Fantagraphics
Fantagraphics to publish Herge
French cover for 'Peppy and Virginny'
In a comment thread on The Comics Journal website, Fantagraphics Co-Publisher Kim Thompson revealed the company will publish an early work by Tintin creator Herge (a.k.a. Georges Remi) titled Peppy and Virginny in Lapinoland.
Also known as Popol Out West, and called Popol et Virginie au pays de Lapinos in French, the book follows the adventures of “a couple of haberdashers who journeyed to the Wild West in search of new clientele, accompanied by their trusty horse Bluebell — where they ran into savage Indian tribes, evil bandits, and much more,” according to the PR details. As far as I can tell, it’s Herge’s only long-form funny animal series, with the lead characters drawn as bears and the Native Americans depicted as rabbits with feathers for ears.
Originally published in 1934, the book is one of several lesser-known and short-lived series that Herge did before giving his artistic life over to Tintin completely (and includes the Quick and Flupke and Jo, Zette and Jocko series).
The 56-page book, which costs $16.99, will be in stores July 2013. It will be part of Fantagraphics ongoing all-ages Eurocomics line, which includes such titles as The Littlest Pirate King and Murder By High Tide.
In other, unrelated Herge news, the comment thread also calls attention to this book, yet to find a publisher, which apparently suggests that Herge and Tchang, the model for the Chang character in The Blue Lotus, had an affair. Bleeding Cool has not-at-all sexy previews of the book here.
This weekend, it’s the Alternative Press Expo
The Alternative Press Expo, or APE, returns to the Concourse Exhibition Center in San Francisco this weekend. The show’s special guests are Groo creator Sergio Aragonés, Flood creator Eric Drooker, all three legendary Hernandez Brothers, The Cardboard Valise creator Ben Katchor, jobnik! creator Miriam Libicki, and Weathercraft creator and giant pen owner Jim Woodring, all of whom have spotlight panels over the course of the two days. In addition, other guests attending the show include Shannon Wheeler, Stan Mack, Justin Hall, Derek Kirk Kim, Jason Shiga, Thien Pham, Jamaica Dyer and many more.
In addition to the spotlight panels, the show has panels on politics and comics, censorship, queer cartoonists and a “Gigantes” meet-up with the Hernandez Bros. and Aragones. They also have workshop panels if you’re interested in making comics and a “creator connection” that allows aspiring creators to find writers or artists to work with.
The show is usually one of my favorites of the year, mainly because it’s so easy going and loaded with opportunities to discover something new and cool. Here’s a round-up of some of the folks you can see and buy cool stuff from at the show, as well as things to do inside and outside of the Concourse:
Food or Comics? | Beurre manié or Building Stories
Welcome to Food or Comics?, where every week we talk about what comics we’d buy at our local comic shop based on certain spending limits — $15 and $30 — as well as what we’d get if we had extra money or a gift card to spend on a splurge item.
Check out Diamond’s release list or ComicList, and tell us what you’re getting in our comments field.
Building Stories
JK Parkin
If I had $15, I’d start with a couple of Marvel firsts, even though one of them isn’t technically a first issue: Uncanny Avengers #1 ($3.99) and Red She-Hulk #58 ($2.99). This is the first week of Marvel NOW, and they’re starting with books by creative teams I’m excited about. Next I’d get Stumptown V2 #2 ($3.99) and wind things up with the Halloween Eve one-shot. I actually supported the Kickstarter for the latter, so my copy is probably already on the way to my mailbox, but hypothetically let’s assume that it wasn’t. It’s by Brandon Montclare and Amy Reeder, two creators whose work I’ve enjoyed in the past. So if it wasn’t coming to me in the mail, it would come home in a paper bag from the comic shop.
If I had $30, I’d add an outgoing Marvel title (Marvel THEN?), Fantastic Four #611, which features the end of Hickman’s run before he moves on to Avengers and Matt Fraction takes over the first family of Marveldom. Next I’d grab Green Lantern Corps #13 ($2.99) as I like the direction the GL books have been headed in lately, and Conan #9 ($3.50), the second half of Brian Wood’s collaboration with Vasilis Lolos. Finally, I’d grab Point of Impact #1 ($2.99), the new crime book by Jay Faerber and Koray Kuranel.
This is a splurge in price only; if I had $50, then Chris Ware’s Building Stories would definitely have been at the top of my buy list this week. It’s a big box of little comics, as Chris put it, and as luck would have it I really do have $50 in gift certificates that I got for my birthday to buy it with. Thanks Mom and Dad!
