Comics Take the Stage At BookExpo
This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on May 23, 2006 Sign up now!
by Douglas Wolk and Calvin Reid, PW Comics Week -- Publishers Weekly, 5/23/2006
 The comics and memoir panel. Pictured (l. to r.) are Marisa Acocella Marchetto, Alison Bechdel, Tom LeBien, David Axe, Harvey Pekar and moderator Calvin Reid Photo: stevekagan.com |
The most notable of those was Houghton Mifflin, which was promoting two high-profile books: Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, easily the most talked-about literary comics work of the show, and The Best American Comics 2006, with guest editor Harvey Pekar. (Both Bechdel and Pekar appeared on a panel, "Pictures of a Life: Comics and the Memoir," along with authors Marisa Acocella Marchetto (Knopf's Cancer Vixen), David Axe (NBM's War Fix), and Thomas LeBien (publisher of Hill & Wang's comics adaptation of the 9/11 Report).
Surprisingly, there weren't too many announcements of other major literary graphic novels, although First Second (which was distributing galleys of its second season's books, including Joann Sfar's Klezmer, and hosted Grady Klein for a Lost Colony signing) noted that it had signed Jim Ottaviani to a two-book deal, beginning with a comics biography of the late physicist Richard Feynman. First Second editorial director Mark Siegel said the Feynman book will be part of a new nonfiction comics line set to begin at First Second. Pantheon has scheduled Kim Deitch's Alias the Cat for next spring, and there was chatter on the floor about Simon & Schuster inking art comics phenom Hope Larson for two books.
And there was another measure of the transformation of comics publishers into book publishers. A few years ago, advance galleys of indie comics publishers' books would have been unheard of; this year, there were a stack of them. Fantagraphics, set up in the booth of its book trade distributor W.W. Norton,, hosted Linda Medley signing her Castle Waiting collection, and drummed up excitement for its Popeye reprints this fall. Even more exciting, Fantgraphics plans to republish the 15 volume Love & Rockets trade book backlist, reformated into a 7 volume manga-sized series, priced at $14.95 each. In the FSG booth, Drawn & Quarterly had Miriam Katin signing We Are On Our Own, her moving Holocaust memoir, and handed out galleys including Kevin Huizenga's book debut Curses. A few yards away, at Hill & Wang, FSG's nonfiction imprint, H&W publisher Thomas LeBien was promoting the forthcoming Novel Graphics line, which includes LeBien's prize project, a comics adaptation of the 9/11 Report and a forthcoming series of biographies of Malcolm X, Ronald Reagan and others.
The big mainstream publishers were gearing up for summer tie-ins with blockbuster movies—Superman Returns at DC and X-Men: The Last Stand at Marvel—and also fanning the flames for future titles with star writers: DC is publishing Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier for the holiday season, and Marvel has projects with Stephen King, Neil Gaiman and Eric Jerome Dickey that it will serialize en route to hardcover publication, as well as a hotly anticipated Halo graphic novel. Meanwhile, Dark Horse was preparing to roll out more Star Wars titles, and a few newer publishers were fielding questions about their own media tie-ins, especially Transformers and forthcoming Oz and Clive Barker projects at IDW, and Family Guy at Devil's Due.
Manga continues to be huge with bookstores and librarians alike, and manga publishers are delving into licensed properties and cross-medium synergy. This year Viz is celebrating its 20th anniversary. The manga publisher is continuing to move piles of Naruto books and preparing to launch the semi-self-referential Shojo Beat Mango Artist Academy, an unusual narrative manga how-to book, as well as its own version of original manga. It's a soccer manga/promotional title called Next Stop: Germany, created as part of a World Cup promotion in conjunction with the U.S. Men's National Soccer Team, which will be available only at the two U.S. Men's National Soccer Team exhibition games later this month. Both Viz and DC's CMX line will separately be publishing different versions of Train Man: Densha Otoko.
Tokyopop, now distributed by HarperCollins, showcased its Manga Chapters and Manga Readers books for the younger, preteen set, as well as its Pop Fiction teen prose line. This fall the house will launch Star Trek manga, and its most anticipated project seems to be Hellgate.
Vertical is following up its recently concluded Buddha series with another Osamu Tezuka project, Ode to Kirihito, launching this fall, and next year will see Keiko Takemiya's science-fiction shojo manga To Terra. Watson-Guptill is preparing another of Christopher Hart's popular how-to-draw-manga books, Manga Mania: Magical Girls and Friends. And Robert Napton, director of Bandai Entertainment's recently launched manga publishing unit, announced a collaboration with Top Cow on a manga-sized edition of a Lara Croft, Tomb Raider book
While comics publishing had a significant presence (PW's pre-BEA issue listed at least 35 comics-related publishers, not counting major houses), attendance at comics-related panel discussions ranged from disappointing to adequate. An hour-long public interview with LeBien on his comics adaptation of the 9/11 Report (which will be podcast at a later date) was sparsely attended, though LeBien had much to say about the development of the project and working with comics veterans Ernie Colon and Syd Jacobsen to produce the book. The "Comics and the Memoir" panel drew a respectable crowd and featured engaged questions from both the audience and among the panelists. And "Demystifying Distribution," moderated by PWCW's Judith Rosen, with Dark Horse's Michael Martens and representatives from Bookazine, Brodart and Diamond, featured a lively audience and pointed questions from the librarians in attendance on age ratings for manga and the need for more comics review coverage.
On the art book publishing side of things, the fifth column of the Ganzfeld anthology series, this one subtitled Japanada, will be coming from Gingko Press in early November. Last Gasp reported that it had gotten wholesale orders for 7,500 copies of Mark Ryden's new art book in one day. Finally, a couple of university presses made much of their comics-related books: University of Mississippi Press put together a brochure to promote its books on comics studies and animation, and Yale University Press was hyping two forthcoming coffee-table hardcovers on comics edited, respectively, by Todd Hignite and cartoonist Ivan Brunetti.
