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Saturday, March 13, 2004
louis! perhaps my favorite all-ages book series on the market, louis, returns for a fourth adventure entitled "dreams never day" courtesy of metaphrog. it's currently being solicited in the march previews, which means it should hit stores this may. here's two pages:
metaphrog has set-up a preview site right here.
posted by peter! 5:43 PM EST permalink
bodhisattva: also in the new previews, a 96pp original graphic novel from newcomers omaha perez and richard raleigh that might be interesting: "In San Francisco, there is a madman who sees into other dimensions, a hospital orderly whose karmic corruption makes him prey to dark powers, a iddle-aged man from India unraveling under the guilt of a terrible crime. hat is it that links these men? Who is the mysterious Many-Eyed Man who ppears to them to steer their lives on their appropriate karmic course?"
here's the cover:
more (including a preview) at bodhisattva.ws.
posted by peter! 5:36 PM EST permalink
reflux: here's some pages from reflux comics #1, a new anthology being solicited in the march previews featuring dozens of up-and-coming creators. once again, if it looks interesting to you, you'll have to tell your local comic book retailer about it since the odds are that they won't order it on their own:
front and back covers:
 
more at refluxcomics.com.
posted by peter! 5:06 PM EST permalink
Friday, March 12, 2004
god bless him: the sarasota herald-tribune out of florida takes a look at will eisner and his upcoming graphic novel, "the plot", in today's edition: "A few days ago, 86-year-old Will Eisner's doctor urged him to stop working so hard. 'But I told him I've been working hard my whole life, and I'm not going to stop now,' Eisner said in a phone interview. 'I love what I do too much.' "
posted by peter! 11:25 AM EST permalink
shut up, you babies: for those of you who like to complain everytime we shine a spotlight on manga, here's a piece from the taipei journal about the opening of a new superbookstore that actually carries american comics books: "Some bookstores in Taipei cater to special interests, while others are great places to meet people. Unlike these, Page One is clearly for book lovers. The recently opened franchise of a Singapore bookstore chain greets its Taipei customers with a plethora of English-language books. It boasts 350,000 books, of which 160,000 are in English, and a floor space of 25,500 square feet in the just-opened Taipei 101 Mall... In addition to bookshelves labeled humanities, literature, management, lifestyle, arts and children's books, browsers will find musical scores, American comic books and detective novels for young adults. The latter two categories are almost nonexistent at other local bookstores."
posted by peter! 11:16 AM EST permalink
true brit: a pair of announcements concerning our friends in england: first off, titan books will be publishing a hardcover library of the classic dan dare strips from the 1950's by creator frank hampson, the first volume of which should be hitting stores any day now. secondly, 2000ad/rebellion is expanding their successful trade paperback line with john wagner's banzai battalion, a comic spinoff from the pages of judge dredd, which should currently be available in most stores.
"Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future, was created by artist and writer Frank Hampson, and debuted in the first issue of British boys adventure comic The Eagle on April 14 1950. Over the course of the next 50 years, Dan would become one of the most recognised fictional characters on the planet, inspiring numerous toys and games, spinning off into countless items of merchandise and collectibles, and eventually becoming the basis for a CGI cartoon."
posted by peter! 11:00 AM EST permalink
Thursday, March 11, 2004
unbound: newsweek over at msnbc.com has this web exclusive about the release of michael chabon's new comic book from dark horse comics: "Michael Chabon’s best-selling 2001 novel 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay' is the story of two cousins, thrown together by fate in the 1930s, who create one of the first great comic-book superheroes: a master escape artist and champion of the downtrodden known as the Escapist. Chabon's novel is mostly about what happens to the cousins in the years following the birth of their greatest creation, but now the Escapist is finally free to tell his own tales. The first issue of a new quarterly devoted to his exploits, 'Michael Chabon Presents: The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist,' just hit the racks at your local comic-book store."
posted by peter! 11:36 AM EST permalink
bloggin', yo: over at breakdowns, chris allen has some positive words about comics blogging: "If you're a comics reader with a computer, you can't go anywhere these days without talk of 'The Comics Blogosphere'. Though there were some committed webloggers like Neilalien before, it's been in the past year or so that 'blogging about comics--the industry, the creators, publishers and editors, and the books themselves--has really exploded. And this is a really good thing.... Whether this has led to some comics sites [like the fourth rail] losing half their audience in the past year, and infrequently updating sites like Savant Mag going away (some of their writers started their own blog, significantly) is anyone's guess, but I find it heartening and invigorating."
while technically, i've never considered ourselves part of the comics blogosphere since blogging is just one piece of what we do here, i agree with chris about the value of these blog sites; they're typically more interesting, ask better questions, and aren't beholden to ulterior motives as most of the comics "news" sites are. a free and engaging press is a good thing, in my opinion, no matter how it comes about.
