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Asian American Comicon Debuts in New York
The first annual Asian American Comicon will be held on Saturday July 11 at the Museum of Chinese in America in New York City. Organized by Jeff Yang, editor of the New Press’s anthology of Asian-American superhero stories, Secret Identities, the AACC is intended to “recognize and celebrate what Asians are doing in comics. ”
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Comics Briefly
One Piece Accelerated; Anime Expo 2009 Coverage; Iranian Protests Marked in Persepolis 2.0; Robot Chicken Tour; Female Force Graphic Novel; Straczynski’s Thor Gets Giant Sendoff; Yui Makino is GOH at NYAF; Frazetta Rights Letter Retracted; and This Week @ Good Comics for Kids
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July Comics Bestsellers
Jeff Kinney’s runaway bestseller Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Last Straw remains top dog of the list, followed by Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen; Joss Whedon’s Buffy: Time of Your Life; Akihisa Ikeda’s Rosario + Vampire and lots of Naruto.
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Life in Comics: Tips for Aspiring Comics Pros at Comic-Con
Comic-Con International in San Diego is less than a month away, and I as I mentioned in my last column, publishers are busy preparing for the big show. But comic book creators seeking to break into the industry should be preparing as well. If you're planning on going to Comic-Con to meet publishers, I have a single piece of advice for you: Do your research first.
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Panel Mania: The Summit of the Gods
The Summit of the Gods by Yumemakura and Jiro Taniguchi, author of The Walking Man, is the story of a Japanese expedition photographer, Makoto Fukamachi. This is the first volume in a series of five volumes about conquering Mount Everest. The Summit of the Gods Vol. 1 will be released in July 2009 by Fanfare/ Ponent Mon.
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Comic-Con '09: Sold Out in San Diego
The San Diego Comic-Con International is full up. With every inch of the San Diego Convention Center booked for the show years ago, and every ticket gone and hotels sold out months in advance this year, the annual comics-themed pop culture extravaganza has gotten as big as it can physically get.
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Children's Book Reviews: 7/6/2009
This week: picture books from Matthew Cordell, Elizabeth Bluemle & Randy Cecil, Ross Collins, Uri Shulevitz and others; novelists including Mary Ann Hoberman, Devin Jordan and R.A. Nelson; plus nonfiction and series favorites.
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Vertical Inc. Is Still Here
Although Vertical Inc., a New York City publisher specializing in translations of contemporary Japanese prose literature and manga, has struggled during the economic downturn, the house has secured a new investor, hired a new marketing manager and plans to make adjustments to its list beginning in 2010.
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The Monster Mash
Little did Quirk Books know when it published Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith in April that the book would spawn a cottage industry.
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Wall Street Noir: PW talks with Norb Vonnegut
Norb Vonnegut's debut, Top Producers, details intricate Wall Street scams, but at heart it's about friendship and betrayal more than stocks and bonds.
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Fiction Book Reviews: 7/6/2009
Reviewed this week, new novels from Thomas Pynchon, E.L. Doctorow, William Trevor, Richard Powers, Alice Randall, Joseph Kanon, Richard North Patterson and Anita Diamant. Plus, Nick Cave chronicles the adventures of a bad seed, the return of Arturo
Pérez-Reverte's swashbuckling Diego Alariste, and Mattox Roesch sends an L.A. gangbanger to Alaska. -
Recipe Report: July 6
This week, a recipe from Gourmet Today, edited by Ruth Reichl, for Orange Raisin Scones.
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Review: Clean Food
No, this isn't a book about cleaning produce before you eat it. Rather, it's a friendly cookbook that makes (mostly) vegan cooking approachable with simple recipes and straightforward descriptions of more exotic ingredients. There’s some typical vegan fare, like seitan bourguignon or scrambled tofu, but many recipes play with expected ingredients in interesting ways: marinated tofu with ginger cashew dipping sauce; and quinoa and black bean salad with apricot lime dressing.
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Cooking the Books with Rachel Holtzman
Earlier this month, Gotham Books acquired rights to chef Grant Achatz’s memoir, Life, On the Line. Based on the proposal and Achatz’s cookbook, Alinea, the memoir won’t be a typical chef’s narrative. Rather, the book, co-written with Achatz’s business partner, Nick Kokonas, will be part autobio, part art book, and part business story. PW talks to Rachel Holtzman, who will edit Life, On the Line.
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The Cooking Star You Haven't Heard of Yet: Jaden Hair
The book jacket for The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook features a smiling photo of author Jaden Hair and a plate of noodles with shrimp and vegetables. Hair’s name appears in a script that looks like her signature, suggesting she might be famous. And then there’s the circle-within-a-circle logo in the lower left corner that looks a lot like the “As Seen on Food Network” logo that graces the covers of books by Rachael Ray, except it says, “As seen on steamykitchen.com.”
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Fancy Food Show Is BEA for Foodies
The best way to describe the Fancy Food Show to book people might be to call it a BEA for food. But that doesn’t do the event justice. The fair, held last week at the Javits Center in New York City, has more exhibitors than Book Expo: about 2,300, compared to BEA’s 1,500. And while BEA exhibitors sometimes give out samples (i.e., books), nearly every exhibitor at the Fancy Food Show gives out samples (i.e., food). BEA may be a feast for the brain, but the Fancy Food Show is a straight-up feast.
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Grand Central Acquires Out-of-Print Jackson Bio
Grand Central is stepping into the Michael Jackson fray, looking to respond to the dearth of titles currently available on the King of Pop with its acquisition of J. Randy Taraborrelli's currently-out-of-print biography on the superstar.
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Diamond’s New Minimums Shape a Tough Comics Market
Earlier this year, Diamond Comics Distributors, the dominant distributor to the roughly 3,000 store comics shop market, raised its minimum sales order and if a comic doesn’t reach the new advance minimum sales order, Diamond will not distribute it. The change sparked an immediate outcry from small comics presses, self-publishers and some retailers, who complained that the new minimum forces them out of the marketplace.
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New ICv2 Confab on Comics and Media Crossovers
Milton Griepp, longtime comics and pop culture business analyst and CEO of ICv2, a pop culture trade news website, decided to take a closer look at the powerful connections between comics, the Hollywood film industry, TV and the videogame industry and has organized the Comics and Media Conference to be held on July 22, just before preview night at the San Diego Comic-con International. The new conference will focus on the lucrative business of turning comics into other kinds of media.
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Scars and Stripes Forever: Peter Bagge’s Everybody Is Stupid Except For Me.
This July, Fantagraphics Books once more unleashes the works of best-selling Hate comics creator Peter Bagge in Everybody Is Stupid Except For Me (And Other Astute Observations), a decade’s worth of cartoon reporting for Reason magazine. Armed with a Libertarian-leaning viewpoint and his signature bemused approach to his exploration of human foibles, Bagge skewers the early-twenty-first century American zeitgeist.
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