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Too Long in Exile

7/29/2019

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KinderComics, alas, has been away for too long. This spring and summer, I have had to channel my energies elsewhere. I hate to admit it, but my academic-year workload does not make room for frequent blogging, and when the summer or intersession comes around, well, then I end up having to advance or complete other long-simmering projects. Lately I’ve had to cut back, refocus, and make a point of not driving myself nuts! Still, I am going to push for several reviews this summer; I want to keep KinderComics alive. The field of children’s comics is too important, and my interest in it too intense, to let go.
I’ll have a review of 5 Worlds: The Red Maze up later this week, and then a few (probably short) ones between now and Labor Day, in order to keep the engine humming. Thank you, readers, for checking out or revisiting KinderComics. I’ll keep pushing.
There has been a great deal of news on the children's comics front during my four-month absence. Would that I could go into all these stories in detail:
  • HarperCollins Children’s Books has announced HarperAlley, a new graphic novel imprint to be directed by Andrew Arnold, former art director and editor at First Second (Publishers Weekly's Calvin Reid has the story here). Arnold envisions a bold publishing program that will put out "about 10 books a season, or about 30 books a year." Wow.
  • Random House Graphic, a new comics imprint heralded back in May 2018 and headed by Gina Gagliano (also a veteran of First Second), recently announced (just in time for Comic-Con International) its debut list, i.e. its first set of releases, due starting in January 2020. (Newsarama has the press release here, and you can find out about the first four titles at RH Graphic's new website, here.)
  • DC has cancelled its middle-grade imprint, DC Zoom, and young adult imprint, DC Ink, only months after publishing the first books in those lines (and after announcing many forthcoming titles: see articles here and here). Announced to great fanfare in February 2018, the two imprints seemed to signal a commitment to original graphic novels for young readers, and showed early signs of commercial success, yet have fallen prey to a corporate reorganization (which also includes the closing of Vertigo, DC's historic imprint for older readers and creator-owned titles). From here on out, DC titles for middle-grade readers will be published with the age rating label "DC Kids" (ouch), while DC titles for young adults will simply be labeled "DC." (Heidi MacDonald has the story, at The Beat, here.) Don't get me started on DC.
  • University Press of Mississippi has announced the pending publication of With Great Power Comes Great Pedagogy: Teaching, Learning, and Comics, a scholarly essay collection edited by Susan Kirtley, Antero Garcia, and Peter Carlson. This interdisciplinary volume promises to do something unusual in the professional literature: bridge the gap between K-12 and higher-education perspectives. Look for it in February 2020.
Besides all that news, awards have been given out:
  • The Excellence in Graphic Literature Awards announced their 2019 winners at the Denver Pop Culture Con on June 1. They include Tiger vs. Nightmare by Emily Tetri, The Eye that Never Sleeps by Marissa Moss and Jeremy Holmes, Crush by Svetlana Chmakova, The Faithful Spy by John Hendrix, Illegal by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin, Hey, Kiddo by Jarrett Krosoczka, Monk! by Youssef Daoudi, and Berlin by Jason Lutes. The Book of Year went to Berlin, while the diversity-themed Mosaic Award went to the first book ever reviewed on this blog, The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang. Full details can be found in the Pop Culture Classroom's press release, here.
  • Winners of the 2019 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards were announced at Comic-Con International on July 19. Best Publication for Early Readers (up to age 8) went to Johnny Boo and the Ice Cream Computer, by James Kochalka; Best Publication for Kids (ages 9–12) went to The Nameless City: The Divided Earth, by Faith Erin Hicks; Best Publication for Teens (ages 13–17) went to The Prince and the Dressmaker, by Jen Wang, who also won the award for Best Writer/Artist. Other award-winners that may particularly interest advocates of children's and YA comics include Giant Days, by John Allison, Max Sarin, and Julia Madrigal, for Best Continuing Series and Best Humor Publication; Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World, by Pénélope Bagieu, for Best U.S. Edition of International Material; and Umami, by Ken Niimura, for Best Digital Comic. It was a bang-up night for First Second, which won in five categories. See the full official list of winners here.
  • Tillie Walden's superb On a Sunbeam won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Graphic Novel/Comics, awarded on April 12 on the eve of the LA Times Festival of Books. See the official Prize announcements, including other nominees, here.
My gosh, what a busy and exciting field. Keeping up is a challenge! I hope to do a better job going forward.

