Here are upcoming titles, now being solicited in comics stores through Diamond Previews for a June 2023 release:
NEW
DARKLY SHE GOES
By Hubert and Vincent Mallié
Once upon a time there was a fallen knight, who believed that saving a princess would allow him to atone for his crimes. Once upon a time there was a dark princess, who believed that it was up to her to atone for the crimes of her parents...
Banished for a fault that forever taints his reputation, Arzhur wanders from tavern to field of battle in search of the next contract which will fill his purse. One night, three mysterious old women offer him to regain honor and fortune if he frees the daughter of a neighboring king, held captive in the ruins of an abandoned castle. But Islen is not the damsel in distress that he expected to save...
Magnified by the virtuoso art of Vincent Mallié, Hubert questions the weight of family heritage and delivers, under the finery of a tale, an intimate reflection on our inner monsters.
Darkly She Goes is an ode to redemption where determinism and free will clash, carried by two masters of the fantasy genre.
9x12, 160 pp. full color HC, $29.99, ISBN 9781681123134;e-book $19.99, ISBN 9781681123141; DIAMOND CODE:APR231702
PUBLICATION DATE: June 20, 2023
When the repulsively ugly Coddie unintentionally saves a fairy from a spell, she does not understand the poisonous nature of the wish granted her by the fairy.
The village folk no longer see her as repulsive and stinking of fish—they now perceive her as magnetically beautiful—which does not help her in her village. A young local lord saves her, but it soon becomes apparent that Coddie's destiny may be far greater than anyone ever imagined.
Caustic and flamboyant, this fairy tale offers grownups an engrossing take on nature and the corrupting power of beauty, in our age of obsession with it.
8 ½ x 11, 152pp. full color pb, $19.99; ISBN 9781681123158; DIAMOND CODE: APR231701
AVAILABLE AGAIN
By the author of the critically acclaimed Giant: on the German front, in the spring of 1945: the war leaves only death and destruction in its wake. To escape the horror of the present, Al, an American soldier, the only survivor of his unit, immerses himself in the memories of his New York life.
Son of German immigrants, born in the United States, he was not yet ten years old when, in one night, under the approving eyes of anti-immigrant Americans, he lost his parents and his home in a terrible fire. Turning his back on his origins, Al has no choice but to live on the streets; he becomes a Bootblack, a shoe shiner. With his friend Shiny, they somehow manage to survive by sticking together.
Six years later, in 1935, they meet Buster and the ambitious Diddle Joe. And then there's Maggie, the girl Al is in love with and whose esteem he ardently longs for. And this, even as she makes it clear to him that they do not live in the same world. New York offers no future for the poor, Al understood that. He is therefore determined to earn more money, whatever the means. But he does not imagine, at that point, that the war which threatens will soon give him an appointment with his past...
9x12, 128pp., color hardcover, $27.99; ISBN 978-1-68112-296-0; DIAMOND CODE: APR231703
New York, early 1930s. A mysterious, laconic Irish colossus known as 'Giant' sweats blood, along with his fellow immigrants, to build the skyscrapers of Rockefeller Center. For a while, he has not received a reply to the typewritten letters he continues to send, as well as money, to the other side of the ocean, to Mary Ann, the wife of one of his colleagues who died accidentally. Giant, who seems to be afraid of nothing, still has not found the courage to reveal to the young woman that she is a widow ... What does her silence mean?
An entrancing everyday working-class tale with the majestic background of the rising skyscrapers of New York. For mature readers.
9x12, 120pp., full color hardcover, $24.99; ISBN 9781681122533; DIAMOND CODE: APR231705
In an equinox, day is as long as night, as if the world found perfect equilibrium between shadow and light, a fleeting equilibrium, similar to the stakes of our human destinies.
Segmented into four tableaux for four seasons, unrelated people of all social backgrounds seeking equilibrium cross paths with other solitudes, weaving in and out of one another's lives- all captivated and tormented by the enigmatic meaning of life. Every season has its visual identity and its individual voice, culminating in summer and, possibly, an answer. 'Equinoxes' is a unique ground-breaking work of rare intensity and narrative sensibility by a rising bestselling star of European comics.
9 x 12, 336 pp, full-color cloth hardcover $44.99; ISBN 9781681120805; DIAMOND CODE: APR231704
From the author of the acclaimed Equinoxes comes a return to roots that serves as spiritual renewal. Comics artist Simon Muchat is stuck. Suffering writer's block, uninspired, vegetating as a school art teacher, he is losing direction and his taste for life, until one day he is invited to appear at a comics convention in Portugal, the country his family came from and which he hadn't seen since his childhood.
The experience proves cathartic. Even though he is not Portuguese himself and is a foreigner there, so many elements are familiar to him. Meeting its lively citizens, full of the zest for life, his distant yet welcoming family bringing back fond early memories, all prove reinvigorating, the breath of fresh air he so badly needed.
Based on his own experience, Pedrosa narrates this return to his roots in a deeply compelling and warmly human way. This is his bestselling graphic novel with over 100,000 copies sold in France and a winner of many prizes including Best Graphic Novel at the Angouleme Festival and FNAC Best GN.
9x12, 264pp., full-color hardcover, $39.99; ISBN 9781681121475; DIAMOND CODE: APR231706
