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GraphicNovelReporter.com
Newsletter |
March 23, 2012 |
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Spring, Sunshine…and a Little Bit of the Dead
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So…what did you think?
I’m talking about The Walking Dead season finale, of course. (Nothing else went on this week, did it?) It was the long-awaited capper to the second season, and it delivered in spades (sometimes in spades to the head). Spoilers ahead, so skip the next two paragraphs if you have not caught up yet.
The secret whispered in Rick’s ear at the CDC last season probably didn’t come as much of a shock to anybody who’s reading Robert Kirkman’s comic series, but it was fun to see the characters on screen react to the news that they all carried the zombie virus.
For me, the episode was brilliantly shot and paced. Since the show deviates from the comics, it’s hard to guess who will live and who will die (bye, Shane and Dale…I’ll really miss Dale; he brought a heart and soul, and conscience, to the show that is sorely missed). There were several times during the hour where I was on the edge of my seat, wondering who would make it. When it was all done, the highlight of the episode was seeing Andrea kick some serious butt (all alone all through the night…that was incredible) and then the final-minutes appearances of both Michonne and the prison. I can’t wait till next season. Nice when a comic is this well interpreted on the screen --- and the audience numbers are just amazing.
One of the reasons we started this site was to reach teachers and librarians, who were incorporating graphic novels into their work at a rapid (and growing) pace. We wanted to make sure the site reached out to them and addressed the issues they were facing and kept them informed of what they were looking to do. This week we have a special article from a student’s viewpoint, and it’s an essay I’m thrilled to have on GNR. The article (I especially love the title: “It’s for school! I swear!”) is by Elizabeth Heyman, a senior at Wachtung Hills Regional High School in Warren, New Jersey. We’re absolutely thrilled to have her sharing her voice (and her passion for comics!) on the site. Check it out to get a great perspective on what comics mean to students today.
This week marked the official debut of spring, and with it came an amazing abundance of sunshine and warm weather here in New York City. That’s fitting, but technically, spring began for us here at GNR two weeks ago, when we unveiled our Spring 2012 Preview. As with our previous seasonal previews, that list compiles the best and brightest of what’s coming out in the months ahead…and we’ve conveniently divvied it up into proper sections (kids, tweens, teens, and adults, plus a nonfiction section). Even if you took a look through the article when it debuted earlier, it’s worth your time to check it out again. We’ve added a few titles to the list to better present a full picture of what’s coming out.
One of the books I was immediately most jazzed about for this spring was Tina’s Mouth by writer Keshni Kashyap. It’s about a girl (Tina, of course) who spends a year conversing with Jean-Paul Sartre for a school project. (Well, she converses; Jean-Paul stays quiet, what with being dead and all.) Anyway, the real story is about what Tina learns as a result of her extensive readings into existentialism and how those lessons relate to her childhood friends, now growing up and becoming teens, and the boys she crushes on and yearns for. It’s a funny book, also touching, and it rather wonderfully incorporates Sartre’s work in a clever and modern way. I loved it and couldn’t wait to get Kashyap talking more about it.
Mark Long was just a child in the late 1960s. His family was living in Houston, and his father was inadvertently involved in one of the most contentious and awful cases of racism in the state. A black man was accused of a crime he didn’t commit. Mark’s father was never called to testify in the trial, even though he was a witness to the crime and could verify the accused was not guilty. Strangely, though, a friendship formed as a result of the case and something beautiful occurred. The Silence of Our Friends (the title is based on a quote from Martin Luther King Jr.) is based on these experiences, and I had the pleasure of interviewing Mark about the book.
Miranda Mercury is a unique and special heroine. She’s one of the few (only?) African-American teen superheroines being published right now. Luckily, she assumes that burden with some great style. Brandon Thomas’s book The Many Adventures of Miranda Mercury has already been placed on YALSA’s Great Graphic Novels for Teens list this year, and we’ve got an interview that shows what a fascinating and well-rounded character Miranda is. I think she’s a character who will attract a rather large following, and deservedly so.
We’re continuing our graphic-novel discussion guides series, a new series I’m really happy with and hoping our readers are enjoying. Discussion guides are certainly something we’ve wanted to add to GNR since the site began, so it’s heartening to see that coming to fruition now. We’ve just added questions for three new books: One Hundred Demons, by Lynda Barry; Ultimate Spider-Man, Vol. 1, by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley; and Runaways, Vol. 1, by Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona. I hope they inspire some great discussions!
There's more, including reviews of Butterflies, Flowers, Vol. 8; Ultimate Spider-Man; Unterzakhn and more, plus plenty of other things you'll want to check out. Scroll down for all the latest.
