Kids' comics

Graphic novels for children are on a roll these days, and that was backed up by the Children's Choice Award nominations, as reported by the CBLDF blog. Winners will be chosen by children voting online. GN nominees are noted in RED.

This installment in the ongoing Princeless series is everything you could want from a title like Princeless: The Pirate Princess #1. A tough and self-assured lead, whose Father trained her from childhood to be a quiet, efficient warrior of the high-seas as opposed to a princess waiting in a tower for rescue. Yet in the latter situation is exactly where Raven Xingtao, the pirate princess, finds herself in the opening pages of the book.

When Scholastic launched its Graphix imprint 10 years ago, graphic novels were a novelty, if you can pardon the expression, in the mainstream publishing world. And kids comics were an unknown quantity—comics shops didn't want them and bookstores didn't know what to do with them. In the first wave, there were many miscues and misunderstandings at many houses along the way. But Graphix wasn't the one making them. Granted, starting out a line with Jeff Smith's Bone is about as much a sure thing as possible—6.9 million copies in print and counting. But picking Raina Telgemeier to do a Babysitter's Club relaunch and eventually Smile, and Kazu Kibuishi to publish his Amulet series weren't as sure—but they sure paid off. Along the way Graphix has picked up multiple Eisner Award wins and nominations, a Stonewall Book Award, a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Honor, an Edgar Allan Poe nomination, and 14 New York Times bestsellers. They've published many more top cartoonists such as Doug TenNapel, Greg Ruth, Mike Maihack and Jimmy Gownley. And there's more to come.

When IDW acquired Top Shelf a few weeks ago, there was much talk about creators like Alan Moore staying around, but Top Shelf's Chris Staros made it clear that he had discussed the move in advance with his top creators. One much liked book that Top Shelf published for about a decade is Andy Runton's Owly series, a steady seller that helped establish kids content in the indy world long before it was fashionable. However, as noted by Johanna Draper Carlson, Runton tweeted that he would be self-publishing Owly going forward.

When you leave the WWE, you also leave WWE licensed comics, as CM Punk will be removed from future printings of Papercutz WWE Superstars comics.

It's gifting time, and the Beat team is showcasing some suitable gifts for everyone in your family. Among those are theseTOON Books gift sets...

by Zachary Clemente If you're like me, you don't have any siblings, which is a real shame since I really want to get kids into...

By Harper Harris John Patrick Green is a Long Island-based comics creator, best known for his collaboration with Dave Roman, Teen Boat. In an announcement...

Today what will probably be the biggest selling graphic novel—or hybrid graphic novels, or picto-fic or whatever you want to call it—of the year goes on sale. Wimpy Kid #9, The Long Haul is the latest installment of Jeff Kinney's best selling series, and it finds the Heffleys going on a sumer road trip. Anyone who grew up with a family and car will immediately need no further hype as to the horrors and comedy plot potential inherent in the family road trip, but just in case you need more of a pitch:

We haven't done a ton of solicitation listings at the Beat recently, but it's something we're going to start up again, because...well, look at all the nice art. Here are the #1s and the Kaboom and Boombox titles from Boom's January solicitations—new creator owned titles include Feathers, a smart looking new kids title, and Burning Fields, a caper with a burning Iraqi oil field as the setting. Also here are all the KaBOOM titles for January with as many variant covers as have been released by some funky fresh artists like Ian McGinty, Lorena Gomez and Christine Larsen.

For years, comics’ professionals have been hiding a well-kept Batman secret. Batman has been listed as being created by Bob Kane for decades, but the secret...

by Alexander Jones The acclaimed writer Ron Marz is tackling the popular video game franchise known as Skylanders in comic book form. The comic was...