Looking for gift ideas for a geek you know? Here are some cool new items they may not have seen yet:
"Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites" combines Evan Dorkin’s darkly funny writing with Jill Thompson’s adorable, award-winning animal illustrations. It's the story of a group of dogs (and one cat) who are paranormal investigators trying to keep all the hidden evil in their idyllic town at bay. The series won a 2010 Eisner Award for Best Publication for Teens and even did a one-shot crossover with Hellboy (released October 27th) not included with this hardcover collection. 184 pages in hardcover for $13.59 at Amazon.
Instead of one more book about Joe Simon and Jack Kirby's Captain America or another of their DC and Marvel comics, "The Simon and Kirby Superheroes" collects their more obscure classics for the first time. This authorized collection includes full-color, fully-restored reproductions of every comic they did for publishers besides DC and Marvel, including characters like Black Owl, Stuntman, Vagabond Prince, Captain 3-D, Fighting American, Double Life of Private Strong, and Adventures of the Fly, along with some bonus material and an introduction by Neil Gaiman. 480 pages in hardcover for $36 at Amazon. [via]
"The Complete National Geographic" is a 6-disc boxed set collecting every issue from National Geographic magazine's 121 year history (1888 to 2009). That's over 1,400 issues and 200,000 photos your grandpa might have used for . . . um, nevermind. Let's just say he didn't have internet access back then. Times were tough, but now we can get 1,400 searchable National Geographic issues for only $53 at Amazon.
Any geek who hasn't read Nextwave is missing out. Warren Ellis describes it by saying, "I took The Authority and I stripped out all the plots, logic, character and sanity". Or, as one Amazon reviewer puts it, "like Shakespeare but with lots more punching". If you have a hundred of the Earth dollars, you can buy four copies of "Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. Ultimate Collection". 304 pages in paperback for $23 at Amazon.
The Daily Show staff put together a collection of photos, graphs, and charts summing up the human race to aid the aliens who will someday find a human-less Earth (I hope we're covered in dinosaurs then). "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents Earth (The Book): A Visitor's Guide to the Human Race" is 256 pages (three pages of that is the title, apparently) in hardcover for $15.10 at Amazon.
"Cooking for Geeks" by Jeff Potter isn't just recipes (although there are plenty of those). It also takes a geeky perspective on the science behind cooking: protein denaturation, Maillard reactions, caramelization, etc. It also includes tips for setting up a kitchen and calibrating your tools, interviews with internet-famous geeks, and a section about overclocking an oven, because geeks can't resist overclocking everything. 432 pages in paperback for $22.18 at Amazon. [via]
Do you know a geek with a periodic table shower curtain? Here's the book for them. "The Disappearing Spoon" by Sam Kean collects several easy-to-understand factoids related to the periodic table, like the old prank where people would give someone a spoon made out of gallium, an element which would melt when they tried to stir a hot drink or held it in their warm hand for too long. The book probably won't give you a better understanding of isotopes, but it will tell you a lot of quirky anecdotes that will probably show up in a future Chuck Palahniuk novel. 400 pages in hardcover for $16 at Amazon. [via]
There's a good chance the geeks you know like webcomic Cyanide & Happiness. "Ice Cream & Sadness" is their second book, which includes 120 classic strips (like the one above) as well as 30 new, exclusive ones. It also includes a forward by Randall Munroe, the author of XKCD. So much awesome. $10.19 at Amazon.
"Axe Cop" is a webcomic drawn by Eisner-nominated illustrator Ethan Nicolle based on stories imagined by his little brother Malachai, who was 5 when the series started. "Axe Cop Volume 1" collects the entire first run of the webcomic in one book, so you can have your internets on paper. Whoa, literature. 120 pages in paperback available for pre-ordering (publishes 12/22/10) at TFAW. I suspect the book won't turn into a giant robot you can get inside. [via]
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Also, Nextwave will make sweet, gentle love to you, while simultaneously making you laugh yourself sick. It’s that good.
Oh my god, the Axe Cop kid is adorable. He makes me sad that I never had a little brother.
YOU NEVER HAD A LITTLE BROTHER BECAUSE I KILLED HIM AT BIRTH.
ALSO, YOU ARE GAY.
Joakim Noah looks silly…..
[courtflush.blogspot.com]