HP Offers Reprints, New Titles

Launched in 1999 as the U.S. publishing arm of the France-based Humanoids Group, Humanoids Publishing is releasing a series of English language reprints and original comics works in hardcover and trade paperback editions.

Fabrice Giger, president of the Humanoids Group, told PW that HG controls more than 60% of the science fiction and heroic fantasy segments of the French comics industry. Based in Los Angeles, Humanoids Publishing is also active in films and computer animation. Although the European market for comics is very different, Giger told PW that he was very interested in the U.S. market for graphic novels: "we expect to reach consumers with hardcover collections that we can sell through bookstores like Barnes & Noble." Humanoids will be releasing three to five new titles a month, Giger said.

In January, the firm released The Nikopol Trilogy by Enki Bilal, an eerie and acclaimed science fiction epic that details the encounter between Egyptian gods and humankind in the 21stcentury. The new Humanoids edition collects the three installments in a single volume, and the book has sold more than 300,000 copies in France. The books were originally released separately in the U.S. in the 1980s by Catalan Communications. In the U.S., Humanoids was conservative. The first printing in January was 2,000 copies, and the company has already gone back to press for another 2,000.

Adrian Cruz, managing editor of Humanoids, added that books will include works by European and American artists and mix reprints with original works. "We're going to publish as many as we can. We want to build a backlist," he said. HP has gone back to press on The Nikopol Trilogy, and there are currently 4,000 copies in print.

Future English-language science fiction titles include The Saga of the Metabarons, a collaboration between Alexandro Jodorowsky, Moebius and Juan Gimenez; The Dormant Beast by Enki Bilal; and The Technopriests by Alexandro Jodorowsky, Zoran Janjetov and Fred Beltran.