Books

I was moving an exercise machine - The Total Gym -down to the basement on the sly. My wife and I had discussed moving it from our bedroom – she wanted to keep it there and I wanted to move it to the basement. So, of course I moved the machine behind her back. Now, the thing weighs about 90 pounds and has ropes and pulleys so it’s awkward to carry. As I wrestled with it coming down the stairs, I missed the last step, and landed on my left ankle. As I went crashing to the ground, the Total Gym followed and came down on my chest…just as my wife was turning the corner. She screamed thinking I had died. When she realized that her idiot of a husband was alive, she started yelling at me for being an ass for carrying it down on my own and reminded me she didn’t want it moved at all. Even though the machine was still on my chest, my wife was crying and yelling, and my ankle hurt like hell and was ballooning up to the size of Schwarzenegger’s bicep, all I could think was; “Shit, the Neil Gaiman book is coming out soon – I have too much to do.” Then I asked my wife for an Advil. 2003 turned out to be an important year, for me and for graphic novels. DC Comics was publishing a BIG book, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman: Endless Nights. It was Neil’s return to Sandman comics and it was not a collection of comics, but an original graphic novel. There was the idea floating around the office that maybe, with Neil’s success with his novels and the fact that American Gods had hit the New York Times Bestseller List, we could have a bestseller on our hands. It was of a dream of mine, to have one of our graphic novels become a best seller.

Cartoonists were showing off their upcoming books covers EVERYWHERE this week. Here's the cover of the first collection of Dylan Meconis's historical yet mystical webcomic, Family Man . And here's a photo of Meredith Gran's first Octopus Pie collection from Villard, coming in June. The book is shown with a cup of coffee for both scale and inspiration.

David Mazzucchelli's stunning ASTERIOS POLYP won the prize for the best Graphic Novel in the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, which as the...

Oh yeah, speaking of the London Book Fair, this little news nugget was buried in Rachel Deahl's preview of the event for PW: Russia will...

I have been writing these in chronological order, but from now on I’m going to channel Lost by doing a flash forward, a flash...

Publishers who think of comic book movies as multi-million dollar ads for the trade aren't that far off, as Marvel has announced that the...

One of the hottest promos at MoCCA was the Pantheon flyer for this fall's new Charles Burns GN, X'ed OUT, and we've sneakily scanned...

Via PR, another best-selling author goes the comics route, Charlaine Harris: Acclaimed author Charlaine Harris, the writer of the Sookie Stackhouse series, is joining the...

Del Rey's Dallas Middaugh writes to let us know he's teaching a class at NYU this Saturday entitled 'Publishing the Graphic Novel' The...

This is not comics, but it's so close. Taschen Books, publisher of many fine art books--some comics related--and many art reference basics, is having...

Well gang, here is the game changer. Here is the bestseller. This is the book that's going to drive all-new readers into comics shops,...

Over at his blog, Kean Soo reports that the first volume of his Jellaby series has gone out of print.. Published by Hyperion,...