Anthony Lappé and Dan Goldman dropped me a line with some excellent news: their frankly brilliant webcomic Shooting War has secured a deal with a publisher (there is more comics news in the same Publisher’s Weekly article here). Warner Books in the US have signed a deal with the guys to publish Shooting War, probably in the autumn of 2007, as a hardback graphic novel, with the story being significantly expanded from the web version, which will roughly account for a third of the finished print version, so there’s going to be a lot of new material and more background for fans of the webstrip. Set in the near-future the story explores the quagmire of Iraq, the War on Terror and the media’s role (or sometimes even complicity) in events, from blogging to global news networks. Dan mixes his own art with photographic backgrounds of real Baghdad streets in a highly effective manner while Anthony’s background as a journalist who has been in Iraq brings verisimilitude to the tale.
Regular readers will already know that I’ve been highly recommending Shooting War to anyone and everyone and I’m delighted to see the guys succeeding so well with this deal. It is interesting they are signed with a mainstream publisher rather than comics publisher; this reflects the growing interest mainstream publishers have in our medium (as we noted the other day in our interview with Bryan Talbot, his next work, Alice in Sunderland, is due from Jonathan Cape in the UK).
I suspect this may also reflect the fact that mainstream publishers are not only recognising the quality of many graphic novel works but also that there is a big audience out there in both traditional comics stores and also in mainstream bookshops, not to mention the healthy coverage the press has been giving to the quality end of the mature readers market – this is exactly the sort of title you can imagine being discussed in the pages of the Guardian for instance, which is good for the creators and publishers but also good for the comics genre in general since it raises awareness and generates interest among those who are not normally comics readers, showing them that our beloved genre offers far more than they may have realised. No news yet as to whether the Warners deal is only for the US rights or if their UK arm will also publish Shooting War.
Shooting War artist Dan Goldman also tells me that next week’s online episode will be the penultimate part of the story, although you can check out more of Dan’s work via the online collective he works with ACT-I-VATE, while he has collected his mature readers online strip Kelly on his own site into chronological order so new readers can catch up on the tale. Meanwhile, if you haven’t checked out Shooting War I strongly urge you to check it out – if you like DC’s DMZ series or Warren Ellis’ Transmetropolitan then you’re going to enjoy this. And if you want to know more you can read what Anthony told us about Shooting War for his What The Author Says piece here on the blog a few weeks back.
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July 28th, 2006 at 1:58 pm
Hello Joe and thanks for every last bit of enthusiasm for all of our work. Just wanted to sound off on one point: it’s my understanding that the Warner Books deal will encompass English language rights for both North America and the UK.
However, I am a cartoonist and not a lawyer; should that statement prove to be incorrect, I’ll pop you a line.
—-cheers—-> dang!