And be on the lookout for our next update, in two weeks, when we bring you the details on Are You My Mother?, the long-awaited new book from Alison Bechdel. After the award-winning Fun Home, which focused on Alison's complicated, closeted father, Alison now examines her relationship with her own mother. It's fascinating, amazing, and heart-wrenching, from one of the most insightful creators working today.
Enjoy,
John Hogan (John@bookreporter.com)
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CREATOR INTERVIEW
Long Journey
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Mark Long tells a fascinating sub-chapter of the Civil Rights Movement in The Silence of Our Friends, based on a true experience his own father went through. By John Hogan
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Click here to read our interview with Mark Long.
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CREATOR INTERVIEW
Being and Mouthyness: Keshni Kashyap’s Delightful Take on Tina’s Mouth
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Writer Keshni Kashyap discusses what makes her heroine, a high school sophomore discovering the philosophies of Jean-Paul Sartre, exist…and grow. By John Hogan
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Click here to read our interview with Keshni Kashyap.
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CREATOR INTERVIEW
Mercury Rising: Brandon Thomas and Miranda Mercury Blaze a New Path
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Brandon Thomas created his heroine Miranda Mercury to make the kind of comic book he’d like to see in the marketplace. While publishers initially shied away from the concept for a number of reasons, The Many Adventures of Miranda Mercury eventually found a home with Archaia Entertainment and has been garnering attention and praise in the graphic novel world. It appears on this year's YALSA list of selections of Great Graphic Novels for Teens and has been nominated for four Glyph Awards. Thomas spoke to GraphicNovelReporter about how he created Miranda, his decades-long love of comics, and how he’s been both writing about comics and for comics the last several years. By Danica Davidson
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Click here to read our interview with Brandon Thomas.
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SEASONAL FEATURE
Spring 2012 Graphic Novel Preview
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Get ready to spring into a great season of graphic novels! Get a look ahead at what's coming out so you won't miss out on some of the most exciting new books of 2012. Let's dive right in...
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Click here for the Spring 2012 Graphic Novel Preview.
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BOOKS TO SCREEN
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Ultimate Spider-Man teams our favorite wallcrawler with a new team of Marvel heroes; plus, a new Avengers movie trailer is online. See them here.
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Click here to watch the trailers.
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EXCERPT
Unterzakhn by Leela Corman
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For six-year-old Esther and Fanya, the teeming streets of New York’s Lower East Side circa 1910 are both a fascinating playground and a place where life’s lessons are learned quickly and often cruelly. In drawings that capture both the tumult and the telling details of that street life, Unterzakhn (Yiddish for “Underthings”) tells the story of these sisters: as wide-eyed little girls absorbing the sights and sounds of a neighborhood of struggling immigrants; as teenagers taking their own tentative steps into the wider world (Esther working for a woman who runs both a burlesque theater and a whorehouse, Fanya for an obstetrician who also performs illegal abortions); and, finally, as adults battling for their own piece of the “golden land,” where the difference between just barely surviving and triumphantly succeeding involves, for each of them, painful decisions that will have unavoidably tragic repercussions. Unterzakhn is on sale April 3, but you can preview it here now.
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Click here to read the excerpt from Unterzakhn.
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DISCUSSION GUIDES
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Comics are an easy lens through which to look at youth culture. Are you an outcast? A superhero? A mutant? All three?!?! Teens are constantly redefining themselves and enjoy examining the lives of others. With any book discussed, the question of how this relates to their own lives is an easy conversation starter. The three titles featured now include Runaways, Vol. 1; One Hundred Demons; and Ultimate Spider-Man, Vol. 1: Power and Responsibility. All include teen protagonists questioning themselves and their roles in society. Teen readers can relate.
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Click here to read the discussion guides.
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TEEN REVIEWS
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Tina’s Mouth by Keshni Kashyap and Mari Araki
Tina M. is a sophomore at the Yarborough Academy taking a class on the lessons of philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Specifically, she’s learning a lot about existentialism, and it’s all just in time, since her social and school lives are somewhat falling apart. Reviewed by John Hogan
Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man, Vol. 1 by Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli
Peter Parker may be dead, but the legacy of Spider-Man lives on! Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli introduce the new web-head, Miles Morales, a 13-year-old struggling to cope with adolescent trials, family feuds, and…burgeoning spider-powers after being bitten by a genetically altered arachnid. Reviewed by Michael Hicks
Wolverine and Jubilee by Kathryn Immonen and Phil Noto
By removing Wolverine and Jubilee from the X-Men’s San Francisco home, author Kathryn Immonen shows readers the dynamic that probably made Wolverine and Jubilee friends in the first place. They may not listen to one another very well, but they are fiercely loyal to each other and it’s clear that one would die for the other. Reviewed by Ryan Donovan
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Click here to read our teen reviews.
