Thor: The Mighty Avenger, Vol. 1

The American Library Association’s Young Adult Library Services Association has unveiled its annual list of Great Graphic Novels for Teens. The 56 titles come from 24 publishers, led by First Second Books with nine and Marvel/Icon with seven.

Chosen by the Great Graphic Novels for Teens Committee from among 78 official nominations, the books are recommended for readers age 12 to 18 as meeting “the criteria of both good quality literature and appealing reading for teens.” In addition, the committee singled out 10 titles “that exemplify the quality and range of graphic novels appropriate for teen audiences”:

• Zahra’s Paradise, by Amir and Khalil (First Second)
• Scarlet, by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev (Marvel/Icon)
• Anya’s Ghost, by Vera Brosgal (First Second)
• The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media, by Brooke Gladstone, Josh Neufeld and others (W.W. Norton and Company)
• Thor: The Mighty Avenger, Vols. 1 and 2, by Roger Langridge, Chris Samnee and others (Marvel)
• Infinite Kung Fu, by Kagan McLeod (Top Shelf Productions)
• A Bride’s Story, Vol. 1, by Kaoru Mori (Yen Press)
• Axe Cop, Vol. 1, by Malachai Nicolle and Ethan Nicolle (Dark Horse)
• Daybreak, by Brian Ralph (Drawn and Quarterly)
• Wandering Son, Vol. 1, by Takako Shimuro (Fantagraphics Books)

The complete list of the 2012 Great Graphic Novels for Teens can be found at the YALSA website.

Legal

Legal | A teenager was sentenced Monday to seven years in prison for his role in the July 2010 theft of a valuable comic collection from an elderly Medina, New York, man, who later died of a heart attack. Eighteen-year-old Juan C. Javier, who pleaded guilty last fall to attempted second-degree burglary, is one of seven people whom police say were hired by businessman Rico J. Vendetti to break into the home of Homer Marciniak to steal his comics. Marciniak, 77, awoke during the burglary and was beaten, suffering only cuts and bruises. However, he had a fatal heart attack later that day. Eight people, including Vendetti and Javier, were indicted in November 2010; the indictments were dismissed against four of the accused so the U.S. Attorney could charge them with murder under federal law. [The Daily News]

National Cartoonists Society

Awards | Michael Cavna talks with National Cartoonists Society President Tom Richmond about the addition of the Online Comics Strips category to the prestigious Reuben Awards: “This is definitely a “first step” in recognizing online cartooning in the NCS divisional awards. It’s been discussed and explored for several years, and there are a lot of challenges involved. I picked the brains of several big names in online comics, and worked with the board to try and come up with criteria for eligibility that were in keeping with the other divisions and the NCS rules. This is what we came up with.” [Comic Riffs]

Digital comics | Comics and religious apps account for the 10 top-grossing iOS book apps this week. [eBookNewser]

Digital piracy | Bryan Young consider who should shoulder the blame for comics piracy: “Comic publishers need to understand why people are doing it and address the issues. People are pirating these comics, right or wrong, because they don’t believe they should be paying the same price as for a print copy of a comic. It’s as simple as that. The average comic book, in print or digital, costs about $2.99 per issue. With print, you have printing costs, shipping costs, wholesale costs and everything else to contend with to turn a profit. It makes sense that they’re priced the way they are. But a digital comic? Digital comics have far less overhead.” [City Weekly]

Thief of Thieves #1

Creators | Entertainment Weekly chats briefly with Robert Kirkman about Thief of Thieves. [Shelf Life]

Creators | Young artists should have a five-year plan, Sean Gordon Murphy firmly believes, rather than sitting around tweeting and waiting to be discovered. He offers some concrete steps, some of which are counterintuitive: “With a little bit of effort, could you write a C+ story? Of course you could! C+ is better than most comics. We deal in an industry where characters fight crime in their underwear — don’t be intimidated into thinking you couldn’t put together a half decent script if you tried.” Writing is not only an asset for the beginning artist, he points out, it also helps them become planners. [deviantART]

Comics | Oliver Sava considers what makes a good all-ages comic: “The best titles have elements adults can latch on to as well. Roger Langridge’s The Muppet Show is one of the best humor comics published in the past decade, using the comic-book form to capture the spirit and energy of the television series. Each issue has an overarching plot broken up by one- or two-page comic strips depicting the show’s different sketches, and Langridge’s experience with adult humor on titles like Fred The Clown keeps the jokes from being too infantile.” [The A.V. Club]

Bandai Entertainment

Publishing | The anime and manga company Bandai Entertainment will stop distributing new products in February, although its existing catalog will continue to be available until the licenses expire. The company will shift its focus to licensing its properties for digital distribution and merchandising. President and CEO Ken Iyadomi said the decision to shut down new-product operations was made by the Japanese parent company without his input, and he strongly implied the underlying problem was that the corporate parent wanted to charge more for its anime than the current market will bear. Bandai published the Lucky Star, Kannagi and Eureka Seven manga, among others; all new manga volumes have been canceled, which means Kannagi will be left incomplete, at least for now. [Anime News Network]

Awards | The finalists for the Cybils, the blogger’s literary awards for children’s and YA books, have been posted, and they include five nominations each in the children’s and YA graphic novel categories. [Cybils Awards]

