It is ironic that The Comics Journal, a critical journal which holds other publishers to such stringently high standards, should produce such a flawed publication as this. A frustrating collection of superb text and wretched production values, THE COMICS JOURNAL LIBRARY: JACK KIRBY is "the first of a series of coffee table-style volumes devoted to the life and work of exceptional cartoonists." The text is roughly a 50-50 mix of interviews (conducted over a course of 20 years) and essays. While the essays provide a level of serious analysis rarely encountered in the fan press, Jack Kirby was far too prolific a creator for his life's work to be summarized in one slim volume. The latter portion of the book chronicles Kirby's battle for the return of his Marvel artwork in the late '80s. The majority of illustrations are poor-quality black and white reproductions shot from comic book pages. The use of a gray background behind the text imparts an overall dull look to a book about one of comics' most energetic stylists. The 12"x12" format puts a lot of stress on the binding, and the cover stock kinks and creases easily; a hardcover would have been a more sensible choice for a book of these dimensions. Despite its grievous shortcomings as an art book, THE COMICS JOURNAL LIBRARY: JACK KIRBY is the most serious critical attempt to come to grips with the sprawling visual genius of the creator of pop culture icons such as Captain America, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, the Hulk, the New Gods, the Silver Surfer and many more. Let's hope that future volumes of THE COMICS JOURNAL LIBRARY are preceded by an open call to the comic art collector community for illustrations.

Jack Kirby created an army of comics characters and it is likely that comics and even some movies would not have been the same if not for him and his creativity. The Comics Journal attempts to summarize his five decade career in a coffee table sized book but those familiar with his work will realize that the man created far too much to be captured in this size of a book. It is very frustrating to see the gray reproductions but also frustrating not to see much of characters such as Mister Miracle, Thor, the Silver Surfer, and the Avengers. There is far too much attention given to Kirby's battle over his original artwork (last third of the book) when more attention could have been paid to what he did and what his accomplishments have meant. Still, I hope that the Comics Journal will publish more of these kinds of books. There is already a good book about Curt Swan but I'd like to see ones devoted to Neal Adams, George Perez, or John Romita.

This book, a critical introduction to Kirby, sets the stage for future volumes in the series. (It is not at all intended as a posh coffee table book of the man's art. For great samples of Kirby's art, there are still many places you can go.) It cleaves, more or less cleanly, into three sections: interviews, critical appraisals/appreciations and the last section, devoted to Kirby's battle with Marvel over the return of his original artwork.

One of the most satisfying and essential parts of this book is a 1989 interview in which Kirby takes off the gloves and asserts unequivocally that one man created the stable of characters that made Marvel the power it has been for the last 4 decades, and further that that man IS NOT the one taking all the credit, the one you may think it is.

The history of popular culture repeats scenarios like this over and over again. When all the legends of New Orleans jazz were dead and buried, truly marginal figures who could have never made it in Chicago or New York crawled out of the woodwork, claiming a bigger part in the music's history than they actually played. And fans, far enough removed from the era when the epic figures roamed the earth, ate it up as gospel. The same thing happens now. With Jack Kirby gone, those remaining can claim the preposterous: that they were anything more than mere editorial front men for the publishing house. Having believed their own overblown PR for decades, they now find themselves in a position where no one can authoritatively contest any claim they make. In such an environment, this book becomes critical to understanding an important truth: Jack Kirby was the originator of modern Marvel. Say it again: Jack Kirby was the originator of modern Marvel. The other guys, who have always publicly rounded off the corners of the truth, were mere nepotistic beneficiaries, 'personality' men, cheesy emcees and carney barkers in the scheme of things. They were your basic coattail-rider who sought to rub off some of that glory--Creativity-- that was far beyond them.

I'm a professional logic designer and even I found some of the material in this text to be very challenging to follow. I use it more as a reference. The book focuses only on synchronous logic circuits. It is fairly standard on combinatorial networks and statemachines. However, like the book's title suggets, the final sections on h/w logic algorithms (multipliers, dividers, FIFOs, bit-slice processors, etc.) and their implementation can be useful to any practicing design engineer or graduate student.

