Comic Book Resources

Congratulations Adrian Tomine!

Awwww.

The Drawn and Quarterly blog announced yesterday that the Optic Nerve cartoonist and his wife, Sarah Brennan, recently welcomed into the world a baby girl, Nora Emiko Tomine. We here at Robot 6 say congratulations to the new parents and wish them the best of luck.

APE '09 | Fantagraphics, Drawn & Quarterly and more

The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D.

The Alternative Press Expo, or APE, is coming up this weekend at The Concourse in San Francisco. The show runs from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday. Special guests include Jamaica Dyer, Phoebe Gloeckner, Dean Haspiel, Batton Lash, Lark Pien, Dash Shaw and Jeff Smith. Here are a few more items of interest if you're attending ...

Fantagraphics | Fantagraphics sent over their signing schedule for the show:

Saturday
11AM - 1PM: Jon Vermilyea (MOME) & Frank Santoro (MOME)
12:00–12:45 Spotlight on Dash Shaw
1PM - 3PM: Dash Shaw & T. Edward Bak (MOME)
3PM - 5PM: John Pham
5PM - 7PM: Renee French (MOME) & Andrice Arp (MOME)

Sunday
11AM - 1PM: Jon Vermilyea (MOME), Frank Santoro (MOME) & Dash Shaw
1PM - 3PM: T. Edward Bak (MOME) & John Pham
3PM - 5PM: Renee French & Andrice Arp

They'll have many new releases on hand: The Troublemakers by Gilbert Hernandez, Conceptual Realism: In the Service of the Hypothetical by Robert Williams, Pim & Francie by Al Columbia, Sublife #2 by John Pham, The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D. by Dash Shaw, MOME Vol. 16 by various, The Great Anti-War Cartoons by Craig Yoe, and Ganges #3 by Kevin Huizenga.

"As an added bonus, Dash Shaw is an official APE guest this year and will be signing copies of his new book, The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D.," writes Eric Reynolds. "For anyone who buys the book at one of his Fanta signings during APE, Dash will do an original PAINTING on the front cover! You will not want to miss out."

Continue Reading »

What Are You Reading?

Map of My Heart

Welcome to another edition of What Are You Reading. Pull up a chair and sit down, won't you? Our guest this week is Bill Kartalopoulos, who teaches classes about comics and illustration at Parsons, is a contributing editor for Print Magazine, and a comics reviewer for Publishers Weekly. But he's probably best known as the Programming Coordinator for the SPX convention in Bethesda, MD.

Bill and everyone else has quite a number of books by their bedside table this week, so we'll get right to it. Be a dear and click on the link below, won't you?

Continue Reading »

Cool things to bookmark: Ted Stearn and Gabrielle Bell

Fuzz and Pluck

The Fuzz and Pluck author Stearn has revamped his Web site, with sample comics, illustration work, animation projects and a store where you can buy some pretty nifty prints and original drawings. Go check it out.

Bell, meanwhile, of Lucky fame, has been posting her diary comics regularly on this site. If you haven't seen it yet I heartily recommend stopping by.

Straight for the art | Hot Potatoe preview

from Hot Potatoe

The Drawn and Quarterly blog has several pages up from Marc Bell's upcoming book, which they call "a 272-page monograph of his fine art and fine aht and foin ART and even some comics coming out soon."

Six by 6 | Six 'retired' artists we'd like to see return to comics

Tales of the Great Unspoken

Making comics, as we all know, is hard work. And -- particularly if you work in the "indie" side of the aisle -- it's not always good-paying work.

Small wonder then that many talented individuals leave the medium to find a career in illustration, animation, sales, or hell, anything that paid better than comics.

Still, while I understand the financial necessity, there's a number of artists I wish would come back to the fold, if just for old time's sake. For example:

1. Aaron Augenblick. In 1999 Augenblick created a charming little mini-comic, Tales of the Great Unspoken. It was inventive, clever, superbly crafted and very funny. It won a Xeric. It was, all in all, a great debut that showed enough promise to suggest that Augenblick had a great career ahead of him in comics. Then he decided to chuck it all and make animated cartoons for Adult Swim and MTV.