Fatale #1

Creators | Frequent collaborators Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips discuss their new horror-noir series Fatale, which debuts today. “You can scare people with a movie because you’re in control a lot more,” Brubaker says. “In a book, you’re making them imagine pictures, and it’s a different amount of control. With a comic book, it’s very hard to write something that puts people on edge. That’s an important thing: Let people know they have no idea what’s coming in this story and no idea what anything is going to be.” [USA Today]

Creators | Paul Grist digs into his new Image Comics series Mudman, whose fictional setting is inspired by his own town on the southwest coast of England. [USA Today]

Creators | King City writer and artist Brandon Graham talks about getting published, and names his favorite comics creators in an interview with David Harper. [Multiversity Comics]

Jerusalem

Creators | A Lebanese newspaper profiles cartoonist Guy Delisle, creator of Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City. [The Daily Star]

Comics | Larry Cruz takes an affectionate look at Golden Age vamp Phantom Lady, a creation of the Eisner-Iger studio. [The Webcomic Overlook]

Commentary | Alan David Doane argues that Alan Moore’s veto of a reprint of 1963 is an argument for, not against, creator-owned comics. “But Moore, as an individual and as a comics creator, has more than earned the right to associate with, both personally and professionally, only those he chooses to associate with. He should not be forced into business contracts or personal relationships he does not wish to be a part of, and we should respect that.” [Trouble With Comics]

Critique | Domingos Isabelinho discusses the decision to re-color Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes, as well as some of the tropes that were left untouched. [The Hooded Utilitarian]

Meanwhile, Strip Magazine, a monthly comic dedicated to serialized action tales, has released its second issue. Unlike The Phoenix, Strip is available digitally as an iPad app, which means we Yanks can read it, too. (I think the high point of my year was learning that The Beano and The Dandy are now available as iPad apps.)

If you’re not quite ready to let go of Christmas yet (hey, it’s supposed to be 12 days!), check out the classic British Christmas comics that Lew Stringer (another talented artist) has posted at his blog. It’s a fascinating look back in time. Dandy artist Andy Fanton posts a more modern Christmas comic (very much in the Dandy style) at his blog.

And finally, we had the U.S. release last week of Nelson, the collaborative graphic novel by 54 creators, each of whom contributed a chapter about one day in the life of a young woman. The contributors include Roger Langridge, Duncan Fegredo, Warren Pleece, Posy Simmonds and Darryl Cunningham, and publisher Blank Slate is donating the proceeds from the sale of the book to the homelessness charity Shelter.

Jimmy Gownley’s Gracieland, co-authored with his old friend Ellen Toole Austin, is a gag strip about life in Catholic school from the point of view of the kids in the plaid uniforms. Gownley, who has 11 Eisner and five Harvey nominations for his comic Amelia Rules, is anything but preachy in these strips; Amelia fans already know that he has a genius for seeing things through a kid’s eyes, warts and all. Already, with only eight strips up, Gracieland has broken new ground: Gownley said to me yesterday, “I think we are the only Catholic-themed web strip that used the word ‘Fallopian’ that wasn’t about natural family planning.”

Gownley will be live-Tweeting the creation of the Thanksgiving strip today.

It looks as if Sesame Street, the television series that’s educated and entertained children since 1969, could be making the move to comics.

It all seems very tentative, but Ape Entertainment has announced it’s in talks with Sesame Workshop to produce a series of a series of comic books featuring such beloved characters as Ernie, Bert, Big Bird, Cookie Monster and Elmo. If the deal pans out, the comics would debut next year in print and digital editions.

“We are incredibly excited about our current negotiations with Sesame Workshop and the possibility of being able to bring their expertise in educating and entertaining children to comics,” Ape COO Brent E. Erwin said in a statement.

Ape already publishes several licensed children’s comics, including Richie Rich, Casper Scare School, Strawberry Shortcake and Shrek.

All this week at Robot 6 we’re interviewing some of the many contributors to First Second’s new anthology, Nursery Rhyme Comics. Today Brigid Alverson talks to the editor, Chris Duffy.

Chris Duffy is the former editor of Nickelodeon Magazine‘s comics section and the current editor of SpongeBob Comics. I was interested in hearing the inside story of Nursery Rhyme Comics—how he rounded up this diverse array of talent and what sort of marching orders he gave them—and Chris obliged with some interesting insights into the making of Nursery Rhyme Comics.

Brigid Alverson: You have some really big names contributing to this book. Were you the one who recruited them, and if so, how did you get them to participate?

Chris Duffy: Almost everyone we asked wanted to be a part of the book. That’s the good news with a collection with a great, clear concept like this book has. Everyone wants in! The challenge was paring down our list to 50 cartoonists (harder than you might think) and just making all those phone calls and emails. I did most of the contacting, though Mark Siegel and Calista Brill broke the ice with a lot of creators who they knew well. I should mention that the idea began with former First Second publisher Lauren Wohl.

Alverson: As an editor, did you match up creators with rhymes, or did you let them choose their own?

Duffy: As an editor, it’s nice to stay sane and pretend you’re in control. So it went like this: first I read a LOT of nursery rhymes. (Hint: the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes is the place to start.) I chose 50 that were a good mix of types as well as lengths and degrees of fame. Then I started at the top of the cartoonist list and tried to match that name with a rhyme–based on their work. Chose a few backup rhymes, then approached the cartoonist. Some kept asking to see more rhymes, some got right into the one we sent, and one went and found her own darn rhyme, thank you very much!

