"This day's experience, set in order, none of it left ragged or lying about, all of it gathered in like treasure and finished with, set aside." –Alice Munro, "What is Remembered"
Over at his “Doot Doot Garden Blog,” Craig Thompson posted today to let his fans know that he has confirmed with his publisher, Pantheon, that his new graphic novel, Habibi, will officially be released on 20 September 2011, the day before his 36th birthday.
“The book,” writes Thompson, “will be $29.95 — 672 b&w pages — clothbound hardcover with stamped gold foil, and look something like the mock-up above. ”
Near as I can determine, Thompson has been working on Habibi for almost six years. And in a mere eight months time, he will be able to enjoy the fruits of his labour — a lengthy publicity tour with hour upon hour of sketching in and autographing books for his fans. As an admirer of Thompson’s draughtsmanship and virtuoso brush-and-ink technique, I worry about the toll the tour will take upon the artist’s drawing hand, but so long as he doesn’t try to produce a second Carnet de Voyage at the same time, he should be all right. Right?
———-
UPDATE (23 January 2011):
According to the Random House online catalogue, Craig Thompson’s Habibi will be released on 20 September 2011 not only as a hardcover but also as an eBook.
From a 33-year-old catalogue of “original art for sale” entitled Cartoonists and Illustrator’s Portfolio Volume Three (Wyomissing, PA: Supergraphics, 1978), here’s a short interview with Barry Windsor-Smith, conducted by the catalogue’s publisher, James Steranko:
Revolutionary artist Barry Windsor-Smith takes on the Uncanny X-Men! The original X-Men go toe-to-toe against Blastaar, deadly menace from the Negative Zone! Storm and Forge find themselves trapped on a primitive paradise world with no hope of escape! Spiral and Lady Deathstrike target Wolverine for death! And Dazzler is hunted by the Marauders, with only the X-Men to save her!
“Arnold Drake (Author)”? Funny, I bought the LifeDeath comics, back in the day, and I don’t remember that at all… but anyway, it’ll be nice to have the work on my bookshelf in hardcover form… I just hope they don’t screw up the colour too badly…
Well, now… according to the listings for 2011 at Amazon.ca, the same company that is supposedly going to publish a new edition of Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth by Andrew Loomis — Titan Books — also has a new edition of Loomis’s Drawing the Head and Hands in the works. Here’s the info that’s been posted so far:
Drawing the Head and Hands [Hardcover]
Andrew Loomis (Author)
This title will be released on October 4, 2011.
List Price: CDN$ 46.00 Price: CDN$ 28.98 & this item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping. Details You Save: CDN$ 17.02 (37%)
ABOVE: Screen capture of Michael Kaluta speaking about Jeffrey Jones, from the “Better Things” documentary. Notice the lovely little sculpture of a naked woman by Jones that is visible in Kaluta’s studio on the far right of the screen; regular readers will recall that it’s been featured in a couple of posts here at RCN.
Producer/Director Maria Cabardo needs $15,000 to complete her documentary on Jeffrey Catherine Jones, and you can help:
The documentary features not only comic book artists but other comics industry professionals as well. Jones’s life and work are the highlights, but the effects of art — on an individual, on society, and as a business — are also discussed. How important and influential is art? Can it really save a person’s life, as its practitioners claim? How did it evolve from pure decoration to a commercial commodity? All of these questions will be examined as we explore the world of Jeffrey Jones. The story of art is, in the end, the story of artists, and the whole can also be seen in its parts.
The movie is currently in post-production, most of the funding will go to the expenses incurred during this stage.
For more information, check out the Director’s blogsite at macabfilms.com.
This “Kickstarter” project will only be funded if at least $15,000 is pledged by Tuesday Feb 8, 9:09 pm EST. Minimum pledge is a buck, but if you pledge $50 or more you’ll receive a “Special Limited Edition DVD and Movie Poster” after the movie has been released. As of yesterday, with 56 days to go, a grand total of 10 backers had pledged $582. Today, with 55 days to go, 11 backers (10 plus yours truly) have pledged $632. It’s a hell of a long way to $15,000, but with enough publicity, the project might attract enough supporters to reach the finish line. Thus, this post.
