Product Description
I am a great fan of Dr. Stephen Covey's wonderful book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. In it, he teaches that the First Habit is to be Proactive.

Dr. Covey explains that being proactive is about taking responsibility for your life. Being proactive is being "response-able;" being able and willing to actively choose how you respond, act and behave, rather than just being reactive. This is the first step to achieving true independence.

Though the 7 Habits had not been written yet, flying in Vietnam in the ‘60s required us all to become proactive about paying attention, about embracing that “it is what it is” and truly listening, to whoever was trying get through our macho masks and tell us things we really needed to hear, think about and understand.

Now 40 some years later, after more than 30 years as an airline captain, I’m a Cockpit Resources Management facilitator. My primary goal in this role is to get pilots, especially captains, to care about “what’s right, not who’s right.” (Wikipedia says Cockpit Resource Management (CRM) is a procedure and training system to reduce Threats and Errors in systems where human error can have devastating effects. Used primarily for improving air safety, CRM focuses on interpersonal communication, leadership, decision making and workload management in the cockpit.)

In Dr. Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Habit 5 is Seek First To Understand, Then To Be Understood. Dr. Covey presents this as the most important principle ofcommunicated and not, as we all sometimes do, to be mentally preparing what we will say next, instead of actively listening.

This story is about me thinking I understood, when in fact, I did not. It is a story about me being very stupid and living to tell the tale.

It is in fact three stories about how the lessons from Dr. Covey can help a pilot stay alive while doing difficult things in difficult places.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Hammond's story was fascinating
John Hammond led an incredibly interesting life, and he had the gift of finding natural, raw talent.The autobiography was a great read!He may have spent his life discovering new talent rather than trying to win the "father of the year" award, but for folks interested in music and the life of artists, the book was a memorable, delightful read.I still recall Hammond's description of a young trumpet player who Hammond felt was greatly underrated--Joe Smith.Comparing him to Louis Armstrong, Hammond said, "Joe Smith was greatly underrated.Louis could rouse, excite and audience, but Joe--he could make 'em cry."Hammond's words were memorable,unpretentious and heartfelt.The reader knew how much he loved music and the musicians. This book was one of my all-time favorite reads.

Interesting but biased...
One can't deny John Hammond's contribution to Jazz. The man "discovered" Billie Holiday, Teddy Wilson, Count Basie and produced tons of records. On the other hand, he had a "bon savage" view of the Jazz musician that was far from reality. When Ellington began composing his "mood pieces", Hammond, until that time a Duke champion, became an enemy. His attitudes were both paternalist and naive. And this book reflects this behavior. ... Read more

Product Description
When a child hears a noise in the night he gets up to investigate. He calls his father to help him and they work through all the things that the 'noise' could be, eventually realising that it is nothing to be scared of. An empowering book about over coming ones fears handled with brilliant originality by John Irving and Tatjana Hauptmann.Amazon.com Review
In John Irving's ninth novel A Widow for One Year, a creepy children's book author named Ted Cole writes a bedtime story about things that go bump in the night. That odd, gently comical tale is brought to life here with Tatjana Hauptmann's shadowy, moonlit pencil illustrations. Young Tom wakes up in the middle of the night to an unusual sound, but his two-year-old brother Tim does not. When his fathers asks what it sounded like, Tom reveals a number of silly and scary options: "like a monster with no arms and no legs," or "a dog trying to open a door," or "a ghost dropping stolen peanuts"--"a sound like someone trying not to make a sound," in fact. The illustrations--with a smattering of wordless spreads--show the pajama-clad Tom wandering alone through a big empty house as bulges in the wall and long shadows hint at unseen horrors. In the end, the father tells his boys that the sound is just a mouse in the wall. Tom is immensely relieved, but baby Tim screams because he doesn't know what a mouse is, and stays up all night to ward off the furry, mysterious thing. Not too scary, nor too comforting, Irving's picture-book debut imaginatively captures that late-night world where everything looks and sounds a little like a monster. (Preschool to age 6) --Karin Snelson ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

