April is here to shower you with exciting releases — like the highly-anticipated new Barry Windsor-Smith book — some extremely cool virtual events, and more! As per usual, scroll to the bottom of this email for this month’s discount code and a sneak peek of an upcoming book. But first, the news!
- Cathy Malkasian’s Nobody Likes You, Greta Grump was reviewed by Hillary Chute for The New York Times
- Shira Spector’s Red Rock Baby Candy and I Never Promised You A Rose Garden by Mannie Murphy were on the Lambda Literary list of “March’s Most Anticipated LGBTQ Books!”
- The great Trina Robbins was featured in this CBS This Morning
- Publisher’s Weekly previewed The Thud by Mikael Ross, and ran great reviews of both Beatnik Buenos Aires by Diego Arandojo and Facundo Percio, and Richard Sala’s Poison Flowers and Pandemonium
- Comics Beat ran an excellent interview with Paco Roca, talking about his most recently translated book, Winter of the Cartoonist
- Vivian Chong, Georgia Webber, Julia Gfrörer, and Simon Hanselmann, have all been shortlisted for the Cartoonist Studio Prize
- Gary Panter was interviewed by Hillary Chute for ArtForum
April New Releases:
Monsters by Barry Windsor Smith
The year is 1964. Bobby Bailey doesn’t realize he is about to fulfill his tragic destiny when he walks into a US Army recruitment office to join up. Close-mouthed, damaged, innocent, trying to forget a past and looking for a future, it turns out that Bailey is the perfect candidate for a secret U.S. government experimental program, an unholy continuation of a genetics program that was discovered in Nazi Germany nearly 20 years earlier in the waning days of World War II. Bailey’s only ally and protector, Sergeant McFarland, intervenes, which sets off a chain of cascading events that spin out of everyone’s control. As the titular monsters of the title multiply, becoming real and metaphorical, literal and ironic, the story reaches its emotional and moral reckoning.
Monsters is the legendary project that Barry Windsor-Smith has been working on for over 35 years. Trauma, fate, conscience, and redemption are just a few of the themes that intersect in the most ambitious graphic novel of Windsor-Smith’s career.
The Artist Signed Edition
A limited, signed edition of Barry Windsor-Smith’s Monsters is also available now from our web store. Featuring a specially designed and signed page printed on vellum, this edition is limited to 1,200 copies!
In Pictopia by Donald Simpson, Mike Kazaleh, Pete Poplaski and Eric Vincent
In Pictopia is the legendary comic created in 1986, written by the era’s most adventurous mainstream comics writer and drawn by a bevy of indie cartoonists—helmed by Don Simpson, with Mike Kazaleh, Pete Poplaski, and Eric Vincent. Presented here for the first time, scanned from the original line art and full-color painted boards, in an appropriately oversized format. Pictopia is the allegorical city inhabited by old, forgotten, but once famous and iconic comics characters, now considered pitiable has-beens by the popular new comics characters who are cheerfully and inevitably taking their places in the pop culture pantheon of celebrity. It is both a paean to timeless, beloved comics characters and a scathing critique of the then-contemporary comics sub-culture.
The Complete Crepax Volume 6: Dangerous Liaisons by Guido Crepax
In this Italian erotic comics collection, which spans 1977–1989, the character Valentina, a music, art, and fashion-loving Milanese photographer, ages in “real time.” First, she saves Effi, a German heiress, from kidnappers, and they become lovers. Valentina also has an affair with Bruno, a young cellist. Dangerous Liaisons follows our heroine into middle-aged home life with her longtime partner, Phil, with whom she has a grown son, Mattia. Two of Crepax’s lauded graphic adaptations: “Venus in Furs” and “The Memoirs of Casanova” are featured in this volume.
The Complete Crepax Gift Box Set Vols. 5 & 6 by Guido Crepax
These erotic comics stories span 1968-1989. In Vol. 5, Bonnie and Clyde, Louise Brooks, and the globetrotting photographer Valentina (a movie and TV star herself!) take center stage, while “The Man from Harlem” is Crepax’s ode to boxer Joe Louis and jazz. In Vol. 6 The Venus in Furs, Casanova, and Milanese photographer Valentina embark on a series of erotic adventures.
Young Shadow by Ben Sears
Bolt City has a new protector in this exciting new middle-grade graphic novel from cartoonist and musician Ben Sears! Young Shadow usually protects sci-fi Bolt City by making deliveries for the food bank and rescuing pets. But one night, he discovers the Sludge Team, a conspiracy composed of a CEO of a chemical plant, trust-fund punks, and suspicious cops. To stop their evil plan, Young Shadow must don a couple of batons, knee pads, and a small black mask, and team up with Spiral Scratch – another benevolent protector in the fight – and metal-clad nuns. Drawn in bold yellows and blacks, this is a socially conscious action/adventure kid superhero tale.
Nuft and the Last Dragons, Volume 1: The Great Technowhiz by Freddy Milton
Sometimes poignant and sometimes slapstick, in this collection of Danish comics stories, Nuft and his family are pitted against prejudice, scheming slumlords and all-seeing robot overlords! This debut volume collects the stories “The Nufts Move In,” in which the dragon family trades its rural ways for a new life in the big city – but the tenement they move into is not only falling apart, it’s plagued by poltergeists! In “Trouble on George Street,” Nuft gets a job at City Hall but quickly discovers that the whole thing is teetering on the verge of collapse! And in “The Great Technowhiz,” the Technowhiz watches over all the city’s functions – but who watches over the Technowhiz? Plus a special collector’s bonus – Freddy Milton’s very first 8-page Nuft tale. With personal commentary and insight by Freddy Milton.
Beatnik Buenos Aires by Diego Arandojo and Facundo Percio
When night falls in Buenos Aires, the city comes alive. Artists flock to cafes and dives to exchange ideas, listen to music, watch outré performance art, pen poetry, fall in love. Beatnik Buenos Aires follows the lives of writers, painters, musicians, sculptors, and performers as they wend their way through these hubs of creative life, seeking out inspiration and grappling with their craft. Set in 1963, this graphic novel celebrates a time in Argentine history when its art scene blossomed. Argentine creators Diego Arandojo and Facundo Percio come together to weave the rich tapestry of this mecca of artistic expression. Romantic, dangerous, and brimming with life — Buenos Aires in the time of the beatnik.
April Events:
- Tuesday, April 6th, 7pm ET: John Hankiewicz (Education) — The New York Comics & Picture-Story Symposium
- Monday, April 12th, 6pm ET: Simon Hanselmann (Crisis Zone) with Nathan Cowdry (Crash Site) — Virtual MOCCA Comic Arts Festival
- Wednesday, April 14th, 2pm ET: John Cuneo (Coping Skills) with Joe Ciardiello (A Fistful of Drawings) — Virtual MOCCA Comic Arts Festival
- Friday, April 16th, 2pm ET: Jaime Hernandez (Queen of the Ring), Gilbert Hernandez (Hypnotwist/Scarlet by Starlight) with Adrian Tomine — Virtual MOCCA Comic Arts Festival
- Sunday, April 18th, 10am PT: Barry Windsor-Smith (Monsters) with Brian Hibbs — Comix Experience Graphic Novel Club