Fantagraphics announces new Carl Barks and EC Comics collections
Buried within a lengthy Comics Journal discussion about the bizarre — and ultimately unsuccessful — public negotiations between Dave Sim and Fantagraphics to release collected editions of Cerebus, Gary Groth announced Thursday the next books in the publisher’s acclaimed Carl Barks and EC Comics lines.
The next installment of the Carl Barks Library, titled The Old Castle’s Secret, will include reprints of Donald Duck stories from 1947 and 1948: “The Old Castle’s Secret,” “In Darkest Africa,” “Wintertime Wager” “Watching the Watchman,” “Wired,” “Going Ape,” “Spoil the Rod,” “Bird Watching,” “Horseshoe Luck,” “Bean Taken,” “Rocket Race to the Moon,” “Donald of the Coast Guard,” “Gladstone Returns,” “Links Hijinks,” “Sorry to be Safe,” “Sheriff of Bullet Valley,” “Best Laid Plans,” “The Genuine Article,” “Pearls of Wisdom” and “Foxy Relations.”
Following the January release of “50 Girls 50″ and Other Stories by Al Williamson and “Taint the Meat … It’s the Humanity” and Other Stories by Jack Davis, Fantagraphics will expand its EC Comics Library with a crime volume dedicated to the work of Johnny Craig and a science fiction devoted to Al Feldstein.
“I’m very happy I didn’t have to negotiate these contracts on an internet thread,” Groth said.
(via The Beat)
Fantagraphics publishing Peanuts Christmas rarity
As explained on the Fantagraphics website, most of Charles Schulz’s creative energy went into the daily Peanuts comic strip, but he also made some special side projects featuring his famous characters. This month, the publisher is releasing a collection of two of those projects, both Christmas-themed.
The title of the collection gets its name from the earlier project, 1963′s Charlie Brown’s Christmas Stocking, a collection of 15 one-panel cartoons for Good Housekeeping. Each features Peanuts characters offering a joke or reflection on the season. The other piece is a story from a 1968 issue of Woman’s Day in which Linus and Lucy explain the meaning of Christmas to Snoopy, with the beagle offering his own opinion at the end.
Fantagraphics has created one of those cool, flip-through videos for the book, which you can see below.
Comics College | David B.
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.
Last month we looked at the career of Marjane Satrapi. This month we’ll examine the career of one of her largest (or at least more apparent) influences, Pierre-Francois Beauchard, better known by his pen name, David B.
Fantagraphics adds subscription option for Wandering Son
Shimura Takako’s Wandering Son has been acclaimed by critics all over the blogosphere (myself included), but any publisher is taking a risk on a 200-page hardcover book that sells for $20, and when it’s part of a 12-volume series … well, there is a lot to be said for giving loyal readers a break.
It’s hard to know whether Fantagraphics is feeling nervous or generous, but the publisher is offering a discount to readers who pay up front: A subscription to the next three volumes, vols. 4-6, for $50.38, a 20 percent discount from the list price of $62.97 — plus free domestic shipping and discounted overseas shipping.
This seems like a mutually beneficial deal: Fanta gets its money up front for volumes that will be published in December 2012, June 2013 and December 2013, respectively, and readers get a good price. This sort of pay-now-read-later arrangement is unusual for manga, and for graphic novels in general. If this works, it could set a precedent for high-end graphic novels — I don’t see anyone paying up front for the next 20 volumes of Naruto, but when you think about it, it’s not that different from traditional publishers like Digital getting pre-orders through Kickstarter.
My SPX 2012 photo diary
Another Small Press Expo has come and gone, and I have the empty wallet to prove it. My official SPX report appears at Comic Book Resources. You can also hear me blathering on about the show with Joe McCulloch and Matt Seneca over here. Short recap: It was a great show, arguably the best SPX I’ve been to in a long while.
Despite my self-induced reputation as a horrible photographer, I opted to take photos at the show anyway.
This Beat is Def: Fantagraphics to publish Piskor’s Hip Hop Family Tree
Hip Hop Family Tree
Wizzywig creator Ed Piskor‘s latest work, Hip Hop Family Tree, has been running on BoingBoing for some time now, laying out the history of hip hop music and starring the likes of Doug E. Fresh, Kurtis Blow, Spyder-D, The Sugarhill Gang, Grand Master Flash and other luminaries from the music’s past. Fantagraphics announced yesterday that they’ll publish a print collection of the work sometime next year.