posted by peter! 11:20 AM EST permalink
what a concept: while some of the large american publishers have been flirting with promotional gimmicks the likes we haven't seen since the direct market took a dive in the mid-nineties, viz has decided to go the old fashioned route and provide actual content incentives to continue to promote their magazine, shonen jump: "The May issue will include an exclusive pinup featuring the only new DRAGON BALL and DRAGON BALL Z artwork drawn to-date in the 21st century from artist and series creator, Akira Toriyama. The giant gatefold illustration shows Son Goku leaping into action as DRAGON BALL cohorts Bulma and Oolong look on. The drawing is the first in a series of seven pinups to be included in future SHONEN JUMP issues."
posted by peter! 11:11 AM EST permalink
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
new review: blade of the immortal by hiroaki samura
"Manji is a character that sometimes I love, and sometimes I absolutely loathe. He has been cursed with "blood worms" by an old witch woman, which grants him the curse/gift of immortality until he has slain 1,000 evil men. Rin is the young damsel in distress who hires Manji to help her claim her revenge by killing the men who murdered her parents..."
(more from ian shaughnessy)
[welcome, ian!]
posted by peter! 10:52 AM EST permalink
dragon balls: according to this review on the anime news network, the latest volume of dragon ball will not be censored for younger audiences: "Unlike the first 3 volumes of the graphic novels, volume 5 carries the 'for 13 Up' logo on the cover. Due to overwhelming demand by the readers, Viz will no longer be 'censoring' the Dragon Ball pages in the collected novels. The novels were originally being targeted towards a younger audience, so it was edited to clean up much of the potty humor and occasional nudity that appeared in the early Dragon Ball."
thank god for potty humor.
posted by peter! 12:49 AM EST permalink
spanish invasion: cyberosia has cut a deal with spanish publisher alecta/recerca to bring spanish graphic novels to the american marketplace: "First up in May is GEI, a bimonthly, full color series written and created by Recerca frontman Xavier Morell with pencils by Felix Ruiz. GEI is about a team of freaks and weirdoes dealing with threats from the unknown. It's in the tradition of old-school Vertigo books but with an European flair... Following in June is PROBABILITIES, a psychological horror story by Marcos Prados & Olga Carmona Peral, in which a young woman gets more than she bargained for when she discovers that her roommate's boyfriend is really a monster." here's the covers:
 
posted by peter! 12:42 AM EST permalink
speaking of jennifer... here's some pics from this weekend's accident at slg that we blogged yesterday:
jennifer kicks ass:
(click here for more)
posted by peter! 12:31 AM EST permalink
comics round table: here's an interesting msword transcript of a dialogue between jamie rich (oni press), jeff mason (alternative comics), jennifer de guzman (slg), and lee dawson (dark horse) concerning the graphic novel industry that occurred during the 2004 novel & short story writer's market: "de Guzman: We attended BookExpo America this summer, and I got the feeling that the traditional publishing world is increasingly seeing graphic novels as a legitimate, and even important, part of the industry. BEA set up a "Graphic Novel Pavilion," and we got a lot of interest from bookstores and libraries that wanted to start up or expand a graphic novel section. There is still a declining perception that comics -- or graphic novels -- are a medium for kids, but we've been trying to educate people in that regard, showing them that graphic novels are a medium, not a genre."
posted by peter! 12:23 AM EST permalink
sexing up a story: andrew arnold at time.comix takes a look at dennis eichhorn's real stuff and david chelsea in love this week: "In contrast to such self-important autobiographies as Joe Esterhaz's Hollywood kiss-and-tell, comix have long been a haven for the story of the little guy. The marginalized nature of the medium has meant that virtually anyone can afford to put out a comic about his or her life. Harvey Pekar's "American Splendor," about the travails of a Cleveland file clerk, has become the best known ordinary-guy autobiography, but virtually every great cartoonist of the last twenty years has tried their hand at it. Two recent graphic novels are perfect examples of comix' ability to capture the drama of less public lives."
posted by peter! 12:18 AM EST permalink
Tuesday, March 09, 2004
youth and beauty: i got flooded with blog links last night, so i'll have to play catch-up tomorrow. here's the last one of the day from me, a webcomic posted to the boltcity message boards by this guy that matt believes used to kick around the WEF back in the day. this link comes courtesy of susannah breslin, who's own web comic is setting artbomb traffic records with each day. enjoy "what youth and beauty these creatures bare" courtesy of matthew:
posted by peter! 11:35 AM EST permalink
harvey done real good: i guess all the complaining finally paid off, according to this press release: "American Book Award-winning comic book writer and pop-culture icon Harvey Pekar has signed with Ballantine Editor Chris Schluep to write three original graphic novels for Ballantine Books. In addition, Ballantine will publish an anthology of the best of Pekar's previously published stories from his critically acclaimed autobiographical comic book series, American Splendor. Pekar—whose quirky comic books have long had a cult following—gained international prominence last year after the extraordinary critical success of the Fine Line Features film American Splendor, which was based upon Pekar’s comic book of the same name. The film won the Sundance Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize, the International Film Critics Association Award at Cannes International, and was film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay."