A sad postscript

When it comes to public-facing scholarship and comics criticism, one of the most inspiring figures to my mind was the late Derek Parker Royal, co-creator, producer, and editor of The Comics Alternative podcast. Derek, a major critic of Philip Roth, Jewish American literature and culture, and graphic narrative, passed away recently, leaving a grievous sense of loss in the hearts of many. He was a scholar, innovator, and facilitator of a rare kind, generous, engaged, and prolific, and will be greatly missed in the comics studies community. He brought many people into that community; for example, at the Comics Studies Society conference in Toronto last weekend, his longtime collaborator Andy Kunka spoke movingly of how Derek encouraged him to enter the field. I will think of Derek whenever I post here, and the soaring example that he set.
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RIP Derek. Thank you for your scholarship, your advocacy, and your spirit.

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2018 Excellence in Graphic Literature Awards

6/25/2018

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The EGL Awards statuette, the Saga, as designed by artists Colin Poole and Kristine Poole. Graphic adapted from denvercomiccon.com.
The first-ever Excellence in Graphic Literature Awards were awarded about a week ago, on Saturday night, June 16, at the Denver Comic Con. Here are the winners:
  • Children's Books: Real Friends, Shannon Hale and LeUyen Pham (First Second)
  • Middle-Grade Books: As the Crow Flies, Melanie Gillman (Iron Circus Comics)
  • Young Adult Books: Home Time: Book One, Campbell Whyte (Top Shelf)
  • Adult Books: The Hunting Accident, David L. Carlson and Landis Blair (First Second)
  • Mosaic Award: The Best We Could Do, Thi Bui (Abrams)
  • Book of the Year: Spill Zone, Scott Westerfield and Alex Puvilland (First Second)
This is a strong slate of books. I’m particularly pleased to see Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do win the Mosaic Award. I confess, though, that my choices for Adult Book and Book of the Year would have been emphatically different. When the EGL Awards first announced their short list, I expressed some reservations about the list, in particular the Book of the Year category, and I continue to feel that way.
In some ways the EGL Awards have gotten off to strong start. They are tied to Denver Comic Con and its sponsoring nonprofit, the Pop Culture Classroom, whose new Director of Education, Dr. Katie Monnin, is a sharp and tireless advocate for comics as children’s reading. Katie and I were Eisner Award judges together in 2013, and her knowledge of and enthusiasm for comics left a vivid impression. Moreover, the EGL Awards appeal specially to K-12 educators and librarians, which, as Heidi MacDonald’s Publishers Weekly article of May 25 reminds us, have become some of the most important constituencies in US comics culture (and reportedly there’s a good deal of comics activity happening right this moment at the ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans).

However, I remained concerned about the makeup of the EGL juries. Though the Awards boast of judges who are “diverse, experienced and informed professionals that span the publishing, library, and education industries,” I see very few comics artists or professional comics critics among them. I do see wisdom in targeting librarians and educators, but I worry about awards that seek to represent the best in comics without reckoning on the larger comics community. Perhaps there cannot be one award that truly represents the fragmented and factious world of comics; I note that Eisner Award results tend to skew toward what is popular in the direct market, i.e. the comic shop culture. The EGLs might be seen as a corrective to that. But I really do believe that the EGLs would benefit from bringing in more creators—not just publishing professionals, but artists and writers—to create a more rounded judging culture.

That said, I look forward to what the EGLs do next year. They are just getting started, and I hope for the best.