A favorite author that father and toddler daughter can now share
I received this book from Amazon and promptly read it to my 2-year old daughter who hears several books read aloud each night as part of her go to sleep for the night routine. I'm a big fan of John Irving and loved the idea that he had written a children's book, giving my daughter a chance to become one of his fans as well at quite the young age. She typically makes it very clear which books are among her favorites. Time will tell whether this one gets added to that list, but based on the first reading I suspect that Mr. Irving and the very talented illustrator he worked with have passed her test.It certainly earn points for not being the typical all ends on the happiest of notes children's book that I am accustomed to reading. My wife commented as I read that the book might give our daughter nightmares. I can't say if it did or not, but when asked how her sleep time went this morning her response was a novel and surprising - "interesting". Coincidentally I happened to read this book directly after reading one called Scaredy Mouse that my wife bought the day before. That book is especially charming and was an instant hit with our daughter. I mention this only because it was interesting to read aloud two books in a row, one featuring a mouse that is terrified of a cat (and everything it sees that it initially mistakes for the cat), the other featuring two little boys who are imaginitively frightened by an unseen mouse. Due to the rodent role reversal in these tales I think I'll continue to read them back to back.

wonderful book! bought it for myself, not a child.
A child's view on things that go bump in the night. I love John Irving's adult novels. This children's book has beautiful illustrations, and the story is scary without being too scary to read to children.

Unique children's book (that adults would also enjoy)
I really like John Irving's writing and have all of his books!
This one sounded really interesting and I was curious whether it would work for both adults and children. I found that this book could entertain both adults and children and was written in a way that was at a child's level, but not talking down to them.It was realistic as well as creative and a unique style of writing for a children's book.

Brilliant.
I don't know if Irving has any more children's books in him -- I certainly hope so.This one is an excellent first effort, and anyone familiar with his novel "A Widow for One Year" already knows the story.

My three-year-old son sees and hears ghosts and monsters everywhere.He's not afraid of them; they're just there, part of his nighttime world.This book is right up his alley, full of spooky speculations about what might be, and even when the simple explanation comes out, why, that just might be scary too.This is far more interesting to my son than if everything had just been hunky-dory A-OK.In a moment this became his favorite book.

I'm a huge Irving fan, and I'm delighted that I can now share his work with my sons before they turn 18.

Interesting
This is an interesting book for children who have fears of the dark and night time noises.It offers comfort in reality rather than fantasy.While acknowledging the fears of the child, this book does not try to ease them.I initially did not like the book because it left me without a "good" feeling by it's end.I felt no resolution.But this is why I like it now.It is a story that illustrates the scary reality of the unknown without trying to give the reader answers.This book is real and it has a sense of humour too. ... Read more

Product Description
Irving Penn is acknowledged as a master of the still life genre. This is the first book devoted solely to Penns elegant and original still life work. Penn has personally overseen every detail of this exquisite books design and production. Still Life is certain to be one of the most powerful photography books of the new century. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

What's in a name?
This book should be titled "Food Photography and other Commercial Assignments" or "The Sixty-dollar Disappointment" or even, "How to make Money off of things I already got paid for.""Still-Life" is misleading as it indicates an artistic level this book does not attain to. If you're into Advertising photography, Penn is unique and often humorous but if you're looking for images to challenge you or reflect on, you will be disappointed, as was I. As for his personal work in this book, the question is, how many skulls and cigarettes do you want to look at? My personal opinion is, if you do something like that, do it, do it well, and move on.In short, most are sharp, well-lit, and well-printed but shallow, like most Advertising.

Classic Penn
Irving Penn has been making still life photographs for many decades, and this collection is a good representation of his work. Elegant black and white compositions of the 1940s,detailed groupings since the 1980s, and his in-your-face color that we see frequently in Vogue today, there is some of everything. My only complaint is this: I would like to see more of his ads for Clinique. Only two are reproduced here. There are hundreds more, and most are more interesting that the two selected for this book.

