By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 8/28/2015
§ I don’t often run Kickstarter checks, but I see Mike Dawson’s Rules for Dating my Daughter kickstarter is nearly fully funded after only a few days! Granted it was a pretty modest goal, but I’m glad to see a book of indie non fiction comics get this much support. Also, Mike, I told ya: […]
By: jules,
on 8/28/2015
Last week I wrote here about the picture books of three newcomers, so I’ve got art (and, in some cases, preliminary images) from each book today. Those books are Jayme McGowan’s One Bear Extraordinaire (Abrams, September 2015), Victoria Turnbull’s The Sea Tiger (Candlewick, October 2015), and Phoebe Wahl’s Sonya’s Chickens (Tundra, August 2015).
Enjoy the art!
ONE BEAR EXTRAORDINAIRE. Copyright © 2015 by Jayme McGowan. Published by Abrams, New York. All images reproduced by permission of Jayme McGowan.
THE SEA TIGER. Copyright © 2014 by Victoria Turnbull. Illustrations reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA.
SONYA’S CHICKENS. Copyright © 2015 by Phoebe Wahl. Published by Tundra Books, a division of Penguin Random House, New York. All images reproduced by permission of Phoebe Wahl.
By: jules,
on 8/27/2015
Big thanks to Nick Patton for having me as a guest over at his place, The Picturebooking Podcast, this week.
He and I chat about blogging and why precisely those of us who do it do it, and we talk about 7-Imp and picture books.
AND lots of other stuff.
The link is here.
It was a pleasure to chat with him, and I appreciate the invitation to do so.
Until tomorrow …
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 8/27/2015
Marvel is mixing up the publishing line with the surprise addition of another book in the Guardians of The Galaxy family: Guardians of Infinity. ComicBook.com broke the news. Previous Guardians author Dan Abnett is returning to the franchise with an art team including Marvel star Carlo Barberi on art. The roster includes new and old Guardians favorites: Drax, Rocket Raccoon, […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 8/27/2015
I seem to recall a few years back that Marvel Studios was really hot on getting Mads Mikkelsen on-board with one of their productions, to the point where he was cast as Malekith in Thor: The Dark World, but had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts with the then-debuting Hannibal. Given what Christopher Eccleston […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 8/27/2015
Civil War Box Set! (Shipping three months after Christmas. Yeah, it ties in with the movie, but why not offer it for Christmas? Has Marvel solved their movie backlist problem? Do the reprints/tie-ins sell? Is there a Batman Effect for Marvel’s MCU?) Color Deadpool! Color Civil War! Deadpool Omnibus! (which starts in the middle?) Marvel […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 8/27/2015
Some big news came out of Marvel Studios today as they unveiled some concept art from next year’s Captain America: Civil War. The art confirms the members of each side in the film’s hero on hero war and gives us some new information about the movie’s major players. Of note is Agent 13 Sharon Carter, who made her […]
By: hannahehrlich,
on 8/27/2015
In this post, Tu Books Publisher Stacy Whitman discusses why avoiding discussions of race with young people can do more harm than good.
Many African American parents already know what “the talk” is. It’s not the talk that many white parents might expect—we’re not talking about the birds and the bees. No, this “talk” is the one where black parents have to sit with their children and discuss how they might be perceived by the world around them: particularly police, but also teachers, neighbors, and friends who are not from their racial background.
Though the burden often falls on parents of color alone to discuss these issues with their children, in reality all parents should address race with their kids in a conscious and meaningful way. Communities are also seeking ways to address interpersonal racial issues, 
particularly in schools. Having the tools to know how to discuss racial matters is essential for children from all backgrounds.
Research has shown that the “colorblind” approach—teaching children that it is racist to acknowledge racial and ethnic differences—is doing no one any favors, and in fact can reinforce racist attitudes and assumptions, and especially reify systemic racism. “Black children know irrefutably that they’re black by the time they’re about 6 years old and probably earlier,” one article noted in our research. Do white children know they’re white? If not, how do they think of themselves?
At Lee & Low, we’ve always believed that even the youngest readers have the capacity to understand and appreciate difference—that’s why many of our children’s books address issues like racism and discrimination. But you don’t have to take our word for it: many experts, educators, and academics have done work on this topic as well and their recommendations can help point parents and teachers in the right direction.
