Tag Archive | "publishing"

Comics make New Writing Scotland

Thursday, May 3, 2012

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New Writing Scotland is a fairly prestigious anthology in Scottish publishing circles which acts as a showcase for the best of new and emerging talent, with the first professional appearance of works, taking in both prose and poetry. And now, I am told, for the first time in it’s 30 annual edition history, it has [...]

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Improper Books launches

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

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For quite a while we used to bemoan a lack of independent comics publishers in the UK; now we have Blank Slate, Nobrow and SelfMadeHero and as we blogged just a couple of weeks ago they have been joined by Adam Cadwell and Marc Ellerby’s the Great Beast imprint. And now, today, we get welcome [...]

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Where Have All the Illustrators Gone? A Reminder

Thursday, April 26, 2012

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A reminder to all the artists out there of our illustration challenge – in response to the recent assertion by some in UK publishing that we had a serious lack of good illustration talent our own Kenny, also a publisher in his own right, issued an opportunity and a challenge to the artists among our [...]

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Drawn from Distress to Recovery – A Call for ‘Graphic Memoirs’

Friday, April 20, 2012

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In recent years we’ve seen an increasing number of comics being used as a way of understanding medical and health problems, as well as being a (sometimes therapeutic) way for people who have been through a major health scare or who have had to battle through the sadly so often misunderstood mental health issues that [...]

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Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, A Princess of Mars: Burroughs’ heroes a century on

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

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An unexpected and rather lovely package arrived for me the other day from the Library of America, a pair of quite beautiful small hardback editions of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes and A Princess of Mars. On May 14th, 1912, Burroughs recorded that he had finished writing Tarzan of the Apes; a century [...]

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Let your fingers do the walking

Monday, April 16, 2012

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This isn’t comics but I suspect anyone involved in book design and publishing will find it interesting, not to mention the many artists who these days work with a tablet and digital pen to draw directly onto their computer – it’s a video AT&T Tech has posted up about a digital system developed by Bell [...]

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Where have all the illustrators gone? A challenge

Friday, April 13, 2012

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Recently there has been a lot of controversy over the supposed paucity of illustration talent in British publishing for adult books; Melanie McDonagh’s article in the Independent back in January discussed how illustration in books used to be the norm, using the example of Dickens, and that illustration in books aimed at adults was still [...]

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Comics in the iPad age

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

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PJ Holden, a comics creator who has often discussed the changing nature of comics publishing and reading since the advent of widespread portable digital readers and availability, posts up a few thoughts on comics creation (especially for independent creators) in the iPad era. Snip: “Ok, some loose thoughts, that may or may not add up [...]

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In defence of dots

Friday, January 6, 2012

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Our own Kenny (via Rian Hughes) points us to this article by John Hilgart in defence of the old methods of comics art and printing, the classic four colour process and the ‘dots’ (an aspect of old colour comics production that Lichtenstein blew up for his pop art grabs from other artists). It’s an older [...]

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SelfMadeHero bought by Abrams

Thursday, October 13, 2011

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The Bookseller announces that one of our very favourite comics publishers, SelfMadeHero, has been bought by US publisher Abrams; Emma Hayley and Doug Wallace will be staying on in their positions according to the Bookseller, I am relieved to read. SelfMadeHero have consistently proven themselves to be one of our favourite publishers over the last [...]

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Gollancz is 50

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

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This year marks the 50th anniversary of one of the UK’s most famous major science fiction publishers, Victor Gollancz, which has published some truly brilliant work by some fantastic writers as diverse as Richard Morgan, Alastair Reynolds, Pierre Pevel, Ian McDonald, Ben Aaronovitch, John Bruner, Sheri S Tepper, Joe Abercrombie, Michael Moorcock, Robert Holdstock, Joe [...]

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Secret Acres and 2010

Thursday, January 13, 2011

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The guys at respected small comics press Secret Acres blog about some tips and suggestions for small press publishing (which they acknowledge they haven’t always followed themselves!) and their own personal ups and downs. It’s interesting reading (via Top Shelf and Dirk Deppey): (Only Skin #5 by and (c) Sean Ford, published Secret Acres) “Recently, [...]

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“The Clash of British publishing”

Thursday, January 13, 2011

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The always interesting Rod McKie pulled himself away from his massive Green and Black’s chocolate hamper over the recent holidays to pen a great post on Blank Slate Books and the state of comics publishing in the UK. As with many of us he had worried in the past that we were continually producing some [...]

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Blank Slate’s new slate of books or Hope For the Future

Monday, December 13, 2010

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Kenny has been posting on the Blank Slate Books blog, mostly announcing the slate of graphic novels he’s planning to publish in 2011, but also talking optimistically about the state of comics publishing in the UK. As Kenny notes we’ve gone from despairing about the lack of independent comics publishers here, which has been a [...]

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Chalk Marks – new from Blank Slate

Thursday, November 18, 2010

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Kenny has announced an exciting  new project for Blank Slate Books – with a busy slate of releases for 2011 and more interesting artists worthy of publication than there is time or money to publish in a year he’s decided to take a leaf out of Fantagraphics’ book (which is indeed a good book to [...]

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