This weekend, it’s the Small Press Expo
The annual Small Press Expo, better known as SPX, will arrive at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel and Convention Center in Bethesda, Maryland, Saturday and Sunday. This particular SPX promises to be excellent — mayhap the bestest SPX evar — so allow me to run through some of the goings-on if you happen to be in that area this weekend.
Food or Comics? | Caviar or Cavalier Mr. Thompson
Welcome to Food or Comics?, where every week we talk about what comics we’d buy at our local comic shop based on certain spending limits — $15 and $30 — as well as what we’d get if we had extra money or a gift card to spend on a splurge item.
Check out Diamond’s release list or ComicList, and tell us what you’re getting in our comments field.
Conan the Barbarian #8
John Parkin
If I had $15: Whoah, another tough week to narrow things down. Is every Brian Wood-written title required to come out the same week of each month? Do Dark Horse and Marvel get together and plan it that way, so that people who only buy Wood comics only have to go to the store once a month? I think more than half the DC titles I buy come out this time every month, too. So yeah, lots to pick from …
Anyway, I’d start with one of those Brian Wood comics, Conan the Barbarian #8 (Dark Horse, $3.50), which features Vasilis Lolos on art. Lolos drew one of my favorite issues of Northlanders, “The Viking Art of Single Combat,” so it’s cool to see the two of them working together again. I’d also get a comic I’m sure will be popular with a few of my colleagues, the first issue of the new Stumptown miniseries by Greg Rucka and Matthew Southworth (Oni Press, $3.99). Next I’d get Manhattan Projects #6 (Image, $3.50); this issue turns the focus from America’s secret science program to Russia’s secret science program. Jonathan Hickman and Nick Pitarra are having a lot of fun with this one. Finally, I’d get Uncanny X-Force #31 (Marvel, $3.99), which really picked things up last issue … and this is a comic that’s usually running on twice as many cylinders anyway.
If I had $30, I’d also grab two finales from DC Comics — Shade #12 and Resurrection Man #0 (both $2.99). Honestly, I never expected to see a Resurrection Man comic again, much less by the guys who wrote the original, so the fact that we got a good run of 13 issues is a pleasant surprise. Shade, of course, was planned as 12 issues from the beginning, and was a nice return to the Starman-verse by writer James Robinson. That leaves me room for three more $2.99 comics, which means I’m going to bypass X-Men, The Massive and Avengers Assemble this week (let’s assume that I’ll one day spend my splurge money on the trades) and instead go with Chew #28 (Image, $2.99), It Girl and the Atomics #2 (Image, $2.99) and Demon Knights #0 (DC Comics, $2.99).
Splurge: Assuming I wouldn’t spend my unlimited gift card on single issues, I’d be looking at the first Bucko collection from Dark Horse ($19.99) and Fantagraphics’ Is That All There Is? trade ($25).
Previews: What Looks Good for November
It’s time once again for our monthly trip through Previews looking for cool, new comics — now with 100 percent more JK Parkin! Michael May, Graeme McMillan, Chris Arrant and JK have each picked the five comics they’re most anticipating in order to create a Top 20 (or so; we overlap sometimes) of the best new stuff coming out two months from now.
As usual, please feel free to play along in the comments. Tell us what we missed that you’re looking forward to or – if you’re a comics creator – mention your own stuff.
47 Ronin #1
John Parkin
47 Ronin #1 (Dark Horse, $3.99): Mike Richardson, Dark Horse’s head honcho, teams with Usagi Yojimbo creator Stan Sakai to retell the story of the 47 ronin who avenged their master after he was forced to commit ritual suicide for assaulting a court official. It will be both very cool and a little odd to see Sakai drawing samurai that aren’t anthropomorphic animals and aren’t in black and white (the book’s full color), but I’ve always admired his clean style. As an added bonus, Kazuo Koike of Lone Wolf and Cub fame consulted on the project, so this should be a treat.
Great Pacific #1 (Image Comics, $2.99): Joe Harris and Martin Morazzo have come up with a book that I just love the high concept behind: the heir to one of America’s most successful oil companies moves to the infamous Great Pacific Garbage Patch and declares it a sovereign country. He then fights giant sea monsters, based on the preview art that’s been released, which is an added bonus.
