First up, a very astute post from Nadia about the limitations of comics’ journalism when we talk about ‘indie’ books. For the sake of this weekly column, I use it as a catch-all term for all those publishers and books outside Marvel and DC, but she’s right that there is a huge difference between a publisher like Valiant versus a wholly creator-owned book like Rachel Rising that Terry Moore does himself. Good food for thought there.
Two of my favorite artists got to do in-depth interviews on their creator owned books: Dustin Nguyen discussed Descender’s robotic world and Declan Shalvey talked the mad, sci-fi work he’s doing in Injection. Both of these books are so delightfully weird with wonderful world-building, and it’s so great to hear an artist go in-depth into how to set a tone to a book. Also, these both just got their first trade paperbacks at $10 a pop–perfect time to check them out if one catches your fancy!
Hurrah, hooray, Kate Beaton’s new book is out today! I am beyond excited for Step Aside, Pops, the second collection of her webcomic Hark! A Vagrant. This interview with The Guardian goes into how Beaton’s interest and background inspires her work. Especially interesting is the time she worked in the oil sands industry, which was the subject of some of her long(er) form comics.
Zoe Saldana has been cast in the I Kill Giants film as a psychologist attempting to help and understand the lead character’s Barbara’s increasingly elaborate fantasy life. Pretty excited to see Saldana in a comics movie that doesn’t involve her being painted green, not gonna lie.
Just announced yesterday, Nimona by Noelle Stevenson is a candidate for the National Book Awards! It’s one of the few graphic novels to be nominated in the award’s history and is up for the young people literature prize. Stevenson is having an AWESOME year.
There was some worry about how Dark Horse would fare once it lost the Star Wars license this year, but Dave Marshall has been named new Editor-in-Chief and seems to be excited about the publisher’s prospects. Interesting to note that landing Avatar: The Last Airbender license seems to have been a big win for Dark Horse and got it regularly hitting the NY Times bestseller list.
