New Pop Culture Books: Marvel Calendar Book, Art of Romita's Spider-Man, New Susanna Clarke, More

Our picks this month. Click the links to order from Amazon.

From 1975–81, Marvel created seven consecutive calendars that were as artistically designed and captivatingly written as any of their comic books. Each of these annual calendars—whether they celebrated the Bicentennial (1976) or spotlighted a specific character such as Spider-Man (1978), Hulk (1979), or Doctor Strange (1980), featured heroes and villains across the pantheon of the Marvel Universe—and all shared inspired features. These included visual call-outs for birthdays of noted Marvel staff and creators; key moments in Marvel history; special events, famous quotes from fan-favorite issues, and other celebratory mentions; with exclusive art from iconic Marvel artists, created especially for these calendars by Jack Kirby, John Buscema, John Byrne, Frank Miller, Walter Simonson, Gil Kane, George PĂ©rez, Gene Colan, Jim Starlin, Sal Buscema, Mike Ploog, and dozens more.

The Amazing Spider-Man has remained the flagship title for the classic Marvel Comics character Spider-Man for over six decades. Stan Lee and Steve Ditko co-created the character in 1962, and it quickly became a sensation. Then, with The Amazing Spider-Man #39, John Romita Sr. replaced Ditko as the main artist and began an epic run.

This oversized Bullpen Books edition focuses on Romita's work on ASM from 1966 to 1973, a run that would dramatically reshape the world of Spider-Man and his alter ego, Peter Parker. With his unmatched skill in dynamic layouts and composition, Romita, working alongside Stan Lee on some of Spider-Man's most enduring storylines and with contributions from a supporting cast of legendary Marvel Bullpen contributor—including Gil Kane, John Buscema, Jim Mooney, and Mike Esposito—would help lead Spider-Man to even greater heights in pop culture.

From the internationally bestselling and prize-winning author of Piranesi and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, an enchanting, beautifully illustrated short story set in the world of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

'A church is a sort of wood. A wood is a sort of church. They're the same thing really.'

Nineteen-year-old Merowdis Scot is an unusual girl. She can talk to animals and trees-and she is only ever happy when she is walking in the woods.

One snowy afternoon, out with her dogs and Apple the pig, Merowdis encounters a blackbird and a fox. As darkness falls, a strange figure enters in their midst-and the path of her life is changed forever.

Featuring gorgeous illustrations truly worthy of the magic of this story and an afterword by Susanna Clarke explaining how she came to write it, this is a mesmerizing, must-have addition to any fantasy reader's bookshelf.

In the spring of 1980, an unexpected group of musical eccentrics came together to play their very first performance at a college party in Athens, Georgia. Within a few short years, they had taken over the world – with smash records like Out of Time, Automatic for the People, Monster and Green. Raw, outrageous, and expressive, R.E.M.’s distinctive musical flair was unmatched, and a string of mega-successes solidified them as generational spokesmen. In the tumultuous transition between the wide-open 80s and the anxiety of the early 90s, R.E.M. challenged the corporate and social order, chasing a vision and cultivating a magnetic, transgressive sound.

In this rich, intimate biography, critically acclaimed author Peter Ames Carlin looks beyond the sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll to open a window into the fascinating lives of four college friends – Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry – who stuck together at any cost, until the end. Deeply descriptive and remarkably poetic, steeped in 80s and 90s nostalgia, The Name of This Band is R.E.M. paints a cultural history of the commercial peak and near-total collapse of a great music era, and the story of the generation that came of age at the apotheosis of rock.

In 2002, Bill Zehme landed one of the most coveted assignments for a magazine writer: an interview with Johnny Carson—the only one he’d granted since retiring from hosting The Tonight Show a decade earlier. Zehme was tapped for the Esquire feature story thanks to his years of legendary celebrity profiles, and the resulting piece portrayed Carson as more human being than showbiz legend. Shortly after Carson’s death in 2005 and urged on by many of those closest to Carson, Zehme signed a contract to do an expansive biography. He toiled on the book for nearly a decade—interviewing dozens of Carson’s colleagues and friends and filling up a storage locker with his voluminous research—before a cancer diagnosis and ongoing treatments halted his progress. When he died in 2023 his obituaries mentioned the Carson book, with New York Times comedy critic Jason Zinoman calling it “one of the great unfinished biographies.”

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