This is good but nothing new
Irving Penn is a great photographer and these images are wonderful. If you own other Irving Penn books, you probably have seen most of these. There's nothing wrong with mining old images and putting them in a book, but this is getting a little crazy.
Great images but if you have his other books, save you're money. If you want, you can buy me presents if the stuff is burning a hole in your pocket.

More for the Canon
A great achievement by the publishers, Little Brown, who are demonstrating committment to Penn's work with terrific reproductions and presentations of his work in this and the previous book devoted to the photographer's collaborations with Issey Miyake. Penn's still life work is an intriguing mixture of idiosyncatic, almost hermetic 'personal' photographs and his magazine work, mostly for Vogue. The range of subjects in the former category is diverse, from street trash to minimalist steel block constructions to animal skulls. The latter is similarly diverse, within the confines of the editorial demands of a glossy magazine. Stated simply, no-one does it better. When Penn trains his mind and eyes on a subject, it is made uniquely his own. These are works to ponder, not only because of their formal beauty, but also for the larger implications of people, objects and their inherent transience. John Szarkowski contributes his usual eloquent and generous prose in this very desirable book. Highly recommended for fans of Irving Penn and fine photography, old and new. ... Read more

Product Description
John Greeve is the headmaster. The 30 years of his life at The Wells School have been rich, challenging, and full of meaning. But now John Greeve's precisely ordered world is crumbling. The values he so passionately believes in are being threatened by forces he cannot accept. John Greeve is a man at the crossroads fighting for the decency of his school, for the survival of his family-and, finally, stripped of everything, for his very life. This new edition includes a foreword by the author and an afterword in which he presents and comments on some of the nearly 1,000 letters he has received since the original publication of this classic novel a decade ago. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Poignant and lovely
This is an epistolary novel, which means that it is composed entirely of a series of letters.It's told from the point of view of boys' school headmaster John Greeve, who writes letters to family, friends, colleagues, and the parents of students over the course of one school year.

Letters from John provide an interesting point of view.Events can only be described as he writes about them to other people, so reading the novel is a little like catching up with a friend periodically.Nothing happens in real time.The reader discovers everything after the fact, and only learns about it in terms of the headmaster's view of the situation.It is a unique perspective and, although it takes a little longer to be drawn into the book, one learns a great deal more about the main character because of the perspective.

Over the course of the novel, Mr. Greeve's life all but falls apart.It's heartbreaking to see so many terrible things happen to someone who is so inherently good.But he maintains his dignity throughout.I appreciated John's integrity.He stood firm on an issue he believed in, and was polite but unwavering when necessary.I had a lot of respect for many of the letters he wrote to colleagues and parents about happenings at the school.

This book should have been depressing.The main character has to face ordeal after ordeal, and in the end, the trials undo him.But it wasn't.It was sad, yes, and very poignant.But I was able to find hopefulness and honor in a man who is so dignified in the face of his trials.

A powerful saga of courage and adapting to the unexpected
The Headmaster's Papers by Richard A. Hawley is the literate and engaging story of John Greeve, headmaster for a small, independent New England boys' school, whose personal and professional life begins to disintegrate around him. Faced with the crumbling of his meticulously ordered routine, Greeve must accept the challenge and fight for his school, his family, and even his own life. Originally published almost twenty years ago, Richard Hawley's The Headmaster's Papers continues to be very highly recommended as a powerful saga of courage and adapting to the unexpected. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

