Greg Heffley finds himself in a new year and school where undersize weaklings share the corridors with kids who are taller and meaner. Desperate to prove his maturity, Greg is happy to have his sidekick, Rowley, along for the ride. But when Rowley's star starts to rise, Greg tries to use his best friend's popularity to his own advantage.

Greg's dad, Frank, is on a mission - a mission to make this wimpy kid, well, less wimpy. All manner of 'manly' physical activities are planned, but Greg just about manages to find a way out of them. That is until military academy is mentioned and Greg realizes that he's going to have to come up with something very special to get out of this one.

It's a brand-new year and Greg is keen to put the humiliating events of last summer firmly behind him. But someone knows everything - someone whose job it is to most definitely not keep anything embarrassing of Greg's private - his big brother, Rodrick. How can Greg make it through this new school year with his cool(ish) reputation intact?

Combined here are 'Maus I: A Survivor's Tale' and 'Maus II' - the complete story of Vladek Spiegelman and his wife, living and surviving in Hitler's Europe. By addressing the Holocaust through cartoons the author captures the everyday reality of fear and the sensation of survival.

When the Joker commits an unspeakable crime, Batman must use all his skill to outwit the crazed criminal. But in the end, how different are the Dark Knight and his quarry?

Tells the story about the loss of freedom and individuality set in a totalitarian England.

Containing 28 pages of new sketches and a four-page gallery of cover art from the original comic series, this is a revised edition of a Batman graphic novel first published a decade earlier.

Has any comic been as lauded as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen ? Possibly only Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns but Watchmen remains the critics' favourite. Why? Because Moore is a better writer, and Watchmen a more complex and dark and literate creation than Miller's fantastic, subversive take on the Batman myth. Moore, renowned for many other of the genre's finest creations ( Saga of the Swamp Thing , V for Vendetta , and recently From Hell , with Eddie Campbell) first put out Watchmen in 12 issues for DC in 1986-87. It won a comic award at the time (the 1987 Jack Kirby Comics Industry Awards for Best Writer/Artist combination) and has continued to garner praise since.

The story concerns a group called the Crimebusters and a plot to kill and discredit them. Moore's characterisation is as sophisticated as any novel's. Importantly the costumes do not get in the way of the storytelling, rather they allow Moore to investigate issues of power and control--indeed it was Watchmen , and to a lesser extent Dark Knight , that propelled the comic genre forward, making"adult" comics a reality. The artwork of Gibbons (best known for 2000AD 's Rogue Trooper and DC's Green Lantern ) is very fine too, echoing Moore's paranoid mood perfectly throughout. Packed with symbolism, some of the overlying themes (arms control, nuclear threat, vigilantes) have dated but the intelligent social and political commentary, the structure of the story itself, its intertextuality (chapters appended with excerpts from other"works" and"studies" on Moore's characters, or with excerpts from another comic book being read by a child within the story), the fine pace of the writing and its humanity mean that Watchmen more than stands up--it retains its crown as the best the genre has yet produced. -- Mark Thwaite

Lieutenant James Gordon takes up a new post in the crime-ridden and corrupt city of Gotham, while billionaire Bruce Wayne returns to the scene of his parents' deaths, intent on avenging their memory. Each faces trials and challenges of their own, only for their lives to become irrevocably and potentially tragically intertwined...