Tag: Books

Jeffrey Brown's DARTH VADER AND SON is a book of gentle humor centering on the idea of Darth Vader as dad to a four year old Luke Skywalker. And amazingly, it is not only an officially licensed Lucasfilm product...but they even made a trailer for it with James Earl Jones reading a line or two.

It's been a while since we saw a new batch of cartoonist-inspired covers for Penguin Graphic Classics editions, all designed by Paul Buckley. But here you go. Mike Mignola on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (which was adapted as APOCALYPSE NOW, for those who came in late).

Now available for pre-order, a new book by Eddie Campbell. This time his subject is finances.

Simone Lia's book of cute cat cartoons, FLUFFY, was one of the top sellers for Cape when it came out, and somehow, based on the title alone, we suspect this could top it:

Artist Mike Cavallaro writes to alert us to an event tonight, the book launch for UNDER THE MOONS OF MARS, a new anthology of short stories inspired by the Edgar Rice Burroughs mythos by writers including Joe R. Lansdale, Jonathan Maberry, Peter S. Beagle, Robin Wasserman, Garth Nix, and more, as well as a foreward by Tamora Pierce and introduction and header notes by John Joseph Adams. Oh, and illustrations by Cavallaro, Charles Vess, Michael W. Kaluta, Molly Crabapple, and more.

The Madeleine L'Engle classic gets a new look in this adorable comic.

DC has released it's book schedule for Vertigo for the fall, including two originals, one yet to be announced -- THE PRINCE OF CATS by Ron Wimberly. Judging by his tumblr for the project, it an updated take on Shakespeare's ROMEO AND JULIET starring Tybalt.

2012 sees Telgemeier's next book, DRAMA, and it's another bullseye to the interests of middle-schoolers, dealing with the ever popular school play. On her blog, she just released the cover and it looks like another winner.

Vertigo has confirmed the details of the graphic novel version of Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy: as previously leaked, Denise Mina will write the adaptation, with art by Leonardo Manco and Andrea Mutti. The cover is by Lee Bermejo — definitely in the style of the Vertigo crime line. THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO graphic novel will arrive in November. The book has already been adapted into a Swedish film/TV series and a US film. All three existing versions have various story tics, and very different takes on Lisbeth Salander, the enigmatic heroine who loves Billy's pan pizza and computer hacking. Mina's take is worth watching as she's a veteran crime writer on her own as well as a comics reader (and writer). We're curious to see how she tweaks the story.

Courtesy of Diamond, we've been posting their top sales charts for 2011 today (more are coming) -- but one question keeps coming up. Diamond releases charts for both "Indie" publishers and "Small" publishers. What is the difference? When you see Random House -- the world's biggest publisher -- on Diamond's "Small" chart, it seems paradoxical. Well, Diamond has provided us with some definitions.

As we've mentioned here several times, there have been no more important graphic novels published in this century than PERSEPOLIS by Marjane Satrapi and FUN HOME by Alison Bechdel. Both found large audiences well beyond the traditional ones for comics, and both have become oft-imitated -- but never duplicated -- by book publishers trying to cash in on the "graphic novel" trend. (The number of graphic autobiographies exploring ethnic roots alone is staggering.)

Matthias Wivel is one of a trio of reviewers -- Domingos Isabelinho and Ng Suat Tong are the other two -- known for applying the most stringent possible personal standards to comics in their criticism. Thus, seeing Wivel come to the defense of HABIBI at The Hooded Utilitarian is a bit of a surprise -- but he makes a plausible point. Running down a host of critical beatdowns administered on that site over stereotypes and gender issues, he says that "parts of the comics intelligentsia seem to be developing an unhealthy obsession with ideological readings of comics."