35 YEARS IN THE MAKING: THE MOST ANTICIPATED GRAPHIC NOVEL IN RECENT HISTORY *A GUARDIAN 'BOOKS OF 2021' PICK* The year is 1964. Bailey doesn't realize he is about to fulfil his tragic destiny when he walks into a US Army recruitment office. Secretive, damaged, innocent, trying to forget a past and looking for a future, Bobby is the perfect candidate for a secret US government experiment, an unholy continuation of a genetics program that was discovered in Nazi Germany nearly 20 years earlier in the waning days of World War II. Bailey's only ally and protector, Sergeant McFarland, intervenes, which sets off a chain of cascading events that spin out of everyone's control. As the monsters of the title multiply, becoming real and metaphorical, the story reaches a crescendo of moral reckoning. A 360-page tour de force of visual storytelling, Monsters' narrative canvas is copious: part familial drama, part thriller, part metaphysical journey, it is an intimate portrait of individuals struggling to reclaim their lives and an epic political odyssey that plays across two generations of American history. Monsters is rendered in Barry Windsor-Smith's impeccable pen-and-ink technique, the visual storytelling, with its sensitivity to gesture and composition, the most sophisticated of the artist's career. There are passages of heartbreaking tenderness, of excruciating pain, of redemption and sacrifice, and devastating violence. Monsters is surely one of the most intense graphic novels ever drawn.

THE MOST PRIMITIVE MAN, THE MOST POWERFUL WEAPON Abducted from his own time by the predatory Spider Aliens and displaced to the present day, Aric of Dacia will make war on his one-time captors and any who stand with them. Armed with a sentient suit of battle armor and savagery born in an age of war, he will become the hero this new age demands. Tyrants from beyond time and space, superpowered corporate raiders, and corrupt government power brokers... all will quake in fear where X-O Manowar dares to tread. Featuring groundbreaking work from comic-book legends Jim Shooter (Secret Wars), Bob Layton (Iron Man), Barry Windsor-Smith (Weapon X), Joe Quesada (Daredevil), Steve Englehart (Detective Comics) and many more, the complete adventures of Valiant's original armored hero begin here in the first Valiant Classic Collection of the series Graphic Policy calls "a must read"! Collecting X-O MANOWAR (1992) #0-9, and X-O DATABASE #1.