Sam Raimi, the director of “Evil Dead,” et al. has taken an interest in the movie project “Earp: Saints for Sinners” based on the graphic novel of the same name published by Radical. “Earp” reimagines its gunslinging title character (Wyatt, that is) and his brothers, along with his comrade-in-spurs Doc Holliday, in a whole new environment–the Future–where everything is ravaged and pretty much the only city left standing is Las Vegas. (Read the full story on Hollywood Reporter.)
I’m excited to see what Raimi can do with this one. Radical is great at coming up with borderline-crazy “what if” scenarios that can easily turn into films. Another being looked at is “Oblivion,” which was actually written by “Tron Legacy” director Joseph Kosinski.
We were thrilled to hear that Persepolis was selected as Philadelphia’s new One City Read. Earlyword posted the story, pointing out that this is “Further evidence that the graphic novel format is gaining acceptance…” Read the full story HERE.
Not sure Persepolis is right for your community? Check out our new ONE BOOK catalog for more suggested titles. Looking for more graphic novels? Check out our new GRAPHIC NOVELS & MANGA catalog. We never sleep. We have a catalog for just about anything you can think of. Any suggestions? We’ll get right on it…
Yesterday, at around 4:00pm, I picked up a book from our Baker & Taylor guy’s office. I’d seen it at the conference and read a good review of it in Ain’t It Cool News (a reliable source, I think, for closet nerds). It’s called Asterios Polyp. (I never knew “polyp” was a word until my friends corrected me last weekend on the way to Coney Island.) By this morning, I’d finished the book. Graphic novels do tend to go fast, but at 344 pages, this one still should’ve taken me awhile.
Anyway, my point is: IT WAS SO GOOD. I’d say it’s neck-and-neck with Blankets (Top Shelf Productions, 2003) for my favorite graphic novel ever. The story itself is nothing all that new. An arrogant, miserable, self-absorbed former professor goes through a personal crisis and then finds a new life somewhere unexpected. (I saw two movies like that last year.) However, the way the story is told is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It’s narrated with unbelievable intelligence by Asterios’s unborn twin brother and drawn in different styles throughout to help “flesh” out the characters even further. I write “flesh” in quotes, because in some of the drawings, the artist does away with “flesh” and the characters become abstractions or sets of lines, in blue or pink or yellow.
Panel-by-panel narrative conventions are totally exploded, which allows feeling and mood and caprice to sink more deeply in. And that is the point of making a graphic novel. The drawings are there to express what words can’t. That’s what makes this such a courageous, endlessly innovative work of art that, if not re-invents, then certainly expands on the possibilities of the medium itself.
I had heard the whispers in the halls and now the rumors are true! Del Rey will be publishing Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Graphic Novel in 2010. Details are available from Publishers Weekly.
And while I missed the official Comic Con announcement, the Quirk Books’ sequel is slated to be Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters! And while I have not yet read the phenomenon that is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the book trailer Quirk Books released for the sequel is hilarious. A little reordering of my giant “to read” pile is in order…Just don’t tell Jane!
This weekend, I started reading a series of graphic novels by Bill Willingham called FABLES, and I think I’m hooked. The concept of the series is that all the characters from the world’s fairy tales and, well, fables, have been exiled from their homelands by some nebulous force called the “Adversary” and forced to live in New York City and surrounding areas.
We find out that things didn’t exactly work out to be “happily ever after”: Snow White and Prince Charming have divorced and he now womanizes female wait staff. Beauty and Beast are having marital issues. Big Bad “Bigby” Wolf is now the Bogartesque sheriff of Fabletown (the underground fable community within NYC), and is investigating the ostensible murder of Rose Red. Jack (of beanstalk fame), her boyfriend, is a prime suspect.
The mix of noir-detective mood with a cast of mythic Shrek-like characters is just bizarre. And bizarre in a really good way. Now I just have to find Volume 2. And 3. And 4…If I’m going to be addicted, I might as well be well-supplied.
The 53 graphic novels that made this list of Great Graphic Novels for Teens were selected from 154 official nominations. These books are, according to YALSA, “recommended for those ages 12-18, meet the criteria of both good quality literature and appealing reading for teens.” We’d like to congratulate the 13 from the Random House, Inc. family:
We are extremely happy to have just finished work on the first ever comprehensive company-wide graphic novel catalog! Featuring titles from great graphic novel producers like DC Comics, Pantheon, Del Rey, Vertical and Titan, this resource is designed to help librarians build or expand substantial graphic novel collections in their libraries. According to a recent article in PW, demand for such collections is growing all over the country.
We also got librarian blogger Robin Brenner of No Flying No Tights fame to write our introduction, featuring invaluable tips on building comics collections. Check out the PDF version online or request a printed copy by emailing us at library@randomhouse.com with your library’s mailing address.
Add some history to your graphic novels collection with this newly-announced drop in:
08: A Graphic Diary of the Campaign Trail
Michael Crowley and Dan Goldman
Three Rivers Press
978-0-307-40511-1
$17.95/$19.95C
On sale: 1/27/09
From the same authors who made the graphic adaptation of The 9/11 Report a bestseller, this newest campaign trail memoir embraces the popular 08 them of “change” in its very format. It is perfect for political enthusiasts and reluctant readers alike.
Zombies’ popularity is just like a zombie. You think it’s dead, but it just keeps coming back. 2003’s The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks was so immensely successful that it spawned offshoots: a deck of cards, a mini-journal, mini-notepads, an audio disc, etc. Then a few years later, Brooks, having established himself as sort of the “zombie authority” around here, wrote the novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, which was also very successful.
Soon, though, we’ll be hearing a fresh voice on the not-so-fresh (literally/olfactorily) topic. Coming in March 2009 from Doubleday is Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament, a comedic novel featuring a “newly minted” zombie whose sad post-existence drives him to Undead Anonymous in search of moral support. The book’s campaign has produced this new hilarious new “ad” for Necrobufrin: Zombie Antidepressant. Take a look.
Don’t count out Max Brooks, though. Next summer, he’ll be cracking a new medium with a graphic-novel follow-up to The Zombie Survival Guide, subtitled “Recorded Attacks.” Stay tuned. And stay alive.
I must get my circuts checked. Yesterday, I found a Three Rivers Press ARC of something called I SAW YOU in my boss’s book cart. I don’t know how I hadn’t heard of it yet-something that combines two of my favorite modern-day phenomena: graphic art and Missed Connections.
If you’re unaware of Missed Connections, you should visit Craigslist.com immediately and click on the link for it. Missed Connections is a place online where people can post little love notes (or maybe “would-be-love” notes) about how they saw someone they were romantically interested in around town and neglected to say something. The posts can range from cute to creepy to wildly inappropriate, but, either way, they’re often very entertaining.
A typical example from today in New York City: “Sunday night…around 10ish. You were rocking a white hat and some killer sneaks. You kept looking at me, and made the same transfer from the southbound NQRW to the L train at 14th. You were standing next to me on the platform. You kept looking at me… you’re cute. Why didn’t you say something?…”
These are entertaining enough by themselves, but Editor Julia Wertz has collaborated with a ton of stars of the graphic art world to produce a whole book of comics inspired by real Missed Connections. I flipped through it for an hour yesterday, and now all my friends have been asking for it. It reminds me of a former staff pick of mine called Postcards. Be sure to reserve copies for your 20-something patrons! This one publishes in February.
-David
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