Archie Comics Launches New 'Sonic' Graphic Novel Series

Archie Comics is looking to expand the audience for Sonic the Hedgehog, the Sega videogame franchise character, with three new graphic novel series, including two in a new, larger format that are designed to appeal to teenagers and older readers. All three series will collect material previously published as monthly comics, and all are designed with bookstores and comics shops in mind.

Digital Comics Offerings Growing for Nook

While the iPad has been the most-talked about digital platform for comics, B&N has expanded its digital comics offerings on the Nook, offering comics as apps rather than converting the content into a proprietary e-book format, like Amazon does for the Kindle, or into the open source ePub format.

Comics Reviews: 5/9/11

New books by Yuichi Yokoyama, Doug TenNapel, Pascal Girard, Stan Lee and Deborah Vankin are reviewed this month.

Notable Comics Events

Walt Simonson, Joe Quesada and Jim Steranko Live in NYC; Jason Shiga's Empire State Book Launch; Dallas Comic Con; Monte Schulz On Peanuts & His Father; and Heroes Con in June

This Meme's For Us: Jay Cantor's 'Aaron and Ahmed' and the Roots of Terror

Jay Cantor and James Romberger’s graphic novel, Aaron and Ahmed, embraces the idea of memes--cultural concepts that spread quickly--in regard to the War On Terror. Beginning with 9/11 and the prison at Guantanamo Bay, the book focuses on the notion that powerful symbols dictate the fight against terror as much as actions.

Pen World Voices: Getting Real with Superheroes

New York City's Cooper Union was the scene for "Get Super Lit," a unique extravaganza of comic art projected on a wide film screen with voice acting and musical accompaniment, held as part of the PEN World Voices Festival.

Amazon Removes Some Explicit Yaoi Manga from Kindle Store

Amazon has removed several yaoi manga from its Kindle Store and refused to allow others to be offered for the Kindle, although the bookseller continues to sell the same manga in print and to offer more explicit erotic books in both formats. Yaoi manga features love stories between two males and can range from softly romantic to sexually explicit.

Comics Briefly 5/03/11

Free Comic Book Day May 7, Duncan The Wonder Dog Wins LA Times Book Prize, Bendis To Write Marvel MMO Plot, Titan Brings Out Comics App, FDNY and Marvel's New Fire Safety Comic Free Online, This Week @ Good Comics For Kids, This Week @ The Beat

Boston Comic Con 2011: Small Is Beautiful

The Boston Comic Con has been growing steadily from its origins as a small hotel comics convention centered around buying comics to an event that features top-name guests but still has the intimacy of a hometown comics festival. While the show is smaller than a big-city convention, it is growing fast. BCC press liaison Colin Solan said attendance this past weekend was 6,000, a big increase over both last year’s attendance of 4,100 and the show’s 2009 attendance of 2,800.

Panel Mania Preview: Ray Bradbury Adaptations from Hill and Wang

Following their 2009 adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Hill and Wang is publishing adaptations of Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles and Something Wicked This Way Comes. Ray Bradbury’s The Martin Chronicles: The Authorized Adaptation by Dennis Calero includes fifteen of the interconnected stories from Bradbury’s book, which follows man as they travel and settle on Mars with the ancient, dying race that inhabits the planet. In Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes: The Authorized Adaptation by Ron Wimberly, two boys, Will and Jim, discover the dark magic and evil at work in the traveling sideshow, Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show, that comes to their town a week before Halloween. This preview includes a selection of pages from each book. Both books will be released on July 17.

Viz Expands iPad Manga App to iPhone, iPod Touch

Viz Media has expanded its iPad app to include support for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The Viz Manga app features over 200 titles. All manga currently on the iPad are also available for the other devices, and readers who buy a book on one platform can sync them across all platforms.

First Second Evolves for the Internet with Webcomics Imprint

Macmillan's graphic novel imprint First Second Books has launched To Be Continued..., a book imprint that specializes in serializing its titles online as Web Comics before releasing them in print at a later date.

‘PW Comics Week’ Goes Monthly; More Web Coverage Planned

After nearly six years of weekly publication, PW Comics Week, Publishers Weekly’s email newsletter on comics and graphic novel publishing, will switch to a monthly schedule effective beginning next month. Although we are changing the frequency of the newsletter, the change will not diminish our overall comics coverage. Publishers Weekly will continue to cover graphic novels and comics in the book industry and traditional comics industry, publishing news and feature stories through the PW website and PW Daily as well as in our new monthly graphic novel newsletter.

Dark Horse Launches Comics App and Digital Store

After updating its software to comply with Apple's revamped app guidelines, Dark Horse will launch the Dark Horse Digital application for iOS devices and the Dark Horse Web store on April 27. The application will feature more than 250 comics priced from from free to 99 cents to $1.99.

W.W. Norton to Publish Revised Edition of 'R. Crumb: The Complete Record Collection'

In November W. W. Norton will publish a new and revised edition of R. Crumb: The Complete Record Collection, a slip-cased hardcover edition of a book originally published in Europe that collects every album cover ever created by Crumb.

Comics Briefly 04/26/2011

2011 Hugo Awards Nominations For Graphic Stories, Dark Horse CEO Speaks to ICv2 About Layoffs, Archie Comics Available Digitally in Spanish, Comixology & Stan Lee Create Digital Comics Japan Benefit Anthology, Barnes & Noble Launches Digital Comics App for Nook, Afrodisiac Free Online, Spider-Man Musical to be Satirized on Law & Order: CI, Comic Books Live Reading in NYC, This Week @ Good Comics For Kids, This Week @ The Beat

Panel Mania: Celluloid

Celluloid, Dave McKean’s first solo graphic novel since the 1998 work Cages, is a pornographic work of art. A woman, whose partner is stuck at work, arrives home and discovers a film projector. The film presents a blurry scene of a man and woman having sex. When the film burns out a door appears that leads the woman to a series of fantastical sexual encounters. Celluloid will be released by Fantagraphics on May 25th.

Comics Reviews: 4/25/2011

Ivan Brunetti’s Hard Won Lessons

Yale University Press has just published Ivan Brunetti’s Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice, a slightly revised edition of a booklet originally published in 2007 as an insert in Todd Hignite’s Comic Art magazine. The volume is a distillation of the cartooning course Brunetti has been teaching at the University of Chicago and Columbia College for several years now. At 88 pages, the book is far briefer than many that similarly promise to teach aspiring cartoonists the techniques of the trade. But to borrow a phrase from another cartoonist, Brunetti’s book is like concentrated orange juice: a potent dose that, like Brunetti’s own comics, values concision in the service of maximum personal expression.

Digital Comics Aren’t Just For Adults Anymore

One of the less hyped but most crucial uses of the smart phone and the digital tablet has been that of babysitter. It’s common to see kids playing Angry Birds, and there’s the widely reported story from December about kids racking up large fees on power-ups for “The Smurfs’ Village” game. Where video games venture, comics are never far behind. Kids’ comics have also entered the digital world.