Drawn & Quarterly

D&Q has revealed the cover to Hark! a Vagrant their Kate Beaton collection. Just the other day, The Beat and another industry observer were chatting about this and that and we observed that no one does a comics author tour like D&Q. The fantastic response to the Chester Brown tour being an example of that. Fantagraphics is the only company that even comes close.

A while back we predicted Chester Brown's I-was-a-john memoir, PAYING FOR IT, would be one of the most talked about graphic novels of the years. Surprise! We called it! The Star looks at the book in light of Brown's run for Parliament on the Libertarian ticket

Chester Brown's PAYING FOR IT is destined to be one of the most talked about graphic novels of the year -- we'd suspect it may be THE most talked about. It's a great work of comics that is nonetheless problematic for the views it espouses about human relationships and commerce. Just in case you aren't sitting on the edge of your seat waiting for the book to come out, PAYING FOR IT is a memoir by Chester Brown about his experiences employing prostitutes. Brown's previous works include such masterworks as I NEVER LIKED YOU, ED THE HAPPY CLOWN and the historical narrative LOUIS RIEL, which is considered an important political work in Brown's native Canada. As one of the pioneers of the most successful schools of autobiographical comics, Brown is a major figure of the art comix era.

Wow! Lots of great books coming out this month!

This is exciting: Drawn and Quarterly is making their WonderCon debut with guests Seth and Vanessa Davis, and the debut of Shigeru Mizuki's ONWARD TOWARDS OUR NOBLE DEATHS and Pascal Girard's REUNION:

As the PR points out, Chester Brown isn't a recluse but he doesn't leave his home city of Toronto too much, so catching him on the road this year in support of PAYING FOR IT is a must. More dates to be announced, but the current schedule calls for Toronto, Chicago, NYC, Montreal, Vancouver and Seattle.

Oji Suzuki is the latest in D&Q's gekiga projects, and Tom Devlin explains why:

Chester Brown's PAYING FOR IT is sure to be one of the most-discussed GNs of the year, and D&Q has just released the final cover. In case you missed the log line, it's an account of Brown's decade-long practice of hiring prostitutes and his arguments for the dignity and necessity of the profession -- in Canada certain forms of prostitution are legal, but that situation is changing for the worse, and Brown makes a pretty impassioned plea in the book to expand on the legalization of what really should be a business transaction between adults. We've read the whole thing, and while we're not quite on board with some of of it, he does make a good case for keeping things safe and legal. The book will have an intro by R. Crumb and blurbs from many famous folks, including Neil Gaiman, who writes:

February has only 28 days, but is jam-packed with lots of great graphic novels and related titles! Warning... looking at what appears so far on BarnesAndNoble.com, the rest of 2011 is going to be just as amazing! Click this link to discover more! (Sweet Kirby Crackle! Corto Maltese, in English, from Rizzoli?!) Better start shopping for bookshelves now.

 If you missed the earlier stops, you can still see the one and only phenomenal Lynda Barry talking and inspiring: DO NOT MISS Lynda Barry...

So, this month is a bit light. There are always some significant titles every month, so here's the list for January.

The big news of the day: D&Q has picked up Kate Beaton and will publish her next collection, HARK! A VAGRANT. Beaton's current print outlet is the Topatoco edition of Never Learn Anything from History, which, every time we've seen Beaton at a show -- is sold out. Grrrrrr. It isn't clear from the PR if this is a new edition of that material or all new but the word "next" suggests the latter.