“Young children are hard-wired in their brains to notice difference and to categorize it. So it is vital during early childhood to put some context around making sense of differences,” said Shannon Nagy, preschool director in 2011 at Lincoln Park Cooperative Nursery School in Chicago.
Studies have also shown that not addressing difference does not make children colorblind—it only encourages them to absorb the implicit racial messages of American society. Children learn that race is a category even when parents try to teach them not to recognize race. Much like children learn to perform regional accents even when their parents are from another location, children learn 
how the larger society around them views race, via inference and transductive reasoning. “In other words, children pick upon the ways in which whiteness is normalized and privileged in U.S. society.”
Teaching children to be “colorblind” has led children (and adults) to believe that it’s rude or racist to even point out racial differences—even kids of color. This makes it exponentially harder to have frank discussions about racial issues when they need to be had.
“Nonwhite parents are about three times more likely to discuss race than white parents,” said a 2007 study. “It’s the children whose parents do directly address race — and directly means far more than vaguely declaring everyone to be equal — who are less likely to make assumptions about people based on the color of our skin.”
One study even had white parents dropping out of the project when the researchers asked them to discuss racial attitudes with their children, even when they went into the study knowing that it was intended to measure children’s racial attitudes.
Many argue that “the talk” should happen far more often than once, and that parents shouldn’t bear the sole burden to teach their kids about race—that it is a community-wide issue.
Erin Winkler provides several ways for parents and teachers to address the biases that children might pick up, including discussing 
the issue in an age-appropriate way, with accurate information that doesn’t shame or silence children for having questions. They also suggest encouraging complex thinking and taking children’s questions and biased statements seriously—“When children are taught to pay attention to multiple attributes of a person at once (e.g., not just race), reduced levels of bias are shown,” the author notes, and suggests that the most important thing parents and teachers can do is to give children information that empowers them to be anti-racist.
One New York City-area school asked, “Can racism be stopped in the third grade?” They began a “racial affinity program,” in which elementary-age kids were sorted by racial groups for discussions of questions that “might seem impolite otherwise,” and to then come together as a school community to discuss these questions and experiences in a way that fosters greater communication. Parents and students are mixed on whether this program succeeded, with Asian students noting that the discussions of race still focused on the dichotomy of black and white, and some parents uncomfortable with the idea of discussing race at all. The administration notes, however, that many of their students of color needed this program—mandatory for all students—to combat microaggressions between students.
Allie Jane Bruce, the librarian at Bank Street School in New York City, has been discussing race, biases, and stereotypes with the students in her school for three years, using children’s book covers as a launching point. “I’m constantly delighted by the new discoveries kids make, and by the wisdom and insight already present in 11- and 12-year-olds,” Bruce noted in her most recent series of blog posts about the curriculum, which she has named “Loudness in the Library.” She notes especially that kids at this age tend to feel very uncomfortable with discussing race at first. “The fact that race-related conversations are so very fraught is a huge part of the problem. We must be able to communicate in order to solve problems that exist at interpersonal, institutional, and societal levels. If kids in 6th grade already have the inclination to stay silent in conversations on race, how much stronger will that inclination be in adults? And if we can’t talk about race and racism, how will things ever get better?”
Parents, what does “the talk” look like in your home? Teachers and librarians, how do you approach discussions about race with your students and patrons?
