2009 August
Thin wallets, fat bookshelves: D&Q/Hill and Wang’s early 2010 schedule
The Cartoon Introduction to Economics
Hey, we’re still in the midst of summer, but that’s no reason not to start thinking about what comics will be coming out next year! That seems to be the case with book publisher Farrar Straus Giroux, who decided to send out their winter 2010 catalog out to press and retailers the other week.
Now, as you may know, FSG distributes Drawn & Quarterly’s titles, and owns the Hill and Wang imprint, which releases a couple of comic-related nonfiction books every year, so this gives me the oppportunity to find out what’s coming down the pike from these two publishers and share my findings with you.
Are you ready? Let’s begin.
- August 3, 2009 @ 08:32 AM by Chris Mautner
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Dragon Ball on mobile
Digital comics | Mobile-phone distribution has given a financial boost to Japan’s flagging comics industry, with some analysts going so far as to call the cellphone “the savior” of manga. Who’s driving the boom? Women, primarily. According to an executive at publisher Shueisha Inc., women account for about 70 percent of cellphone manga readers.
However, there’s one major (and familiar) obstacle to the further growth of mobile manga: the publishers, who “are afraid of destroying the old business model.” In most cases, Miki Tanikawa reports, they release mobile content only after it has appeared in magazines and collected volumes. [The New York Times]
G.I. JOE Movie Prequel #4
Publishing | Marc Graser looks at the increasing use of comic books to help promote movies, television shows and video games before they debut. “Studios have come to the realization that having a presence out there and the ability to build interest is valuable to a film,” say Mike Richardson, president of Dark Horse. “We reach the same demographic the studios are trying to reach,” namely 16- to 30-year-old males. [Variety]
Retailing | Frank Santoro declares the official end to the era of the direct market as a bridge between the newsstand and the book market: “… There are two sandboxes now. What that means is that if you grew up reading comics from, say, 1999 to now you didn’t necessarily have to read superhero comics to get your comics fix or even go to a store that sold both. This is a good thing. It’s a new audience, and a broader one than maybe any of us old school dinosaurs could have anticipated. I’ve spent far too much time ranting about ‘the kids not knowing their comics history.’ Well, I’m over it. I don’t really feel the need to explain who Marshall Rogers is anymore, or convince anyone that late ’70s Kirby is actually really good. Figure it out for yourself.” [Comics Comics, via Journalista]
- August 3, 2009 @ 07:32 AM by Kevin Melrose
What are you reading?
Sequence from 'EmiTown'
Welcome to What Are You Reading, where we talk about all the wonderful comics and other stuff we’re currently engaged with and hopefully point you toward some quality material. Our guest this week is Jamie S. Rich, author of the new graphic novel You Have Killed Me and, of course, our guest-blogger for the week.
A bad case of pinkeye kept me from doing to do much reading this week, but thankfully the rest of the Robot 6 team seems to have made up for my lapse. See what they’ve been reading by clicking on the link below …
- August 2, 2009 @ 11:45 AM by Chris Mautner
Collect This Now! | Pop. 666 by Francesca Ghermandi & Massimo Semerano
Occasionally an editor hangs on to samples that artists send him, afraid they may never see this material again. Somewhere in my files, I have little gems sent to me by sometimes famous artists, sometimes soon-to-be-famous artists, and somewhere, I may still have some that never became either, young hopefuls that never carried through or people who I failed to find a place for.
Francesca Ghermandi is one of the people whose packages I cherished when they used to come to me. I think she wrote me twice, and as a result, I have copies of Helter Skelter and Hiawata Pete, both in Italian, both absolutely brimming with amazing cartooning. These would be great candidates for that Robot 6 column where they demand books get translated, and boy, I’d sure love to read them someday. For now, I just look at the pictures.
In with these is a plastic comb notebook with a clear cover and photocopied pages of the first several chapters of Pop. 666, then called Suburbia. It only had one chapter in English, the one published by David Mazzuchelli in Rubber Blanket, the rest was not translated. Like the hardbound cartoon books Francesca had sent me, however, the strange and grotesquely beautiful world she drew sucked me in. I really wanted to publish this stuff in Dark Horse Presents. I don’t know why it didn’t come to pass, maybe I couldn’t get anyone else to see what I saw. There is no date on the letter, Francesca could have sent the same packet to Fantagraphics right about then. The timing makes sense. They started serializing the story off and on in their anthology Zero Zero beginning with the 19th issue in the summer of 1997. They eventually printed all 90 pages, but unlike some of the other strips from the magazine, Pop. 666 has never gotten its own collected edition.
I’m not sure who came up with the title Pop. 666, but it calls to mind the title of Jim Thompson’s western novel Pop. 1280. Thompson is one of the best of the hardboiled school, having written classic genre pieces like After Dark, My Sweet and The Grifters, inspiring many a modern crime writer and filmmaker. Thompson’s book is about a sheriff at odds with his town, the kind of squalid community where all life is a give-and-take proposition. These people are damned by their own evil deeds, they are the future populace of hell. Pop. 666.
- August 1, 2009 @ 12:01 PM by Jamie S. Rich
SDCC ’09 | Ardden Entertainment brings Casper back to comics
Casper and the Spectrals
I missed the news coming out of San Diego that Ardden Entertainment, publisher of the Flash Gordon comic, is publishing a new Casper comic. Written by Todd Dezago with art by Pedro Delgado, here’s the Previews listing:
Just in time for Casper’s 60th anniversary, Ardden Entertainment proudly debuts Casper And The Supernaturals, an all-new take on the world’s most famous ghost and his two friends, Wendy the Witch and Hot Stuff! There is a city within New York City known as Spooky Town, but most humans are unable to see it. Within this city live the Supernaturals, the ghosts, goblins, demons and witches of the world. When an ancient entity known only as the Volbragg threatens both New York and Spooky Town, Casper and his friends are forced to band together and defeat an unimaginable evil!
The book comes out in October.
Via Kiel Phegley
- August 1, 2009 @ 10:01 AM by JK Parkin