Ed. Sarah Simons, 1993, Museum of Jurassic Technology, Los Angeles, 125 pgs.

“The Mount Wilson Observatory lies a short distance north east of Pasadena California at an altitude of 5,704 feet above the sea in the range of mountains known as the Sierra Madre.

“…Beginning in 1905 the Observatory regularly published the results of its research through a series of papers in a number of scientific journals including The Astrophysical Journal, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and The Proceedigs of the National Academy of Sciences. Taken together, these papers constitute the massive Contributions from the Mount Wilson Observatory – a venerable collection of information which contains a large percentage of the major astrophysical discoveries of the years of the first half of (the twentieth) century.

“Almost immediately certain of the observatory’s findings began to trickle down to the lay public through the popular press.

…”As early as 1911, the astronomers at Mount Wilson began receiving letters from people all around the world, people from all walks of life, educated as well as uneducated. Many of the letters were simple expressions of appreciation and awe for the work that the astronomers were accomplishing. There was, however, another class of letter. These letters were communications to the astronomers by individuals who felt, often with a great degree of earnestness, that they were in possession of understandings or information that should be shared with the astronomers.

“The information contained in this class of letter was typically of astronomical or cosmological concern. These individuals had gleaned the information they wished to communicate either by experimentation, observation or intuition and invariably felt a strong sense of urgency in their need to communicate their observations to the observers at Mount Wilson.” – Simons, from the introduction.

No One May Ever Have the Same Knowledge Again collects the letters on display during a 1993 exhibition of the same name at the Museum of Jurassic Technology.

August Ragone, 2007, Chronicle Books, 206 pgs.

From the back cover, “Eiji Tsuburaya – Master of Monsters details the dynamic life and movie career of this legendary film figure, from his early fascination with film, flight and models to his work in the golden age of Japanese cinema to the ingenious technical innovations that brought miniature worlds and fantastic characters vividly to life.

“Collecting hundreds of film stills, posters, and character art, and dozens of delightful on-set photos of Tsuburaya instructing monsters to crush one building after another, this highly visual biography also features rare profiles of the master’s film collaborators, detailed information about his key films and shows, and special features on his legacy and the enduring popularity of the characters he helped create.”

This is a new title, currently 25% off.

Alexei Monroe, ed. Slavoj Zizek, 2005, Short Circuits Series, MIT Press, 311 pgs.

From the back cover, “NSK is considered by many to be the last true avant-garde of the twentieth century and the most consistently challenging artistic force in Eastern Europe today. The acronym refers to Neue Slowenische Kunst, a Slovene collective that emerged in the wake of Tito’s death and was shaped by the breakup of Yugoslavia. Its complex and disturbing work – in fields includig experimental music and theater, painting, philosophy, writing, performance, and design – has an international following but a powerful and specific cultural context. Within the NSK organization are a number of divisions, the best-known of which is Laibach, an alternative music group known for its blending of popular culture with subversive politics, high art with underground provocation – reflecting the political and cultural chaos of its time…

“…Monroe uses a variety of theoretical and historical approaches, as is appropriate to the shifting and elusive nature of his subject. The use of theory reflects NSK’s own theoretical engagement; it is also a valuable way to read the issues raised by the work. Neither oversimplifying nor uncritically mystifying, Monroe leaves intact the “gaps, contradictions, and shadows” inherent in his subject, demonstrating that “it should still be possible to appreciate the work as art that moves, confuses, agitates, or fascinates.”

Written by Enrique Sanchez Abuli, drawn by Jordi Bernet and Alex Toth, 2006 (previously published as Torpedo 1936, 1990-2004), Vents d’Ouest, 682 pgs.

French language.

Torpedo Integrale collects 15 previous perfect-bound volumes of Torpedo 1936 into a heavy hardcover. Fleeing Sicily after killing his drunken biological father, a local kingpin, Luca Torelli becomes contract killer (a “torpedo”) in prohibition-era New York. The Spanish comic follows Torelli’s adventures as a hit man in non-linear fashion, sometimes with few clues as to when an episode is taking place. Making plenty of enemies along the way, Torelli also finds a loyal sidekick called Rascal, and a foil who repeatedly outsmarts him – a high-profile prostitute named Susan. Antagonists don’t last long enough to become regular characters.

