Graphix Gets Goosebumps
This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on June 6, 2006 Sign up now!
by Kai-Ming Cha, PW Comics Week -- Publishers Weekly, 6/6/2006
First there was The Baby-sitters Club, now there's Goosebumps. Graphix, Scholastic's graphic novels imprint, has expanded its list to include comics versions of its popular Goosebumps horror series.
The Goosebumps graphic novels will be black-and-white adaptations of the existing novels in the R.L. Stine Goosebumps series. Each book will collect three stories by theme; the first will be Creepy Creatures (which collects "The Werewolf of Fever Swamp," "The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight" and "The Abominable Snowman"), which will be released in October. Terror Trips and Scary Summer will follow in March and July of next year.
"The Goosebumps stories just lend themselves to visual presentation," says Scholastic senior editor Sheila Keenan. Keenan pursued artists whose illustration style would work well with each story. "I looked for people whose art would add to the Goosebumps style but also connect with a particular story." Among the artists who'll be working on the series are comics all-stars Scott Morse, Greg Ruth, Gabriel Hernandez, Amy Kim Ganter, Jill Thompson, Dean Haspiel and Ted Naifeh.
Goosebumps is a wildly popular prose series with more 250 million copies in print. It's a very well-known property and fans of the series will be looking carefully to see how the graphic novels differ from the original material.
"The characters come alive in a different way," Keenan explains. The combination of the unique sensibilities of the artists involved and very familiar stories "makes for a powerful combination," she says. "Readers are going to get a really big visual bang with the horror." Goosebumps is the fourth comics series to come from the Graphix line, following on the heels of the comics adaptation of The Baby-sitters Club by artist Raina Telegemier and artist Chynna Clugston's Queen Bee. The Graphix line was launched in 2005 with Jeff Smith's fantasy series Bone.
Keenan says she is excited by the flexibility of the graphic novel medium in attracting readers, and she's also considering projects aimed at a younger market, readers age five to eight.. She sees possibilities in nonfiction, specifically history and science, for future comics projects. But she stresses that, like Scholastic's publishing in general, Graphix's intended audience is 8-13-year-olds. "When people are buying a Scholastic product, they know it's age appropriate," says Keenan. "We're the experts at making books for kids. We're bringing in all that practice and expertise to what we think is a hot format."
However, while kids and publishers have embraced comics and graphic novels as exciting reading material, some parents may not be so pleased. Asked about the disconnect between what kids want to read and what their parents want them to read, Keenan points to librarians. "The main concern for a librarian is getting kids into the library and getting them to read. Graphic novels are getting kids to read," she says.
Graphic novels, Keenan explains, "model" the reading process for kids. "There's context and visual and verbal cues." She emphasizes that parents should not assume there's nothing substantial to read in a graphic novel. And, of course, she expects that parents who may be unfamiliar with graphic novels will be aided by the Scholastic brand.
"We are deliberately making graphics novels for kids," says Keenan. "The story is good, the writing is good. You can't give that short shrift just because they have good pictures."
