In the current issue of Spin, a photo on page 69 shows punk-rock girl Brody Dalle - originally lead singer of the Distillers, now with Spinnerette - snuggling up with a good book. A really good book, actually. One of mine. Brode is lovingly clutching the me-edited anthology Abuse Your Illusions: The Disinformation Guide to Media Mirages and Establishment Lies.

Thanks to Brody and Spin for the product placement, Darren Ankenman for the photo, and Richard Metzger and Bradley Novicoff for the heads-up.

The complete Lost Girls will be published as a swanky single-volume hardcover retailing for $45 (Amazon has it for $29.70), compared to the original three-volume set from 2006 that retailed for $75 (and is now out of print). It’s due in April.

Humbug by Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Davis, Will Elder, Al Jaffee, & Arnold Roth (Fantagraphics, 2009)

Amazon | publisher’s page

Fantagraphics has posted the entire first issue of Humbug as a PDF.

From the publisher:

Harvey Kurtzman changed the face of American humor when he created the legendary MAD comic. As editor and chief writer from its inception in 1952, through its transformation into a slick magazine, and until he left MAD in 1956, he influenced an entire generation of cartoonists, comedians, and filmmakers. In 1962, he co-created the long-running Little Annie Fanny with his long-time artistic partner Will Elder for Playboy, which he continued to produce until his virtual retirement in 1988.

Between MAD and Annie Fanny, Kurtzman’s biographical summaries will note that he created and edited three other magazines, Trump, Humbug, and Help!, but, whereas his MAD and Annie Fanny are readily available in reprint form, his major satirical work in the interim period is virtually unknown. Humbug, which had poor distribution, may be the least known, but to those who treasure the rare original copies, it equals or even exceeds MAD in displaying Kurtzman’s creative genius.

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An Atlas of Radical Cartography, edited by Alexis Bhagat and Lize Mogel (Journal of Aesthetics and Protest Press, 2008)

From the book’s website:

An Atlas of Radical Cartography is a collection of 10 maps and 10 essays about social issues from globalization to garbage; surveillance to extraordinary rendition; statelessness to visibility; deportation to migration. The map is inherently political– and the contributions to this book wear their politics on their sleeves.

An Atlas of Radical Cartography provides a critical foundation for an area of work that bridges art/design, cartography/geography, and activism. The maps and essays in this book provoke new understandings of networks and representations of power and its effects on people and places. These new perceptions of the world are the prerequisites of social change.

The Bandana Republic is the first literary anthology written by gang members (current and former).

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Long review