Top Shelf nabs 3 Harvey nominations!

Hearty congratulations to Alex Robinson, Jeff Lemire, and Tim Sievert for their nominations in this year's Harvey Awards! Alex's Too Cool to Be Forgotten and Jeff's The Country Nurse are up for Best Graphic Album: Original, while Tim's That Salty Air earned him a Best New Talent nod. We're mighty proud of these fellows and wish them the best of luck for the award ceremony in October at the Baltimore Comic-Con.

• Essex County (Vol 3): The Country Nurse -- $9.95 (US) -
• The Essex County Complete -- $29.95 (US) - PRE-ORDER
• That Salty Air -- $10.00 (US) -
• Too Cool to Be Forgotten -- $14.95 $12.95 (US) -

ALEC: THE YEARS HAVE PANTS
by Eddie Campbell

"ALEC is magic, and even if I knew how all of it was done I'd be doing you a disservice if I pointed out the wires and mirrors. ... It is written by someone who obviously finds being alive an endless source of novelty and conundrum." -- Alan Moore

"Do you need me to tell you how good Eddie Campbell is? Or that ALEC is probably the best book-length comic about art and wine and midlife crises and families and friends and wine and love and art and saying goodbye and terror there is?" -- Neil Gaiman

For the first time ever, the groundbreaking autobiographical comics of master cartoonist Eddie Campbell (FROM HELL) are collected in a single volume!

Brilliantly observed and profoundly expressed, the ALEC stories present a version of Eddie's own life, filtered through the alter ego of "Alec MacGarry." Over many years, we witness Alec's (and Eddie's) progression "from beer to wine" -- wild nights at the pub, existential despair, the hunt for love, the quest for art, becoming a responsible breadwinner, feeling lost at his own movie premiere, and much more! Eddie's outlandish fantasies and metafictional tricks convert life into art, while staying fully grounded in his own absurdity. At every point, the author's uncanny eye for irony and wry self-awareness makes even the smallest occasion into an opportunity for wit and wisdom. Quite simply, ALEC is a masterpiece of visual autobiography.

ALEC: THE YEARS HAVE PANTS (A LIFE-SIZE OMNIBUS) collects the previous Alec books THE KING CANUTE CROWD, GRAFFITI KITCHEN, HOW TO BE AN ARTIST, LITTLE ITALY, THE DEAD MUSE, THE DANCE OF LIFEY DEATH, AFTER THE SNOOTER, as well as an all-new 35 page book, THE YEARS HAVE PANTS, and some other short stories rarely or never before seen. -- A Softcover Graphic Novel with French Flaps, 640 pages, 7 1/2" x 10", Mature (16+), Diamond: JUL091081, ISBN 978-1-60309-025-4, $35.00

ALEC: THE YEARS HAVE PANTS
(Special Hardcover Edition)
by Eddie Campbell

Also available this summer, a special hardcover edition of Alec: The Years Have Pants. -- Deluxe Hardcover, 640 pages, 7 1/2" x 10", Mature (16+), Diamond: JUL091082, ISBN 978-1-60309-047-6, $49.95

THE SURROGATES (V1)
by Robert Venditti & Brett Weldele

SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM TOUCHSTONE PICTURES, STARRING BRUCE WILLIS.



"The Best Indie Book of the year. Sci-fi tales are making a comeback and The Surrogates is quietly leading the charge." -- IGN

The year is 2054, and life is reduced to a data feed. The fusing of virtual reality and cybernetics has ushered in the era of the personal surrogate, android substitutes that let users interact with the world without ever leaving their homes. It's a perfect world, and it's up to Detectives Harvey Greer and Pete Ford of the Metro Police Department to keep it that way. But to do so they’ll need to stop a techno-terrorist bent on returning society to a time when people lived their lives instead of merely experiencing them.

The Surrogates is a story about progress and whether there exists a tipping point at which technological advancement will stop enhancing and start hindering our lives. It is also a commentary on identity, the Western obsession with physical appearance, and the growing trend to use science as a means of providing consumers with beauty on demand. -- A Full-Color Graphic Novel, 208 Pages, 6 5/8" x 10 1/8", Young Adult (13+), Diamond: MAY063435, ISBN 978-1-891830-87-7, $19.95

FAR ARDEN
by Kevin Cannon

"Cleverly plotted ... Cannon is one of the comics world's most energetic storytellers, and his minimalist artwork, far from cramping its subject matter, has its own eye-catching charm." -- Carl Hays, Booklist

Meet Army Shanks -- crusty old sea dog and legendary brawler of the high Arctic seas! He's got just one mission: to find the mythical island paradise known as Far Arden, which lies hidden (so they say) in the wintry oceans of the far North. But there's more than just water standing between Shanks and his goal: he'll have to contend with circus performers, adorable orphans, heinous villains, bitter ex-lovers, well-meaning undergraduates, and the full might of the Royal Canadian Arctic Navy! Not to mention he's not so sure how to get to Far Arden in the first place...

In his first solo graphic novel, Kevin Cannon (THE STUFF OF LIFE, T-MINUS) proves himself a master spinner of yarns. FAR ARDEN is an epic journey through a world not quite our own, written and drawn with strokes bold and swift. As readers hurtle toward the stunning conclusion, Cannon assembles countless details, characters, and relentless plot twists into an astonishing whole far greater than the sum of its parts. Thrilling, eccentric, lusty, genuinely moving, and often hilarious (with sound effects that alone are worth the price of admission), FAR ARDEN may be the best adventure comic you'll read all year. --A 400-Page Deluxe Hardcover Graphic Novel, 5" x 6 1/2", Diamond: MAR094430, ISBN 978-1-60309-036-0, Mature (16+), $19.95

HOT OFF THE PRESS!

Top Shelf is proud to present the all-new installment in the breathtaking series by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill! In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Vol III): Century #1 ("1910"), our familiar cast of Victorian literary characters enters the brave new world of the 20th century!

CHAPTER ONE is set against a backdrop of London, 1910, twelve years after the failed Martian invasion and nine years since England put a man upon the moon. In the bowels of the British Museum, Carnacki the ghost-finder is plagued by visions of a shadowy occult order who are attempting to create something called a Moonchild, while on London's dockside the most notorious serial murderer of the previous century has returned to carry on his grisly trade. Working for Mycroft Holmes' British Intelligence alongside a rejuvenated Allan Quatermain, the reformed thief Anthony Raffles and the eternal warrior Orlando, Miss Murray is drawn into a brutal opera acted out upon the waterfront by players that include the furiously angry Pirate Jenny and the charismatic butcher known as Mac the Knife. This one is not to be missed!

This book is the first of three deluxe, 80-page, full-color, perfect-bound graphic novellas, written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Kevin O'Neill -- with lettering by Todd Klein, and colors by Ben Dimagmaliw. Each self-contained narrative takes place in three distinct eras, building to an apocalyptic conclusion occurring in our own twenty-first century. -- An 80-page Softcover Graphic Novel, 6 5/8" x 10 1/8", Diamond: FEB094465, ISBN 978-1-60309-000-1, Mature (16+), $7.95

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