Charley’s Nexus by H.R. Neu Charley’s curiosity leads him to an ancient group of Keepers of the Universe. (2016, Paperback, 104 pages)

What makes a successful comics creator? How can storytelling stay exciting and innovative? How can genres be kept vital? Writers and artists in the highly competitive U.S. comics mainstream have always had to explore these questions but they were especially pressing in the 1980s. As comics readers grew older they started calling for more sophisticated stories. They were also no longer just following the adventures of popular characters--writers and artists with distinctive styles were in demand. DC Comics and Marvel went looking for such mavericks and found them in the United Kingdom. Creators like Alan Moore (Watchmen, Saga of the Swamp Thing), Grant Morrison (The Invisibles, Flex Mentallo) and Garth Ennis (Preacher) migrated from the anarchical British comics industry to the U.S. mainstream and shook up the status quo yet came to rely on the genius of the American system.

Robert Ariss - activist and academic - had a unique vision of HIV/AIDS. As an HIV seropositive individual for many years before his death on May 9, 1994, he was a full participant in, and critic of, the development of the gay community's response to the HIV epidemic both in Australia and internationally. Though Ariss' life is a definite presence in this study, Against Death: The Practice of Living with AIDS is not an autobiography. Instead, it is a unique and critical account of a public health crisis, a community's response, and the politics of sexuality. It was in Sydney, Australia, world-famous for its Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, that Robert Ariss lived and worked. It is his vision of that community - of its members infected with and affected by HIV - which is documented in this remarkable anthropological study. Yet the study's implications reach beyond Sydney to all communities living with HIV and AIDS.

"I'm no ordinary woman..." Jack is in love with Kitty, Charley with Amy and both need Charley's Aunt to help. But when she doesn't turn up, they coerce their friend and fellow student into posing as the widowed millionaire, so they can confess their feelings to the girls. Things become more complicated when first, Jack's father and then Amy's uncle turn up. Both take a keen interest in Charley's Aunt, "from Brazil - where the nuts come from." One of the most popular comic farces of all time, Charley's Aunt has been loved since its original performances in 1893 and the continuous four year run that followed. The original dialogue is retained in this edition, refreshed with modern stage direction and a new introduction.

It is 2065 and Earth continues its downward spiral. It is more polluted, overcrowded and, most of all, more desperate. Then Charley shows up in an alien spaceship and offers an escape: a chance for a new life on a new world, in a colony currently under construction. Everyone is skeptical. Who is this guy who claims to be just an ordinary man? How did he come to possess such a ship? Just what is the deal here? Is the offer for real? It is, but of course there's a catch; there is always a catch. This is the story of that colony and what Charley did to earn it, what consequential task he undertook for an alien species that resulted in being rewarded with an entire planet. That part of the tale is not so pretty. It is also, however, a story about interstellar love, of the romance between Charley and the beautiful Clarity of Purpose, human but not of Earth. She, at least, is far more appealing. Primarily, this is the story of one man's indomitable will and the consequences of his personal desperation. Possible annihilation of the human race was merely an unforeseen consequence. That could not possibly happen, could it?

Five women must spend months alone together in a hostile jungle, threatened on land and in the water and—perhaps most dangerous of all—by their own exposed and violent passions, that turn them, into savages far worse than their hunters and enemies.

Noted guitarist John Fahey presents a textual and musicological examination of the music of blues legend Charley Patton. This new edition is enhanced by Fahey's notes from the Grammy-winning, out-of-print box set Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues: The Worlds of Charley Patton.