Seconds

Story: Bryan Lee O'Malley
Art: Bryan Lee O'Malley & Jason Fischer 
Publisher: Ballantine Books

What’s it about?
Seconds is the highly anticipated first new comic from Scott Pilgrim creator, Bryan Lee O'Malley. Following a pretty impressive success (for such a small indie title), which even resulted in a much bigger motion picture feature, O'Malley went back to his roots. By releasing a new self-contained graphic novel!

Seconds tales the story of this woman, Katie Clay, who is a young talented chef and the proud owner of a local restaurant, called Seconds. Lately, Katie has been struggling with both her personal and professional life. Things have been quite stressful for our heroine, she is in the transition of opening her own new restaurant, leave the old place behind and try to finally move out of that restaurant's second floor and get a proper apartment to live in. And she's been guessing her step of the way. Is that new place a good or bad decision, should she settle for that building or a better locations, and has she been making good decisions all her life and how did she lose the good thing she had going on with her ex-boyfriend?

But one day she finally get the chance to redo it all!

She finds this mysterious white-haired magical girl she calls Lis. She's the resident house spirit at Seconds.

A young waitress named Hazel was severely burnt by Katie's fault. Lis offers Katie the one-time only use of a magic notebook which grants her the ability fix past mistakes. The rules? She has to write down the mistake she wishes to "correct". Ingest a magic mushroom. Go to sleep. And the next day when she will wake up, things will have changed anew.

But soon Katie finds a loophole. She decides to grab a few more of those mushrooms and starts abusing this newfound power. Trying to fix everything, her past relationship, the future new restaurant. Everything! Until it's perfect!

And it only makes things worse and worse the more she tries changing things...

Seconds is a fun entertaining little fable featuring some gorgeous pages with help of Bryan Lee O'Malley's new team of assistants.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Writer: William Shakespeare

Adapted by Richard Appignanesi

Art: Kate Brown

Publisher: Self Made Hero

What’s it about? 

This is an adaptation of a William Shakespeare play.  To my mind, it’s the most magical and comedic one.

Theseus and Hippolyta are due to be married in Athens, Greece.  Theseus' servant Egeus has a daughter named Hermia.  Hermia and Lysander are in love and wish to marry, however Egeus has decided that Demetrius is an appropriate husband.  Helena loves Demetrius but, as he wants Hermia, he is not interested in Helena.

In honour of Theseus and Hippolyta’s wedding a group of inept craftsmen decide to put on a play about star-crossed lovers, Pyramus and Thisbe.  It’s a tragedy where the lovers kill themselves, so not entirely fit for a wedding – I did say they were inept!

In the forests of Athens the fairy court is in session.  Oberon, King of the fairies, and Titania, fairy Queen, are embroiled in an argument.  Oberon wants a human boy that Titania has adopted, but Titania won’t give him up.  Oberon plots revenge, and here is where the plots converge...

Oberon gets his servant Puck to enchant Titania so she falls in love with the first hideous thing she sees.  Hermia and Lysander have run away to get married and are pursued by Demetrius, who is in turn pursued by Helena.  Oberon witnesses this and instructs Puck to enchant Demetrius to fall in love with Helena, except Puck gets it wrong and enchants Lysander instead.  The enchantment of Titania is successful, as Puck gives one of the craftsmen, Bottom, a donkey’s head, and Titania falls for him.

This takes up the first half of the play.  The second half concerns the humans and fairies trying to sort out the mess Puck has caused. 

Gonzo. A Graphic Biography Of Hunter S. Thompson

written by Will Bingley
illustrated by Anthony Hope-Smith
foreword by Alan Rinzler
Publisher: SelfMadeHero

What's It About​?
“Over the course of Hunter S. Thompson's extraordinary life he was publicly branded a bum, a vandal, a liar, an addict, a freak and a psychopath. Only some of which are true,” so states the blurb of this book, a graphic retelling of the life of the infamous “gonzo” journalist from his earliest brush with the law at the age of nine to the time of his death in 2005. On the way he covers the 1972 American Presidential election, Watergate, the Fall of Saigon and the 1970 Kentucky Derby.