Desperado Debuts in January

While manga and superheroes top the sales charts and indy comics win the lit awards, midlist genre books remain under-represented in the world of graphic novels. Joe Pruett is aiming to change that with his new Desperado imprint, distributed under the Image Comics banner. He hopes to give creators a place where they can present new properties in a multitude of genres without having to fit into a house style.

"I'm not doing manga, although I would if the right project came along, but I want to offer an alternative to what the mainstream companies are offering," he told PW. The line of books will debut in January.

The Desperado lineup offers a mix of collections, regular monthly comics and a format Pruett calls "the Graphic Novella"—48–64-page hardcovers by top talents. "This is a format which I really like, and I hope to produce more as time progresses," he said. The first project in this format will be Freak Show by Bruce Jones and Bernie Wrightson, the never-before-collected lavish horror strip from Heavy Metal. Next up is Roundeye, a new samurai love story by Tony Harris (Starman, Ex Machina). Projects by Paul Jenkins (Origins), Bob Burden (Flaming Carrot) and British fantasist Mark Chadbourn (the Age of Misrule series) are also in the pipeline.

Pruett also hopes to put out a variety of art books. "These won't be pin-up books, but rather retrospectives of an artist's entire career, covering decades of work." The first two subjects are multiple Eisner Award winner P. Craig Russell and Brian Bolland.

As for more traditional graphic novels, one of Desperado's first offerings will be a 200-page collection of the best of Negative Burn an anthology that Pruett edited in the 199os, which published everyone from Alan Moore to Jeff Smith.

Pruett's background goes back to Caliber Comics, where he launched Negative Burn. After the comics market shrank in the late 1990s, he turned to writing comics for Marvel, but he never lost the bug for publishing. He thinks the kind of eclectic mainstream fare Desperado offers doesn't have many outlets in the current publishing scene.

"I feel the market is ready for fresh ideas and not just the same formula over and over again," Pruett said. "Desperado is about creativity and not about brands. My sales pitch to creators is 'come to Desperado, bring your personal ideas and properties, retain ownership and have fun.' It seems to be working so far. Everything we put out won't appeal to everyone, but I guarantee it will appeal to someone."