P.S. Speaking of how one should go about publicizing one’s fundraising efforts, I have to say, the people at MaCab films aren’t helping themselves with their blog. The most recent post on the first page of the blog is dated May 29, 2009! Where’s the information about their Kickstarter project? Nowhere to be seen. Where should it be? Front and centre from now until February 8, 2011. Yes, some of the formal sub-pages have more recent material, but that’s not the way to get attention on a blog. Post on the front page, and post often. Let your personality and enthusiasm show. Make someone associated with the project available for interviews on comics, illustration, and art sites, and publicize those interviews on your blog. Include images with every post. And last but not least, do as I say, not as I do!
UPDATE (14 January 2011):
With 24 days to go, 26 backers have pledged $1,443 of the above project’s $15,000 goal. If the goal is not reached, the project receives nothing, and time is quickly running out.
“The paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood are widely known and loved, but this book presents for the first time a comprehensive survey of the intimate world of the Pre-Raphaelites drawings. Works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais are set beside those of their followers Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris and Ford Madox Brown, as well as lesser-known figures such as James Collinson and Frederick Sandys. Copiously illustrated with Pre-Raphaelite drawings from public and private collections around the UK, the book features an illuminating text by the renowned art historian Colin Cruise, offering a fresh and intimate perspective on this much-loved group of artists.”
With the Amazon discount, the price is right. But I haven’t made up my mind yet whether or not I will buy the book. This is one I’d prefer to browse through in person before I order.
UPDATE (12 December 2010):
Shortly after I posted the “Heads Up” for Pre-Raphaelite Drawing by Colin Cruise, the price of the book at Amazon.ca jumped to CDN$50.40. If you order from Amazon.com, however, the price is a mere US$31.50 (plus shipping, if you don’t live in the USA). Even so, the total, shipping included, for a Canadian buyer is a mere US$42.06, which is actually less than the old price on Amazon.ca with free shipping but WITH TAX ADDED: CDN$43.65. Since the US and Canadian dollars are pretty much at parity, I have now made up my mind to take advantage of the current discount and have placed an order with Amazon.com. Nice thing about Amazon is that they make it easy and painless to cancel a pre-order if a better deal emerges at a different store at a later date.
UPDATE (21 December 2010):
Price dropped again at Amazon.ca, so I cancelled my Amazon.com order and ordered from Amazon.ca. The total this time around: CDN$ 39.00, tax included. And the lesson is: it pays to pay attention.
Today, on the Library of American Comics blog, Dean Mullaney announced that Genius, Isolated: The Life and Art of Alex Toth by Mullaney and Bruce Canwell has been expanded to “a three-book set that will be the definitive statement on the restless genius and timeless legacy of Alex Toth.” The lavishly illustrated set will include 1) Genius, Isolated, which will detail Toth’s “life story and work through the early 1960s, when he began his sensational move into animated cartoons”; 2) Genius, Illustrated, which “picks up the story as Toth becomes one of the leading character designers in television animation–continues through his renewed career in comics with Warren, DC, and his creator-owned properties of the 1970s and beyond–and includes an examination of the artist’s poignant final years”; and 3) Genius, Animated, an art book which will reproduce “hundreds of Toth’s model sheets and storyboards,” along with “many full-color presentation pieces designed to sell new series to the networks.” The first book is slated to appear in March 2011, with the others to follow as they are completed, I suppose. And the last bit of good news: “A slipcase for the three-book set will be available with the third book.”
To read Mullaney’s announcement in full, click here.
“David Boswell’s classic counterculture icon is collected here in an oversized hardcover format. This volume collects the first Reid Fleming comic and the mini-series, Rogues to Riches, as well as Heartbreak Comics.”
If you’ve never read David Boswell’s Heartbreak Comics, you’re in for a real treat!
Since I’ve never read most of the other Reid Fleming comics, but have always wanted to, this is my chance to get them all in one fell swoop, and at CDN$19.75 for a 224-page hardcover collection via Amazon.ca, I simply can’t resist.
BONUS LINKS:
Follow this link, and if you have very good eyesight, you will able able to read the first 32-page issue of the original series, Reid Fleming: World’s Toughest Milkman, for free.
David Boswell’s Official Web Site includes examples of his photographs, comics, cartoons, and illustrations. He also has various prints and other merchandise available for purchase.
