Crowdfunding: When the Publisher Doesn’t Cover the Creator’s Expenses

Crowdfunding is emerging as a new force in comics publishing, not only to fund new projects, but to address long-standing creator complaints like lack of promotion and advances.

Upcoming Comics Events: 6/25/2012

7/3 Authors discuss Walt Kelly: The Life and Art of the Creator of Pogo in San Francisco, CA;7/5 Our Valued Customers signing with "Mr. Tim", New York, NY; 7/7 Kids Read Comics in Ann Arbor, MI

CBLDF Forms Coalition to Defend U.S. Comic Book Reader Charged in Canada

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund has formed a coalition to support the defense of an American comic book reader facing criminal charges after Canadian officials claimed the comics found on his laptop are child pornography.

Gene Yang’s ‘Level Up’: Videogames, Angels and Growing Up Asian-American

Cartoonist Gene Luen Yang follows his critically acclaimed graphic novels Prime Baby, The Eternal Smile and 2006 National Book Award finalist, American Born Chinese, with Level Up, written by Yang with art by Thien Pham, published by First Second.

PW Comics World Launches the 'More To Come' Podcast

PW Comics World joins the podcasting world with the first episode of "More to Come" featuring co-editors Calvin Reid and Heidi MacDonald and producer Kate Fitzsimons anlayzing current comics news, with a look at upcoming books and current trends in the book publishing world as they affect comics.

Faith-Based Comics and Graphic Novels from Kingstone Media

Focused on an aggressive release schedule supported by key distribution channels and solid financing, Kingstone Media Group has set its sights on becoming the leading publisher of faith-based graphic novels and periodical comics in the Christian Booksellers Association.

Panel Mania: Any Empire

Nate Powell, author of the 2009 Eisner award-winning graphic novel,Swallow Me Whole, explores war and violence in Middle America in his new book, Any Empire. A group of kids from a small, Southern town face their privileged suburban fantasies of violence when there is a string of turtle mutilations. Later as adults, they meet again to confront the questions raised by their childhood experiences. Any Empire will be released by Top Shelf in August.

Graphic Nonfiction: The Life, Art and Death of Ana Mendieta

If you’ve never heard of Ana Mendieta, the visionary Cuban feminist artist who died in 1985, then Who is Ana Mendieta?, a new graphic biography by Christine Redfern and Caro Caron, published this month by the Feminist Press, will provide an introduction to both her life and to her art.

Comics Events 6/20/11

Pride Month Signing with Abby Denson & Jennifer Camper in New York, Boilerplate Art Opening in Portland & More

Graphic Novel Winners of the Random House Creative Writing Competition for NYC High School Seniors.

The winners of the annual Random House Creative Writing Competition For New York City Public High School Seniors were announced last week at the competition’s annual awards ceremony. The RH CWC awards are designed to encourage and support young creative talent in the New York City public school system and first, second and third place scholarship prizes are awarded in fiction, poetry, drama, personal memoir and graphic novels.

Doctors, Comic Books and Healing: Chicago’s Comics & Medicine Conference 2011

The second annual Comics & Medicine conference took place the weekend of June 9-11 in Chicago, bringing together a host of speakers and cartoonists, among them Scott McCloud, John Porcellino, David Small and Hillary Chute, to focus on the melding of graphic illustration in the field of healthcare both as a teaching tool and as a means of healing.

Comics Events 6/13/2011

Josh Neufeld & Brooke Gladstone in Brooklyn, Kids Read Comics Festival and more

Throwaway Adds 'Calypso' to 'Ulysses Seen'; Releases 'The Wasteland' App

Throwaway Horse, the company behind Ulysses Seen, the Web comics adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses, will update the Web Comic with "Calypso," the 54-page fourth chapter of the novel and release a comics app adaptation of T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland created by British cartoonist Martin Rowson.

Jeff Lemire’s ‘Essex County’ in Film Deal

Tales of the Farm, the first volume of Jeff Lemire’s award-winning graphic novel triology Essex Country (Top Shelf), has been picked up to be adapted into a feature film by producers Steven Gilder and Alec Chorches. Although the project is a long way from being greenlit, it has script by John Car, and John Dykstra, the visual effects supervisor of the new film X-Men: First Class, is attached to the project as director.

ABDO to Offer Marvel e-Books; Free Comic Book Reader Guides

Educational and library publisher ABDO announced an agreement to license and offer e-book versions of Marvel comic books beginning in the Fall 2011 school year. In addition the publisher--ABDO has long worked to highlight the utility of comics in education--has created a series of free downloadable teacher guides focused on vocabulary building and based on ABDO’s Spotlight pop culture line of comics licensed from such publishers as Marvel and Dark Horse.

Comics Reviews June 2011

Is Kickstarter the #3 U.S. Indie Graphic Novel Publisher?

If someone told you that Kickstarter, the online fundraising site, funded roughly the same amount of comics material as DC Comics' Vertigo Imprint, you’d look at them like they were crazy.

Adventures in Publishing: Carla Speed McNeil’s 'Finder'

Dark Horse has published the first volume of Carla Speed McNeil's The Finder Library, which brings together four story arcs about the world of McNeil’s domed city of Anvard, its competing tribes, its outdated futuristic technology, and the outlaw hero Jaeger and the Grosvenor family, the series’ main characters.

New Graphic Books Blur Categories To Tell Stories

What is a graphic novel? Is it a collection of serial comics? Or is it an original story told only in sequential art? As the public’s interest in visual storytelling continues to grow, the format is morphing into a new kind of graphic work not easily defined as a conventional comic book.

Panel Mania: A Bride's Story Vol. 1

By Kaoru Mori, the creator of Emma, A Bride's Story follows Amir, a young bride in nineteenth-century Asia, who is sent to a neighboring town to get married. When she arrives she discovers her new husband is eight years younger than her. However, soon she develops a deep affection for the boy and his family as she integrates into the culture of her new home. A Bride's Story will be released by Yen Press this week.