Stacy Whitman is Editorial Director and Publisher of Tu Books, an imprint of LEE & LOW BOOKS that publishes diverse science fiction and fantasy for middle grade and young adult readers.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 8/26/2015
Ever wondered what the exact Pantone shade of Batman’s cowl is (circa 1980)? How about Superman’s skin? Or perhaps what parts, exactly, are visible in Wonder Woman’s invisible jet? Well look no further, because legendary DC artist Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez has you covered. He posted the 1982 DC Comics Style Guide on his Facebook page today. The Style […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 8/26/2015
After restoring our collective brain patterns from last week’s insane Podcorn visitation, the men and women hand selected by the government to write the world’s premiere comic book news website, The Beat, sought a nap. A new member of the team known as Frank Oliver aligned himself amongst our ranks, and after some comic book […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 8/26/2015
Greetings, sales charts fans! It's time once again to look at DC's sales figures. (Warning: This month's column contains a higher amount of ranting than usual...) July was not a good month, sales-wise, for DC Entertainment. Compared to June, the average sales per title dropped by over 8K, and they sold 300K fewer total units in the NA direct market, despite offering nine more titles. Sales were down across the board, in many cases significantly, except for one title: Batgirl. Why did things drop so significantly? Three main reasons:
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 8/26/2015
The Legend of Korra, Nickelodeon’s four season follow up to the beloved Avatar: the Last Airbender, is receiving a full series DVD box set. It was recently announced that Avatar would also finally be collected as a 16 DVD complete series box set this fall, so this move comes as little surprise. No release date was assigned […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 8/26/2015
We've already seen today that just jumping on a new, fresh direction isn't enough to make a sales success, but what about over at Marvel? As I've noted their whopping sales have been led by the astonishing success of their Star Wars comics, but variant covers are also strong in this one. Star Wars #1 had over 100 variants, for instance. The upcoming hip hop variant program wasn't just problematic from a creator standpoint, however, it's also set new levels of frustration for retailers who have to order high on other books just to be able to ORDER copies of the variants, as revealed on Reddit by retailer Calum Johnston and explained at the Outhouse. Apparently a frustrated retailers posted the above annotated order sheet for the variants, showing how high order would have to be.
By: keilinh,
on 8/26/2015
Kandace Coston is LEE & LOW’s summer intern. She is one of five recipients of the We Need Diverse Books Internship Program inaugural grant. She graduated from Barnard College where she majored in music and took every creative literature class possible. In her free time, Kandace pursues her other interests, which include American Sign Language, handmade jewelry, and composing cinematic adventures!
I’ve always loved personality quizzes. As a teenager I was obsessed with brightly-colored magazines promising to reveal and explain different traits of my personality. I spent hours answering quirky questions, deciphering ambiguous logic, and debating results. 
Often the answers were frivolous and vague like a daily zodiac reading; but every once in a while I got an explanation that cut through my skepticism and perfectly pinched my persona. It felt as though an omniscient force was watching me from within the glossy pages. Those goose bump-inducing quizzes got neatly cut out and taken to school to entertain, and discreetly dissect, my friends.
When I was offered the opportunity to write a personality quiz for Tu Books’ popular YA mystery Ink and Ashes, I jumped at the chance. Creating the quiz would allow me to play haunting omniscient force! I was determined to craft a quiz so poignant and accurate it would induce goose bumps across the arms of every reader in the land! *Evil Laugh*. I immediately set to work in the dark lair of my cubicle.
My first step was to evaluate the six personality types I would use as results: Forrest, Nicholas, Claire, Parker, Fed, and Avery. I assigned each character a different color sticky tab and reread passages of the novel marking moments that revealed their different personality traits. I oversimplified each character’s persona by condensing it into three adjectives. Next I drew a line and plotted the two most opposite personalities, Nicholas and Avery, on either side. Everyone else seemed to fall in between these two characters. I plotted them appropriately completing the personality gradient.
Next, I began building questions that centered around an outing to the mall. The mall served as a great theme because it’s a natural setting for character-revealing situations. I crafted six questions that related to the novel and are circumstances readers can identify with. I thought four multiple-choice answers per question would suffice but it proved problematic. More than two characters were associated with one answer which made the personalities indistinguishable and muddied the results. Although each character is distinct, they possess certain overlapping traits. For example Parker is smart like Fed, who likes video games like Avery, who embraces conflict like Claire, and so on. The characters’ intersecting personalities led me to a significant realization: they shouldn’t be plotted on a line, but on a triangle.
With this new discovery I tried a different tactic. Instead of the quiz determining which character the reader was most like, it would determine which characters the reader was most unlike. The process reminded me of how doctors diagnose patients. The answers to questions would reveal symptoms of personality, and with each symptom the quiz would eliminate the character with contrasting personality traits. Through process of elimination the reader would be left with the character he/she has the most in common with. This seemed like a solid, plan until one of my Quiz Testers managed to perfectly eliminate all six characters with her six answers. This showed me I needed additional questions, more specific answers per question, and that this diagnosis-based grading mechanism was unnecessary.