It's a shame. The kid really could have really made a name for himself. Still, it's not too late Aaron. You could give up all that sweet, sweet Nickelodeon money and come back to comics anytime ...

Continue Reading »

Is the ship sinking? A short chat with Peggy Burns

Crickets

Continuing our occasional series looking at how small press and indie comics publishers are weathering the downturn in the economy, not to mention Diamond's recent policy changes, today we're talking with Drawn and Quarterly's Associate Publisher Peggy Burns.

D&Q rather unintentionally became regarded as one of the first martyrs of Diamond's new cut-off policy when two of their serialized comics, Sammy Harkham's Crickets and Kevin Huizenga's Or Else, were cancelled. The fact that said cancellations were due to the separate decisions of the artists themselves and not the publisher or Diamond didn't matter much at the time; its close proximity seemed to have a direct cause and effect.

I was curious as to what Burns had to say about that matter and the industry climate in general, since she's one of the most intelligent and candid people working behind the scenes in comics today. She didn't disappoint and I'd like to thank her for taking the time to respond to the plethora of questions I emailed her.

Can you give me any idea of how close Crickets and Or Else were to missing Diamond's new cut-off before the respective creators pulled the plug on the series?

I don't really want to get into a numbers game with our authors whose comics fell below or near the Diamond minimum. Obviously, the titles (Or Else, Lucky, Crickets) that have been announced as ending in their pamphlet form hovered around the minimum, though the conversation with Or Else happened before the minimum news. Ending a series is not something we want to do. The artist wanted to tell their story in this form, and we have the job of telling this form is no longer viable. It's not an easy decision and wasn’t fun to do.

Continue Reading »

2009 Joe Shuster Award nominees announced

The nominees for the 2009 Joe Shuster Awards, which honor Canadian comics creators, were announced today. The five-year-old awards program is named after Joe Shuster, co-creator of Superman. The list of nominees this year includes Darwyn Cooke, J. Torres, Karl Kerschl, Dave Sim, Kathryn & Stuart Immonen, Faith Erin Hicks and Seth, among many others.

Check out the full list of nominees in the press release after the jump.

Continue Reading »

Robot Reviews: Three from D&Q

Nicolas

Drawn and Quarterly recently released three small, slim graphic novels, all dealing with similar themes of loss, death and the human experience, though they vary widely in approach.

Nicolas
by Pascal Girard
Drawn and Quarterly, 64 pages, $9.95.

Aching with regret and longing, Nicolas is Girard's chronicle of personal grief following the death of his younger brother. Rather than delve into any sort of lengthy or more traditional narrative, he chooses instead to lay out his autobiographical story in stark, short vignettes, utilizing a crisp, minimalist style that's completely devoid of background or extemporaneous detail.

Overall it's a smart choice and it really helps the book feel intimate and personal. As Girard moves from childhood to adulthood he attempts to give a rounded portrait of his behavior and doesn't attempt to portray himself as a wounded angel. He's selfish and self-absorbed and not necessarily above using his tragic story to help him get attention, particularly from women. More significantly, however, is how his inner thoughts and behavior ring true for anyone who had to attend a family funeral as a young child.

Continue Reading »

Missed it: Words Without Borders celebrates comics

Excerpt from 'A Drifting Life'

Words Without Borders, "The Online Magazine for International Literature," is celebrating the graphic novel all this month with loads of previews of new and upcoming books from a variety of publishers, including Yoshihiro Tatsumi's A Drifting Life, the fourth volume of Osama Tezumka's Black Jack, Diane Obomsawin's Kaspar, The Pig by Riccardo Falcinelli and Marta Poggi, Blizzard in the Jungle by Jo Hak-Rae and Ri Chol-Geun and Ari Folman and David Polonsky's adaptation of the Academy Award-nominated film Waltz with Bashir. There's also an interview with Polonsky if you're so inclined.

What Are You Reading?

Aya of Yop City

With Christopher Mautner taking a little time off, I'm stepping in to round up "What Are You Reading?" -- the weekly feature in which we discuss, well, what we're reading. We encourage you to chime in, too.

