Drama Cover Revealed; Telgemeier’s Followup to Smile

Raina Telgemeier (author of Smile, one of the best graphic novels of 2010) has released this cover to her next book, Drama. Due in September 2012 from Scholastic, Drama involves theater geeks working stage crew in middle school. What a great title! And I love that strong purple. Update: The book is now available at Amazon with this description: Callie loves theater. And while she would totally try out for her middle school’s production of Moon Over Mississippi, she’s a […]

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The Secret World of Arrietty Out Next Month

On February 17, Disney will release the newest Studio Ghibli movie: The Secret World of Arrietty. Here’s the trailer: As pointed out, this is based on the classic series of novels that began with The Borrowers by Mary Norton, about a family of little people who live in the walls of houses and live off items “borrowed” from the Big People. It’s a wonderful choice for a cartoon, since animation allows the various-sized characters to interact realistically without a layer […]

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Kate Beaton Draws Reading

Kate Beaton (Hark! A Vagrant) writes and draws about her reading style for The Globe and Mail. (Via Tom Spurgeon.) This illustration shows both her facility for capturing movement beautifully and her own twitchy poses. I can relate, especially that last one with the little stars. Ah, iconic cartoon language!

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Are Comics Detrimental to Creators?

Tom Spurgeon posted today this thought-provoking quote: there’s a bunch of stuff out there right now on creative teams fighting and/or dissolving. It’s not something I care to link to, but you can find it pretty easily if you look around. The thing that I wanted to note is that this kind of public griping always seems to happen when comics is in a real emotionally stressful period; I think the mini-era we’re in qualifies, for sure. I think we’re […]

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What Is DC Thinking? Sex, Violence, Racism, and Marketing

DC’s in the news again, and not necessarily for good reasons. First, there was the report done by a Washington, D.C. TV station. According to ICv2, the story was introduced “with the titillating lead-in ‘Graphic violence and sex: that’s what you’ll find in the pages of DC Comics today.’” While I’m against dragging out the old falsehood that all comics are for kids, like many other people, I was disturbed by the bottom-feeding adolescent approach of such titles as Catwoman […]

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Bonus Manga Out Loud Podcast Discussing DMP’s Barbara Kickstarter

Ed and I were joined by Lissa Pattillo and Alex Hoffman to discuss the DMP Kickstarter to publish Osamu Tezuka’s Barbara in a bonus episode of the Manga Out Loud podcast. We put this together quickly, while the topic was fresh in everyone’s mind. Our special guest is Ben Applegate, who organizes the DMP Kickstarters, and I very much appreciated his willingness to tell us more about the company’s vision for these projects, as well as providing some print run […]

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Sanctuary by Stephen Coughlin

Sanctuary is one of the digitally serialized comics coming out from SLG Publishing. Stephen Coughlin has created a story he calls a “Disney murder mystery” personalizing a group of animals kept in a park-like animal sanctuary. I found it funny, suspenseful, and well-cartooned. The animals are treated like people, with their own personalities and motivations, and while that’s unrealistic, it’s also entertaining. It reminded me of something like Madagascar … until the research scientists revealed their darker sides. That sets […]

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Four Months In, DC Makes Some Major Adjustments

The new DC 52, the complete reboot of their superhero comic line that restarted with Justice League #1, began in September 2011, so it’s now four months old. Apparently, that’s provided enough data for the decision-makers to make some changes in the line. (And for the first delay. Flagship title Justice League will ship issue #5 a week late. Since it’s drawn by Jim Lee, who also has other responsibilities as a company official, this is not terribly surprising.) The […]

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