Incognegro was a fascinating historical thriller with a still-timely premise. A light-skinned black man goes undercover to report on lynchings in the 1930s in the graphic novel by Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece, first published in 2008 from Vertigo. It becomes personal when he has to rescue his darker-skinned brother from accusations of murder down South. Vertigo was founded by editor Karen Berger, who has since left DC with their move to the West Coast and is now setting up […]

My gracious, Wizard World has been announcing quite a lot lately. Let’s hit the high points. Wizard Magazine Will Return Before the conventions, Wizard was a magazine. One that pandered to fanboys and featured a price guide that focused on speculation and promoting comics that they said would be hot (thus valuable). One that ceased publication in 2011 after almost 20 years of print. Now, with the hiring of Brian Walton (formerly of Nerdist) as their Director of Content, they’re […]

Cartoon Crossroads Columbus is quite the unusual comic show. It’s a “free, citywide arts festival” involving both downtown Columbus and Ohio State University (particularly the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum). This year, it will be held September 28 through October 1, and they’ve brought on a new staffer to make the experience even better. Long-time comic journalist Tom Spurgeon has been serving as Festival Director, with Jeff Smith (Bone) as President and Artistic Director. This year, he’s joined by […]

The latest Diamond Previews catalog lists a lot of books worth checking out. You can order them now through your local comic shop for delivery in October or later. Phoebe and Her Unicorn in the Magic Storm AMP! Comics for Kids, $9.99, AUG17 1149, due out October 18 There have been five collections of this charming comic strip, beginning with Phoebe and Her Unicorn, and they’re all great. Now, Dana Simpson has created an original graphic novel with the characters: […]

Boom! Studios has announced that they will be releasing in November the Giant Days 2017 Special. Creator/writer John Allison is putting together, in his words, “a tribute to the films of Richard Curtis, and the Bridget Jones movies, by someone who has seen those movies perhaps once, and maybe not all the way through.” Artist Jenn St-Onge (Jem: The Misfits) chimes in: “Readers can expect some holiday hijinx from our main ladies (with only the best intentions, of course), some […]

Due out next year from Iron Circus Comics is a restaurant-set graphic novel with a fascinating premise. Meal promises “romance, restaurant politics, and the finest food on six legs” with this description: Yarrow McMurray is a 23-year-old aspiring chef who’s moved to a new city to make her mark on the world of food. But her cuisine is crawling with ingredients like no other — because she cooks with insects. Ants, spiders, worms, flies — they all have a place […]

As part of their reveal of covers for First Second’s Spring 2018 releases, EW.com has posted the cover below for All Summer Long, the next book from Hope Larson. Larson described it on Twitter as “a fairly low-key book about friendship and music… set in Eagle Rock, in Los Angeles” and pointed out that it would be the first book she’s both written and drawn since her wildly popular adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time. (I added the “wildly popular” […]

Angel City: Town Without Pity will be in your local comic shop (if they were smart and ordered some in) tomorrow. It’s a hard-boiled but loving look back at 1930s Hollywood, where an aspiring actress gets wrapped up in conspiracies and crimes with mobsters and movie studio bigwigs (many inspired by real-life events) when she starts trying to find out who killed a friend of hers. It’s written by Janet Harvey and drawn by Megan Levens (Madame Frankenstein). The book […]