An Action Biography
Irving's "Trail of the Fox" is not your typical biography. It is a fast-paced, almost novelistic read that moves swiftly through the career of this legendary soldier, trying to give the reader a taste of the man rather than an exhaustive list of his doings and accomplishments. Using his close relationships with ex-Afrika Korps officers as well as Manfred and Luci Rommel and their papers and photographs, Irving achieves what he sets out to do in a fast-paced, if somewhat terse read. The image we get of Rommel as a youth is a blurry watercolor sketch that periodically comes into sharp focus: a puny and somewhat sickly lad from an uninspired civil-service family who literally willed himself into an excellent officer cadet and later during the First World War, into a superb tactician. He showed his form early as a young lieutenant of mountain troops, driving his men forward without regard for fear or fatigue, but always with concern for their well-being, and always from the front. His accomplishments -- Iron Crosses first and second class, wound badges and the famous "Blue Max" -- were matched only by his ambition. In the quest for Prussia's highest award for valor Rommel showed a frightening self-obsession that he was often to show as an older man: a hunger for award, praise, and recognition. He also showed his capacity to alienate other officers, a habit he kept up his entire career and which may have cost him his life, and some personal pettiness, using every opportunity to exact vengeance on his rivals.

The interwar years saw Rommel serve as an instructor at a military school and pen "Infantry Attacks" a best-selling and seminal book on small-unit tactics that not only brought him to the attention of Adolf Hitler, but remains in the library at West Point to this day. As CO of Hitler's Poland HQ, Rommel again captured Hitler's attention with his fearless treatment of Nazi bigwigs, and landed command of the 7th Panzer Division for the attack on France. It was here that the Rommel legend was born again, as the "Spook Division" blazed a reckless path across to the English Channel. Rommel's conduct here typified his adult personality: he was utterly fearless, physically inexhaustable, indifferent to logistical problems, and unwilling to subordinate himself to higher authority or to recognize that he was part of a greater strategic situation. He was also keenly aware of propaganda, and reveled in theatrics -- two traits which cemented his later fame. An avowed Hitler-worshipper, he was Hitler's first choice to command the small German expeditionary force to Africa.

It is this part of Irving's book which brings Rommel into the sharpest clarity, for it was in "Afrika" that the "Desert Fox" legend was born. Rallying demoralized Italian troops, and throwing his meager German forces around as if they were much larger, Rommel quickly issued a series of humiliating beatings on the hitherto triumphant British, and begun the two years of see-saw, give-and-take warfare that marked the North African campaign. Rommel's strengths -- courage, charisma, the ability to inspire others and a matchless tactical genius -- were tested by his weaknesses -- wilfull blindness to inconvenient facts, lack of strategic vision, inability to politick, and a tendency to run out into battle and saddle his staff with the important decisions. Ironically, the more successes he had, the more troops he commanded, and while Rommel was arguably the best tactician of the war he was probably not suited to bigger command than a single corps. Still, had he anything like the equipment, manpower, and fuel of his British opponents he would have won the desert war easily. At Second El Alamein, the battle which made Montgomery famous, the British outnumbered him 3-1 in men and 5-1 in tanks, which certainly puts the "greatness" of this Allied victory into perspective.

Rommel after Africa Irving shows as a burned-out, disillusioned, somewhat defeatist but still ambitious man, on the outs with Hitler and the Nazis but bound by his loyalty oath from taking an active role in the anti-Nazi movement. Considered a dangerous man because of his popularity, he was a natural target for the inquisition that followed July 20, 1944, and in the book's most tragic chapter, cooly accepts Hitler's choice of suicide or disgrace by asking his executioners for poison, because the combat-wounded field marshal "can't work a pistol properly." This absolute lack of fear in the face of death is the man's real legacy to the world.

"Trail of the Fox" is by no means a "deep" biography. Irving glosses over large parts of Rommel's early life in his haste to tell the later story, and in his quest to keep the book fast-paced and readable he also speeds through aspects of Rommels' life that probably deserved more attention. But it is an enjoyable and very fair look at one of the greatest soldiers in human history.

one of the better biographies on Rommel
This book might be a good example of what a great historian David Irving might have been if he didn't get so twisted and anti-Semitic about the Jews and the Holocaust. This biography I thought, was pretty good work on Germany's most famous general (at least to the west). Irving's research proves to be quite good, its well written and very readable. The context of the book was quite informative as well. Its the only Irving book I have in my library and its there for its own merit despite of the author's personal reputation which have been trashed by his own effort.

