Dinosaurs Across America go interactive!

I am proud to announce that our Dinosaurs Across America by Phil Yeh may have become the FIRST fully interactive graphic novel!

This book has been a successful fun tool for kids to learn about US Geography for years as a comic book Phil sold at his numerous appearances around schools and libraries across the country advocating for literacy through comics. We then did with him the full color graphic novel which has gone to press 3 times with over 15,000 sold. It’s a Library Media Connection Editor’s Choice and has received many great reviews.

We’re all pretty ignorant when it comes to geography, these comics have made it easy and fun for kids to learn the facts about all 50 states.

And now, thanks to Koobits, an interactive book developer, it comes to your iPad  screen as well as an e-book for PC. Here is a presentation along with video of what it looks like.

This is the just the first of a series of announcements we’ll be making this year that set NBM on a new course. Stay tuned!

Our books through June.

A quick note to say that we’ve now got our planned books through June up on the site in Coming Up, laid out month by month for you to take a sneak preview of!

We’ve just added April through June of what we’ve got planned which includes an irresistible new nefarious strip Kinky & Cosy we’ll be previewing regularly on our home page soon and with Rick Geary’s next book in his Murder Series, a fascinating take on Sacco & Vanzetti, we’ll be starting up a whole new way of publishing that will mix E-book same date release and a very limited direct-only collector’s edition… More about that later…

Thank you Marc Mason!

… For a great job helping us on our publicity for a couple of years. As he goes back to school to tweak his career, he alas does not have the time for us anymore, so now we’ve consolidated all our publicity under the energetic Stefan Blitz who’s been taking care of our social media side. Welcome, Stefan, we hope to have a fruitful and long relationship!

And again, thanks, Marc, all the best to you!

Happy New Year!

…from all of us at NBM, we wish you a great 2011.

Stay tuned to NBM for some exciting new directions in that year…

Terry

Varied response on Miss Don’t Touch Me 2

I said it myself in the release for this book: after reading it, I was about to strangle Blanche for her block-headed naivete, this read can be frustrating.

So some are disappointed, some even hate it and some like the reviewer at Gutter Geek (on The Comics Journal site) explains why this second tome of Blanche’s adventures might be just as good:

“Many of the reviews I have seen of this installment have implied (or shouted) disappointment in the book, complaining of its irresolution, its ambivalence about all of its characters, including its purported heroine (who breaks the reader’s heart by proving not only all-too-human, but even less than human at the crucial moment),   In truth, I found this second volume of Miss Don’t Touch Me more satisfying precisely because it was less generic, less formulaic, less premised on plug-and-play characters.
If the first Miss Don’t Touch Me was clearly meant to be a one-shot, this second volume brings us deep into a world of early 20th-century Paris and into a cast of characters whose messy adventures promise no easy resolutions but many fascinating and troubling adventures in the years to come. If it turns out that we are left here (and I don’t want to give away too much by spelling out in any detail where it is, in fact, that we are left at book’s end) I will surely have reason to revise my impression of the volume. But assuming there are Miss Pas Touche volumes still to come, I am more than ready to accept the uncertainties of this strange and special album.”

What do you think?

Back from Frankfurt with some new exciting news

Got back yesterday. In this direction, the jetlag is a lot better to deal with, you just stay up longer the day you return. Hey, even managed to go see The Social Network with my daughter Sylvia in town on mid-semester break. An ironic movie: an anti-social person made the world’s most popular social network.
Anyway, Frankfurt was fun and productive, with fewer appointments than last year but still: I can tell you we’ve got a new David B lined up where we’re going to take a quite different approach to how we present it than what we’ve been doing. Also the next Louvre book will look quite different! Basically, we’re seeing we don’t need to be married to the 6×9 format as much as we were so we’re going to open things up!
Also, we’re seeing a need for our books to reflect what we publish: beautiful quality comics you want to have physically and keep proudly in your library. For those who’d rather not spend so much, we’ll be multiplying our efforts on the E-book side.
In the other direction, The Broadcast and Networked got a good reception from foreign pubs so some sales look likely.
And as for Papercutz: the big news is we just signed for GARFIELD! New comics based on the new show on Cartoon Network.

