Abrams to Pub 'Mom's Cancer'

Knopf isn't the only New York house interested in serious nonfiction comics. Following the announcement of Knopf's plans to publish Marisa Acocella Marchetto's comics memoir of her own bout with cancer (News, Apr. 25), Harry N. Abrams has acquired the rights to publish Mom's Cancer by Brian Fies, a graphic nonfiction account of his mother's diagnosis and recovery from cancer and his family's efforts to cope.

The book was acquired by Abrams senior editor Charles Kochman and will be published in hardcover in spring 2006. Originally published as a Web comic, highlights of Mom's Cancer are available at www.momscancer.com. It has been nominated for an Eisner Award, the comics industry prize for the year's best work.

Kochman, who joined Abrams in February after 12 years at DC Comics, said the acquisition was an effort by Abrams to publish more pop culture– oriented material. He declined to reveal the size of the advance, but quipped that it "is so way less" than the $250,000 Knopf paid for Marchetto's Cancer Vixen. The book, he said, will have a "substantial first printing, something larger than usual for Abrams."

Fies is a freelance science writer and illustrator who lives in Santa Rosa, Calif. Mom's Cancer is his first work of graphic nonfiction. He's familiar with Harvey Pekar's Our Cancer Year, published in 1994 by Four Walls Eight Windows, but said, "I avoided reading it until I finished. But it was helpful to know that something like this could be done."