Comics

Continuing our spotlight on this year's Russ Manning Most Promising Newcomer awards, we come to David Marquez, artist on SYNDROME and DAYS MISSING Vol 2 for Archaia. London-born but living in Texas, Marquez was on track to become a high school teacher before deciding to pursue his love of art and applying for a job in the animation department on A SCANNER DARKLY. Since then he's worked on a a variety of indie comics projects.

As you were.

Continuing our look at this year's Russ Manning Award Most Promising Newcomer nominees, we have Adam Hines, author of the extraordinary DUNCAN THE WONDER DOG, a meditation on consciousness that uses a dense, collage art technique and expressionist storytelling. It's set in a world where animals can talk, but any idea that this is going to be a cutesy anthropomorphic tale should go right out the window. Duncan has already won a Xeric Grant, the LA Times Book Prize for best graphic novel and the first Lynd Ward Prize, and it's nominated for the Harvey Award, making it one of the most honored graphic novels of recent years.

Have you heard about A Game of Thrones? It's very popular. Dynamite is publishing the comic, issue #2 is out in October and Alex Ross did the cover. Tyrion and white wolves in da hizzy!

After a period of beta testing, Diamond is ready to roll out their digital comics sales this September. As there is not much else happening that month, maybe this will perk things up. More seriously, about 30 publishers are participating in the venture, which is run through iVerse and involves participating retailers generating codes for sale. The program will begin more advanced beta testing in stores in August. Interested retailers can sign up here.

Each year the Russ Manning Award is presented to a new artist of merit. Past winners include Jeff Smith, Dave Stevens, Scott McCloud, and many other future Hall of Famers. We thought we'd take a look at this year's nominees and show off some nice art along the way. Up first: Janet K. Lee.

Jeff Smith has joined the stand-alone digital store ranks with new apps for BONE and RASL via comiXology. To celebrate, there's a sale and at 4 pm a chat on Reddit with Smith. As kids books tend to do very well on tablets and phones, we'd expect Bone to conquer this medium as well as it has every other place it's appeared.

Gabrielle Bell is releasing her San Diego Diary mini, and Lizz Hickey is releasing SUCK IT. Both are JUST IN TIME. more info

AWOOGA! ALL HANDS ON DECK! Arcade Fire soundtrack -- check -- but the remake by Peter Gabriel? "My body is a cage." So this is a remake of AVATAR?

Coming this fall from Gingko Press, finally, a Tomer Hanuka art book, OVERKILL. In addition to his award-winning illustration work, the book collects of his comics covers for books like MIDNIGHT, MASS., UN-MEN, and more.

For those of you happily staying home in NYC instead of braving nerd prom, you are being rewarded by an amazing event: The Fine Art of Comics, with Gary Panter, Art Spiegelman, and Chris Ware at the Whitney Museum on July 20th. Held in conjunction with a show on Lyonel Feininger, this trio of masters will talk about comics and fine art.

DC Comics is either smart or crazy...or both. Their policy of extremely controlled release of information on the New 52 has led to Kremlinology being taken to new heights as every post on The Source leads to people examining everything with a fine tooth comb...(and sometimes finding franks and beans) and DC getting more and more publicity out of it, even when it looks like a mistake or change of direction.