Extrodinary piece of work
Hands down, one of the best WW2 biographies out there. Backed with solid extensive research, and a gripping narrative, this book is a must read for those who are curious about this massive historical figure.

best Rommel biography out there
Irving wrote a wonderful, easy to read masterpiece. The research done by Irving is in depth.He not only describes Rommel as a general but what hewas like in his personnel like also. This book should be recommend toanyone who wants to learn more about the Desert Fox.

Excellent research, flawed conclusions
Irving, as usual, did an excellent job in researching this book; however, his conclusions are about as flawed as those he drew in HITLER'S WAR, when he concluded that Adolf Hitler did not know about the Holocaust until 1943at the earliest.I do not recommend this book who is not throughlyfamiliar with World War II and does not understand that Irving'sconclusions must be taken with a grain of salt. ... Read more

Product Description
John Irving and Cultural Mourning offers a chronological survey of his eleven novels, examining his prose via thematically focused chapters on postmodernism, the sixties, fatherhood, narcissism, mourning and finally self-redemption. ... Read more

Product Description
The scholarly response to John Irving's novels has impinged upon a wide range of contemporary subjects of interest, from postmodernism and ethics to gender studies, the family, and historical criticism. This volume draws on a series of contemporaneous reviews and scholarly essays to provide the reader with an in-depth look at Irving's work. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (3)

quickly delivered and very truthful about the condition
I am very satisfied with the services provided.
They sent out my product promptly and in good condition.
Thanks.

Welfare State vs. Independent Living
This book basically sums up the problem with psychiatry, social work, law and welfare. Essentially people have to be sick in order for someone to treat them, ergo, people must be invalidated in order for someone to gain employment as a "profesional".

Law essentially becomes the domain of people that use their socially created "authority" to impose judgement or justice upon those that they deem undesireable to the community. Rather than becoming a means for resolution of disputes, the system gets used to invalidate people so a profesional workforce can maintain class construction.

Without a seperate system of experts people would gain autonomy over their own lives, such as birth, death, care, etc. Most incidences of these categories have been taken over by a medical abstraction based system that often creates more iatrogenic outcomes. People become overmedicalized, lose authority over their lives and are forced through law and medicine to turn over responsibility of their lives to experts more capable of treating "diseases" when in my opinion the whole enterprise seems a reentrenchment of "religious" control with "scientific" control, aka eugenics.

These professionals create needs in the people that gain degrees in these disabling professions to legislate political outcomes not, I repeat, not based on sound scientific basis, but mere professional or moral judgement, a modern version would be drugging of children on psychiatric drugs, redefining most behaviors of youth as abnormal, which come to represent a moral movement instead of a scientific movement to control people, but using the cover of science to persuade people to submit. By controlling people through these means they gain employment, so it benefits these professionals to lobby politically and religiously to reconstruct society around professions that cannot fix the problems of society, these professionals become disillusioned and then eventually come to either disbelieve their work or become more fervent as a religious believer might in such work causing further harm to more people in the hope that the right treatment maybe just around the corner so to speak. Those that don't continue to follow this line of thinking eventually have to be retrained.

Since these professions don't lead to solutions to socio-economic problems they tend to disable both the person that has been forced to give over their autonomy and the person in the profession that wants to help people, but has failed to find a solution. In law they simply exclude or attempt to exclude the public from the legal process and tend to use mystical techniques to overide the rational understandings of those excluded, one example being the dialogue and legal construction of language or abstraction of "law".

Since people construct these mystifications on purpose to enable employment most jobs tend to not actually function in a way seperate from moral implications. Also, people in society tend to construct the socially accepted mystifications as accepted fact and further erode their own autonomy as well as being propagandized through media constructions.

Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison and Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus have further elaborated upon how society constructs a kind of schizophrenia in capitalism, which I think complements this short work, they also refer to Illich as well. So I think the disabling should not continue to go on, we need to bring up these issues of power and the manner that it has been distributed and will be in the future, otherwise more graduates of psychology, sociology,law, medicine, etc, will continue to find themselves disillusioned and at times causing more harm than helping those with whom they cannot fix, due to the loss of autonomy that appears through the creation of disease where none used to exist merely for pharmeceutical profits or to maintain social positions of power(as this book implicates), or to gain power through taking such away from the poor whom would otherwise protest such conditions if they were conscious of the outcomes.

Some other reading as well might be such as...

Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.)
Our Right to Drugs: The Case for a Free Market
The Healing Brain: Breakthrough Discoveries About How the Brain Keeps Us Healthy
Toxic Psychiatry: Why Therapy, Empathy and Love Must Replace the Drugs, Electroshock, and Biochemical Theories of the "New Psychiatry"
The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise, and Progress

Disabling Professions is a must for all professionals
The trouble with this book is that it makes you rethink your whole reason for being! It is an insightful review of how professions have incapacitated the people and issues they set out to help. It focused on medicine, law andthe helping professions but is relevant to all of us. It makes you think -am I creating a reason for being? should I be really working myself out ofa job? Empowering for those who feel they MUST employ a professional forall things - think again. ... Read more

Product Description
Irving's works, which include The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules, have been praised for their focus on human relationships.

This title, John Irving, part of Chelsea House Publishers’ Modern Critical Views series, examines the major works of John Irving through full-length critical essays by expert literary critics. In addition, this title features a short biography on John Irving, a chronology of the author’s life, and an introductory essay written by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University. ... Read more

Product Description
In Dr. Steven Covey’s wonderful book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, he says that we develop private power so that as adults we can effectively join into community and exercise public power to serve those around us. One daily way to prepare ourselves for service, he says, is to visualize in the morning that we put on a “cloak of service to humanity” so that we go through the day searching for opportunities to be of assistance and benefit to those around us. To be effective, this search must be penetrating because many of the greatest opportunities to serve are hidden or invisible.

This story tells how I found finding a great opportunity to serve, I found the answers to the age-old questions: Why am I here? What is my purpose? What shall I do with my life? ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

I felt like I was there.
I enjoyed this short story.I felt like I was there too.Thanks Mr. Irving. ... Read more

Product Description
Containing the never-before-collected Marge's Little Lulu #88-93 in full color, this volume features masterworks by comic-book legends John Stanley and Irving Tripp that haven't been seen since they first hit spinner racks over fifty years ago!Perfect for anyone who loves to laugh, these timeless tales of Lulu Moppet, Tubby Tompkins, and the rest of the neighborhood kids will be appreciated by adults and children alike for the unrivaled quality of their craft and hilarity of their hijinks! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

good as it gets
those familiar with comic books in the 1950s need no explanation of the popularity of the little lulu series. it was funny. (who needs political humor). i would like to comment on what a great book this is. vibrantly colorful, almost full comic book size, on thick glossy pages with thick paperback cover. though nothing can replace the good old days of going to the local store each week to buy the latest comic books, this is certainly a close second. hats off to dark horse publications for a great product for those who remember and for those who will discover little lulu.

John Stanley Rules
John Stanley was one of the gods of comic storytelling and this collection is Exhibit A. After reading his stuff for Bushmiller's NANCY and some of the other work he did for the funny animal comics, I started reading this collection and it hit me right away: Stanley loves the Little Lulu characters. He infuses them with such depth and delineates them with such detail and humor and love that they live. I don't know of a single other comic character that you can re-read over and over with such pure pleasure as Stanley's Little Lulu stories. Brilliant, just brilliant.

