Poor Valiant. They try so hard but come out with such pedestrian, mediocre comics. Yet I admire their willingness to keep plugging and trying new methods to get attention, and more importantly, readers. Their latest announcement, though, just made me scratch my head. Valiant is launching a channel on Quidd, “the world’s first platform for collecting and trading emojis, stickers, and cards.” (iOS only.) I know this is a fogey thing to say, but I have no idea how you […]

Fantagraphics has announced that they will be publishing Ellen Forney’s next book, Rock Steady: Brilliant Advice From My Bipolar Life. It’s termed a “graphic novel/self-help book” and a companion to her previous graphic memoir, Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me. I really liked Marbles for exploring how to balance artistic creativity with treatment of a misunderstood mental condition. Rock Steady continues in that vein, portraying Forney’s advice and stories about maintaining stability. Rock Steady, “a survival guide of tips, tricks […]

I first heard of Ali’s House, a newspaper comic strip about an Arab-American family by Marguerite Dabaie and Tom Hart, when I read Hart’s The Sequential Artists Workshop Guide to Creating Professional Comic Strips. Hart uses their experiences working together as examples of his points. From what I can piece together, the strip was originally developed in 2008 for King Features Syndicate. The pitch was that human nature, particularly in a family, is universal, although the cultural trappings may be […]