For mature readers

864 pages; hard cover; partial color

Italy's Guido Crepax is one of the most acclaimed cartoonists in the world. In the 1960s and '70s, he created and chronicled the adventures of Valentina, arguably the strongest and most independent female character in European comics up to that time, and legitimized the erotic genre. Fantagraphics' ambitious Complete Crepax series launched in 2016 to international acclaim, and this handsome boxed set contains our third and fourth volumes, Evil Spells and Private Life.

Vol. 3 introduces Baba Yaga, the villainous witch of folklore, and includes Crepax's sinuous adaptations of several literary masterpieces by Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry James, and Edgar Allan Poe. In Vol. 4, the author's sexy proto feminist heroine Valentina becomes a mother, outwits a gang of jewel thieves, flashes back to her childhood and adolescence, encounters a mysterious cello, and much more!