Found in Translation: Soccer and Basketball Manga

This month's column celebrates the return of football with a couple of unlicensed sports-themed manga that we’d love to see a publisher put in the game. For the soccer fans out there, if the World Cup was not enough to satisfy your soccer itch, then have I got a comic for you. Yoichi Takahashi's classic soccer manga Captain Tsubasa gives the beautiful game the stylish comic treatment it deserves.

Comics Briefly: 9/7/2010

Small Press Expo Coming This Weekend, ICv2 Conference on Comics and Digital, Justin Beiber Cease & Desists Bluewater Comics, Girl Genius Wins the Hugo Award - Again, A Comic Con for the Middle East, This Week @ Good Comics 4 Kids, This Week @ The Beat

Vanessa Davis Keeps It Complicated

In her second collection of autobiographical comics, Make Me A Woman, coming in October from Drawn & Quarterly, Davis creates an intimate portrait of a world you totally want to hang out in. Her chatty-charming personality, quirky memories, and oddball thoughts are all telegraphed in drawings that hum with life.

Panel Mania: EmiTown

Emi Lenox chronicles her everyday life in EmiTown, an online auto-bio comic that is updated nearly daily. Lenox utilizes a variety of styles to transform the mundane into an adventure (take note of her metaphorical superheroes) and to emphasize the meaning in small moments-—like the joy of a beer after work. Image is releasing the first collection of EmiTown on October 27.

Children's Comics: 9/6/10

First Second Graphic Novel with Banned Book Theme Appears First on Web, Later in Stores

A book-loving boy from the small Oklahoma town of Americus grapples with the travails of high school and takes a stand when it looks as though his favorite fantasy series, starring a young sorceress who hunts monsters and tyrants, might be banned from the local library. That's the storyline of Americus, written by MK Reed and illustrated by Jonathan Hill, due from Roaring Brook's First Second Books in fall 2011. This graphic novel is making an earlier, serialized appearance on the Web, where new installments have been posted three times a week since early June.

Diamond to Change Weekly Delivery Date

Starting in January 2011, accounts serviced by Diamond Comics Distributors will be able to get comics and graphic novels delivered to stores on Tuesday for a Wednesday on sale date, in line with other industries that have street dates.

Comics Still King at Baltimore Comic-Con

While mega-shows like the San Diego Comic-Con and the FanExpo Canada—held the same August 27-29 weekend—have morphed into multi-media showcases for everything from entertainment news to horror to anime, the Baltimore Comic-Con purposely stays focused on just comics.

PW Select is for Graphic Novels

Yes, PW Select, our new quarterly supplement listing self-published titles, is for graphic novels and comics too. Launched by PWxyz president George W. Slowik Jr., the PW Select registration site is now live and accepting submissions for the first PW Select supplement, which will appear in our year-end issue in December.

Comics Briefly: 8/31/10

Read Comics In Public Day, Wertham's Papers Open to Public, 2010 Harvey Award Winners, Kirkman's Prose Walking Dead Story Previewed, Image Comics Gets iPad App, Bruce Wayne & Dick Grayson to be Batman at Once, Shawn Martinborough interviewed by BET, Anti-Comics Political Campaign Ad, the "Crisis" Around Collaboration; Kids Comic con on Kickstarter; This Week @ Good Comics For Kids, This Week @ The Beat

Phoebe Potts Breaks Some Eggs, Makes a Memoir

A graphic novel tackling infertility could be grim, especially when it doesn't end with the desired baby. When it's done with the spirit and humor that Potts brings to her story, though, it's nearly impossible to put down. Phoebe Potts' Good Eggs will be published in September by HarperCollins. Overwhelmingly likeable on the page, Potts tells the story of her and her husband's frustrated efforts to have a child with equal parts comedy and pure narrative skill.

Round Table, SmarterComics Offer Comics Versions of Self-help, Business Books

Book packager Writers of the Round Table has teamed up with nonfiction comics publisher SmarterComics to produce a line of comics works based on bestselling business, motivational and personal self-help titles. The SmarterComics line of adaptations will launch in 2011 with books based on bestsellers by tough-love personal motivator Larry Winget, Latino entrepreneur Robert Renteria; sales and marketing guru Tom Hopkins, performance psychologist John Eliot and internet distribution visionary and Wired magazine editor-in-chief, Chris Anderson.

Panel Mania: Koko Be Good

Koko is a troublemaker, yet spurred by meeting Jon, decides to "be good." Jon, on the other hand, is contemplating whether he should move with his girlfriend to Peru on a humanitarian mission or stay and pursue his own music career. Jen Wang's first graphic novel, Koko Be Good, follows these characters as they attempt to come to terms with others' expectations as well as their expectations of themselves. Koko Be Good will be released by First Second on September 14.

Comics Reviews: 8/30/10

Lerner's Graphic Universe Keeps Growing

Despite the economic downturn and declines in some sectors of the graphic novel market, Lerner Graphic Universe, the comics division of Lerner Publishing Group, has continued to grow and continues to expand its list of graphic novels aimed at the trade, school, and library markets.

Comics Briefly: 8/24/2010

Islamic Comic The 99 to Crossover with Justice League; Millar's Clint Open for Submissions; Ignatz Award Nominees Announced; Baltimore Comic-Con This Weekend.; Comics at the Brooklyn Book Festival; Comics 4 Comix Cartoon Art Museum Fundraiser; Keith Giffen Returns to Comics Art; Call For Information: PW Feature on Graphic Novels as Gifts; This Week @ Good Comics For Kids; and This Week @ The Beat

Like A Brick Upside Your Head: George Herriman's "Tiger Tea"

Comics archaeologist Craig Yoe strikes again with Krazy + Ignatz in “Tiger Tea,” a handsome collected edition from IDW under the Yoe Books imprint. George Herriman’s creation Krazy Kat was one of the first examples of graphic storytelling that frequently crossed the line from “mere” funny pages fodder into the realms of heady art, and this collection showcases the author’s flair for rampaging narrative absurdity.

After Scanlations: Manga Publishers Look to Offer Legal Digital Access

In the wake of an alliance of Japanese and U.S. manga publishers determined to put a stop to illegal scanlations, publishers are trying to figure out how to reach the ever-growing number of fans who consume manga in digital formats before the manga pirates do it for them.

Passion, Ideas and Teamwork: The Stanford Graphic Novel Project

Since 2008, the Stanford Graphic Novel Project--part of the creative writing program at Stanford University--has produced a book-length graphic novel per session, a total of three full-length titles created by a staff of writers, artists and production workers who are actually students enrolled in the class to learn the craft of creating serious nonfiction comics.

Panel Mania: Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Biography

In this selection of pages taken from throughout a new graphic biography of the murdered Jewish teenage writer Anne Frank, we see the birth of Anne Frank in 1929, the rise of Hitler and Nazism in the years to the follow, the efforts of her father Otto Frank to hide the family, their eventual discovery and capture in the secret annex in Amsterdam and imagined scenes from the Nazi concentration camp where Anne Frank was murdered. Written by Sid Jacobson and illustrated by Ernie Colon in conjunction with Anne Frank House, Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Authorized Biography will be published September 14 by Hill & Wang.