More good news for comics fans. In reply to a post by blogger Tom Crippen featuring a couple of “Nuts” comics over at the Comics Journal site, TCJ and Fantagraphics employee, Kristi Valenti, let slip the following big news for Gahan Wilson fans, and I quote, “FYI, Fanta will be reprinting these. Should be out by SDCC 2011.” For those of you who don’t already know, Gahan Wilson’s “Nuts” first appeared as a regular feature in National Lampoon in the 1970s, along with “Idyl” by Jeffrey Jones, “Trots and Bonnie” by Shary Flenniken, and several other strips that deserved to be collected and brought back into print. Yes, a “Nuts” collection was published back in 1979 by Richard Marek Publishers; however, since that book has been out of print for almost thirty years, and since Fantagraphics has had a big success with their three-volume boxed set of “50 years of Playboy Cartoons” by Gahan Wilson, perhaps the time is ripe for a more general readership to discover, or re-discover, the greatness that is Gahan. One can only hope!
SALVATORE
Vol. 1: Transports of Love
Nicolas De Crecy
The best-selling and acclaimed author of ‘Glacial Period’ in the Louvre collection returns with a new series starring a dog auto repair mechanic so in demand, he can afford to move his garage to a distant hard-to-reach peak for peace and… privacy. The privacy, as it turns out, is to build a mode of transportation that can get him through earth and seas to his beloved far, far away. As unpredictable and totally original as ‘Glacial Period,’ this is a Plymptonesque tale filled with absurd, irresistible bittersweet humor.
61/2 x 9, 104pp, full color trade pb.: $14.99, ISBN 978-1-56163-593-1
Amazon says:
Salvatore [Paperback]
Nicolas De Crecy (Author) List Price: CDN$ 14.99 Price: CDN$ 10.94
Although the poor paper selection and tiny trim size of NBM’s last De Crecy translation, Glacial Period, made it difficult to appreciate the nuances of De Crecy’s artwork, and I don’t expect Salvatore to be any different, there’s only one game in town right now for English-language versions of De Crecy’s books, so… I… will… grit.. my… teeth… and… buy… the… damn… book…
Deathbird Stories
by Harlan Ellison
(preorder–to be published in December)
Dust Jacket by Gnemo.
Lettered: $500
Limited: $125 ISBN: 978-1-59606-084-5
Trade: $45 ISBN: 978-1-59606-085-2
Length: 416 pages
Subterranean Press is proud to present the expanded, definitive edition of Harlan Ellison’s landmark collection of stories, in an oversize hardcover edition.
SOME BOOKS BECOME CLASSICS
For more than three decades this singular collection of stories in which the New Gods of freeways, and slot machines, internal combustion deities and evil so enormous that it swallows the streets in shadow, for more than thirty years the power of this book has compelled the attention of not only readers of imaginative bent, but the praise of hard-line literary critics. One cannot codify modern literature of the fantastic without including a reference or selection from this dark book of godly and troubling stories that will not be ignored.
SOME WRITERS BECOME LEGENDS
Ellison. Harlan Ellison. He wrote this book midway toward the earliest acclaim of a career that now goes into sixty years. He’s still with us. the enfant terrible has become an eminence gris but the tongue remains sharp, the wit unpredictable, the manner still singular. He has outwritten and outlived his caste, and the words in this book carry the fire and truth of his career.
Lettered: 26 deluxe bound hardcovers, housed in a custom traycase
Limited: 500 signed numbered copies, slipcased, bound in leather, with illustrated endsheets by Leo & Diane Dillon
Trade: Fully cloth bound hardcover edition
Table of Contents:
* Foreword: Oblations at Alien Altars
* A Word about Time (*)
* From A to Z, in the Sarsaparilla Alphabet (*)
* The Whimper of Whipped Dogs
* Along the Scenic Route
* On the Downhill Side
* O Ye of Little Faith
* Scartaris, June 28th (*)
* Neon
* Basilisk
* The Face of Helene Bournouw
* Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitude 38°54’N, Longitude 77°00’13’’W
* Rock God
* Bleeding Stones
* Ernest and the Machine God
* Delusion for a Dragon Slayer
* Corpse
* Shattered Like a Glass Goblin
* Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes
* Paingod
* At the Mouse Circus
* The Place With No Name
* The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore (*)
* The Deathbird
* Afterword: Moving in Mysterious Ways (*)
* A Word About the Cover Art (*)
Did you know that Deathbird Stories includes a short tale that was adapted for comics, with art by Al Williamson and Carlos Garzon? The story is “Along the Scenic Route,” and the adaptation first appeared in Ariel: The Book of Fantasy #3 (April 1978) and was reprinted in the more recent collection, Al Williamson Adventures (Insight Studios Group, 2003).
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