I have owned this book for 10 years now and have used it more as a reference than anything else. The authors tend to go a little overboard in trying to present the material as a mathematics subject. But once you get used to their notation (very computer science oriented not electrical engineering)the information they give in the alogrithm portion (last chapters) is hard to find anywhere else. I actually implemented the non-restoring integer divder and FIFO described in the text in several digital ASICs I have designed. If you're a professional logic designer or graduate student I recommend this book if you can pick it up cheap used. The binding on this book is very weak. I need to find some duct tape...

Si buscas sexo explicito, no compres este libro. Si buscas un argumento apasionante o inteligente, tampoco. En Hidden Camera encontraras una serie de historias cortas con un transfondo erotico, y el excelente dibujo de Manara, pero poco mas. Basicamente se trata de las historia protagonizadas por Honey, el delicioso personaje de Milo, que trabaja para un grupo que realiza grabaciones con camara oculta, normalmente con alguna orientacion sexual, para venderlas para la television. Personalmente Me decepciono un poco.

A mixed bag of stories from the horny Italian carttonist, grouped around the theme of a film company in search of senssational subjects. Stories range from the humorous to the deadly grim. One enjoyable romp has the company set up a luscious blonde employee for a bit of involuntary backdoor action, only to have the trick backfire on the (equally luscious) brunette who planned it. Manara shows atypical restraint in NOT showing the resulting assault in all its erotic glory.
The other highlight, for me, is a scene where the crew unwittingly cause a young lady to upset her husband. He and his mother punish the offending lass with a bare bottom caning, and the crew capture the whole thing on film. This is a really protracted sequence, in which the girl is forced to raise her skirt and kiss her husband while being slashed across the bottom with the cane by his strong-armed mom. The action continues for pages, while hubby continually promises "Just one more", then changes his mind because she moved or something. After a few strokes she is made to lower her panties and the next blow falls on bare skin. And the next. And the next...
The sight of this gorgeous gal sobbing in pain as she is compelled to kiss her man, while bending over to expose her buttocks to the next stinging smack, is very entertaining. And if she knew she was being filmed, I'm sure her humiliation would be even greater!

Ever wanted to jerk off to a comic book? Well, now you can!

Giuseppe Bergman is the starring of the oldest Manara's comic books. In this episode you can live his metropolitan fantasy, you can live the dream of a young and sweet lady and you can see how art can be confuse with the real life. This is one of the best Manara's techincal performance. His illustrations for "to see the stars" will be impressed in your memory forever!

Generaly speaking, I enjoy the Alex Delaware series, but after reading this book I am looking forawrd to more non-Delaware books by Kellerman. Monster is well enough written, however the material isn't exactly exciting. It starts off decently enough, but starts going downhill about a quarter of the way in, and crashes in flames around the middle. The bulk of the story involves Delaware checking into the past history of a group of people from a small town which no longer exists. The main problem being is that these characters are pretty much all dead and have no place in the current context of the story, and you spend a couple hundred pages reading about people who you really don't have any interest in. On top of that, the story is so convoluted, by the time you get near the end, you have lost any focus, and interest, and really don't care what happens. Overall, it is a slow moving, uninteresting, implausible story that I would not recommend unless you are a diehard Kellerman fan. Hopefully his next book will be a non-Delaware book, as Alex needs a longer hiatus.

Monster is Ardith Peake. A psychotic, near-vegetable who's been locked up in a maximum security hospital for the last sixteen years. Yet suddenly, the Monster is predicting murders before they occur. Alex Delaware and detective Milo Sturgis must try to unravel a mystery that goes back twenty years or more to the time that Monster wiped out a wealthy family in the small northern community of Treadway. But how does this ancient history tie in to the grisly murders being committed today?

I'm a huge fan of Jonathan Kellerman and especially of his Alex Delaware series. I've read and enjoyed them all but this one seemed to lack the spark of the others. The premise is great and the book starts out strongly, but I didn't feel it was as captivating as some of his earlier Delaware novels. In fact, the end started to drag a bit.

