Comic Book Resources

Straight for the art | Seth's new Nancy design

Nancy and Oona Goosepimple, by Seth

Man, that's a knockout, huh? Feast your eyes on George Sprott author (and all-around Dapper Dan) Seth's design for Nancy, Vol. 2, the forthcoming installment of Drawn & Quarterly's gorgeous John Stanley Library.

The image hails from this post by D&Q's Rebecca Rosen, which you really ought to read if the cult of Nancy has been a bit inscrutable to you like it has been to me. Just for example, the above image is a Seth drawing ... which graces a book containing the adventures of a character created by, and best known through the work of, Ernie Bushmiller ... but D&Q's Nancy books collect John Stanley's run on the character from her comic books, as opposed to Bushmiller's newspaper strips ... but those books were actually drawn by Dan Gormley, working off Stanley's storyboard-format scripts. Phew! And then there's the role that Mark Newgarden's abstractified tribute to Bushmiller's Nancy, "Love's Savage Fury," played in the character's popularity with cartoonists...and ditto Newgarden and Paul Karasik's landmark essay "How to Read Nancy" ... ah, let Rebecca explain it to you, and why it all matters.

Robot reviews: Another kids' comics round-up

Nancy Vol. 1

Nancy Vol. One
by John Stanley
Drawn and Quarterly, 128 pages, $24.95.

When faced with the challenge of adapting Ernie Bushmiller's classic comic strip to longer comic book format, John Stanley's response was simple and economical: Turn her into Little Lulu.

That's the only conclusion I can come to after reading this collection of stories in D&Q's ongoing "John Stanley Library" project. Nancy is pretty much Lulu with frizzier hair, Sluggo is a thinner and slightly more benign Tubby. There's even a snotty rich kid and bratty little boy similar to Wilbur and Alvin. Stanley even repeats one of his Tubby stories involving a burglar almost note for note.

That doesn't make Nancy a bad book by any stretch of the imagination. Mediocre Stanley is still miles above most people's best work. The best stories here though are the ones involving Oona Goosepimple, an odd, Wednesday Addams-type girl who supernatural antics cause no end of anxiety for poor Nancy. It's those stories where Stanley -- freed of the Bushmiller formula -- really gets inventive and inspired. If the ratio of Oona stories increases as the volumes do, then I'll keep buying these books as long as D&Q are able to get them out.

Reviews of Moomin, Amulet and more can be found after the jump ...

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Robot reviews: Another manga round-up

Ooku Vol. 1

Ooku: The Inner Chambers
by Fumi Yoshinaga
Viz, $12.99.

As story hooks go, Ooku's got a great one: A strange plague during the Edo period of Japan kills off more than three-quarters of the country's male population. As a result, the culture and gender relations end up going all topsy-turvy, and succeeding generations find the women ruling the roost and men being protected and prized for their ability to produce offspring. This is especially in the Shogun's harem, or Inner Chambers, where the story takes place.

It helps that the story is by Fumi Yoshinaga, who, in books like Antique Bakery and Gerald and Jacques, has proven herself to be more interested in gender relations and identity issues than mere yaoi squickiness (although she certainly likes that too. Certainly the fact that Ooku won the Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize in its home country has led to a certain amount of anticipation among some manga fans.

Unfortunately, while Yoshinaga remains an excellent and expressive artist, the series stumbles out of the gate. One of the main problems is the translator's decision (no doubt motivated by an attempt to approximate a certain Japanese dialect) to have everyone speak in a formal, Renaissance Faire-like manner, with lots of "thees" and "thous" and "didsts." It has the unintended effect of coming off as forced, and distancing the reader from the characters and the story.

Beyond that though, Yoshinaga doesn't really seem to do much with her idea, at least so far. She seems more interested in conveying the various back room politics and romances that take place in the inner chambers than giving thought as to what such a huge change in the population would do to a culture. Would the fashion still be identical to what it was in the real world, with men shaving their heads and women wearing long gowns? Wouldn't that change somewhat drastically? Would a female shogun really keep a male harem and if so, would it be so identical in structure to what the real Edo shoguns had? This may sound like nit-picking, but makes the story seem more than a bit facile, as though she just swapped everyone's sex and that alone would be interesting enough. It may well be that I'm not giving Yoshinaga enough credit and that she's actually considered these issues and will explore them in more depth in future volumes. But so far, I'm not encouraged.

Reviews of Red Snow, Pelu and more after the jump ...

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Straight for the art | Melvin Monster covers

Melvin Monster

Frustrated that Drawn and Quarterly's John Stanley Library of books doesn't include the covers to the original comic books? D&Q feels your pain (sort of) and has posted the covers to the stories from the forthcoming, second Melvin Monster book on their blog.

And if that's not enough to satisfy you, they've also got a swell Nancy story.

Your video link of the day: Seth gets interviewed

The nattily dressed cartoonist talks about Doug Wright and his own book, George Sprott in this interview for Q TV. Is it just me or should Steve Buscemi play Seth in the great alt-comix biopic?

What Are You Reading?

Talking Lines

Welcome to another edition of What Are You Reading, where we can't stop talking about the comics (and other things) we love. I'm pleased as punch to write that our guest this week is R. Sikoryak, whose wonderful book, Masterpiece Comics, is out right now from Drawn and Quarterly.