Marvel NOW!: This might be cheating, but Marvel has 10 new comics debuting in November under the Marvel NOW! banner. Mark Waid on Hulk? John Romita on Captain America? Matt Fraction writing Fantastic Four and FF? Jonathan Hickman on Avengers? Yeah, I’ll just lump all these together and hope no one notices I’m gaming the system here …
Walt Disney’s Donald Duck: A Christmas for Shacktown: Fantagraphics continues its series of high-end collections of the best of Carl Barks’ duck stories, with the Christmas-themed third volume arriving just in time to be stuffed in somebody’s stocking.
Retrovirus (Image Comics, $16.99): Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray’s latest graphic novel, drawn by Norberto Fernandez, is about a research scientist who specializes in viruses heading to Antarctica to examine a perfectly preserved caveman. I’m a fan of Palmiotti and Gray’s work together, from Jonah Hex to The Monolith (which gets the collection treatment in November), and this one sounds like it could be a lot of fun.
The Middle Ground #118 | Turn left
The more I think about it, the more strange Image Comics’ position in the modern comic book industry seems. Think about it: It’s currently the place where up-and-coming creators publish their own creations, looking to make a name for themselves and catch the attention of the Big Two publishers, and yet it’s also the place where established creators publish their own creations, having made a name for themselves by working on familiar brand names and characters at the Big Two publishers. Doesn’t that seem odd to anyone else?
The odd thing, perhaps, is that the Big Two publishers are part of the equation at all. If Image is both your launching pad and your escape pod, then why take the detour to Marvel or DC in the first place? I’m asking somewhat sarcastically, because I know that the answer is “because we want to,” as well as “because there are readers out there who pay attention to the Big Two in a way that they don’t pay attention to other things, and it’s a way to catch the attention of an entirely different readership that isn’t available anywhere else.” And yet… I don’t know; I’m feeling more and more exhausted by the churn that Marvel and (especially, lately) DC seems to have for creators, as well as the disrespect and hoops to be jumped through. A friend and I were talking about rumors about internal politics at both companies recently, and the question “Why would you want to subject yourself to all of that?” came up.
Food or Comics? | Amontillado or Amulet
Welcome to Food or Comics?, where every week we talk about what comics we’d buy at our local comic shop based on certain spending limits — $15 and $30 — as well as what we’d get if we had extra money or a gift card to spend on a splurge item.
Check out Diamond’s release list or ComicList, and tell us what you’re getting in our comments field.
Locke & Key: Grindhouse
Graeme McMillan
I don’t know quite why, considering I’ve been feeling cynical and disinterested in the DC Universe over the past couple of weeks, but I find myself tempted by both Flash Annual #1 and Justice League International Annual #1 (both DC Comics; $4.99) this week; something even more surprising considering I haven’t been following the JLI series past trying out the first issue. And yet, if I had $15 this week, I suspect I’d be using a chunk of it for that. I’d also grab Joe Hill and Gabriel Hernandez’ Locke & Key: Grindhouse (IDW Publishing, $3.99), because, well, Locke & Key is a very, very good comic book.
If I had $30, I may find myself picking up the first collection of Peter Panzerfaust (Vol. 1: The Great Escape; Image Comics; $14.99) because I like the high concept behind it even if I managed to miss the single issues. People who did pick it up in singles: Is it the kind of thing I’d like, do you think?
Should I find the money and ability to splurge, I find myself surprisingly drawn to Dark Horse’s Star Wars Omnibus: Clone Wars Vol. 1 ($24.99); I blame people in my Twitter feed talking about Star Wars Celebration last week, and my thinking, “I haven’t really kept up with Star Wars in ages” in response. Does that count as peer pressure?
Wilfred Santiago draws Michael Jordan and John Brown
Wilfred Santiago, the creator of 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente, is working on a new biography: Michael Jordan: Bull on Parade. Details are sparse, but according to the Fantagraphics blog, “frenetic panels and art from Santiago’s new book are online and updated regularly until its release in late 2013.” If the images are any indication, Santiago is busting out from the limited palette he used for the Clemente book to full, brilliant color, applied in a bold, painterly style.
But wait! There’s more! It turns out these two comics are actually part of a trilogy. The third volume, Thunderbolt, is a bit of an odd man out: It’s a bio of the famed abolitionist John Brown, and according to its website, it will run as a free webcomic, serialized weekly, beginning in July 2013. Maybe it’s because I’m more of a history buff than a sports fan, but I think this one looks the most interesting of the three; the sample art is darker and sparser than the Jordan art, and the topic is certainly fascinating. There’s one image below, and more at the book’s official Facebook page.