The Xeric Grant has encouraged and nurtured a number of independent comics creators, including Alex Fellows. We’ve just added on a new Xeric winner to the graphic novels pre-orders which I reckon is well worth a look – Fauna by Zack Gardner. Obviously I haven’t read it yet, but I have to say I am intrigued by this new voice in our genre and eager to get my hands on it come September.
And the idea of the Xeric Foundation (founded by Peter Laird, co-creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) is a damned good one – grant winners are given financial assistance to enable them to self-publish their work. Along with anthologies of new writing and art which we talked about here recently this is exactly the sort of thing we need if we want a comics industry which is healthy, vibrant and diverse.
Getting published is a struggle for new talent, but then getting your book noticed in a market dominated by major publishers can be a whole other struggle. That’s one of the reasons we like to try and cover titles like Fauna here on the FPI Blog; we’ve even added a new section to the graphic novels site, Staff Picks, where we will highlight interesting new titles that readers may otherwise miss and which we think deserve more attention (hey, we’re comics fans, we liked reading these, so, we figure, other comics fans will like them).
And on the interesting and innovative publishing angle, the November pre-orders for Fantagraphics are now up. Titles include the excellent Charles Burns (Black Hole) and the astonishing take on Dante’s Divine Comedy, Jimbo’s Inferno from Gary Panter (in a rather tasty sounding prestige hardback – the earlier Jimbo in Purgatory is also re-printed). Milt Gross’s 1930 He Done Her Wrong also gets a welcome re-issue, one of the earliest (some say the first true) graphic novels.
Wed, Jul 13, 2005
Awards, Comics and cartoons