In November NBM is reviving the fondly remembered Classics Illustrated comics in a new line of graphic novels published under its Papercutz imprint.  The more expansive graphic novel format allows the classic stories to be presented more completely, something that is quite evident in Michel Plessix's 144-page adaptation of Kenneth Grahame's classic The Wind in the Willows.  Plessix renders the adventures of Mr. Toad with subtle tones of aquarelle laid over thin, precise line work.  Papercutz' The Wind in the Willows is available in both hardcover ($17.95) and trade paperback editions ($13.95).

Also coming in November from NBM (under its ComicsLit imprint) is The Museum Vaults, the second in a series of graphic novels produced in France in cooperation with the Louvre to be published here in the U.S.  In Marc-Antoine Mathieu's The Museum Vaults an art assessor has to evaluate the collections of the Louvre in an alternate Kafkaesque world where the collection is housed in an ever deepening series of basements.  The 64-page two-color graphic novel has a cover price of $14.95 and makes a perfect companion piece to Nicholas Crecy's Glacial Period, the first novel in the Louvre series released here by NBM.