 225 pp. The University of Michigan Press. $35. Jackie Ormes, nee Zelda Mavin Jackson, was a journalist, artist, [...]

Cartoonists can creatively distort a story's setting -- playing up its salient details, putting an interpretive spin on its lines and contours -- until it's more vivid and imposing than [...]

WOLF POINT. By Edward Falco. (Unbridled, $23.95.) This three-character cat-and-mouse thriller plunges straight into its Hitchcockian plot. A disgraced businessman, T, picks up a young couple, Jenny and Lester, who [...]

Byline: Douglas Wolk Millions of American college students graduated last month, ready to join the workforce. They're very different from graduates 10 years ago, significantly different from even last year's [...]

Byline: Douglas Wolk, Jonathan Pont VP of engineering jobs at enormous Internet companies aren't normally filled via ads on a job board. But when executive recruiter Stephen Wachter was looking […]

PART biographical sketch, part lofty pronouncement on existence and literature, the caustic French novelist Michel Houellebecq's new book, H. P. LOVECRAFT: Against the World, Against Life (Believer Books/McSweeney's, paper, $18), [...]

Brian Wilson began recording his masterpiece, Smile, in 1966; the project collapsed a year later, unfinished. For the past thirty-seven years, Wilson's been coasting on his reputation as The Guy […]