posted by peter! 11:30 AM EST permalink
holy crap: kelly sue passes along word of slave labor graphics editor jennifer de guzman's recent brush with disaster. from her blog: "A drunk driver smashed through the front of the SLG offices at one a.m. on Saturday morning. I was the last of everyone to know about it because my cell phone hasn't been working, so I walked into a very shocking scene this morning. (In my great tradition, chance and circumstance kept me from coming in to help clean up.) The car plowed through the front door and windows, into my desk, then into the production scanning station. When I arrived this morning, there were no traces of my desk left, just its contents in several cardboard boxes and on the order department cart. I had a lot of stuff in my desk." quick recovery, jen. just glad you're safe!
posted by peter! 11:23 AM EST permalink
neat: the angola press agency is reporting about luanda's efforts to use comics books as an educational vehicle as part of their movable libraries program: "Although this is the second time that the Movable Library is organised, it has been registered very little interest and participation of the younger children and teenagers. The very few ones who attended the exhibitions mostly chose comic strip books which narrate adventure, fairy tales, and science fiction.Beatriz Lukombo, a nine-year old girl, said that books help children to develop their intellectual and writing capacities, and learn new things..."
posted by peter! 11:20 AM EST permalink
smacks in the kisser: the telegraph has this piece about the roy lichtenstein exhibit currently at the hayward gallery in london until may 16th: "Comic book images, easy-to-read thought bubbles, and bright primary colours pack such a punch that they can easily divert our attention away from the complexity and ambition of these early paintings. When we ask why the cartoon paintings are easy to read at first but become increasingly uncomfortable when we try to look longer, it is because Lichtenstein has thrown away pictorial conventions that had been operating in Western art since the Renaissance. These are not, as we initially assume, pictures of people, places or things - they are pictures of pictures."
posted by peter! 11:13 AM EST permalink
Monday, March 08, 2004
i hope we don't have to wait too long on this side of the pond: we blogged the trailer a month or so ago, but here's the official website for immortel, the new film from enki bilal based on the nikopol trilogy set to debut in france and belguim on march 24th. i'm actually very excited about this:
(thanks, nenad, for the link.)
posted by peter! 2:05 AM EST permalink
oh, for pete's sake: i guess it was only a matter of time, but the shelby star of north carolina is waving the "watch-what-your-children-read" flag towards manga, despite the fact that the books in question contain age labels: "Watch what your children read. That's what Cleveland County Sheriff's Capt. Bobby Steen is advising parents to do about comic books available to teens at area bookstores like Waldenbooks in the Cleveland Mall. The books are part of a growing genre of graphic novels from Japan. 'Love Hina,' the series Steen is questioning, is by Ken Akamatsu, and has a publishers' recommended age of 16 and up. The books were brought to Steen's attention after a local parent raised concerns. 'They need to know that this is out here. For $9.99 they can look about getting in a hot tub naked with a girl,' Steen said."
my favorite part: "Steen considers the books sexually suggestive, despite their non-pornographic classification, and he worries that the books may put ideas into teen-agers' minds..." say it isn't so, bobby, say it isn't so.
posted by peter! 1:58 AM EST permalink
call the police: really, i don't make this stuff up: "Inspired by the comic books he read while growing up on Chicago's South Side, the 48-year-old Torrance resident has spent decades honing his own superpower improvising gadgets and devices out of common household items. By day, he's a mild-mannered computer consultant. By night, he's an impresario of improvisation, a genius of the junk drawer, a modern-day MacGyver. 'The initial spark came from Superman comic books,' Tymony says. 'I loved reading about Lex Luthor.' Tymony was fascinated by the ingenious inventions that enabled Superman's decidedly human adversary to give the nigh-omnipotent extraterrestrial a run for his money." more from the redlands daily facts of california.
posted by peter! 1:53 AM EST permalink
public service announcement: "Join Mike Mignola and MoCCA to celebrate the release of the HELLBOY movie! Acclaimed artist Mike Mignola will be on hand for a special one-night fundraising appearance to benefit MoCCA. View an exhibit of Mike’s original works, movie props, and Hellboy prototypes! This is your opportunity to meet Mike himself! Enjoy complimentary refreshments! Enter a raffle to win tickets to HELLBOY screenings in NYC, and many other great prizes! All of the proceeds from the evening will go to benefit the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. Tuesday, March 9th, 6-9pm. At the new Soho home of the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (See address and directions below). $7 for MoCCA Members; $10 all others. Each guest will receive an autographed Hellboy Movie Poster (while supplies last). RSVP: 212-254-3511 or info@moccany.org."
posted by peter! 1:42 AM EST permalink
archives:
11/30/2003 - 12/06/2003
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04/25/2004 - 05/01/2004
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07/25/2004 - 07/31/2004
08/01/2004 - 08/07/2004
08/08/2004 - 08/14/2004
08/15/2004 - 08/21/2004
08/22/2004 - 08/28/2004
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