March 24, 2010
Bundled, Tossed, Untied And Stacked
By Tom Spurgeon
* In breaking news -- meaning it popped up in my inbox 10 minutes before this post rolled out -- Fantagraphics has signed an agreement with Rick Marschall to create and run a new imprint for the company called Marschall Books. This imprint will be devoted to the historically compelling comics, cartoons and humor efforts in which Marschall is a widely-acknowledged, longtime expert.
Tons of information in the press release here.
* Fantagraphics
has one of those photo-description-video-pdf previews up for the first volume of its Roy Crane reprint series. He is
the source for action in comics, the Douglas Fairbanks Sr. of funnybook lickety-whop, and these books should be a blast. (image at top)
*
Daryl Cagle's on-line syndicate turns 10. That's an idea that was way before its time at its inception. Heck, given the incremental, leviathan-like crawl of the newspaper industry, Cagle's operation is still ahead of its time.

*
CBR previews the forthcoming Daren White and Eddie Campbell collaboration
The Playwright.
* Fantagraphics published a couple of cover images for forthcoming books on their blog just after I posted last week's "Bundled":
Joe Daly's Dungeon Quest and
Johnny Ryan's Angry Youth Comix Vol. 3. Speaking of Fanta books, I always enjoy
these Jeff Smith covers for the
Our Gang reprints.
* the writer J. Torres
talks to PW about a repackaging of his
Alison Dare material he did with J. Bone from a publisher with the frightening appellation of Tundra.
* I'm not really good with the superhero stuff, and those dopey "I'm an Avenger" silhouettes and their joke equivalents have both more than worn out their welcome and never should have been treated by anybody as straight-up news in the first place, but I guess it's worth noting that Robert Kirkman is going to band together elements of his sprawling
Invincible universe into
something of a team book. Kirkman has been working through a lot of projects lately, and not all of them feel like hits. This one seems like something safely within his sweet spot, though. As for the original
Avengers, I guess retailers are going to get a flat-out, potentially terrifying snootful of them starting this summer.
* veteran Paws Inc. contributor Brett Koth
is launching his own strip through Creators,
Diamond Lil. You can keep clicking through to a number of links worth consuming if this news interests you.
* the writer Warren Ellis
provides a look at the fourth paper volume of his
Freakangels project with Paul Duffield, one of the higher-profile and simply conceived web and print projects going. Ellis also
notes the existence of a one-volume collection of his
NextWAVE series with Stuart Immonen, which was a funny, clever series you might want to have under one cover.
* in case you missed it,
Salon dropped Tom The Dancing Bug after a 15-year relationship.
*
Captain Underpants will appear in a series four graphic novels; the first one will have a print run of one million, which is actually a modest estimate given the success of the original series.
* here's something that
Brigid Alverson caught that I sure didn't: Meredith Gran of
Octopus Pie is really pushing for sales through her own site, citing economic reasons. I haven't seen anyone do this with quite that language, although selling to your mailing list and at show and through one's site and to one's friends is pretty common for all authors. Although maybe I'm reading it wrong, this sounds much closer to a vote of no-confidence in seeing a decent return from the release of the book through the standard sales infrastructure of bookstores and on-line retailers, which is a different thing altogether.
* Sean T. Collins
profiles the launch of the alt-comics tabloid pood, and expresses doubt that anyone would want to read news comics on newsprint given any other choice.
* Marvel
takes baby steps towards publishing Marvelman/Miracleman, the superhero whose kryptonite is a legal brief.
* IDW's latest licensed franchise will be
Jurassic Park. Guys, I'm telling you, I'm sitting on multiple issues of potential Eisner-winning
Sapphire and Steel storylines here. We can make this happen.
* the writer Graeme McMillan was let go from the science fiction blog-driven site
io9, which means I don't have to go to
io9 anymore. Their loss: I thought he did good work for them. I look forward to seeing McMillan's by-line on more specifically comics-focused sites,
like this one.
* finally, the timing was really bad on this one, but if you haven't read
the publishing news announcement for Lynda Barry's Picture This (cover image below), you really should take the time to do so right now.
posted 11:00 am PST |
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