Tag: Books

Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, a stunning coming of age story considered a classic by many, has been ordered removed from Chicago's Lane Technical High School for reasons that remain unclear.

Mike Baron is best known as the co-creator of Nexus and Badger, two of the signature comics series of the indie 80s. While the ups and downs of his nexus co-conspirator Steve Rude have been pretty well documented, what about Baron? We hear he's got a revamp of the Badger simmering at the resurrected First Comics. But he's also staying incredibly busy turning out novels by the bushel. In fact he has turned out three in recent months, with appropriately pulpy covers. Yes they are e-books, but no feverish novel about a spook called in to discover why the world's leaders are spontaneously combusting is complete without a pulpy cover!

Instant want: Fantagraphics will be collecting Tony Millionaire's Sock Monkey stories in a treasury edition. The books originally came out from Dark Horse but are joining Millionaie's Maakie's collections at FBI.

The somewhat uneven performance of Marvel's graphic novel program is a frequent topic of analysis when we talk about graphic novel programs here. Both the Diamond and Bookscan numbers for 2012 showed Marvel -- the #1 publisher overall in the Direct Sales market -- surprisingly far back in the pack where books are concerned.

The trend of adapting prose authors into GN form seems to have slowed down a bit, but the third volume of the GN version...

It's my FAVORITE day of the year, when Brian Hibbs posts the year-end sales from bookstores via the Bookscan chart. Now we know these numbers are significantly low, but as I always say, they present a metric. The huge take away? Well, we all knew The Waking Dead was a juggernaut,—sales in this franchise would have made it the #3 publisher all by itself—but after that it's kids comics all the way, led by the maybe-comics of Dork Diaries, but following by Big Nate, Ninjago, Ursula Vernon's Dragonbreath, Drama and so on.

Short version, the last remaining book retail giant plans to close as many as a third of its stores over a 10-year period—although that may be an optimistic projection, as well. Slowed by the rise of digital and a lack of new malls, B&N oipened only two stores in the last fiscal year, and it's end of year profits were well below what was expected. While the Nook ereaders has been a bright spot, sales there have slowed as well. So a leaner meaner BN seems to be in the cards.

With 2013 barreling along, it's time to start looking at some of books that are going to make it a notable year, and here's one that has flown mostly under the radar until now: Who is AC? by Hope Larson with art by Tintin Pantoja, to be published by Atheneum on April 16th. It's Larson's first original GN since Mercury, she she describes it thusly:

Every couple of years, Scholastic, the biggest played in the kids book arena, releases a study on how kids read called The Kids and Family Reading Report. Jim Milliot sums up this year's findings, which largely centered on kids and ebooks:

In case you didn't get the memo, Warren Ellis's second novel is out tis week. It's called Gun Machine, and it's a dark story...

DC also released their collection plans for the DCU for May-August, and they include FOUR deluxe editions collecting the various BEFORE WATCHMEN miniseries. Perhaps...

When it was announced that executive editor Karen Berger was stepping down last week, articles on the Vertigo imprint immediately took on an elegiac...