Books

You'd think a graphic novel drawn by Ramona Fradon, Rick Veitch, Michael Netzer and Terry Beatty would have gotten some attention, and it has, but not in comics circles. The Adventures of Unemployed Man by Erich Origen and Gan Golan, authors of the best-selling Goodnight, Bush. As you might guess, the topic at hand is an explanation (from one point of view) of why jobs are scarcer than a mint copy of CHEW #1. As a preview at Huffington Post shows, the story is a didactic allegory using superhero tropes to illustrate income disparity and the decoupling of profit from employment and...also how people turn into the Hulk from being exposed to too many Fox News rays.

Abrams ComicArts, an imprint of ABRAMS, returns to New York Comic Con to showcase the 2010 line up of high-quality comics related titles.

By Torsten Adair The following is a selection of new comics titles due to be published in October 2010. This list is not comprehensive, as there are over 275 books scheduled. These are just the titles which caught my eye. If you would like to browse forthcoming comic strip books at your leisure, click here. Instead, I have selected titles which caught my interest. These are not necessarily titles I will purchase, but which I will definitely look at once they arrive at my local comics shop or bookstore.

How many Dabel brothers are there? While Les and Ernst are familiar from their various imprints at publishers around town, there's also Pascal and David Dabel, and they have launched their own publishing house called Sea Lion Press, which is set to publish YA books by well-known authors including Paulo Coelho, Richelle Mead and Richard A. Knaak. They'll be at New York Comic-Con to promote a new series of comics based on Mead's bestselling Dark Swan series, starting with STORM BORN, the story of freelance shaman Eugenie Markham, who fights strange creatures from a place called the Otherworld. Mead is also the author of the bestselling Vampire Academy books, for those without access to a teen-age reader.

Somehow or other we just stumbled across this blog by Hungarian cartoonist Attila Futaki whose comics adaptation of the immensely popular Percy Jackson & the Olympians, Book One: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan just came out. There are quite a few of these YA novel to graphic novel conversions going on, but Futaki's art is a lot nicer than it has to be. The final version is colored by José Villarrubia and looks even better.

By Torsten Adair --

The following is a selection of new comic strip titles due to be published this Fall 2010. This list is not comprehensive, as there are over 200 books about comic strips scheduled from September to December. These are just the titles which caught my eye. Although you are welcome to debate the definition of "comic strip" in the comments, for my purposes I'm including single-panel cartoons as well as books about comic strips in this list.

One of the great unfinished graphic novel projects, Craig Thompson's HABIBI, has been finished, he announced earlier this week. Thompson has been slaving away on this 600 page opus since BLANKETS was published to great acclaim in 2003. The subject matter is nothing less than Islam, and Thompson has promised to look at it the way he looked at Christianity in BLANKETS. That isn't going to be controversial at all.

The West Hollywood Book Fair takes place Sunday, September 26th, and as in past years will have an extensive Comics and Graphic Novels Pavilion and a full slate of programming, on topics including webcomics, YA and a spotlight on MOUSE GUARD's David Petersen, all of which you can see below:

The following is a selection of new titles due to be published in September 2010.

There is no particular order to the titles presented below.

This list is not comprehensive, as there are over 275 graphic novel titles scheduled for this month. If you would like to browse them at your leisure, click here. Instead, I have selected titles which caught my interest. These are not necessarily titles I will purchase, but which I will definitely look at once they arrive at my local comics shop or bookstore. Please be advised that publication dates are not set in stone. Also, your local comics shop might receive copies before your local neighborhood website or library. Links connected to publishers will link to the publisher's website, sometimes to the exact title. Links for the ISBN-13 (also known as the Bookland EAN) will take you to the title as featured on BarnesAndNoble.com . I consider my tastes to be rather eclectic. If you feel I've neglected or slighted a title, publisher, or creator, please feel free to mention it in the comments below.

Monthly lists such as this will be posted at the end of the previous month. I will also be posting specific subject lists (comic strips, comics history and surveys, superheroes...) for each season, but these will not have a set schedule.

Earlier this week the Borders bookstore chain announced its earnings for the quarter ending July 31 and the results were weak, as expected. Sales fell 11.5%, to $526.1 million, with a $51.6 million loss.

Over on his Flickr page, the very talented designer Paul Buckley has posted a new batch of comics-inspired covers for thePenguin Classics Deluxe series. Contributors include Richard Sala, Killofer, Tara McPherson, Jen Munford, Ten Stearn, Gonzalo, and Grez.

Late last year, DC announced a new line of graphic novels called Earth One. The idea was a line of standalone graphic novels...