Atomic Books Blog

Sunday, May 05, 2013

Festival Check 2013!

Baltimore is Festival City! From now through the Fall there'll be a festival (or multiple festivals) almost every weekend. Almost every neighborhood in the city has their own festival, as well as these major ones:

May The Sheep & Wool Festival
May The Maryland Film Festival & Videopolis
May SoWeBo Festival
May Maryland Deathfest

June Honfest

July Artscape

August BronyCon
August Otakon

September Hampdenfest
September Baltimore Comic Con
September Small Press Expo
September High Zero Festival
September Baltimore Book Festival

And if you're coming to town, we have a handy list on our links page for places to check out and things to do.

Saturday, May 04, 2013

Free Comic Book Day 2013

Today, all over the country, is Free Comic Book Day - an event where participating comics shops give away free comics and have special events.

Here's how it works at Atomic Books.

We'll be giving away free copies of our own annual free comics anthology, Mutant #4.

We'll also be giving away free copies of Haliegh Buck's Internet Diarrhea.

These two books are exclusive to Atomic Books.

We'll also be giving way copies of Runner Runner, Handout Comics #3 and Master P's Theater (if it arrives in the mail in time). These you most likely won't be able to find at comics shops anywhere else in the area.

We'll also have copies of all the regular Free Comic Book Day releases. And you can get 1 each of every title.

On top of that, all of our graphic novels and art books are on sale 20% off and all bagged and boarded back issues are on sale for 50% off.

The first 10 customers can get Love & Rockets New Stories #5 for $5 and for the first 20 customers they can get Gilbert Hernandez's new hardcover graphic novel Marble Season for $5.

For every purchase of $30 or more you'll get a free Dunny!

And new taco truck El Cuervo will be serving food from 11AM-5PM.

The menu:
Tacos - Roasted Chicken with Tomatillo relish, chicharons
Smoked Beef with Pickled red onion,BBQ sauce
Carnitas - pickled red onions, tempura fried jalapeños
Tempura Avocado with pickled red onions, BBQ sauce
Tortas - Korean fried chicken
Seared Queso fresco con rajas

Also, be sure to check out our expanded store and Celebrated Summer's new space - right next door.

Monday, April 01, 2013

Atomic Books Special Announcement

Atomic Books turns 21 years old this year, and we have some exciting new plans to help us celebrate becoming a legal adult.

This Spring, our friends next door at doubledutch boutique are moving into a new location on the 1000 block of W 36th St. We and Celebrated Summer will be expanding into 3616 Falls Rd. Atomic Books will be the entire first floor of the Oddfellows Building.

One side of the first floor will be used and rare books and records, continuing our focus of contemporary art, graphic novels, small press literary fiction. Celebrated Summer will continue to carry punk, metal, indie, soul, reggae and have room to stock more new releases in vinyl. And also, we're adding a listening station!

In the back of the current Atomic Books location, the space of the record store and our office will be converted into a bar area for our events and clubs. We’re calling it the Dead Poets Society and it will be open during store hours. Dead Poets Society will also be a bottle shop where we'll be carrying our own Atomic Books beer as well as a selection of bottles related to music, comics and literature.

Stay tuned for more details!

UPDATE: We were kidding about the name.

Friday, March 29, 2013

BaltoZine Roundup: Maryland Deathfest & Matmos

The Baltozine Roundup is a regular feature wherein we take a look at what national periodicals are saying about Baltimore-area arts, events, people, and places. Be sure to pick up the magazines and read the full articles.

Decibel (#103) previews the Maryland Deathfest preview.
"Throughout Maryland Deathfest's seven-year tenure at Baltimore's Sonar Club, organizers Evan Harting and Ryan Taylor have played logistical trial-and-error in creating and hosting North America's premier extreme music festival, now in its 11th edition. Some of their moves have been out of necessity (outdoor vendors), some have been knock-'em-out-of-the-park successes (outdoor stages at either end of the Saratoga Street block), others not so much (2010's stage atop the slop on the building's east side). 2013, however, poses the biggest challenge for Harting and Taylor. And the following quote explains why: 'Just to give you an idea of what this place is about now, tonight, Ronnie from Jersey Shore is DJing.' If you're keeping score, Sonar closed down in early 2012. The venue reopened shortly after, allowing MDF's 10th anniversary to go on relatively unscathed and without incident. Since then, Sonar's ownership has changed hands and the multi-room live music venue has been transformed into a nightclub called Paparazzi. 'It's not the same anymore,' continues Haring. 'It's more a place that hosts dance parties and stuff....'" - Kevin Stewart-Panko

Uncut (#191) reviews The Marriage of True Minds, the new Matmos record:
Rating 7/10
"...The resulting responses are the backbone of an album typically cryptic in outlook - techno, metal, sidereal electronics, Foley soundwork and clipped, dirty funk all pass by, your ears complicit in the growing confusion. Matmos' compositional nous places all of these pieces into 'forced cohesion', letting the constituent parts speak to and with each other, whether contiguous or not. Gloriously polyglot." -Jon Dale`