What a week! I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to sit back and read some comics. The weekend is finally here, and the world can relax and rest once more --- but the comics industry has been busy too, and the last seven days have seen a flurry of comics-based news and announcements fly past at high speed.

ComicsAlliance has got your back, though: when it comes to comics, we never slow down, so here’s a look back and just what’s been going on. New comics, new stories, new hirings, new podcasts, new art being made --- it’s all part of the ComicsAlliance Weekender!

 

INDUSTRY NEWS

Jeff Smith has announced that this July will see the publication of Bone: Coda. Guess what that is? Well, uh, yeah, it’s a coda to his hugely popular series Bone. This seems like it’ll be a story which doesn’t bear any continuity to it, particularly - it’ll be a new adventure designed for people who’ve never been to Boneville before. Actually, that list of people would included the main characters themselves: the story will see the trio heading off to see if they can make their way to Boneville itself for the first time in-story. Cartoon Books, as ever, will publish.

 

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Off-Life will be returning next month, after a bit of a hiatus. The next edition just revealed a lovely cover from artist Ellen Porteus, and will be featuring various comics works from Molly Bounds, Matthew Dooley, Till Lukat, Josh Hicks, Fabien Roche, Nick Burton and Aleesha Nandhra. There’s also an interview with Nobrow founder Sam Arthur, along with everybody’s favorite Dan Berry: it’s Dan Berry!

SelfMadeHero has acquired the rights to distribute Tetris, the next graphic novel from Box Brown, in the UK. After his previous biography on the wrestler Andre the Giant, this time Brown will be once more profiling the history of an icon of entertainment: it’s just that this time the icon will be a video game. Or should I say, the video game, as he looks at the life and times of Tetris, one of (if not the?) most successful games of all time. The book will be published in the US by FirstSecond.

Along with that announcement came mini-announcements, as best as I can tell, for the rest of SelfMadeHero’s Autumn line, which I hadn’t seen mentioned anywhere else before. Coming later this we have The Trial of Roger Casement by Fionnuala Doran; One Year Wiser: The Gratitude Journal by Mike Medaglia; Dalí by Edmond Baudoin; Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, Vol. 1, an adaptation of four M.R. James stories by Leah Moore and John Reppion; The Can Opener's Daughter by Rob Davis; and The Return of the Honey Buzzard by Aimée de Jongh.

AWARDS

The Eisner Awards announced their nominees last week and, as is a growing and welcome tradition, this week the judges got together on the Comic-Con blog to talk about their process. What goes into being an Eisner judge, anyway? This year the panel were made up of Brian Doherty, Danny Fingeroth, Jason Grazulis, Jason M. Poole, Natalie Powell, and Carol Tilley --- they don’t address the main question Twitter raised which was “why was TwoMorrows nominated three times for Best Journalistic Presentation”, but they do talk more generally about the thought process.

Meanwhile, an off-shoot of the Eisners is the Russ Manning Award, given to a new, upcoming artist who seems destined for big things. This is a wide-open award, with submissions opening this week and running until May 27th. If you’d like to submit yourself --- or an artist for consideration --- you can read the guidelines through this link. Last year was a tie, with Jorge Corona and Greg Smallwood both winning.

 

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Nominations are a little further along for the Reuben Awards, which have picked their five-artist shortlist. Run by the National Cartoonists’ Society, this year’s final five are Lynda Barry, Stephan Pastis, Hilary Price, Michael Ramirez, and Mark Tatulli. As covered a few weeks back, the other categories also see nominations in comics-related categories, and you can see them all here.

The Hugo Awards also released their nominees this week. Ohboy.

 

HeroesCon Mascot by Skottie Young
HeroesCon Mascot by Skottie Young
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EVENTS

HeroesCon has revealed a complete guest-list for this year’s convention. This is one of those ‘fabled’ ones which everybody seems to love --- like Emerald City, TCAF or Thought Bubble. It’s a particularly huge number of guests this year round in North Carolina, mixing familiar faces with new artists I’ve not heard of before. This year’s con is set for June 17-19.

Brigid Alverson covers the 10th Annual Kids Comic-Con for Publishers Weekly, which this year was held at the Bronx Community College, New York. It looks like a fun one --- Jamal Igle was there, along with Art Baltazar and Franco, and Alverson traces a little history into her look at this year’s con.

 

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WEEKEND READING

Following the untimely passing of Prince, I liked this look from Jason Sacks at a comic inspired by the artist. Alter Ego by the incredible creative team of Dwayne McDuffie, Denys Cowan and Kent Williams is a comic Sacks pitches perfectly, including (hurrah!) a bundle of artwork as he goes. Comics as a whole really needs to start appreciating Jason’s writing more --- he’s prolific, writes about unexplored areas of comics, and really gets to the heart of good comics. And the comic comes out looking like this unmissable piece of work, which I’m certainly now going to try and pick up if I can.

ComicsAlliance had two columns launch this week --- Elle Collins kicking things off with Give 'Em Elle, which gives her a weekly voice to talk about any and all comics-related issues that come to mind. Tom Speelman also came in with Screen & Page, a new column that looks at anime and manga, their crossover, and how they develop from one another. This first week’s column is on Tiger & Bunny. Oh! And, cough cough, JAM and I got to another round of The Delinquents, our monthly guide through the Valiant Universe. I know I’m biased but hey, folks --- what a great website, eh?

 

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Alenka Figa brings a nice, quick review of Trans Man Walking, a zine by artist Andi Santagata which promises to be the first in a series.

Alex de Campi returns to Storify with a primer on how to pitch your comic to an artist --- it’s a tricky, important process: this is a story you’re going to leave in the hands of someone else for months and months, and it’s a huge amount of work you’re quietly pitching them. De Campi’s got a particularly strong approach to her comics output, and you can see that coming through in the posts.

The Outhousers has been having a fun time recently, as you might imagine. The piece that most took my interest this week was an interview with the Solarman creative team, Joe Illidge and N. Steven Harris.

 

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AND FINALLY

Gilbert Hernandez has opened up his commissions once more?! What kind of a magical world is this? Stop reading ComicsAlliance immediately (although keep us locked on the browser, darlings!) and head on over!

Have a great weekend, everybody!

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