Integrale feels like an underground throwback, an epic Tijuana bible with high production values. It is not for kids, in other words. Nor for the not-so-easily offended. The main character is an asshole, and the stories are gritty, mean, and full of dark humor. Picture ‘Blast of Silence’, but with pratfalls, boobs and rough quickies… and with more murder to offset all the comedy and screwing.

Alex Toth, a veteran of horror and hot-rod comics among other things, quit the project after the first short story, citing the unsavory content. Jordi Bernet took over the drawing with a looser and more stylized approach well-suited to the material. Bernet’s style evolved deliberately as he made a smooth transition from Toth’s clean minimalism into a more textured and expressive look, when the title hit its visual stride. The drawing changed quite a bit more in the last volumes, as Bernet explored a more cartoony approach to slapstick and cheesecake. The writing appears to range in focus and quality as well, sinking late in the megavolume into a self-parody of its already-sleazy origins.

All of that said, this is kind of a gorgeous object. Open it to a random page for a comics lesson from a couple of masters, and hard-boiled comics done right. Printed on thick white matte paper with crisp black ink. This is a new title, and an import, currently being offered at 40% off the cover price.

Jeff Downer, Artist Publication, JKJ Press, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Edited by Jeff Downer, Kate Noble, Jabari Jordan-Walker, 8.5×11 Hardcover, First Printing: 15 Editions. $65.

Exclusive - Only one of the fifteen first-edition copies of GOL NU GET MOTE is available in Boston.

Artist’s abstract:

This project speaks of the ties that British Colbumbia’s history has with its longest river, the mighty Fraser River. Initially it was an essential route between the interior and the coast, functioning as a vehicle for early commerce and industry and how it was the first site of recorded settlements of First Nations people in the area. During the Fraser Canyon Goldrush that started in 1858, centered around Hope, Yale and Lytton, hundreds of men flocked to the area upsetting the population balances that consisted of Hudson Bay Fur-traders and First Nations peoples.
In this first expedition of three, I have followed the river from where it empties into the ocean, documenting the precincts, towns, artifacts along the way to Boston Bar, BC, eventually making my way to the source of the river, high in the mountains near Prince George, BC. I am in search of how time, tourism, commerce, and residents along the river have made their mark on these towns and whether or not there is a trace of its heritage left today.

Michel Feher, with Ramona Naddaff and Nadia Tazi, 1989, MIT Press/Zone Books, each volume about 500 pgs.

The three groundbreaking volumes of Fragments collect 48 illustrated essays on the cultural history of the human body, typically at choice intersections of corporeal and conceptual mechanisms people have formed to inscribe or recreate bodies adapted to moral and practical circumstance.

Each volume draws the reader through the human body’s layers on its own distinct axis. Volume 1 traces the body’s vertical relation to divine and bestial poles of lived experience and the imagination, as well as the machines that imitate, accelerate or replace it along the way. Volume 2 finds nodes where the body’s interior meets the exterior, in spiritual and emotional expression on the one hand, and in thoughts on cenesthesia, pain and death on the other. Volume 3 explores organ and function in social, political and scientific symbolism imposed on the physical individual, and in the ways that the body is transformed into an organ of larger bodies, from the local community to the cosmos.

Susan Buck-Morss, 2000, MIT Press/October Books, 368 pgs.

From the cover: “Susan Buck-Morss was in Moscow during events leading to the fall of the Soviet Union, working collaboratively with members of a new generation of philosophers who were developing an independent reading of Western theory (Adorno, Benjamin, Foucault). That experience provides the reference point for this analysis of East and West as two closely related versions of modernity. Out of visual images and historical fragments she constructs constellations that resonate unexpectedly with present concerns: ecology, gender, sexuality, and mass media. She recasts traditional narratives across a wide spectrum of historical topics, from revolutionary politics to avant-garde art, from mass entertainment to industrial labor, from collective action to domestic privacy. Rejecting the established discourse of democracy versus totalitarianism, she argues that the socialist imagery failed because because it mirrored the dreamworlds of capitalism too faithfully.

“Dreamworld and Catastrophe is an experiment in visual culture, using images as philosophy, presenting, literally, a way of seeing the past. Its pictorial narrative rescues historical data that with the end of the Cold War are threatened with oblivion, and challenges common conceptions of what the century was about.”