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COMING SOON: March 28th and April 4th
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Here’s what you can look forward to in the weeks ahead!
March 28
Angelman: Fallen Angel
Fantagraphics
Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: Circus of the Damned, Book 2: Ingenue
Marvel Comics
Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: Circus of the Damned, Book 3: Scoundrel
Marvel Comics
Any Similarities to Persons Living or Dead Is Coincidental
Fantagraphics
Captain America: The Death of the Red Skull
Marvel Comics
Casper’s Scare School
Ape Entertainment
Charmed, Vol. 3
Zenescope Entertainment
Cow Boy
Archaia Entertainment
Dark Shadows: The Best of the Original Series
Hermes Press
Deadpool, Vol. 10: Evil Deadpool
Marvel Comics
Disney Fairies, Vol. 8: Tinker Bell Stories for a Rainy Day
Papercutz
DMZ, Vol. 11: Free States Rising
Vertigo
Fear Itself: Youth in Revolt
Marvel Comics
Flash Omnibus, Vol. 2
DC Comics
Floundering Time
Slave Labor Graphics
Gone to Amerikay
Vertigo
Incorruptible, Vol. 6
Boom! Studios
Interiorae
Fantagraphics
Justice League of America: Dark Things
DC Comics
Kitchen Sink Press: The First 25 Years
Boom! Studios
Kochi Wanaba
Blank Slate
Kung Fu Panda Digest: Slow, Fast & Other
Ape Entertainment
The Legion of Monsters
Marvel Comics
Marvel Masterworks: Avengers, Vol. 4
Marvel Comics
Medusa’s Daughter
Red Giant Entertainment
Megalex: The Complete Story
Humanoids Publishing
Monsieur Jean: Singles Theory
Humanoids Publishing
Nether World
Arcana Studios
Pete and Miriam
Boom! Studios
Pocket God, Vol. 2: A Tale of Two Pygmies
Ape Entertainment
Pocket God, Vol. 3: A Quest Called Tribe
Ape Entertainment
Rachel Rising, Vol. 1: Shadow of Death
Abstract Studios
Scooby Doo, Where Are You?
DC Comics
Secret Avengers, Vol. 3: Mission Caught World
Marvel Comics
Secret Warriors, Vol. 6: Wheels Within Wheels
Marvel Comics
Shattered Heroes
Marvel Comics
Siegfried, Vol. 1
Archaia Entertainment
Simpsons Confidential
Bongo Comics
Stalin’s Spy in Tokyo
Blank Slate
Stan Lee’s Traveler, Vol. 3
Boom! Studios
Tails, Vol. 1
Hermes Press
Tanpopo Collection, Vol. 1
Boom! Studios
Three Stooges, Vol. 1: Bed Bugged
Papercutz
Thunderbolts: The Great Escape
Marvel Comics
Torpedo, Vol. 5
IDW Publishing
Young Lovecraft, Vol. 1
Kettledrummer Books
April 4
30 Days of Night, Vol. 1
IDW Publishing
The Avengers, Earth’s Heroes: Adventure Comic Reader #1
Marvel Comics
The Avengers, Earth’s Heroes: Adventure Comic Reader #2
Marvel Comics
Avengers: Hawkeye Solo
Marvel Comics
Avengers: Legion of the Unliving
Marvel Comics
Avengers: Mythos
Marvel Comics
Avengers: Serpent Crown
Marvel Comics
Avengers: West Coast Avengers Assemble
Marvel Comics
Batman: Gotham Shall Be Judged
DC Comics
Black Charity
Archaia Entertainment
Black Orchid Deluxe Edition
Vertigo
Cold War, Vol. 1
IDW Publishing
Dream Quest of the Unknown: Kadath & Other Stories
Mick Man Press
G.I. Joe Cobra, Vol. 2: Cobra Civil War
IDW Publishing
The Girl Who Owned a City
Lerner Publishing Group
Hack/Slash Omnibus, Vol. 4
Image Comics
Jack Kirby’s Fourth World Omnibus, Vol. 2
DC Comics
Jinx
Archie Comics
Legends of the Dark Knight: Jim Aparo
DC Comics
Lovecraft Anthology, Vol. 1
Selfmadehero
Skullkickers Treasure Trove, Vol. 1
Image Comics
Spider-Man: The Return of Anti-Venom
Marvel Comics
The Strange Talent of Luther Strode, Vol. 1
Image Comics
X-Force: Toy Soldiers
Marvel Comics
X-Men: Fatal Attractions
Marvel Comics
X-Men: Mutant Genesis 2.0
Marvel Comics
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Click here to see what's coming soon!
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