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EGL 2018 Nominees: The List

3/15/2018

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NEWS! This morning, the organizers of the Excellence in Graphic Literature Awards announced their nominees for the first-ever slate of EGLs, to be awarded at the Denver Comic Con on June 16. The livestream of the announcement, hosted by KidLit TV, can be (re)viewed here. Also, PR Newswire has a press release including the full list of nominees. It's an interesting list, with books I love, books I admire, and books I'd like to get to know. 
The EGL Awards, as I posted this morning, aim to strengthen the link between comics publishing and the field of children's and Young Adult librarianship. School librarians, public librarians, and K-12 educators are well represented in the judging panels and advisory board, and indeed seem to be the Awards' center of gravity. The awards include eight categories organized by age range, as well as one diversity-themed prize, the Mosaic Award, and an overall Book of the Year prize with contenders drawn from the other categories. The age-based categories are divided into Fiction and Nonfiction for Children (Grade 5 and under), Middle Grades (Grades 6-8), Young Adults (Grades 9-12), and Adults. (You can find out more about the EGL categories at the Pop Culture Classroom, here.)
It seems to me that the EGLs have been rolled out in, for comics, unusually coordinated and deliberate fashion. I expressed reservations about the seeming outlook of the Awards when I first learned of them (see the comments thread here), and continue to wonder at the Awards' judging culture and, perhaps, selective filter—all based on my guesswork, I hasten to add. It does seem likely to me that the EGLs will filter out significant parts of comics culture and book-length comics publishing. However, this is also true of other industry awards that seek to cover the whole span of book-length comics, such as the Eisners; all have blind spots, and all speak to the interests of particular communities within the comics world. That said, this first EGL slate strikes me as solid and promising, with an encouraging diversity in aesthetic, genre, and tradition. I also like the range of publishers represented (though First Second Books is clearly the favorite, with five out of the eight nominees for Book of the Year).
I confess, I do see a few frank headscratchers among the nominees (what award process is without those, though?). The nonfiction choices for Children and Middle Grades are quite thin, and in general I feel more confident of the YA and Adult categories. Also, the Best of Year finalists make for, um, an odd set: apples and oranges and then some. Further, I'm not sure that all the nominees quite match the high literary aspirations implied by the Awards' name, suggesting that the "L" in EGL may be an awkward fit for some comics, even very good ones (but, um, the politics of respectability is perhaps too big a problem for one award to solve?). Here is the full list of finalists, as reported today:
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CHILDREN'S BOOKS
Fiction
  • Bolivar by Sean Rubin (BOOM! Studios)
  • Good Night, Planet by Liniers (TOON Books)
  • Real Friends by Shannon Hale and LeUyen Pham (First Second)
  • The Big Bad Fox by Benjamin Renner (First Second)
  • Where's Halmoni? by Julie Kim (Little Bigfoot)
Nonfiction
  • Bats: Learning to Fly by Falynn Koch (First Second)
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MIDDLE GRADE BOOKS
Fiction
  • As the Crow Flies by Melanie Gillman (Iron Circus Comics)
  • The Baby-Sitters Club: Dawn and the Impossible Three by Ann M. Martin and Gale Galligan (Scholastic/Graphix)
  • Cici's Journal by Joris Chamblain and Aurélie Neyret (First Second)
  • Soupy Leaves Home by Cecil Castellucci and Jose Pimienta (Dark Horse Comics)
  • The Witch Boy by Molly Ostertag (Scholastic/Graphix)
  • Brave by Svetlana Chmakova (YEN Press)—Honorable Mention
Nonfiction (?)
  • Solution Squad by Jim McClain (Solution Squad Publishing)
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YOUNG ADULT BOOKS
Fiction
  • Home Time: Book One by Campbell Whyte (Top Shelf)
  • I Am Alfonso Jones by Tony Medina, Stacey Robinson and John Jennings (Lee & Low/Tu Books)
  • Quince by Kit Steinkellner, Emma Steinkellner and Sebastian Kadlecik (Fanbase Press)
  • Spill Zone by Scott Westerfield and Alex Puvilland (First Second)
  • The Wendy Project by Melissa Jane Osborne and Veronica Fish (Super Genius)
Nonfiction
  • Fire! The Zora Neale Hurston Story by Peter Bagge (Drawn & Quarterly)
  • Lighter Than My Shadow by Katie Green (Lion Forge)
  • Poppies of Iraq by Brigitte Findakly and Lewis Trondheim (Drawn & Quarterly)
  • The Senses by Matteo Farinella (Nobrow)
  • Spinning by Tillie Walden (First Second)
ADULT BOOKS
Fiction
  • Mis(h)adra by Iasmin Omar Ata (Gallery 13)
  • My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris (Fantagraphics)
  • Park Bench by Chabouté (Gallery 13)
  • Roughneck by Jeff Lemire (Gallery 13)
  • The Sound of the World by Heart by Giacomo Bevilacqua (Lion Forge)
Nonfiction
  • Calamity Jane: The Calamitous Life of Martha Jane Cannary by Christian Perrissin and Mattheiu Blanchin (IDW Publishing)
  • Hostage by Guy Delisle (Drawn & Quarterly)
  • Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371 by MK Czerwiec (Penn State UP/Graphic Medicine)
  • The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui (Abrams)
  • The Hunting Accident by David L. Carlson and Landis Blair (First Second)
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MOSAIC AWARD FINALISTS
  • As the Crow Flies by Melanie Gillman (Iron Circus Comics)
  • Good Night, Planet / Buenas Noches, Planeta by Liniers (TOON), English and Spanish editions
  • Monstress Vol. 2: The Blood by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda (Image)
  • Mis(h)adra by Iasmin Omar Ata (Gallery 13)
  • Quince by Kit Steinkellner, Emma Steinkellner and Sebastian Kadlecik (Fanbase Press)
  • Soupy Leaves Home by Cecil Castellucci and Jose Pimienta (Dark Horse Comics)
  • The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui (Abrams)
  • Where's Halmoni? by Julie Kim (Little Bigfoot)
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BOOK OF THE YEAR FINALISTS
  • Bats: Learning to Fly by Falynn Koch (First Second)
  • Cici's Journal by Joris Chamblain and Aurélie Neyret (First Second)
  • Home Time: Book One by Campbell Whyte (Top Shelf)
  • My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris (Fantagraphics)
  • Real Friends by Shannon Hale and LeUyen Pham (First Second)
  • Soupy Leaves Home by Cecil Castellucci and Jose Pimienta (Dark Horse Comics)
  • Spill Zone by Scott Westerfield and Alex Puvilland (First Second)
  • The Hunting Accident by David L. Carlson and Landis Blair (First Second)