Alverson: What sort of guidelines did you give the creators?

Duffy: The goal was to make it a real nursery rhyme book, not a parody or a deconstruction. So, the first rule was that the words of the rhyme were presented in a clear way. Readers had to see quickly what words went with the rhyme and which were the little asides. (If there were asides.) Nursery rhyme books are meant to be read out loud and that needed to be possible with Nursery Rhyme Comics. Beyond that, not many guidelines, though we urged the cartoonists to have fun with it and to keep young readers in mind.

Alverson: Nursery rhymes are already familiar to the readers, and there are a million nursery rhyme books out there already. How did you approach the problem of doing something original with them?

Duffy: Now there are a million and one! Cartoonists, in my experience, have no trouble coming up with their own way to tell an old story. They seem to live for it. How many cartoonists, on their own, draw their own Charles Atlas comic or Jack Chick parody or send-up of superhero origins? Lots! I knew from the start that with the people we were approaching we’d get quite a few original takes. The results surpassed my expectations and then some.

Alverson: Which comic surprised you the most, in terms of the creator’s interpretation of the original material?

Duffy: Even though I know him very well from our time together at Nickelodeon Magazine, Dave Roman created a comic that surprised me and surprises everyone who reads the book. One doesn’t immediately associate “One, Two, Buckle My Shoe” with clones, mad scientists, and mutant chickens sliding on melted butter. There were many other surprises, such as the gigantic guard at the end of David Macaulay’s “London Bridge” and the flying cats in Theo Ellsworth’s “As I Was Going to St. Ives.”

Alverson: Who do you see as the readers of this book? Children, nostalgic adults, or adults reading aloud to children?

Duffy: Yes, yes, and yes.

Mirabilis is available for the iPad, which means even Yanks like me can read it, and I highly recommend it. It’s a slightly grown-up version of the classic British children’s story, with a standup guy stumbling into a supernatural situation and winding up on a quest with his two pals (one of whom starts out as an enemy). I’m tempted to say “If you like Harry Potter, you’ll like this,” but that’s a bit facile. I liked the world of the earlier Harry Potter books, and I like the world of this comic. The figures are actually a bit stiff, but I didn’t really notice because of the richness of detail, the imaginative supernatural world, and the beautiful color. The writing is first-rate and quirky in the way the British do best.

The iPad app itself is beautifully designed. It sets the mood of the story and organizes the single issues of the comic (the first trade volume comprises eight issues). The first issue is free, the second is 99 cents, and subsequent issues are $1.99, which is an interesting pricing structure. It makes it relatively inexpensive to get started with the story. More issues will be added to the app as the trades are published, and the entire story is four volumes (32 issues) long. That could run to money, but it’s cheaper than import fees…

If you’ve seen Jordan Crane’s elegant webcomics hub What Things Do — or better still, if you’re one of the lucky few who have a copy of his hand-silkscreened, die-cut, three-books-in-one anthology NON #5 — you know that the cartoonist behind Uptight and The Clouds Above is one of comics’ best designers. But I think that with Keep Our Secrets, his new comics-style children’s book for McSweeney’s kids’ imprint McMullens, the man has truly outdone himself. This sucker is partially printed in heat-sensitive, color-changing black ink that disappears when touched to reveal a picture hidden underneath. Check it out in the video above, as two adorable tykes help demonstrate. If I were a little kid, I think being able to touch a book and suddenly see hidden stuff appear — like an accordion stuffed with cats, say, or a guy with banana hands under his gloves — would be something close to magic.

The one that really grabbed me is Dark Horse’s nonfiction graphic novel about the Green River killer, which was first announced in 2009. The Dark Horse folks like to take their time with their books, and marketing director Jeremy Atkins tells me that it is now slated for a September release. The book is written by Jeff Jensen, whose father was a member of the investigative team on the murders. “It’s stories that have never been told before,” said Atkins. “It’s not sensationalized at all. It’s more for a true crime audience than a crime fiction audience.”

If that’s too dark for you, here’s a bit of sweetness and light: Amy Mebberson, whose super-cute art graced the global manga Divalicious (you can read the whole first volume online at the link) and many of Boom! Studios The Muppet Show comics, is not letting any grass grow under her feet: She is one of the artists on Ape Entertainment’s Strawberry Shortcake comics, doing the coloring and some of the pencilling. This increased my interest in Strawberry Shortcake 100%.

You know how a kid’s favorite stuffed animal always looks battered and beat-up? Illustrator Tom Kelly is working on an all-ages comic, The Stuffed Animal Saga, about how the animals get that way; the first arc is titled “Why the Teddy Bear Has One Eye.” Kelly describes it as a bit like Toy Story, in that the animals come to life when the humans aren’t around. The comic will be released digitally by iVerse as part of their children’s app.

At the Diamond booth, Ku Liang pitched me on The Next Day, a graphic novel with an intriguing premise: It is based on interviews with four people who survived suicide attempts. The book ties in with an animated documentary film that will be available online, and it is illustrated by John Porcellino. It will debut at TCAF in May, although the PR says it won’t be available in the U.S. until next fall.

Finally, at every con there is The One That Got Away. I stopped off at the Blind Ferret Entertainment booth to tell Ryan Sohmer how much I was enjoying his webcomic about comics, The Gutters. (Sohmer really curates the comic, which is written and drawn by a variety of creators.) (CORRECTION: Sohmer writes the comic, which is illustrated by a variety of artists.) He told me that the advance copies of the print edition had just come in, and he had brought two to the show. “I’d show you one,” he said, “but I just gave the last copy to Brian Bendis.”

