Centrala is a Polish indie comics publisher that recently opened a London office, which s helping their books get wider distribution. They have three new books including what sounds like an intriguing tale about two German police officers who join the Klan to make friends and meet girls, an anthology mixing comics and cooking and a book adapting a famous Polish poem about a train into a 60 foot long comic!
Eastern European comics are usually thought of as an "emerging" scene, but with publishers like Centrala and the Latvian kuš! collective getting notice, they've emerged quite a bit. Here's the Centrala books, which are all available for order.
Rolling along with the Fall line-up for comics, here's another September release. Brooklyn's Hang Dai Studios has teamed with Alternative Comics to release their fall schedule, which includes three titles Smoke by Gregory Benton, Beef with Tomato by Dean Haspiel, and Schmuck by Seth Kushner and an all-star line-up of cartoonists. It's a powerhouse line-up of talent, each book with its own distinctive voice born of living life in New York City. In Benton's case, however urban life has inspired a wordless fantasy epic about two kids, apparently the children of migrant workers, who are swept away to a magical land beset by perils who are befriended and protected by a magnificent dog straight from the Day of the Dead. It's a wordless narrative that's part Amulet, part Adventure Time, but all original, with a bittersweet ending that packs a punch. We emailed Benton with a few question about his work and Smoke:
Louise Fitzhugh's classic children's book Harriet the Spy is being adapted into a graphic novel by Harriet Webster and Claudia Petrazzi, due out from Delacorte Press on April 27, 2027.
