Bundled, Tossed, Untied And Stacked



By Tom Spurgeon

* hey, there's a new Louis book coming out. Looks like it will hit comic shops in October.

* the biggest potential news I heard this week was from a reliable source that the Fort Thunder gang had reunited to do a new issue of Monster that will be on sale at Comic-Con through attendee and contributor Brian Ralph. Included are all your Fort Thunder favorites like Brian Chippendale and Mat Brinkman. The only thing that would keep this from happening would be a) the printing doesn't happen in time for the book to make it to the show, b) my source is seriously screwing with me and this book doesn't exist at all. Either way, I'll cry. Monster was the closest thing to a house comics anthology for the legendary 1990s arts collective, and they are the only comic books I ever had stolen from my home. UPDATE: Just received e-mail from second source swearing that the new issue of Monster does exist, but it won't be out until this Fall's SPX. It seems there were troubles in getting the now-scattered Fort members to send their work in in reproducible form on the deadline needed for CCI. It was probably easier when they were all under the same roof. Let's hope it stays in 2010 until at least tomorrow breakfast.

* it's probably official by now. I'm glad to see Jeff Parker getting a bunch of opportunities at Marvel. He's done consistently good work for them. It also occurs to me that one place where Marvel pummels DC right now is the relative depth of each company's writing rosters.

* Fantagraphics has four new Ignatz-format books out for summer 2010, including a third volume of Sammy The Mouse. This is great news if you simply love the format, like I do. With Casanova officially making its debut as a standard serial comic book today, you could also say that of the two major breaks in serial comics formats that came out about three-to-five years ago it looks like the fancy, more expensive model beat out the fewer pages/background material/cheaper price point model. With the format for the Ignatz working in multiple market I'm not sure it was ever a fair fight, and of course it wasn't a fight at all, but it does say something slightly depressing about the direction of the comics market.

* the Dork Tower comics are returning. Those comics seem to sell well in a lot of shops that can't be bothered to carry too much outside of a very limited purview of cape and scowl funnybooks, so I always imagine that ten years from now there will be alt-cartoonists that will cite that series as a primary influence. Not that this matters to the many fans of the book that just want to read new issues.

* somehow, this site for an artist named Gwen Turner making a comic called Domestic Bliss got stuck in my bookmarks. I think it's because I couldn't quite find my way around the site but the comic looked promising. Or maybe I just like the name "Gwen."

* one of the few comics-related announcements coming out of the big ALA meet-up in the nation's capital was a new line of children's books and graphic novels spearheaded by David Dabel

* I suppose the availability of a bunch of Tokyopop books through a popular downloads site is a publishing news story, although it's hard to see much momentum building behind that price point.

* finally, Oh, Brother, the new syndicated comics feature effort by Bob Weber Jr. and Jay Stephens has debuted after a short formal ramp-up period and months of industry backroom talk. It's already one of the five best-looking strips in the paper. Not that anyone should be surprised. Ask your local paper to look into buying it.


 
posted 10:15 am PST | Permalink
 

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