Disney Publishing Worldwide

Publishing | Disney Publishing is pushing further into the kids’ periodical market with four new magazines, including two standalone issues tied to Marvel’s upcoming Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger movies. Marvel’s comics division apparently won’t be producing content for the publications. A third magazine, based around Cars 2, will be monthly beginning in the fall, while the fourth, tied to the Disney Channel animated series Phineas and Ferb, will be bimonthly. [Variety, Deadline]

Broadway | On the heels of the recent departure of director Julie Taymor, producers of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark are reportedly in talks to replace choreographer Daniel Ezralow, who designed the $70-million musical’s complex flying sequences. Chase Brock is likely to step in for Ezralow, who was described by a cast member as “a Julie person.” [Bloomberg]

Zita the Spacegirl

Publishing | Mark Siegel, editorial director of First Second, discusses the state of the market, webcomics and what lies ahead for the five-year-old imprint: “I know it sounds like PR spin, but I genuinely feel like 2011 is the year that First Second has been preparing for all along. In terms of the range of themes, genres, styles, [and] age categories, it’s what the First Second dream was from the start.” [ICv2.com]

Publishing | Archie Comics has teamed up with Mothers Against Drunk Driving and Dallas Cowboys tight end Jason Witten for a story out this week in Archie Double Digest #217. [The Associated Press]

Publishing | The 2003 biography Godspeed: The Kurt Cobain Graphic is being republished in “a smaller, manga-style format for a new generation of fans to pore over.” [Independent Online]

Retailing | Caitlin McGill spotlights A Comic Shop, the Winter Park, Fla., store that recently added a lounge, and created the Fangirls club to give female readers a place to meet. [Orlando Weekly]

Internet | PopCrunch names the 14 best comic book websites, a list topped by Comic Book Resources. [PopCrunch]

Borders

Retailing | Troubles continue for Borders Group as the retailer filed notice Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission that Executive Vice President Thomas D. Carney and Chief Information Officer D. Scott Laverty have resigned. Just last week Borders, the country’s second-largest bookstore chain, announced it’s delaying payments to some publishers as it attempts to restructure its credit lines. [GalleyCat]

Passings | Longtime retailer Carl Tupper, who owned BSI Comics in Metairie, Louisiana, for 30 years, passed away on Dec. 29. He was 70 years old. [BSI Comics, ICv2.com]

Libraries | Four of the top five young-adult titles checked out from the New York Public Library in 2010 were manga: Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto, Tite Kubo’s Bleach, Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece, and Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball Z. Jennifer Holm’s graphic novel Babymouse and Jeff Kinney’s comics-prose hybrid Diary of a Wimpy Kid were the top two children’s titles. [NYPL Wire]

Organizations | Child’s Play, the charity founded in 2003 by Penny Arcade creators Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins, raised $2,294,317.53 in donations in 2010, setting a record for the organization, which provides toys and video games to hospitals worldwide. [Gamasutra]

Death Note Black Edition, Vol. 1

Publishing | Deb Aoki looks ahead to 82 new manga series and one-shots set to debut this year. [About.com]

Conventions | Jessica Testa previews the first Amazing Arizona Comic Convention, which will be held Saturday and Sunday at the Mesa Convention Center in Mesa, Arizona. Guests include Robert Kirkman, Rob Liefeld, Jeph Loeb, Joe Benitez, John Layman, Ryan Ottley, Cory Walker, and cast members from The Walking Dead. [The Arizona Republic]

Creators | Tom Spurgeon continues his holiday interview series with writer Kelly Sue DeConnick: “Every story is absolutely perfect when it only lives in my head. I’m confident, I have all kinds of ideas, snippets of dialogue, etc. — it’s like a high almost. And then… I have to start writing it down. And once those ideas meet the real world and I can examine them from even the distance of my eyes to the page… well, that’s when it becomes clear that I’m not a genius after all.” [The Comics Reporter]

Creators | Writer Ruthie Kott relates a humorous story told to her by Paul Hornschemeier. [Gapers Block]

Webcomics | Todd Allen and Scott Beaderstadt’s comic Division and Rush has moved from the ChicagoNow website to its own domain. [Division and Rush]

Supreme Court

Legal | The U.S. Supreme Court appeared divided Tuesday during oral arguments on a California law that would forbid the sale or rental of violent video games to minors. Justices Antonin Scalia, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Sonia Sotomayor raised free-speech objections to the statute, with Ginsberg asking: “If you are supposing a category of violent materials dangerous to children, then how do you cut it off at video games? What about films? What about comic books?” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Samuel A. Alito Jr. indicated their belief that the state can restrict the access of minor to video games, while Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Elena Kagan probed the issues without showing their cards. It will probably be several months before the court hands down a decision. [Los Angeles Times, PC World]

Crime | A man charged with orchestrating the July theft of the expensive comics collection of an elderly Rochester, N.Y., man who was beaten and later died has been arrested by FBI agents for allegedly selling hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stolen merchandise on eBay. [The Daily News]

Crime | Police in Stamford, Conn., charged Spider-Man and Captain America with assault and Poison Ivy with breach of peace following a weekend brawl in a parking garage. [The Associated Press]

