archaia

ComicsAlliance has learned that comic book publisher BOOM! Studios has acquired fellow Los Angeles comics company Archaia Entertainment from its parent Kunoichi. Archaia, home to such acclaimed titles as David Petersen's Mouse Guard and Jim Henson's A Tale of Sand by Ramón K. Pérez and known for very high book production values, had been suffering financial setbacks recently as a consequence of a problems with a book trade distribution partner, prompting the publisher to sign a deal with Diamond the next year, the leading distribution agent for direct market comic book stores. BOOM! has a much stronger infrastructure in the comics market, which the company hopes to leverage to expand Archaia's readership with the company operating as a separate imprint within BOOM! Studios.

On sale next week from Archaia is Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard #1 (V2), beginning an all-new anthology series that invites some of comics' most talented creators to tell stories set throughout the endlessly charming, frequently funny and always harrowing mediaval world of mice created by David Petersen. This first issue contains framing sequences by Petersen himself that introduce the mechanism by which new stories by Stan Sakai (Usagi Yojimbo), Ben Caldwell (Wednesday Comics' "Wonder Woman") and Nick Tapalansky and Alex-Eckman Lawn (Awakening) will unfold: a storytelling contesthosted in old Madame June's mouse tavern. The prize for the best tale? A zeroed out bar tab.

Good news from Archaia. The publisher of David Petersen's multi-award winning Mouse Guard has announced the second volume of Legends of the Guard, an anthology project that invites some of comics' most talented creators to tell stories set throughout Petersen's endlessly charming, frequently funny and always harrowing mediaval world of mice...

Early last year Archaia released The Dark Crystal: Creation Myths, the first of a planned three-volume prequel to the enduringly popular Jim Henson fantasy film about a young hero's quest to restore a magical crystal and unify a long divided race of powerful beings before the more malevolent of them could take control of the world forever...

Most ComicsAlliance readers familiar with the work of Giannis Milonogiannis have probably read his stuff in Prophet, the Brandon Graham-written sci-fi saga from Image Comics that spotlights the work of several great artists who practice a distinctly European style of comic bookery...

The problem with the direction that print retail has taken in the last few years -- with so much material being purchased online, and with so many direct market stores bagging and boarding books before putting them on the racks -- is that the idea of just picking up a book and flipping through it to see what it looks like seems a thing of the past...

Just take a glance at Cow Boy, Archaia's new hardcover graphic novel from writer Nate Cosby and artist Chris Eliopoulos, and you might quickly write it off as "cute." And, to be fair, an all ages story about a 10-year-old boy with what may or may not be a real gun made up to look like a toy horse hunting bounties in the old West is cute...

On sale now from Archaia is I'm Not A Plastic Bag, a truly remarkable graphic novel by Rachel Hope Allison that tells a fantastical yet extremely poignant story about the environment. The book, which features almost no text, imagines the Great Pacific Garbage Patch -- the horrifyingly huge gyre of plastic and chemical debris that floats disgustingly in the Pacific Ocean -- as an endearingly anthro

Comic-Con International has announced the nominees for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards -- popularly known as the Oscars of comics -- to be given out this year during the mighty San Diego convention. Categories range from Best Single Issue to Best Inker to Best Publication Design, and coming in with the most nominations of all is Marvel Comics' Daredevil...

Before he became famous for his work on Sesame Street and The Muppets, Jim Henson was a veritable Jack-of-all-trades in the artistic field. During the '60s, Henson was not only a master puppeteer; he was a photographer, made television commercials, dabbled in music, created at-home animated movies, and crafted screenplays with writer and friend Jerry Juhl...