D&Q Grabs New Lynda Barry Title

This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on January 9, 2007 Sign up now!

by Calvin Reid, PW Comics Week -- Publishers Weekly, 1/9/2007

Drawn & Quarterly publisher Chris Oliveros will publish What It Is, acclaimed cartoonist Lynda Barry's first new book since 2002, in early 2008. D&Q will also republish her five-volume backlist of comic strip collections in newly redesigned editions. The multiyear deal is for world rights and was negotiated by agent Liz Darshanoff.

Barry is best known for her long-running, influential comics strip Ernie Pook's Comeek—featuring popular preadolescents Marlys and her brother, Freddie—which has run in alternative weeklies around the country since 1979.

Describing What It Is as "part comics, collages and paintings," Oliveros said it will be followed later in 2008 by the first of five redesigned volumes (one each year) collecting the entire run of Ernie Pook's Comeek. Each volume will cover five years of the strip. D&Q will also publish an additional volume of Barry's strips and illustrations that have appeared in Esquire, McSweeney's, RAW and other publications. D&Q, which is distributed by FSG, will publish seven Barry titles through 2011.

The deal does not include three titles published by Sasquatch Books or the illustrated novel Cruddy (S&S, 2000). Barry has also been published by HarperPerennial. Oliveros emphasized that the republished collections will restore the comic strip, which over the years had been reformatted for book publication, to its original square format. Each volume will include an introduction by Barry.

"Lynda is one of our greatest cartoonists," said Oliveros, "and we're going to reintroduce the public to her work."