Fun for all ages
John Stanley's Little Lulu stories are a treat for the child still inside all of us. While not as revered as Schulz's Peanuts, Stanley know how to present children in situations that bring a smile to your face. As a "serious" comic book fan who grew up reading the superhero action and drama of Lee, Kirby and Ditko, I missed out on these stories the first time around. I've latched onto them when Dark Horse began reprinting them as I had read of John Stanley and was not disappointed. Not only did I enjoy them but my brother and friends did as well. What really makes me happy is that I passed many of these books on to my local library and they are being read and well worn. Pass them on to the kids!

Nick C.

It's a Lulu!
As her many fans know, Marge's Little Lulu circulated in the days of Dell, when comics were a dime, gradually easing their way up to a quarter. To get those comics nowadays in readable shape requires a bit of an outlay on E-Bay. Even new comics these days run around three bucks, only about thirty times more than in the dime days. No wonder the perennial reissues of popular lines garner so much attention.

The Another Rainbow hardback Little Lulu collection was slipcased with color covers, but even that had black and white internal art, as do most of the Dark Horse reissues. This full color collection is the odd duck, but not quite: Dark Horse's Little Lulu Color Special from 2006 preceded it. That paperback measured 10 X 6.5 inches, 208 pages, and retailed for 13.95. This new color collection is 9 X 6 inches, the same size as the black and white Dark Horse series, 200 pages, retailing at 14.95. It's the first in a series of color collections, which unlike the black and white books, are not numbered.

What readers probably are wondering is why isn't this rated a five? For one thing, if books have to be printed in China, we're not really making five star books. Apart from that, though, the printing is very grainy, unlike the pristine color special, which seemed to be a one-off and a class act all the way, itself now going the way of the E-bay auction.

The Color Special editors picked and chose its contents between Little Lulu #4 and #86. "The Alamo and Other Stories" contains comics 88-93. I suppose that Classic Media owns the rights to the modern Little Lulu design created by CINAR in Canada for the animated Little Lulu Show, which ran on HBO, but it's always disconcerting to see these designs used on reissued Little Lulu material. Here it's on both the front and back cover.

What one reads these comics for, of course, is the deft and humorous writing and drawing of John Stanley and artwork of Irving Tripp. The bottom line is here's the most reasonable way to get five entire Little Lulu comics, which will appeal to collectors, who may be filing away the originals in archival bags, but would yet like a copy to reread the stories (and gaze at the whimsical art). But be ye forewarned. Collectors who leave these comics around on the coffee table may find their guests becoming fans.Little Lulu Color SpecialLittle Lulu: The Bawlplayers And Other StoriesLittle Lulu: Miss Feeny's Folly And Other Stories

Dark Horse resumes the series
After wrapping up its numbered series of LITTLE LULU reprint volumes some time ago, Dark Horse steps beyond the black-and-white boundaries of THE LITTLE LULU LIBRARY and reprints LL #88-93 (1955-56) in color. Unlike the previous LITTLE LULU COLOR SPECIAL, the coloring here appears to be taken from the original comics (you can tell by the "stippled" faces and occasional boundary transgressions), which may tick off some sticklers. The quality of John Stanley's stories remains high, though Irving Tripp's artwork gets a little rougher towards the end (watch for the "non-pointy" noses to begin to appear) and Stanley's "story-telling stories" are now wholly reliant on Witch Hazel and Little Itch. The headlined story "The Alamo" (which concerns depredations done to Davy Crockett coonskin caps -- one of the few times, BTW, that Stanley seems to have paid the slightest attention to pop-culture fads going on around him) is actually buried in the middle of the book; I'd have preferred that Dark Horse continued the "tradition" of generic titles from the numbered issues. This will be a big summer for Stanley fans, as Drawn & Quarterly will soon begin issuing its JOHN STANLEY LIBRARY collections of Stanley's non-LULU work. The fact that Dark Horse will continue to release LULU collections is, of course, the best news of all. ... Read more