§ The Nook app has just launched a whole new Comics section with 8000+ graphic novels!
To celebrate the arrival of NOOK Comics on the NOOK for iOS app, customers can receive a free DC Comics 2013 Superman Sampler, which includes excerpts from Superman: Last Son of Krypton, Superman: For Tomorrow, Superman: Earth One, and Justice League Volume 1: Origin. The free Superman sampler will be provided to customers that download the updated iOS app and set up a new NOOK account at nook.com/account, and is available for a limited-time only. Visit NOOK.com for more details.
“With our free, updated NOOK for iOS application, we’re delivering to customers with iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch a great optimized reading experience, now with access to NOOK Comics, one of the leading collections of digital comics and graphic novels available,” said Jamie Iannone, President of Digital Products at NOOK Media LLC. “Using their iOS device, customers can enjoy NOOK’s collection of more than 3 million digital books, magazines and newspapers, as well comics and graphic novels with the stunning Zoom View feature.”
§ The Cape/Observer/Comica graphic short story prize is open for entries. The competition—only open to UK cartoonists, alas—often brings out some remarkable short graphic fiction. This year’s judges: Stephen Collins, who won the prize in 2010, Dan Franklin, Suzanne Dean, Paul Gravett, Rachel Cooke and Joe Dunthorne. The winner will receive £1,000 and get published in the UK Observer. Details on how to enter here.
And it you’re wondering about previous entries, they are available in this free ecomic, Shorties, which you can read online or download to tablet.
Too bad there isn’t a US version of this prize. Come on, someone!
§ Why Now Is the Time to Start Reading Superhero Comics. If you say so!
§ The first of doubtless many profiles of Rutu Modan and her remarkable new book, The Property:
Visiting Poland, Modan found dealing with the country’s past complicated: “I felt that the Poles have a different story about what happened in World War II than the Jews. Even in Germany, people my age know Nazis were evil, Jews were victims. It’s easier to communicate, they have the same story. We can make a relationship based on starting a new page. “In Poland, it was really difficult for me to accept their story: The Jews live happily in Poland; then, suddenly, the Nazis came [and] killed Jews. The Poles helped the Jews, they tried to hide them. There was no anti-Semitism, everyone loved the Jews. The pogroms were in Russia, not Poland. It was even better for Jews than in other countries. I wanted to ask everyone, ‘OK, what really happened?’”
§ And a profile of Max Bemis, whose new comic tells an unusual Brooklyn tale:
It’s not just his run-ins with Brooklynites that inspired the book. It is loosely based on Bemis’s psychotic episode more than a decade ago and his subsequent struggles with bipolar disorder. During his fight with the illness the author once wandered out of his apartment in Williamsburg and roamed the neighborhood, confronting strangers, rambling incoherently, and insisting that he secretly was being filmed. It was one of the scariest moments in Bemis’s life, but it turned out to be great fodder for this musician-turned-comic book writer’s first series.
Mini Studio coffee run:
§ Someone wants to make a movie out of HARD BOILED, an early Frank Miller/Geof Darrow collaboration.