After a few more adjustments to structure and questioning my quiz was finally complete. It turns out crafting a quiz doesn’t entail the wisdom of an omniscient force but rather focused trial and error. The quiz may not be perfectly accurate or provide poignant personality revelations but that’s not the point. The point is to engage fans of Ink and Ashes by giving them something fun to discuss and results to agree or disagree with. The quiz serves as another way for readers to see themselves in literature.
To take the Ink and Ashes quiz for yourself, check it out here.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 8/26/2015
Although the book is already shipping late, these Secret Wars just can’t be contained, and the Marvel blockbuster of exposing universes is adding a 9th issue—because 8 was NOT enough. Jonathan Hickman, Esad Ribic and cover artist Alex Ross ride out the storm with the issue, which ships in December. “Apparently, Secret Wars is even […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 8/26/2015
(Above, Ryan Sook’s cover for Superman: Alien American #1) If you’ve been following our sales charts here at The Beat you know that June was the big relaunch month for DC following Convergence and the move west, with 20 new #1s and new storylines and new costumes for old favorites. And sales were pretty good […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 8/26/2015
Here’s a story I never hoped to write: Bergen Street Comics, the lovely and much loved comics shop right up the street from Brooklyn’s Barclay’s Center is closing, according to a blog post by co-owner Tom Adams. After six amazing years Amy and I regret to announce that we will be closing the shop next […]
By: Betsy Bird,
on 8/25/2015
The Nest
By Kenneth Oppel
Illustrated by Jon Klassen
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
$16.99
ISBN: 978-1-4814-3232-0
On shelves October 6th
Oh, how I love middle grade horror. It’s a very specific breed of book, you know. Most people on the street might think of the Goosebumps books or similar ilk when they think of horror stories for the 10-year-old set, but that’s just a small portion of what turns out to be a much greater, grander set of stories. Children’s book horror takes on so many different forms. You have your post-apocalyptic, claustrophobic horrors, like Z for Zachariah by Robert C. O’Brien. You have your everyday-playthings-turned-evil tales like Doll Bones by Holly Black. You have your close family members turned evil stories ala Coraline by Neil Gaiman and Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn. And then there are the horror stories that shoot for the moon. The ones that aren’t afraid (no pun intended) to push the envelope a little. To lure you into a false sense of security before they unleash some true psychological scares. And the best ones are the ones that tie that horror into something larger than themselves. In Kenneth Oppel’s The Nest, the author approaches us with a very simple idea. What if your desire to make everything better, everyone happier, released an unimaginable horror? What do you do?
New babies are often cause for true celebration, but once in a while there are problems. Problems that render parents exhausted and helpless. Problems with the baby that go deep below the surface and touch every part of your life. For Steve, it feels like it’s been a long time since his family was happy. So when the angels appear in his dream offering to help with the baby, he welcomes them. True, they don’t say much specifically about what they can do. Not at the beginning, but why look a gift horse in the mouth? Anyway, there are other problems in Steve’s life as well. He may have to go back into therapy, and then there are these wasps building a nest on his house when he’s severely allergic to them. A fixed baby could be the answer to his prayers. Only, the creatures visiting him don’t appear to be angels anymore. And when it comes to “fixing” the baby . . . well, they may have other ideas entirely . . .
First and foremost, I don’t think I can actually talk about this book without dusting off the old “spoiler alert” sign. For me, the very fact that Oppel’s book is so beautifully succinct and restrained, renders it impossible not to talk about its various (and variegated) twists and turns. So I’m going to give pretty much everything away in this review. It’s a no holds barred approach, when you get right down to it. Starting with the angels of course. They’re wasps. And it only gets better from there.
It comes to this. I’ve no evidence to support this theory of mine as to one of the inspirations for the book. I’ve read no interviews with Oppel about where he gets his ideas. No articles on his thought processes. But part of the reason I like the man so much probably has to do with the fact that at some point in his life he must have been walking down the street, or the path, or the trail, and saw a wasp’s nest. And this man must have looked up at it, in all its paper-thin malice, and found himself with the following inescapable thought: “I bet you could fit a baby in there.” And I say unto you, it takes a mind like that to write a book like this.
