Category: Other Publishers

By Matt Madden
224 pages, black and white, one color insert
Published by Chamberlain Bros.

One of my favorite “how-to” books in comics is, in many ways, less a “how-to” book and more like a piece of performance art. Matt Madden’s 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style is a book that should be used in any sort of comic class, showing over and over again that there really is more than one way to tell a story, even something as simple as wandering across the apartment.

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Written by Andrew Kreisberg
Art by Matthew JLD Rice
32 pages, black and white
Published by Arcana Comics

There are some book concepts that you hear and the idea instantly grabs you; others end up being a strong turn-off that keeps you away from the final product. What you don’t really see much of, though, are those books where the concept is so out there that your initial reaction is, "I absolutely have to see this to believe it." That’s how I felt about Arcana Comics’s Helen Killer, casting the famous blind-and-deaf woman in a whole new light: professional assassin. And you know what? I’m really glad I took a look.

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Written by Daniel Abraham
Art by Eric Battle
32 pages, color
Published by Dabel Brothers Productions

Writing a licensed comic book seems to be a peculiar sort of balancing act. It seems like there would be two obvious ways to approach the book; either assume that all your readers are familiar with the source material and just hit the ground running, or assume that none of your readers are familiar with the source material and spell everything out for them. Instead, a lot of these comics go for a strange sort of third option, trying to play to both crowds. In the case of Wild Cards: The Hard Call #1, all it seems to really create is a feeling of frustration.

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By Hope Larson
176 pages, black and white
Published by Atheneum Books

What I think I like the most about the announcement of a new Hope Larson book is that you never really know what to expect. The only real constant between her first two graphic novels, Salamander Dream and Gray Horses, was a quiet, graceful sort of quality in how she told the story. So while it’s no surprise that her new book Chiggers has that in spades, my one real surprise was how while it’s the most grounded in the real world of her books to date, she’s still able to bring bits of the fantastical into the story—and how well they fit.

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By Kean Soo
160 pages, color
Published by Hyperion

In what seems to be a trend these days, Jellaby was a web comic that I absolutely loved, only to have it go on hiatus because of a print edition being announced by a major publisher. When Kean Soo announced the change in status for Jellaby back in early 2006, I hadn’t counted on needing to wait almost two years to see the end result. The one bright side, though? Having read the first 60 odd pages already, I knew that I wouldn’t be disappointed.

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By Julia Wertz
176 pages, black and white
Published by Atomic Book Company

I have a confession to make—the title of The Fart Party made me simultaneously eager and loathe to read Julia Wertz’s book. On the one hand, it’s hard to not see anything called The Fart Party and not groan a little inside. But, well, I have to admit that farts can be awfully funny at times. It wasn’t until I finally read Wertz’s story (with Laura Park) in Papercutter #6 that I knew I needed to sit down and check this out. And you know, I’m awfully glad I did.

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By Jon Sukarangsan
48 pages, black and white
Published by Fortune Cookie Press

There are times, when reading a comic, when I seriously wonder if I’m reading fiction or non-fiction. That was certainly the case with Jon Sukarangsan’s Hurricane Season. With books like these, the problem isn’t anything done wrong by the creator. Rather, it’s that as you read the comic, the storytelling is so convincing that it feels like something that they’d personally experienced. That said, with a book like Hurricane Season I’m actually a little relieved that it isn’t reality.

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By Matthew Armstrong, Bannister, Phil Craven, Steve Hamaker, Ben Hatke, Kazu Kibuishi, Johane Matte, Jake Parker, Rad Sechrist, and Kean Soo
112 pages, color
Published by Villard Books

The Flight anthologies are always books that I look forward to, full of stories that spark the imagination and bring a sense of wonder to the page. When I heard that an all-ages edition of Flight, called Flight Explorer, was set to come out I was both excited and worried. On the one hand, the Flight books have always been full of top-notch material. But would a deliberate attempt to go exclusively all-ages somehow hinder the creators? Like so many worries about upcoming books, there are times when I seriously wonder why I don’t just accept in advance that people know what they’re doing.

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