This week's special guest is David Welsh, who writes about manga for his blog Precocious Curmudgeon, and for The Comics Reporter.

To find out David and the rest of us are reading, just click "More."

Continue Reading »

Harkham cancels Crickets

Crickets

OK, this is officially getting depressing now. Hot on the heels of Kevin Huizenga's announcement that he is pulling the plug on his D&Q pamplet series Or Else, cartoonist and Kramer's Ergot editor Sammy Harkham says on his blog that he is canceling his D&Q-published pamphlet series, Crickets after only two issues. Unlike Huizenga, he minces no words abou the reason why:

Wanted to just let those favorite few of you out there to know that my comic book, Crickets, has been cancelled due to changes made by the major comics distributor that effectively made it impossible to continue in the comic book format. Crickets #3 will come out in some DYI form in the next couple months...after that, I dont know exactly. While I am really bummed about this, as I feel I never even really got started on it, I appreciate all the people who supported it when it was coming out. Thanks. To the future.

Man, I really liked that comic too. Should we start some kind of Drowning Pool and take bets as to what series is next on the chopping block?

(found via)

Huizenga calls it quits for Or Else

Cover to Or Else #6

Over at his blog The Balloonist, indie comix superstar Kevin Huizenga (Ganges, Curses) announced that he has called a halt to his ongoing Drawn and Quarterly series Or Else:

I've decided that Or Else (the series) is done. It doesn't make sense to do it this way anymore. Drawn and Quarterly have been great and I want to thank them. For sure I will still be putting out a lot of books and zines, forever, so save your pennies, and watch this space for more news as it becomes available. Thanks for reading.

There have been five issues of the pocket-sized comic book, published on a yearly schedule, to date (that's the abandoned cover to the sixth one on the right). The comic largely seemed to serve as a forum for Huizenga's more experimental and avant-garde work, the last issue finding his everyman Glenn Ganges trapped in an imaginary country torn apart by religious fanaticism.

An email was sent to Huizenga, but he politely declined to comment any further at this time.

Update: It looks as though Huizenga will be releasing the material that was supposed to appear in Or Else #6 as a 28-page mini-comic, available in a few weeks.

(via)

Walt and Skeezix put on hiatus

Walt & Skeezix, Vol. 2

One of the critical jewels in Drawn and Quarterly's crown in recent years has been their ongoing collection of classic Gasoline Alley strips by its creator, Frank King. Three fat volumes, spanning 1921-26, have been released so far, each one winning its share of accolades.

All that seems to have come to a halt recently and there hasn't been any mention of a fourth volume in any of D&Q's recent catalogs or press releases. The reason? According to this Comics Journal message board thread, apparently Tribune Media has threatened to sue the company if they continue with the series. Here's a statement from publisher Chris Oliveros, courtesy of Kevin Greenlee:

"Technically we have not ended the series and hope to somehow continue it. Sales are not a problem, but rather Tribune Media. They are threatening to sue us if we continue, despite the fact that, according to our lawyer, the material we are reprinting has lapsed in copyright. Even though the law appears to be on our side, we cannot afford to go into any lawsuit against a large corporation. We'll wait and see...

Thanks for your interest and support,
--
Chris Oliveros
Drawn & Quarterly"

Later posts in the thread suggest that a fourth volume is in the planning, so let's just hope this is a temporary setback.

Thin wallets, fat bookshelves: Drawn and Quarterly's spring/summer catalog

A Drifting Life

Continuing our look at the coming year in comics publishing, here's a look at what the esteemed Canadian publisher Drawn & Quarterly has planned for the spring and summer.

APRIL

A Drifting Life by Yoshihiro Tatsumi. Probably the biggest book the company will publish this year, and at 840 pages, I mean that literally. This is Tatsumi's (The Push Man, Good-Bye) memoir of his life from 1945-1960, the end of WWII to his arrival as a professional manga-ka. Expect to see this on a lot of top 10 lists a year from now. $39.95 hardcover. Continue Reading »