Wasps are perhaps nature’s most impressive bullies. They seem to have been given such horrid advantages. Not only do they have terrible tempers and nasty dispositions, not only do they swarm, but unlike the comparatively sweet honeybee they can sting you multiple times and never die. It’s little wonder that they’re magnificent baddies in The Nest. The only question I have is why no one has until now realized how fabulous a foe they can be. Klassen’s queen is particularly perfect. It would have been all too easy for him to imbue her with a kind of White Witch austerity. Queens come built-in with sneers, after all. This queen, however, derives her power by being the ultimate confident. She’s sympathetic. She’s patient. She’s a mother who hears your concerns and allays them. Trouble is, you can’t trust her an inch and underneath that friendliness is a cold cruel agenda. She is, in short, my favorite baddie of the year. I didn’t like wasps to begin with. Now I abhor them with a deep inner dread usually reserved for childhood fears.
I mentioned earlier that the horror in this book comes from the idea that Steve’s attempts to make everything better, and his parents happier, instead cause him to consider committing an atrocity. In a moment of stress Steve gives his approval to the unthinkable and when he tries to rescind it he’s told that the matter is out of his hands. Kids screw up all the time and if they’re unlucky they screw up in such a way that their actions have consequences too big for their small lives. The guilt and horror they sometimes swallow can mark them for life. The queen of this story offers something we all can understand. A chance to “fix” everything and make the world perfect. Never mind that perfect doesn’t really exist. Never mind that the price she exacts is too high. If she came calling on you, offering to fix that one truly terrible thing in your life, wouldn’t you say yes? On the surface, child readers will probably react most strongly to the more obvious horror elements to this story. The toy telephone with the scratchy voice that sounds like “a piece of metal being held against a grindstone.” The perfect baby ready to be “born” The attic . . . *shudder* Oh, the attic. But it’s the deeper themes that will make their mark on them. And on anyone reading to them as well.
There are books where the child protagonist’s physical or mental challenges are named and identified and there are books where it’s left up to the reader to determine the degree to which the child is or is not on such a spectrum. A book like Wonder by R.J. Palacio or Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper will name the disability. A book like Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree by Lauren Tarshis or Counting by 7s by Holly Sloan won’t. There’s no right or wrong way to write such books, and in The Nest Klassen finds himself far more in the latter rather than former camp. Steve has had therapy in the past, and exhibits what could be construed to be obsessive compulsive behavior. What’s remarkable is that Klassen then weaves Steve’s actions into the book’s greater narrative. It becomes our hero’s driving force, this fight against impotence. All kids strive to have more control over their own lives, after all. Steve’s O.C.D. (though it is never defined in that way) is part of his helpless attempt to make things better, even if it’s just through the recitation of lists and names. At one point he repeats the word “congenital” and feels better, “As if knowing the names of things meant I had some power over them.”
When I was a young adult (not a teen) I was quite enamored of A.S. Byatt’s book Angels and Insects. It still remains one of my favorites and though I seem to have transferred my love of Byatt’s prose to the works of Laura Amy Schlitz (her juvenile contemporary and, I would argue, equivalent) there are elements of Byatt’s book in what Klassen has done here. His inclusion of religion isn’t a real touchstone of the novel, but it’s just a bit too prevalent to ignore. There is, for example, the opening line: “The first time I saw them, I thought they were angels.” Followed not too long after by a section where Steve reads off every night the list of people he wants to keep safe. “I didn’t really know who I was asking. Maybe it was God, but I didn’t really believe in God, so this wasn’t praying exactly.” He doesn’t question the angels of his dreams or their desire to help (at least initially). And God makes no personal appearance in the novel, directly or otherwise. Really, when all was said and done, my overall impression was that the book reminded me of David Almond’s Skellig with its angel/not angel, sick baby, and boy looking for answers where there are few to find. The difference being, of course, the fact that in Skellig the baby gets better and here the baby is saved but it is clear as crystal to even the most optimistic reader that it will never ever been the perfect baby every parent wishes for.