Hello from Frankfurt

Just arrived in Frankfurt, Germany for the annual huge international book shindig. Publishers from around the world converge in a number of halls the size of many football fields each to present to each other their new books for selling foreign rights. Been here every year since the 80′s, well, except for 2001, out of respect for my frantic wife (who’s a little nervous this time too, since there’s a warning out).

Besides presenting NBM’s latest, like The Broadcast or Networked,  or Papercutz’ Harry Potty and Tales from the Crypt, I’ll also be meeting with many European pubs to see their latest and finalize on plans for future books to come from us.

Stay tuned, I may have some news, “Live from Frankfurt, it’s…”

I dunno, live from New York has a better ring.

Right now I’m jusg bleary eyed with jetlag waiting for some books to arrive… sleeeep, I need sleeeep. But I can’t ’cause it’s too early here.

Welcome to Sean Michael Wilson

I’d like to welcome to this blog Sean Michael Wilson, whose new book The Story of Lee will be shipping from us to comics stores in December. He’s also noted for AX, Alternative Manga from Top Shelf which has been getting a lot of press and he’s got an adaptation of a famous Japanese classic tale coming out from Kodansha here.

Prolific guy for a ‘wee brain.’ Meeting him is to enjoy his Scot’s brogue, btw. A Scot living in Japan for years and into manga aplenty. And that’s no blarney, mate!

The art for this is by Japanese Chie Kutsuwada who lves in… the UK.

How mixed up is that?!

SPX: wow! love the energy.

Just back from the SPX show this last weekend, held in Bethesda. Saturday was amazing. A crowded big hotel conference room full of people eager to get the latest exciting indie comics.

The energy and enthusiasm was palpable as we blew through all the Dungeon books we brought within 2 hours, sold out of our premier of The Broadcast and sold a lot of A Home for Mr. Easter and Greg Houston’s books Vatican Hustle and his new Elephant Man.

Eric Hobbs had flewn in from Indiana for the occasion and we also had Brooke Allen up from Savannah and Greg Houston from… Baltimore all busy signing. Brooke had cute little pins to give away and had made little Mr. Easter figurines which she painted right there for people.

What impressed me the most, after not having been able to go the last couple of years myself (our artists took care of the NBM tables themselves), was a clear turnaround in attitude where in the past many were shy to spend more than a buck or two at a time on mini-comics and kinda stared at the graphic novels. Now they were there to get the latest GNs even if they were, as some publishers do them, at more than $25. Of course, great preference was given to those that the artists could be there to sign (which is why the early blow out of Dungeon took me by surprise, we’ll come better armed next year- oddly enough though we couldn’t sell Little Nothings. Go figure).

Thanks to ever-charming Brooke, Eric and Greg, all very good at engaging the fans, in helping to make this an exciting event to be at.

See ya there next year!

Ted Rall is in Afghanistan, risking his neck.

…and he’s tweeting and blogging about it.

It’s quite fascinating as he goes back to where he went at the start of the Afghan War back in 2001. He reported on that in one of our bestselling books To Afghanistan & Back. This hybrid of comics and articles that he wrote for the Village Voice was also the first ‘instant graphic novel’ as we rushed it out to print within months beginning 2002. It’s gone on to sell over 20,000 copies.

Ted just had to see for himself what was really going on, especially with our country frantically waving our flags at the time and blood-thristy for revenge. What he brought back was sobering. He predicted clearly back then that this was far from over. I knew this would make a great bit of comics journalism and had Ted bring it into comics.
Well, he’s back at it again and tweeting about it as well as blogging. Live from the middle of Taliban hell. The guy’s nuts. But count on him to tell you a different point of view. Subscribe to it.

Also, this time he got a miraculous amount of funding for it through the amazing Kickstarter site (link here goes straight to Ted’s page there). No paper or magazine would pay for this highly dangerous assignment in these nobody-has-money-internet-days, so quite a few people contributed to it through Kickstarter…

Literally, the internet taketh away and then giveth back.

Well, on this one at least…

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