Corinne comes face to face with the man responsible for the death of her friend during a harrowing battle above the city.

Supernatural suspense and terrifying thrills as gods, monsters, witches, vampires, and werewolves face off! A new nightmare begins in the Eisner Award-nominated horror series from RODNEY BARNES, the writer behind such hit shows as Wu-Tang: An American Saga and STARZ’s American Gods, and JASON SHAWN ALEXANDER, the artist who redefined SPAWN for a new generation. As vampire queen Abigail Adams and necromancer Thomas Jefferson combine their might to devour the very heart of Philadelphia, James Sangster and their newfound werewolf allies make their final stand. But more is at stake than they realize, and the plot twists even further as knights become traitors, kings become pawns, and new grandmasters emerge… Welcome to the new ruling class—the immortal, the undead. Bow before your masters! Collects KILLADELPHIA #19-24

What made ancient cities successful? What are the similarities between modern cities and ancient ones? The Social Construction of Ancient Cities offers a fresh perspective on ancient cities and the social networks and relations that built and sustained them, marking a dramatic change in the way archaeologists approach them. Examining ancient cities from a “bottom up” perspective, the authors in this volume explore the ways in which cities were actually created by ordinary inhabitants. They track the development of urban space from the point of view of individuals and households, providing new insights into cities' roles as social centers as well as focal points of political and economic activities. Analyzing various urban communities from residences and neighborhoods to marketplaces and ceremonial plazas, the authors examine urban centers in Africa, Mesoamerica, South America, Mesopotamia, the Indian subcontinent, and China. Collectively they demonstrate how complex networks of social relations and structures gave rise to the formation of ancient cities, contributed to their cohesion, and sustained their growth, much as they do in modern urban centers. The authors' analyses draw from ancient texts as well as archaeological surveys and excavations of urban architecture and other material remains, including portable objects for daily use and comestibles. They show clearly how early urban dwellers consciously developed dense interdependent social networks to satisfy their needs for food, housing, and employment, forged their own urban identities, and generally managed to thrive in the crowded, bustling, and competitive environment that characterized ancient cities. Not least of all, they suggest how urban leaders and urban dwellers negotiated a consensus that enabled them to achieve both mundane and extraordinary goals, in the process establishing their unique ritual, legal, and social status.

Urban wildlife management is a town planning subject. It is logical and important to relate the animal and human conflict seen all over the world, as a phenomenon which is applicable to all types of human settlements, despite the diversities and complexities of cultures, societal structures, laws, value systems, religions and so on. A universal principle or theory governs and applies to all cities which define these conditions and phenomena creating the conflict or coexistence. This book investigates the niches of one of the key urban animals from a syntactic, semantic and pragmatic perspective and explores how these niches are naturally synonymous to similar patterns, structures and compositions within human settlements. It explores and defines the demographic patterns, thresholds and phenomenon, which leads to formation of the different levels and extremes of interaction between the species. This forms a paradigm which classifies this conflict within the various disciplines and frameworks of urban ecology. The focus is primarily on urban dogs, it being a keystone species, but is later related with other urban animals as well. The premise for this approach is that history has shown how certain species have persuasively coexisted with humans for so many millennia, yet a conflict happens between animals and humans and within humans over animals. It is thus logical to believe that the forces which create this conflict cannot solely be natural to the species in question and have to come from outside – from the settlement patterns of both species and the “net resultant force and dynamics”. The book looks at these dichotomies in four distinct but interrelated ways. It delves deep inside four niches which form the dynamics of any settlement – spatial, cultural, ecological and economic and explores all scales at which the “succession” and evolution of animals take place in highly urbanized settlements.

Assemblies of rectangular stone pillars, or stelae, fill the plazas and courts of ancient Maya cities throughout the lowlands of southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and western Honduras. Mute testimony to state rituals that linked the king's power to rule with the rhythms and renewal of time, the stelae document the ritual acts of rulers who sacrificed, danced, and experienced visionary ecstasy in connection with celebrations marking the end of major calendrical cycles. The kings' portraits are carved in relief on the main surfaces of the stones, deifying them as incarnations of the mythical trees of life. Based on a thorough analysis of the imagery and inscriptions of seven stelae erected in the Great Plaza at Copan, Honduras, by the Classic Period ruler "18-Rabbit-God K," this ambitious study argues that stelae were erected not only to support a ruler's temporal claims to power but more importantly to express the fundamental connection in Maya worldview between rulership and the cosmology inherent in their vision of cyclical time. After an overview of the archaeology and history of Copan and the reign and monuments of "18-Rabbit-God K," Elizabeth Newsome interprets the iconography and inscriptions on the stelae, illustrating the way they fulfilled a coordinated vision of the king's ceremonial role in Copan's period-ending rites. She also links their imagery to key Maya concepts about the origin of the universe, expressed in the cosmologies and mythic lore of ancient and living Maya peoples.