Quite a list. I'm excited to see, for example, Liniers, Melanie Gillman, Tillie Walden, Katie Green, Thi Bui, Emil Ferris, Guy Delisle, and the team of Stacey Robinson and John Jennings. I'm also excited to see promising books from creators I don't know.
The division of Awards by age range, and the list of publishers represented, perhaps indicate the Awards' intended focus and community more clearly than anything I could say. Let's see what happens.
PS. It was a pleasure to see among the EGL jurors and advisors in this morning's video announcement my friends and colleagues Dr. Katie Monnin of the University of North Florida (we judged Eisners together in 2013) and Carr D'Angelo and Susan Avallone of Earth-2 Comics, my LCS!
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Nominations for the First Excellence in Graphic Literature Awards

3/15/2018

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​NEWS! The first-ever set of nominations for the Excellence in Graphic Literature Awards is fixing to go live, in about an hour, thanks to KidLit TV.

The EGL Awards are sponsored and organized by the nonprofit Pop Culture Classroom, and represent an effort to tie a major comics award more directly into the worlds of children's and YA graphic novel librarianship. The Comics Journal's Alex Dueben interviewed two of the people behind the EGL Awards, John Shableski and Illya Kowalchuk, back in January (and I tentatively raised some concerns about the Awards in the comments thread).

It'll be interesting to see this first slate of nominees! You can access the livestream of the nominations (10:00 am PCT, today, Thursday, March 15) at KidLit TV, here.
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    See Hatfield, comics and children's culture scholar

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