3 New Comics for New Readers – June 6, 2012

Two twists on darker versions of our world, one funny and one fantastical. Yes, 3 becomes 2 this week when there isn’t a third book that strongly fits our criteria. Instead, you get to focus on two really promising books that should make you look at reality from a slightly different angle. Off-beat and worth every penny.

Wednesday is New Comics Day! Each week, The Comics Observer picks brand new releases worth checking out that should be suitable for someone who has never read comic books, graphic novels or manga before.

These are out today! If you like what you see here, click the links to see previews and learn more about them. Then head to your local comic book store, or check out online retailers like Things From Another World and Amazon. Let us know what you think in the comments below or on Facebook.

For a full list of this week’s new releases, see comiXology and ComicList.com.

Ed the Happy Clown by Chester Brown

Ed the Happy Clown
Written and illustrated by Chester Brown
Published by Drawn and Quarterly
Genre: Humor
Ages: 16+
240 pages
$24.95

In the late 1980s, the idiosyncratic Chester Brown (author of the much-lauded Paying For It and Louis Riel) began writing the cult classic comic book series Yummy Fur. Within its pages, he serialized the groundbreaking Ed the Happy Clown, revealing a macabre universe of parallel dimensions.

Ed the Happy Clown is a hallucinatory tale that functions simultaneously as a dark roller-coaster ride of criminal activity and a scathing condemnation of religious and political charlatanism. As the world around him devolves into madness, the eponymous Ed escapes variously from a jealous boyfriend, sewer monsters, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and a janitor with a Jesus complex. Brown leaves us wondering, with every twist of the plot, just how Ed will get out of this scrape.

The intimate, tangled world of Ed the Happy Clown is definitively presented here, repackaged with a new foreword by the author and an extensive notes section, and, as with every Brown book, astonishingly perceptive about the zeitgeist of its time.

Koma by Pierre Wazem and Frederik Peeters

Koma
Written by Pierre Wazem
Illustrated by Frederik Peeters
Published by Humanoids Inc.
Genre: Fantasy
Ages: 16+
280 pages
$29.95

Addidas is a bright and quirky young girl who spends most of her time helping her widowed father in his job as a chimney sweep in the industrial metropolis they live in. When Addidas ventures too far into a chimney, she encounters a bizarre new friend…

From prolific independent European creators Wazem and Peeters comes a colorful and poetic tale that brilliantly balances its fantastical elements with poignant, realistic themes.