News, Views and Oddities, where we link to various bits and bobs which have grabbed our attention, encompassing comics, books, illustration, design and film. Clicking fingers at the ready.
John Martz shares the covers of two of his upcoming books: Destination X, due in May and published by Nobrow and what’s ostensibly a French edition of his Machine Gum comics, published by La Pasteque. As he points out though, the Machine Gum strips are silent anyway, so French edition moniker a bit irrelevant really.
Speaking of Nobrow, they have a new distributor, along with Koyama Press: Consortium Book Sales and Distribution. Hopefully this will translate into Koyama titles available more widely in the UK (as long as bookshops order them), and elsewhere.
Sometimes you come across collaborations and pairings that you wonder why you didn’t think of them yourself, they seem that fitting. That’s how I felt about these Edward Gorey’s illustrations for The War of the Worlds: if that doesn’t merit a geekgasm, frankly I don’t know what will.
Slate’s inaugral Cartoonist Studio prizes were awarded, with Chris Ware winning in the best graphic novel category and Noelle Stevenson in the webcomics.
Did I mention I love Thien Pham? I love Thien Pham- he seems like a genuinely really lovely guy. But this isn’t just a declaration of affections- go read his advice on how to get your comic made over at the First Second blog- it’s very funny:
Traveling the world talking to millions of people about my book Sumo the same question all ways comes up. “Mr. Pham, ” they’ll say “how do I get my comic made?” “Do I need an agent?” ” Why are you so awesome?”
Lucy Knisley’s excellent food memoir, Relish is out next month and she’s embarking on a book tour. But what’s a comic book creator to wear to promote one’s book? Specially designed lovely dresses and tunics matching your cover, of course! So cute!
The excellent One Percent Press are now stocking Dakota McFadzean’s comics: Ghost Rabbit, Unkindness and Last Mountain. Like many, I’m aware of McFadzean’s work via his dog comics, and have been wanting to get my hands on these for a while, so it’s great that they’re finally available with very reasonable postage costs. One Percent Press are one of the few comics distributors who are still charging very reasonable shipping despite the US postage hike -they previously shipped all orders for free, including international- so support them if you can. Also, their selection of comics is pretty rad.
Stacey Whittle is looking for new contributors for In the Woods 2, a follow up to the successful first anthology.
Marvel’s initiative to make 700 first issues available for free on Comixology led to a server overload or something similarly technical. People seem to be declaring that this proves giving digital comics away for free first is a success, but surely we’ll only know about that afterwards, when and if figures show that has directly led to people buying more Marvel comics. I wouldn’t think it’s instantly measurable anyhow.
Isaac Lenkiewicz’s Bart Simpson comic is very, very good. He’s got a book coming out from Nobrow’s new Flying Eye children’s imprint, and other projects on his plate, but I hope we get to see the other parts to this sometime.
Thu, Mar 14, 2013
Comics and cartoons