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Alan's War: A Conversation Becomes a Book

First Second will release the English-language version of Alan’s War: The Memories of G.I. Alan Cope, by French artist Emmanuel Guibert, in October. The 336-page black and white work, a success in France, is based on the memoirs of an American soldier’s experiences during World War II and his life, and disillusionment with his country, in the conflict’s wake. Alan’s War will have an initial print run of approximately 30,000 copies.

Alan’s War came about after Guibert and Cope struck up a friendship in France, where the veteran moved in 1948. After taping Cope’s reminiscences, Guibert arranged his words into a coherent chronology. “My job is to make an illustrated book out of a conversation, possibly as good and vivid as the conversation was,” the artist explained. Lapin, the in-house magazine of comics publisher L’Association, serialized the work, and in 2000, a year after Cope died, the first of the three volumes of Alan’s War appeared. The volumes have since been translated into Spanish, Italy and German; First Second is publishing the series in one book.

It was important to Guibert that the book in appear in Cope’s native language, and the artist sees its publication in America as the closing of a circle. Cope recorded his memoirs in what the artist describes as “a truly wonderful French, the literary and poetic French the strangers speak.” In the translation, “the language had to appear as natural as it would have been if Alan had spoken directly in English.” He worked closely with the translator Kathryn Pulver, noting “It certainly wasn't an easy job for the translator, whom I salute with much gratitude.”
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Zombies, Mayhem and Martial Arts

Tokyo Zombie features the absurd and grotesque work of manga-ka Yasunaka Hanakuma and the art style of heta uma, which literally means, "bad but good."

September Comics Bestsellers

Wimpy Kid, Batman and Naruto—the heroes of our age—once again anchor the list.

Oni and 60Frames Meld Web Videos, Comics

Recently Oni Press announced it has joined with 60Frames Entertainment, an online video distribution company, to create interlocking web videos and comic books.
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In this 9 page preview of Burma Chronicles, the peripatetic cartoonist Guy Delisle visits Burma (also known as Myanmar) and chronicles life (from newspaper censorship to a list of all the corrupt generals) under a brutal military dictatorship. The book will be published this month by Drawn & Quarterly.
Click above for the full preview.
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Skimming the Ocean or Digging a Well: Analysis on Comics Blogs

Every day, after checking my email and taking care of anything that needs to be done immediately, I read my "Comics" feed in Google Reader. Or, rather, I skim it. The feed has only a dozen subscriptions to news and reviews sites, which amount to about 50 messages a day, but sometimes I find myself devoting far more time to skimming the articles than I mean to. More and more, I'm asking myself "Why?"

Aya of Yop City
MARGUERITE ABOUET AND CLÉMENT OUBRERIE. Drawn & Quarterly, $19.95 (128p) ISBN 978-1-897299-41-8

Abouet and Oubrerie's sequel to their 2007 graphic novel Aya is a charming comedy of manners about a group of young women-a sort of Jane Austen scenario transplanted to the Ivory Coast of the late '70s. Aya's friend Adjoua has a new baby, and everybody's pitching in to help take care of him, although he looks rather less like the purported father than like an irresponsible bounder by the name of Mamadou. Meanwhile, their starry-eyed friend, Bintou, is plunging into a new romance with a man whose urbane extravagance blinds her to his sneakiness. Mostly, though, this volume is about the cheerful, communitarian spirit of the place and time it sketches out-a moment of postcolonial African history when people didn't have a lot of resources (Adjoua is entering a beauty contest in the hopes of winning cooking oil for the fritters she sells), but had high hopes for the future. Oubrerie's scrappy, witty pen-and-ink artwork is a small delight: everybody's got exaggerated but subtly expressive body language and facial expressions, and the story's dashed-off but dead-on settings-with traffic blocked by wandering sheep and tin roofs near ambitious office buildings-make its tone of historical transition between tradition and modernization even more vivid. (Sept.)
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Twisted Classics: The Work of Posy Simmonds

Thomas Hardy and Gustave Flaubert don't usually spring to mind when graphic novels are mentioned. But British cartoonist and illustrator Posy Simmonds is changing all that. A longtime contributor to the British newspaper, The Guardian, Simmonds's first foray into reinventing classic literature as graphic novels came in 1999 when Gemma Bovery, an updated version of Flaubert's Madame Bovary, ran in the daily paper.

September 3 2008
  • Prince of Persia (First Second)
  • Dororo Vol. 3 (Vertical)
  • Hellblazer: The Laughing Magician (DC/ Vertigo)
  • Slow Storm (First Second)
  • Counter X Vol. 2: Generation X (Marvel)
  • Rogue Angel: Teller of Tall Tales (IDW Publishing)
  • Immortal Iron Fist Vol. 2 (Marvel)
  • Deitch’s Pictorama (Fantagraphics)
  • Mo and Jo Vol. 1: Fighting Together (Raw Junior)
  • Mushishi Vol. 4 (Del Ray Manga)
  • Honey and Clover Vol. 3 (Viz Media)
  • Mixed Vegetables Vol. 1 (Viz Media)

  • Politics at SPX
  • Kids’ Comic-Con 2009
  • PW The Beat: Google Comic; Otaku Politician
  • South East Asian Comics
  • Comics on the iPhone
  • Final Chapter of A.D.
  • PictureBox Back To School Sale

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PW Comics Week
Editors: Calvin Reid and Heidi MacDonald
Contributing Editor: Douglas Wolk
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