Click on the link below to find out what Mr. Sikoryak and the rest of the Robot 6 crew are reading this week. And don't forget to let us know what comics or books you're currently enjoying in the comments section.

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What Are You Reading?

The Photographer

We have a very special edition of What Are You Reading this week, as our guests are none other than the legendary Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly. Spiegelman, you know, no doubt, as the author of such acclaimed books as Maus, Breakdowns and In the Shadow of No Towers, while his wife Mouly was co-creator and editor of Raw Magazine, art editor at the New Yorker and is spearheading the new Toon Books line of children's comics.

To see what's currently in their reading stack, just click on the link below ...

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Clowes New Yorker illustration in running for magazine cover of the year

Dan Clowes' New Yorker cover

Daniel Clowes' cover for the May 11 issue of The New Yorker is among the finalists in the Association of Magazine Editors' cover of the year contest at Amazon.com.

You can vote for your favorites in 10 categories, from Best Obama Cover to Best in News & Business to Sexiest Cover, and be entered to win a $10,000 gift card from Amazon.

Voting on the finalist will run through Sept. 20. Voting for the grand-prize winner will open the following day. Winners will be announced Oct. 14 at the Magazine Publishers of America's Innovation Summit in New York City.

Clowes will release his original graphic novel Wilson in May 2010 through Drawn & Quarterly.

(via FishbowlNY)

What Are You Reading?

Love and Rockets New Stories #2

Welcome, welcome, welcome to another round of What Are You Reading. I am very pleased this week to say that our guest is Jeet Heer, the peerless critic and historian who, when not writing introductions for Little Orphan Annie or Krazy Kat collections, can be found at the Sans Everything or the Comics Comics blogs.

Jeet and the rest of the crew have been reading a lot this week and are eager to share, so get clicking on that link pardners.

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What Are You Reading?

The Harvey Girls

Welcome to another edition of What Are You Reading. We had a bit of a scare this week at WAYR Central, as our planned special guest fell through at the last minute due to a lack of proper communication on my part and a sudden illness on his. Quickly becoming panic-striken, I turned to the person I always turn to in such matters -- my wife, Evelyn, who handed me a paper bag to breathe into and said she'd fill in this one time as long as I promised never to ask her to do something like this again.

So without further ado, let me present our very special all-nepotism edition of WAYR! Click on the link to find out what delightful comics we're currently reading ...

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Thin wallets, fat bookshelves: A publishing news round-up

Sample Nancy strip

• Eric Reynolds has posted the official press release regarding Fantagraphics plans to publish Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy:

According to Co-Publisher Gary Groth, who inked the deal, Fantagraphics has contracted to publish the first 24 years of Nancy dailies, beginning in 1938 (when Nancy took over the strip from its former star, Fritzi Ritz) through 1961. "If the demand is there," Groth noted, "we will of course want to continue into the 1960s and beyond, if for no other reason than to run all those great 'hippie' Nancy episodes. But we'll cross that bridge in 2016 when we finish publishing the books we've contracted for."

Kim Thompson will be editing the series. Each volume will contain four years worth of dallies and be designed by Jacob Covey. The books will be 8" x 8" in flexibound format and retail for $29.99. Daniel Clowes will pen the introduction to the first volume. There's lots more info to discover in the link, including the news that Fanta will print an expanded version of Mark Newgarden and Paul Karasik's seminal 1988 essay, "How to Read Nancy" next spring.

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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.

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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 ...

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SDCC '09 | Day One

Comic-Con

After a bevy of announcements earlier in the week about movie deals and video-game adaptations, Comic-Con International officially kicked off Thursday with news of the hiring of an industry veteran, and three significant book acquisitions.

IDW Publishing revealed that Bob Schreck, a longtime senior group editor at DC Comics, will join the company as senior editor in October. He'll focus on developing new projects and new talent.

An editor at Comico and Dark Horse, Schreck co-founded Oni Press with Joe Nozemack in 1996. Three years later he joined DC Comics, where he oversaw the Batman line and, eventually, edited the All-Star titles and developed new projects for Vertigo. He was laid off in January during a wave of major cutbacks by Warner Bros.

Day One's major publishing news came from Scholastic, Drawn & Quarterly and Dark Horse.

Scholastic announced that Jeff Smith will release new Bone titles with co-writer Tom Sniegoski, beginning in summer 2010 with Bone: Tall Tales. The fall will see the expansion of the Bone world with the first book in the Quest for the Spark trilogy, overseen and illustrated by Smith and written by Sniegoski.

Drawn & Quarterly acquired the rights to Daniel Clowes' new graphic novel Wilson, the cartoonist’s first book not to be originally serialized in Eightball. The title, described as a "portrait of the modern egoist,” will debut in May 2010.

Dark Horse, meanwhile, rolled out an overview of its convention announcements, which include plans to release all three volumes of the popular European noir series Blacksad.

In other Thursday highlights:

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SDCC '09 | Let the blurry photo posts begin!

I imagine we're going to be sifting through tons of posts like these in the days to come, but D&Q's Tom Devlin has some photos of the company setting up shop for the big con.