However, all that said, Jonathan Kellerman still is a strong presence in the psychological thriller genre. He can write with authority when he discusses medication side-effects, neuroses, and psychoses since he really is a psychologist himself. All this information may sound boring but it really isn't. It all ties in to the plot and plotting is where he usually excels. I just felt the plot ran out of steam toward the end of the book. Still a good book from a good writer. Head and shoulders above a lot of what passes for mysteries these days.

Dr. Delaware, serves as a psychiatric consultant to the police department. He and Detective Milo Sturgis set out to solve the crime of a psychologist who worked at a hospital for the criminally insane. The head of the facility tells them that the Dr. was safe when she was there--it was in the outside world that she met her untimely end. The victim had been working with Ardis Peake, a young man who had brutally murdered his own mother and another family many years ago. Her interest in him was spurred by dark family secrets in her own past, which are uncovered as the plot proceeds. More murders occur which bear a grisly resemblance to the Dr.'s murder and which are eerily foretold in the psychotic mutterings of Peake. There are many twists and turns until the final solution is revealed. Kellerman writes of the inmates with stark realism, but also with a great amount of understanding. An interesting book!

Don't let the synopsis fool you, Parva isn't really the main character. She seems like it, but her friend (who wears a stupid hat through-out the book) who is featured in the 'climatic' scene.

And 'climatic' is in quotes because the tension of this story never really changes all that much. One could read this entire book and feel no real change in emotion.

And calling it the 'most hardcore' seems silly, too. Despite some hardcore situations, they are delivered in such a way as to diffuse any emotions they might arouse.

As said before, go right by this. Trust me.

Sure, Manara's art is great, but everything else is just too bland.

Milo Manara is a gifted artist with an occasional sense of wit and situational humor in several of his works. This however, is not the case with Manara's Kama Sutra. The book is a series of silly excuses for amorous encounters (very)loosely based on the Kama Sutra. Humor content varies from poor to nonexistent. Finally, the ludicrous encounters are un-erotic in their execution and seem like independent scenes that are poorly organized into a loosely coherent work.

Manara's Click (series) and WWW are much better works.

Following Milo Manara's usual style, this book is simply a series of sexual vignettes loosely tied together by a fantastical/supernatural plot.

Like a lot of Manara's books, the continuity of the story is purely structured by the author's whim. For example, a sensual "kissing cousins" scenario is broken up by a blustering landlord which then segues into a near rape of the main character. Such scenes also highlight another penchant of the artist--linking slapstick to tone down darker scenes--which may put some readers off. However, those used to his other books like Butterscotch and Click will find this to be par for the course.

Overall, this is standard Manara fare and probably best appreciated by fans of his artwork.

If you're like me you just need all the movies in list format with a rating of 1 to 5 stars. The films in this book are not even reviewed(!) and there's WAY too many long, drawn out passages about each one. If I liked reading I wouldn't be so into film!

facets movie guide is the difinitive guide for those seeking the best, the worst, the most avant garde in film of the past or present. their catagories provide insight into the minds that went into this compilation and gives the buff a place to start on a wild search for films of every description. rental and purchase information abounds as does their own service.

a valuable companion to movie renting and purchase!

It's clear by now that there's no real medical basis for neonatal circumcision. One would hope in a book of this bulk (and price) to gain sharper insight into where the practice came from and why it has been so tenacious. Unfortunately the authors' interests as crusaders against mutilation turn this into a very large tract.

"The definitive work on the subject has just been published, and its a long, long time overdue. The first couple of sentences says it all. I couldn't have summed it up better myself. 'In those countries where circumcision is an accepted part of life, perfectly rational, intelligent and well-meaning adults believe that they have the right to cut off parts of their childrens' sexual organs!' What else do you think you have the right to cut off your child?" Dr Dean Edell, The Dean Edell Show, KGO, San Francisco

This book appears to me to be very poorly edited, with numerous clerical and scientific errors. For instance, multiple sclerosis is termed a "neurogenerative" disease rather than a "neurodegenerative" disease. The writing includes some of the longest sentences I've ever seen in scientific writing, and not to the author's benefit. The authors repeat themselves quite a bit from one chapter to the next. Disappointing!

This book is hillarious. first they are so stupid to mess with the tomb and then they open it. what retards. But since it was a mystery it kind of left you hanging. Hopefully the author can fix it up sooner or later.