Comics Reviews: 1/18/2010

Cooking the Books with Marcy Goldman

Cookbook author Marcy Goldman's site, BetterBaking.com, has pioneered a pay-for-content model that charges visitors $2.49 per recipe and also offers quarterly and six-month subscriptions. As Goldman continues work on her fourth cookbook, she talked to PW about fiercely guarding her content: "Everything has its value. We have to just not panic. Publishers are confusing the delivery system with thinking people don’t want content anymore."

Talking Food Writing with Powell, Hesser, and Company

Last year was a tough one for print, with stalwart magazines folding and seemingly more bloggers than ever crowding the Internet. But the January 7 “Word of Mouth” panel on food writing for the Web, which I moderated at Housing Works Bookstore Café in lower Manhattan, proved one thing: cookbooks and food writing still have incredible power—and that the medium through which it’s delivered is starting to matter less and less.

Short Order: January 19

In this issue's round-up of cookbook-releated news, a Washington health organization names the decade's healthiest and unhealthiest cookbooks. And yes, Paula Deen is on the unhealthy list. Also, Saveur lists cookbooks readers can't live without; Hachette launches its first "cookvook"; and David Lebovitz talks e-cookbooks.

Recipe Report: Granola Bars

If your New Year's resolution involves eating more healthfully, check out Kim Boyce's Good the Grain: Baking with Whole-Grain Flours (Stewart, Tabori & Chang). Boyce doesn't advocate making Ho Hos with whole wheat pastry flour; rather, she fills her book with recipes for classic, homey dishes like porridge and rye bread, many of them calling for natural sweeteners.

Comics Briefly

Heroes 4 Haiti: Comic Creators Organize Disaster Relief; Archie Inks Deal with Random House; New DC Weekly Comic Aimed at Gamers; Perez and Wolfman Together Again; Children's Charity Teaches Comic Creation; This Week @ Good Comics for Kids and This Week @ The Beat

Vertical Acquires New Tezuka License

Vertical, Inc., an independent publisher of Japanese science fiction, crime fiction, and manga, will publish Ayako, a newly licensed work created by the late, acclaimed manga-ka Osamu Tezuka, in October.

Panel Mania: Popgun Vol. 4

"Hamburgers for One," by Frank Stockton is a 24-page story taken from the latest volume in Image Comics’s ongoing Popgun series, an anthology of full-color comics. Popgun Vol. 4 also features work by Jock, Jeffrey Brown, Erik Larsen, and the cover is by Ben Templesmith. The anthology will go on sale on February 24.

A Shelf of One's Own: Shelving Graphic Novels in Bookstores

As graphic novels of all kinds make their way into the general bookstore market, issues of shelving and categorization have become more important. And with more literary works like Stitches, Fun Home and Asterios Polyp in the general bookstore marketplace—serious works of nonfiction/memoir and literary fiction—the question of just where a graphic book should be shelved has become a trickier proposition.

Out of Body Experience: Dash Shaw’s ‘Body World’

For those who followed BodyWorld as it appeared on Dash Shaw’s website from 2007 to 2009, it will come as no surprise that the book version, to be released by Pantheon in April, is out of this world. To those who haven’t read Shaw’s work since Bottomless Bellybutton, it just might blow your mind.

Disney Mum on Marvel Integration

New Year’s Eve 2009 saw the House of Ideas become the House of Mouse as Marvel’s stockholders approved the $4.3 billion purchase of Marvel Entertainment by Disney. Under terms of the agreement, Marvel shareholders received a total of $30 a share in cash plus approximately 0.7452 Disney shares for each Marvel share they owned.

Actar Acquires Birkhäuser Architecture Titles

Actar, the publisher of books on architecture, graphic design, and contemporary art with offices in Barcelona and New York, has signed an agreement with Springer Science + Business Media to acquire the sales and distribution of titles from Birkhäuser Verlag in Basel, Switzerland. Birkhäuser will become an imprint of Actar but will remain in Basel.

Asterios Polyp Wins Fourth Annual PWCW Critic's Poll

Once again, a graphic novel exemplifying comics' ability to uniquely treat the themes of literary fiction has topped PW Comics Week's annual critics poll. David Mazzucchelli's long-awaited Asterios Polyp got the most votes, with six.

2009: The year in Manga

2009 was not a good year. In fact, many people are calling it the worst year ever. But in 2009, manga finished out one of its best years yet. More sophisticated content founds its way to American readers—and by way of the Internet, no less.

Abrams Collects Woody Allen Comic Strip

Woody Allen may be most famous as an actor and director, but he also had an eight-year run as the star of his own syndicated newspaper comic strip, Inside Woody Allen, that ran from 1976 to 1984.

Children's Comics Reviews: 1/4/2010

Hope Larson's Mercury, Jake Parker's new Missile Mouse and a new offering from Toon Books highlight this month's graphic novels for younger readers.

Short Order: January 4

When the New York Times asked novelists Chang-rae Lee and Jane Smiley which books they'd weed out of their collections, both writers mentioned cookbooks. That makes more Alice Waters (who just signed another deal with Clarkson Potter) for us. Also: a food writing panel in NYC, more "best of '09" cookbook lists, and an Escoffier-themed novel.

2010's Most Exciting Food Books

There’s a lot to look forward to in 2010. I’ll be watching Chronicle to see what food and drink titles it decides to publish with compatible mobile applications and enhanced e-books; and can’t wait to see the results of crowd-sourced cookbook projects. As for specific titles, here’s what I’m anticipating.

Cooking the Books with Rozanne Gold

When James Beard Award-winning cookbook author Rozanne Gold heard that Condé Nast was selling Gourmet’s collection of 3,500 cookbooks and that NYU’s Fales Library wanted to buy them, she couldn’t stop herself from getting involved—and giving the library $14,000 to acquire the archive.

Eat Your Books Indexes Cookbooks

As cookbooks come up against increasing competition from online recipe repositories, sites have sprung up attempting to reinvigorate the medium. There’s Cookstr, Cookbooker, and now, Eat Your Books, which makes cookbooks you already own more useful to you.