It’s funny that I can say so much without mentioning the language, but there you go. Oppel’s been wowing folks with his prose for years, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a cunning turn of phrase when you encounter it. Consider some of his lines. The knife guy is described like “He looked like his bones were meant for an even bigger body.” A description of a liquid trap for wasps is said to be akin to a, “soggy mass grave, the few survivors clambering over the dead bodies, trying in vain to climb out. It was like a vision of hell from that old painting I’d seen in the art gallery and never forgotten.” Or what may well be my favorite in the book, “… and they were regurgitating matter from their mouths and sculpting it into baby flesh.” And then there are the little elements the drive the story. We don’t learn the baby’s name until page 112. Or the very title itself. When Vanessa, Steve’s babysitter, is discussing nests she points out that humans make them as well. “Our houses are just big nests, really. A place where you can sleep and be safe – and grow.”
The choice of Jon Klassen as illustrator is fascinating to me. When I think of horror illustrations for kids the usual suspects are your Stephen Gammells or Gris Grimleys or Dave McKeans. Klassen’s different. When you hire him, you’re not asking him to ratchet up the fear factor, but rather to echo it and then take it down a notch to a place where a child reader can be safe. Take, for example, his work on Lemony Snicket’s The Dark A book where the very shadows speak, it wasn’t that Klassen was denying the creepier elements of the tale. But he tamed them somehow. And now that same taming sense is at work here. His pictures are rife with shadows and faceless adults, turned away or hidden from the viewer (and the viewer is clearly Steve/you). And his pictures do convey the tone of the book well. A curved knife on a porch is still a curved knife on a porch. Spend a little time flipping between the front and back endpapers, while you’re at it. Klassen so subtle with these. The moon moves. A single light is out in a house. But there’s a feeling of peace to the last picture, and a feeling of foreboding in the first. They’re practically identical so I don’t know how he managed that, but there it is. Honestly, you couldn’t have picked a better illustrator.
Suffice to say, this book would probably be the greatest class readaloud for fourth, fifth, or sixth graders the world has ever seen. When I was in fourth grade my teacher read us The Wicked Wicked Pigeon Ladies in the Garden by Mary Chase and I was never quite the same again. Thus do I bless some poor beleaguered child with the magnificent nightmares that will come with this book. Added Bonus for Teachers: You’ll never have to worry about school attendance ever again. There’s not a chapter here a kid would want to miss.
If I have a bone to pick with the author it is this: He’s Canadian. Normally, this is a good thing. Canadians are awesome. They give us a big old chunk of great literature every year. But Oppel as a Canadian is terribly awkward because if he were not and lived in, say, Savannah or something, then he could win some major American children’s literary awards with this book. And now he can’t. There are remarkably few awards the U.S. can grant this tale of flying creepy crawlies. Certainly he should (if there is any justice in the universe) be a shoo-in for Canada’s Governor General’s Award in the youth category and I’m pulling for him in the E.B. White Readaloud Award category as well, but otherwise I’m out to sea. Would that he had a home in Pasadena. Alas.
Children’s books come with lessons pre-installed for their young readers. Since we’re dealing with people who are coming up in the world and need some guidance, the messages tend towards the innocuous. Be yourself. Don’t judge a book by its cover. Friendship is important. Etc. The message behind The Nest could be debated ad nauseam for quite some time, but I think the thing to truly remember here is something Steve says near the end. “And there’s no such thing as normal anyways.” The belief in normality and perfection may be the truest villain in The Nest when you come right down to it. And Klassen has Steve try to figure out why it’s good to try to be normal if there is no true normal in the end. It’s a lesson adults have yet to master ourselves. Little wonder that The Nest ends up being what may be the most fascinating horror story written for kids you’ve yet to encounter. Smart as a whip with an edge to the terror you’re bound to appreciate, this is a truly great, truly scary, truly wonderful novel.
On shelves October 6th.
Source: Galley sent from publisher for review.