Publishing | Gerry Alanguilan takes issue with a recent article about the decline of the Philippine comics industry: “There is a NEW Philippine comic book industry, and it has been around since 1993. It’s nothing like the old komiks industry. It’s comic books are nothing like the old comic books. These are comics you don’t see at sidewalks or rent at your local sari sari store. They are no longer produced in the millions like the old days, but the question is: DO THEY HAVE TO BE? Do they have to be published in the hundreds of thousands for people to be happy and believe Philippine comics is alive? Do they HAVE to be in sidewalks? The answer to that question is NO. The days of the hundreds of thousands of comics in a week is GONE. It’s never coming back.” [Komikero, via Journalista]

The Smurf King

Publishing | PW Comics Week looks at Papercutz, NBM Publishing’s growing imprint for children’s graphic novels. [Publishers Weekly]

Business | Diamond Book Distributors has hired Luke Magerko as executive director for business development. [ICv2.com]

Conventions | Matthew Murray reports on last weekend’s London MCM Expo. [The Beat]

Creators | Grant Morrison discusses Batman Inc., Zen billionaires and superheroes: “Superheroes have always been about becoming whatever we’ve needed them to be at any given time. Lately, we’ve made them like Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch’s The Ultimates, weaponized supersoldiers working for the military-industrial complex, which then grew into Iron Man, who is a superhero celebrity, an everyone-is-a-star kind of thing. But give it another five years and it could be cosmic seekers again, because of the new drugs coming onto the market. Or it could be something else entirely. They’ll take the form of whatever our dreams or ideals happen to be.” [Underwire]

Creators | Dinosaur Comics creator Ryan North chats briefly about Machine of Death, the anthology that prevented Glenn Beck’s latest book from debuting at No. 1 on the Amazon sales charts. [Eye Weekly]

Valentine

Creators | Johanna Draper Carlson talks to Alex de Campi about digital comics and her serialized comic Valentine: “We want everything now, thank you, and in convenient digital form and not for some rip-off price, so give it to us, or we’ll steal it. … I have no bricks and mortar retailing network I must be careful not to piss off (so the epub versions can be cheaper than the print version, and released day and date), nor any convoluted and delicate relationships with foreign publishers. So I am going to do things the way I and everyone I know wants them: simultaneously, cheaply, and conveniently.” [Publishers Weekly]

Internet | Players of FarmVille, the popular and apparently highly addictive online game, who purchased “SuperFVMan” and “SuperFVWoman” for their avatars soon found that they were no longer available. Kinsey Jamison wonders whether DC Comics’ legal team may have intervened. [Games.com]

Comics | Ten insane facts comics taught us about American history. [io9.com]

A Dudley Watkins illustration for Treasure Island

Don’t feel bad if the name Dudley D. Watkins doesn’t ring a bell—I grew up reading his comics and I never heard of him either. Watkins was a regular artist for the Scottish publisher DC Thomson, which published the children’s comics Beano, Dandy, Topper, and Beezer, and from 1925 until his death in 1969 he brought a variety of oddball characters to life, including Biffo the Bear, Smarty Grandpa, and my family’s personal favorite, Desperate Dan. The Scottish newspaper The Courier (“Taking you to the heart of Tayside and Fife”) has posted a generous sampling of Watkins’s works, and although I wish they were a bit bigger, they sure do bring back memories.

I was raised in the U.S. but spent stretches of time in both Ireland and Scotland (in fact, I lived in St. Andrews, which is in Fife), so I know from solid experience that British children’s comics of the 1960s and 70s were far more entertaining than their American counterparts. (I wrote about them for The Hooded Utilitarian and the former incarnation of this blog.) To this day whenever someone in my family goes over there they are instructed to bring back copies of Beano and Dandy, which are still delighting kids 85 years after Watkins first put pen to paper.

And that Treasure Island book? I own it. I got it in kindergarten and was utterly terrified by the Black Spot and other pirate antics. That Watkins, he knew what he was doing.

(Via The Forbidden Planet.)

Don't go in the water! (Art not final.)

Yes, you heard that right. Up till now, Zenescope has been turning out cheesecake/horror combos like Grimm Fairy Tales and Return to Wonderland, which, although they sound like children’s books, most definitely aren’t. Now they are freshening up their line with something completely different: An actual kids’ line, Silver Dragon Books.

Zenescope president Joe Brusha included the new line in his presentation at the American Library Association meeting this past weekend, and the librarians I spoke to thought the books looked like they would be popular with young readers. The first two titles are co-branded with the Discovery Channel and are titled Top Ten Deadliest Sharks and Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Predators, which shows that they still have a taste for the sensational. A third graphic novel will be co-branded with Animal Planet.

Zenescope also gave us a look-see at their Charmed comic, based on the long-running TV series and pitched at teen readers. (In a departure from Zenescope tradition, it features fully clothed women.)

Maus Vol. 1

Comics College is a monthly feature where we provide an introductory guide to some of the comics medium’s most important auteurs and offer our best educated suggestions on how to become familiar with their body of work.

Today we’ll be traipsing through the body of work of one of the most significant (if not exactly prolific) American cartoonists of this modern age, Art Spiegelman.

Why he’s important

Even if his pen never touched paper again, Spiegelman would have his name etched in comics history until the sun swallows the Earth for Maus, his memoir/biography concerning his father’s harrowing time spent first hiding from the Nazis in Poland and then suffering in the Auschwitz concentration camp. It’s a complete tour de force from start to finish and one of the few unanimously agreed-upon entries to enter the modern comics canon.

