Raina Telgemeier

The weekend is here! Take a look back at what’s happened in the past seven days. New comics, new stories, new podcasts, new art being made — it’s all part of the ComicsAlliance Weekender!

Disney Pixar represents the pinnacle of what can be achieved within modern animation, and its heartwarming tales present often complex ideas in ways that children can embrace and understand. The studio's most recent release, Finding Dory, is a sequel to the smash-hit Finding Nemo, but also so much more than that. Like its predecessor, it's a fun adventure film for the family, but it also tackles the difficult subjects of mental health, disability, and being different. There’s a great number of children’s comics out there for fans of Finding Dory, and we’ve put together a list of five of the best independent comics for kids of a variety of ages to try out next.

The weekend is here! Take a look back at what’s happened in the past seven days. New comics, new stories, new podcasts, new art being made — it’s all part of the ComicsAlliance Weekender!

It's the end of the year! We made it through 2015, a year that brought all kinds of new, weird and brilliant comics into our lives. It's been a huge year for the industry, with the arrival of several new publishers, multiple new digital publishing concepts, and a whole slew of creative talent pushing themselves into the spotlight. With so much going on during 2015, there's one question you might have not thought about yet: what's coming up in 2016? So much. There are new graphic novels, new publishing lines, new digital initiatives; it's all going on. And so, as we reach the Yearender, it's time to look ahead, to see what comics' future will bring.

The holiday season is upon us, and with that comes gifts! It’s always lovely to receive something special from someone you love, but there’s also a particular pleasure that comes in giving a really well chosen gift and knowing that it’s truly appreciated. Sometimes it really is better to give than to receive! In that spirit, ComicsAlliance is here to inspire you with some great ideas for gifts to buy for your friends and family. Each gift guide is tailored to a particular personality type or special interests, and today we’re picking out comics gifts for the biggest, most important group of all; kids!

The Barefoot Gen for Schools and Libraries Kickstarter is a two-pronged attack on complacency — three, if you count the example it sets in itself. Aiming to 1) get classic comic literature into classrooms and 2) educate American children about the tragedy in their nation’s debt to Japan, Last Gasp is running a campaign to print four thousand hardcover copies of Nakazawa Kenji’s Barefoot Gen. Nakazawa lived through the devastation of Hiroshima in 1945, and thirty years later he turned his experiences into a story about a little boy who lives an ordinary life — and then keeps on living, when all ordinariness disappears, and his peers and family fall victim to atomic warfare.

Raina Telgemeier, the biggest name in comics today, made a major announcement at San Diego Comic-Con this past weekend --- her next project will be a graphic novel called Ghosts, scheduled for release by Scholastic Graphix in 2016. Ghosts will be Telgemeier's second major work of original fiction following 2012's Drama, in contrast to her autobiographical works Smile and Sisters, and centers on a young girl called Catrina and her family as they move to a new town and attempt to settle in.

The 27th Annual Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards took place at the Indigo Ballroom at the Hilton Bayfront San Diego on Friday night, and it was a great night for diversity, for women in comics, for comics aimed at a younger audience, and for the future of the industry.

To help any con-going readers with their convention plans, ComicsAlliance has put together this handy list of panels we recommend. Some are panels we think sound cool and some are panels where you can see CA contributors! You may not be able to experience everything (and probably not everything on this list!), but here's what we think are the best panels to attend on the final day, Sunday, July 12th!

The American Library Association (ALA) announced their list of Most Challenged Books in 2014, and three comics were on the list: Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples' Saga, and Raina Telgemeier's Drama. These comics were challenged for a number of reasons, but many of the complaints had a basis in trying to limit what books children have access to. It's important to note that the ALA is made up of more than just school libraries; public and academic libraries are also part of the ALA.