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By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 8/25/2015
It’s a little late since the book came out earlier this year, but an appearance by Dylan Horrocks in the US is always welcome. In fact, it’s been more than 10 years since he came to the US and 15 since Hicksville was the toast of SPX. Fantagraphics has just announced a tour for Sam […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 8/25/2015
While the Lois Lane one-shot from Marguerite Bennett, Emanuela Lupacchino and DC in 2014 may have failed to inspire interest in DC from an ongoing series starring Lane, it hasn’t stopped Switch Press from publishing not one, but two novels featuring the character. The second, an upcoming novel story entitled Lois Lane: Double Down will launch […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 8/25/2015
Though it’s called Invisible Republic, the Image series from Gabriel Hardman and Corinna Bechko has quickly made its presence felt. In five issues the husband and wife duo (along colorist Jordan Boyd and designer Dylan Todd) have managed to introduce a rich futuristic setting and a compelling set of characters. To celebrate the release of the first volume […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 8/25/2015
Today, The CW’s streaming network CW Seed debuted the first animated extension of their televised “Arrowverse” in Vixen, starring Megalyn Echikunwoke and featuring guest talent from the network’s lineup of superhero series (including Stephen Amell and Grant Gustin). For those curious, you can now watch the full episode and get a look at the newest addition to […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 8/25/2015
You heard it folks - the creator of the sensational Berserk series, Kentaro Miura, is bringing his first new work in 20 years to Dark Horse (and the US) in 2016. No word on how long this story will be, but going by Miura's track record, you may want to reserve a shelf or 3 for this one.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 8/25/2015
2016 Flame Con will be held for TWO days this time. And that's not all: they're moving to a bigger location too
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 8/25/2015
A new day a new Kickstarter but this one is notable: a collection of comics essays by Mike Dawson called Rules For Dating My Daughter. Although the book will contain new material, som of it originally ran on The Comics Journal, Slate Magazine, and The Nib. Here's one from The Nib which we admired before, "Longstreet Farm." Dawson's take on things is very funny but he spend a lot of time asking a lot of questions:
100% agreed on the comics magazine article, Heidi. A print mag (or any print endeavour) is going to live and die on its contents and ability to connect with the specific audience it is attempting to reach. You can’t try and be all things to all people – it’d be like an anthology series of single issues having wildly different tones within the pages. Most readers don’t seem to appreciate that, at least in the serialized anthology format, as it seems you’re only enjoying a fraction of the comic for the full price. Makes the decision to drop really easy.
Well, retailers didn’t even give ACE a chance, frankly. We had Diamond send along a gratis copy of #1 to every account in North America (some 3,500, I believe) and our order numbers subsequently rose by 15 copies. As editor, I wasn’t trying to be “all things to all people,” but I can’t disagree with Johanna and Heidi on the notion that ACE tried to be inclusive with readers and collectors alike. The raison d’être (and the reason I was paid for helming this laudable effort) was the belief that the marketplace could use a monthly price guide — a WIZARD with content, if you will… It was the best job I ever had, and there’s a slim chance it might be picked up on a less frequent schedule by another publisher, but who knows. Print is tough but the thought was, if it was comic-book size, appeared on the stands the same week every month, and contained fun content well presented, maybe readers devoted to print might give it a whirl. Frankly, I never heard one negative comment about the mag and the devoted readership — small, yes, but they seemed to love it — appears to lament its passage.
Important point: Rob Yeremian of The Time Capsule, Cranston, RI, was the publisher of ACE, a terrific retailer and friend. I was the mere editor/designer.
Thanks, Heidi.
“I know Bleeding Cool magazine is still going on, but I have never read a copy and only sighted it infrequently”.
Heidi, may I suggest you order it from your local comic retailer? I’m sure they would be happy to take your order. Interestingly, you’ve written about its contents before, I just presumed you’d read it before doing so.
The magazine’s editor-in-chief is Hannah Means-Shannon, who used to be a leading writer on The Beat, I seem to recall. She’s rather good, you might recall.
Anyway, Bleeding Cool Magazine still exists, it still sells, indeed, it has expanded its size recently, by over a quarter. I’m writing for its 19th issue right now, add a zero issue and two FCBD editions (do you not get press copies of all the FCBD books? You should.) and that’s the 22nd edition. Might be worth tracking down, even for anthropological reasons.
Don’t wait till May.
It is a shame about ACE. It’s always sad when a print magazine ends. We found that we3 couldn’t make print work which is why we switched to the web…
First time I’ve ever heard of ACE, even though I buy lots of comic mags (both US and french), love Mr. Cooke’s other magazines Comic Book Artist and Creator and check Previews every month.
If I hadn’t heard of it, the average reader had even less chances to do so, sadly.
Of course, the presence of a price guide would probably make me NOT to buy it, sorry to say.