Thankfully he has continued to make and champion comics, however, producing work that, if not equal in stature to Maus (and what really could be?), are often thought-provoking and invigorating nevertheless. A constant cheerleader for the medium, he has (along with his wife, Francoise Mouly) has fought the good fight to get comics to lose their red-headed stepchild status, both by trumpeting a variety of important cartoonists in anthologies like Raw magazine (which he edited with Mouly), and as a critic, scholar and speaker.

Where to start

The Complete Maus

Well duh. There’s a reason Maus won that Pulitzer Prize and all those accolades. Even in the almost twenty years since its completion, the book remains an astounding accomplishment, a thoughtful, emotional examination of both the Holocaust and Spiegelman’s relationship with his difficult father. It seamlessly blends straightforward narrative with an almost avant-garde visual style (its key conceit being that the Jews are drawn as mice, the Germans as cats). For many newcomers, young and old, Maus often serves as their starting point into the world of comics.

If you can find a copy, and you can play Hypercard files on your computer (and if you do, isn’t it time to get a new computer?) you should also try to find The Complete Maus CD-Rom, a nice addendum of notes, photos and assorted research materials used to make the book. (The rumor is a DVD version is in the making.)

From there you should read

The recently re-released Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist As a Young %@*$! provides a glimpse into Spiegelman’s early (sort of) years, and highlights his more  formalist, experimental side. It’s smart, genre-defying stuff, and those who love seeing the boundaries of the medium get prodded, poked and pushed will especially enjoy what’s on display here. Look closely enough, and you can see many of the techniques that he’d later employ in Maus. Originally printed in the late ’70s, Pantheon re-released the book in 2008, along with a new, lengthy introduction from the author that sheds some more light on the material and his own personal make-up.

Breakdowns

After Maus, Spiegelman’s other “big” work is arguably In the Shadow of No Towers, his response to 9/11. It’s a series of one-page, landscape formatted essays that combine Spiegelman’s interests in the visual underpinnings of the medium and autobiography. Visually, the book is a wonder, full of panels that zig-zag. criss-cross and tumble around one another  in an attempt to convey the inner chaos the author felt immediately after the attacks. Thematically and textually, the book is a little weaker, which is not helped by the fact that Spiegelman’s strips end at the halfway point and the rest of the book is padded out with a collection of early 20th century comic strips. Still, while Shadow has its faults (and certainly its fair share of critics), it remains, I think, the most logical next step for those interested in exploring his work.

Further reading

Comix, Essays, Graphics and Scraps: From Maus to Now is a nice collection of the artist’s work during the 1990s (and before), featuring a variety of illustration and little-seen comics work, including his striking covers for the New Yorker magazine. The book’s out of print and a bit hard to find, but it’s worth tracking down.

In the Shadow of No Towers

Spiegelman has also written two children’s books, Open Me, I’m a Dog and Jack and the Box (the latter done for Mouly’s line of young reader comics, Toon Books). Kids will likely enjoy both, though of the two I probably prefer Dog.

You can also see some more of his all-ages work in the Little Lit series of books he edited with Mouly Big Fat Little Lit offers a nice “greatest hits” collection of the anthologies, though really all of the three initial books are enjoyable.

Ancillary material

Spiegelman is equally well regarded for his work as an editor, particularly on Raw magazine. I could write a dozen other posts about that anthology’s significance and influence, but suffice it to say that if you want to discover its wonders for yourself, track down a copy of Read Yourself Raw, which collects the first three issues, and/or the three chunky volumes of the Penguin series that followed afterward.

Those looking for more “behind the scenes” type work should check out Be a Nose! a trilogy of sketchbooks from the 70s, 80s and 00s, published by the McSweeney’s folk.

For those interested in Speigelman’s scholarly side, check out Jack Cole and Plastic Man, a loving tribute to the Golden Age cartoonist, ably and somewhat frenetically designed by Chip Kidd.

Finally, there’s Art Spiegelman: Conversations, which, as the title suggests, compiles various interviews he did over the years in one fat book.

Avoid

Unsure of what to tackle after completing Maus, Spiegelman set his sites on illustrating Joseph Moncure March’s poem, The Wild Party. The illustrations (this is a strictly no-comics affair) are decent, but somewhat bland and obvious. To my mind this is the weakest entry in his bibliography.

Unless, of course, we’re talking about The Narrative Corpse, an interesting but decidedly lackluster comix jam experiment Spiegelman edited, that had cartoonists from all walks of life and genres (Mort Walker, S. Clay Wilson, Will Eisner, etc.) penning three panels of an incomprehensible and ultimately rather dull story of a stick-like figure. It’s the sort of thing that sounds fascinating in concept but quickly falls apart when reality intrudes.

