An irreverent survey in comics spanning world history from the birth of Islam to the Byzantine Empire to the Italian Renaissance. Larry Gonick's celebrated series The Cartoon History of the Universe is a unique fusion of world history and the comics medium, a work of serious scholarship and a masterpiece of popular literature. Praised by Jonathan Spence in the New York Times Book Review as "a curious hybrid, at once flippant and scholarly, witty and politically correct, zany and traditionalist," Gonick's clever illustrations deliver important information with a deceptively light tone, teaching us about the people and events that have shaped our world. This long-awaited new volume covers the Middle Ages around the globe, including the multicultural Middle East, West Africa and the cross-Saharan trade, Central Asia and the Byzantine Empire, the European Dark Ages and the Crusades, the Mongol conquests, the Black Death, the Ottoman Empire, the Italian Renaissance, and the rise of Spain, leading up to Columbus's departure for the new world. Gonick offers an historical survey that is at once multicultural, humanistic, skeptical, and laugh-out-loud funny.

Nearly one million weekly listeners trust NPR's Brooke Gladstone to guide them through the distortions and complexities of the modern media. This brilliant radio personality now bursts onto the page as an illustrated character in vivid comics drawn by acclaimed artist Josh Neufeld. The cartoon of Brooke conducts the reader through two millennia of history-from the newspapers in Caesar's Rome to the penny press of the American Revolution and the manipulations of contemporary journalism. Gladstone's manifesto debunks the notion that The Media is an external force, outside of our control, since we've begun directly constructing, filtering, and responding to what we watch and read. With fascinating digressions, sobering anecdotes, and brave analytical wit, The Influencing Machine equips us to be smart, savvy, informed consumers and shapers of the media. It shows that we have met the media and it is us. So now what?

For storytellers and artists of all levels (no experience necessary!), here is a colorful, interactive how-to book that teaches kids to express themselves through comics. Hey! Are you an artist? Writer? Creator? All of the above? None of the above? Grab a pencil and this book to begin expressing your life in comics! This interactive guide is chockfull of fun exercises, insightful lessons, and plenty of practice space. Draw and write your own characters! Create funky panel shapes! Fill in the speech bubbles! Follow fun prompts to doodle, draw, and design! No writing or drawing experience is necessary—all it takes is YOU (plus a pencil or pen) to turn your ideas into visual stories, starring you! Praise for comic artist, speaker, mental health coach, and New York Times bestselling author Ellen Forney: - “Ellen Forney’s greatest strength as a cartoonist is her gift for explanation—getting information across with vigor, wit, and visual inventiveness.” –New York Times- “Forney has a virtuosic understanding of what words and images can do in congress, playing them off one another in ways that allow her pages to be more than the sum of their parts.” –NPR- “Brilliant” –Entertainment Weekly

When a man named Lewis rents a vacation house on Long Island for a few days,he doesn't expect to end up on a crazy circus train ride to nowhere. His onenight in the house, he burns it down. Then he meets charismatic Joseph Dillon,manager of the Circus of the Grand Design. Knowing he needs to leave the area ina hurry, Lewis agrees to join the circus as a publicist, despite Dillon'swarning that he might not be able to return to the place he began. The circus'sprivate train travels an infinite dream-loop to unknown lands, and Lewis becomeslost amongst crazy acrobats, sexy elephant riders, a magical mechanical horse, agiant woman and her savage, prehistoric rodent bears, an egotistical juggler anda fertility goddess who takes exceptional interest in him. The train, itsresidents and the places they visit form a complex puzzle that Lewis feelscompelled to solve; this, then, is the Circus of the GrandDesign.

Ripped from the March 1943 issue of the famous pulp magazine, The Phantom Detective, here is the lead novel, THE STONES OF SATAN -- a thrilling full-length Phantom Detective Adventure!