Next month: Eddie Campbell

Neil Gaiman

Legal | Neil Gaiman addresses some of the news coverage of his continuing legal dispute with Todd McFarlane, which was punctuated this week by an evidentiary hearing regarding the characters Dark Ages Spawn, Domina and Tiffany: “There are some knock-offs of the characters I’ve co-created that Todd published and made toys of over the years, and I felt they were derivative of the characters I’d created (or in one case, one actually was the same character I’d created). Todd didn’t want to pay anything at all on them so he (not me/my lawyers) took it back before the judge. Nobody ‘stole characters’ and there’s no argument over ‘ownership of characters’ going on. We’re now waiting for a ruling on if those characters are (in my opinion) derivative or (Todd’s opinion) not of the characters I co-created and have an established copyright interests in. It’s not an ‘epic battle.’ The epic battle was fought and won in 2002.” Gaiman and McFarlane have until July 25 to submit additional arguments. [Neil Gaiman's Journal]

Legal

Legal | Simon Jones has commentary on the defeat this week of a controversial bill in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly to tighten regulations on the sexual depictions of minors in manga, anime and video games: “This is a social battle waged in legislature, and the ultimate goal is to once again push adult content back into the darkest recesses of society, by getting people accustomed to the idea of granting rights to fictional characters, and eroding the rights of real people to have free and unpleasant speech.  In the logic of the censors, this would have been an intermediary step to a complete porn ban; if we can convince the people that non-obscene manga can harm children, why not say the same for adults?” [Icarus Publishing]

Digital comics | Graeme McMillan talks to ComiXology CEO David Steinberger about his company, the newly announced BOOM! Studios comics app, pricing, and retailer reactions to digital distribution. [Techland]

iPad

Digital comics | After a week of owning an Apple iPad, Chris Sims declares, “It is basically the perfect way to read comics.” [Comics Alliance]

Publishing | Dark Horse has stealthily launched a company blog. It doesn’t appear to have an RSS feed yet, though. [Dark Horse]

Conventions | Donna Rolando previews the New Jersey Comic Expo, which is expected to draw “certainly over 1,000″ people on Saturday to the Riverdale Armory in Riverdale, New Jersey. Comic guests include Denny O’Neil, Irwin Hasen, Joe Staton, Bob Wiacek and Jim Salicrup. [NorthJersey.com]

Events | Ellen Spitaleri reports on “Hometown Superhero,” an exhibit of the comic art collection of Dark Horse founder Mike Richardson at the JC Lillie Performing Arts Center in Milwaukie, Oregon. [Clackamas Review]

Unknown Soldier #22

Creators | Writer Joshua Dysart discusses his recently canceled Vertigo series Unknown Soldier: “… I still think that we’re going to see a complete ending. It’s not the ending I would of ultimately liked to have done, but back in December I literally had a dream that we were canceled. And it wasn’t a prophetic dream because our numbers were bad it was just kind of my unconscious waking me up, literally. I called my editor and decided, before we ever got the cancellation notice, that we would start working on the ending. And so we devised a way to begin planting these elements that would allow us to wrap up if we had to in a quick manner, but still give us open enough spaces that we could put other stories in there.” [The Unseen Eye]

G-Man, Vol. 1

Creators | Snow Wildsmith interviews cartoonists Ben Towle and Chris Giarrusso. [Good Comics for Kids]

Creators | Johanna Draper Carlson chats with cartoonist Sarah Becan about her Xeric Grant-winning minicomic The Complete Ouija Interviews. [Comics Worth Reading]

Creators | Tom Mason checks in with the creators of Malibu’s Ultraverse. [Comix 411]

Graphic novels | Eva Volin leads a roundtable discussion of Foiled, by Jane Yolen and Mike Cavallaro. [Good Comics for Kids]

Crunchyroll

Business | Japanese e-book publisher Bitway has invested $750,000 in Crunchyroll, the San Francisco-based website that streams anime and live-action Asian movies. A major distributor of electronic books, including manga, in Japan, Bitway hopes to work with Crunchyroll to develop a comics-distribution platform overseas, with an emphasis on the United States and Canada.

Crunchyroll launched in 2006 as a for-profit site, and featured among its content illegally hosted user-uploaded fansubs and bootleg anime. But in 2009, following a $4 million investment from venture-capital firm Venrock, Crunchyroll began offering only licensed content. The website reportedly attracts 6 million unique visitors a month. [Anime News Network]

Dark Horse

Publishing | A preview in USA Today of Troublemaker, the Dark Horse graphic novel written by bestselling author Janet Evanovich and daughter Alex, kicks off “a groundbreaking multi-platform” promotional initiative involving the publisher, the newspaper and electronics giant Toshiba.

Despite reading two press releases about “DH: HD” (“Dark Horse: High-Def”), I’m a still a little unclear about what the marketing effort involves. Toshiba’s announcement states the program “includes extensive Toshiba presence” in Dark Horse comics, which presumably means product placements. The publisher’s press release underscores a showcase in USA Today, in print and online, for its comics — similar to what the newspaper and DC Comics did with Wednesday Comics — and teases that in October it “will roll out a series of all-new stories created exclusively for the program.” [USA Today]

Awards | Raina Telgemeier’s graphic memoir Smile has been named as an honor book in the prestigious Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards, which recognize excellence in children’s and young-adult literature. “This is the first time a graphic novel has made it onto the list,” Telgemeier wrote, “and I’m extremely humbled to share the short list with such an amazing group of talented authors.” [press release]

From "Neil Young's Greendale"

Publishing | The New York Times and Wired.com spotlight Vertigo’s release this week of Neil Young’s Greendale, Joshua Dysart and Cliff Chiang’s adaptation of the singer-songwriter’s 2003 concept album. [Vertigo]

Creators | Jeffery Klaehn surveys a handful of Fantastic Four writers: John Byrne, Steve Englehart, Mark Millar, Mark Waid and Marv Wolfman. “Before the FF, comic-book super-heroes were stiff and wooden and had problems like ‘How do I enlarge the bottle city of Kandor?’, which no reader on Earth can relate to,” Waid said. “The FF made the adventure-comics world safe for emotion.” [Pop]

Creators | Snow Wildsmith interviews Chris Schweizer, touching upon his background, his influences and his Crogan Adventures series. [Good Comics for Kids]

Creators | Nicolla Scott is briefly profiled by her local newspaper. [Sydney Central]

Creators | Eric M. Esquivel chats with Brandon Graham. [Bleeding Cool]

Comic strips | A souvenir edition of Roy of the Rovers is being released this week in honor of the World Cup. [Daily Mail]

Kids Read Comics!

The Detroit News previews the second annual Kids Read Comics! convention, which kicks off Saturday in Dearborn, Michigan.

The free event, which features two days of panels and workshops, boasts an impressive guest list that includes Katie Cook, Roger Langridge, Dwayne McDuffie, William Messner-Loebs, Dan Miskin, Jim Ottaviani, David Petersen, Dave Roman, Paul Storrie, Marc Sumerak, Raina Telgemeier, Rob M. Worley and Thom Zahler.

Neil Gaiman

Legal | Neil Gaiman and Todd McFarlane will return to court next month after more than seven years to hash out how much Gaiman is owed for his copyright interests in Medieval Spawn, Angela and Count Nicholas Cogliostro. Gaiman wants to learn how much money was generated by three other characters he claims are derivative of those he co-created with McFarlane: Dark Ages Spawn, Domina and Tiffany.

McFarlane asked for another trial on the issue, but on Tuesday U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb ruled that Gaiman has a plausible claim, and ordered an evidentiary hearing to be held on June 14. [Wisconsin State Journal]

Conventions | As the bidding war for Comic-Con International continues, convention organizers have asked San Diego hotels to sign contracts guaranteeing room rates for the next five years. A decision on whether the four-day event will remain in the city after 2012 was expected weeks ago, but Comic-Con spokesman David Glanzer said that’s been delayed because the competing cities — Anaheim, Los Angeles and San Diego — continue to amend their offers. He now expects a decision within the next month. [The San Diego Union-Tribune]

Disney Publishing Worldwide

Publishing | Disney Publishing Worldwide is now managing the global children’s licensed book publishing business formerly overseen by Marvel. [Publishers Weekly]

Publishing | Dave Carter wonders what the closing of the CMX manga imprint might tell us about the future of DC Comics. I follow most of his line of thinking — DC wants to publish properties it can exploit in other media — but he loses me with his prediction the “days are probably numbered” for creator-owned works at the company. It seems unlikely that DC would cut off its primary source for new properties and, in the process, push creators to the company’s competitors. [Yet Another Comics Blog]

Graphic.ly

Publishing | Andrew McDonald profiles Graphic.ly CEO Micah Baldwin: “I don’t even think we’re close to the ‘p’ of profitability yet. Depending on what happens over the next 12 months, I wouldn’t be surprised if we were not profitable for the next 18 months. We’re in serious build mode. I won’t give you [revenue] figures; mostly because I just don’t know them, and they’re small. We’ve been out for a month. We’re a little bit ahead of plans, which is good. We’re getting more users and more purchases than we expected early on, which I think is great.” [StrategyEye]

Legal | The attorney for Michael George, the retailer and convention organizer awaiting a new trial in the 17-year-old murder of his first wife, said “it looks hopeful” that his client’s family will be able to raise the money for bail. George, who has been incarcerated for the better part of 30 months, reportedly is confined to a wheelchair and unable to walk without assistance. [Daily American]

Conventions | Matthew Sheppard reports from last weekend’s Bristol International Comic & Small Press Expo. [Den of Geek]

Creators | Daniel Clowes discusses his new graphic novel Wilson: “I find malcontents to be amusing. I have a lot of friends who are cranky complainers, and I guess I have a high tolerance for that.” [The Oakland Tribune]

Moving Pictures

Creators | David Howard interviews Kathryn and Stuart Immonen about their collaboration Moving Pictures. “We’ve been asked a lot about the difference between Moving Pictures as a webcomic and as a book and really, we never considered it to be the former,” Kathryn Immonen says. “It was a comic on the web and I think that’s a different beast. We serialized it weekly and put it online simply as a way to impose a deadline that would ensure that it got done.  The script itself, if you can call it that because it really was composed almost solely of dialogue, was completed quite some time ago. So by the time we got around to turning it into a comic, it was kind of a new and unfamiliar work for both of us.” [Torontoist]

Creators | Ryan K. Lindsay chats with Ivan Brandon about Viking. [The Weekly Crisis]

Patrick the Wolf Boy

Creators | Art Baltazar talks about kids’ comics: “I wanna do kids books forever. That’s what I am. I’m a cartoonist and I wanna draw cartoons and comic books. I’m not a guy who’s drawing this to write Final Crisis one day or something. I wanna do this. If I can’t create something or write cartoons, I’ll go nuts. I gotta draw every day at home, even if I’m on the couch or whatever I’m doin’. I just gotta do it man. I live so I can draw stuff … and see movies.” [Mania]

Comics | Ten of the most politically charged comics, from Air Pirates Funnies to Y: The Last Man. [Geekosystem]