April 15, 2010 / More →
Available now for pre-order at your favorite comic shop are two totally different (and totally excellent) graphic novels from Top Shelf! The mature-readers heavyweight this month is The Playwright from writer Daren White and artist Eddie Campbell, a gorgeous fully-painted romantic comedy about the sex life of a celibate middle-aged man -- it's a witty blend of cynicism and sweetness, from the award-winning artist of Alec and From Hell.
Also featured is the hilarious fourth adventure in the infectiously goofy Johnny Boo series by James Kochalka, Johnny Boo and the Mean Little Boy. In their latest episode, Johnny Boo and Squiggle meet a new friend who loves to play games -- but as you can guess, some of his games aren't very nice! Our heroes learn a few lessons about making friends, getting revenge, and changing your pants.
Place your orders now for these two beautiful, hardcover books... June'll be here before we know it!
April 13, 2010 / More →
The Swedish Invasion is officially a hit! Top Shelf packed heavy for the MoCCA Festival this past weekend in New York, knowing that we'd be joined by over half a dozen Swedish guests and debuting tons of new books... and still we sold out of almost every book we brought!
The three hot Swedish debuts (Hey Princess, The Troll King, and 120 Days of Simon) were definitely among the star books of the show. Check out this photo of authors Mats Jonsson, Kolbeinn Karlsson, and Simon Gärdenfors signing copies, and click here to see it full-size.
Thanks to all our Swedish friends, the hard-working MoCCA staff and volunteers, and most importantly the fans who came out to our Swedish Invasion pre-party at Rocketship and to the Festival!
Now the Invasion rolls on... to Chicago for C2E2 this weekend! Good thing we've got a whole new shipment of books on the way...
Read More →
April 9, 2010 / More →
The SWEDISH INVASION begins TONIGHT at ROCKETSHIP COMICS & continues all MoCCA weekend, April 10TH-11TH!
Come meet and party with Simon Gärdenfors (THE 120 DAYS OF SIMON), Mats Jonsson (HEY PRINCESS), Kolbeinn Karlsson (THE TROLL KING), Niklas Asker (SECOND THOUGHTS), Fredrik Strömberg (SWEDISH COMICS HISTORY), as well as Chris Staros, Leigh Walton, Johannes Klenell, and many of the contributors to the Swedish Anthology FROM THE SHADOW OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS at:
THE ROCKETSHIP SWEDISH INVASION PARTY
FRI, APRIL 9TH, 8:00PM
@ 208 SMITH ST, BROOKLYN, NY
And join us this weekend for:
THE MoCCA ARTS FESTIVAL
SAT & SUN, APRIL 10TH & 11TH
@ THE 69TH REGIMENT ARMORY
68 LEXINGTON AVENUE (BETWEEN 25TH & 26TH)
(Next weekend we're heading to CHICAGO for C2E2, the CHICAGO COMIC & ENTERTAINMENT EXPO (FRI - SUN, APR 16TH-18TH) -- don't miss the Nerd City/Top Shelf Swedish Invasion Party on SAT APR 17TH at the famed Chicago nightclub, the Double Door.)
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April 8, 2010 / More →
Today the comic industry's hotly-anticipated Eisner Award candidates were announced, with Eddie Campbell's Alec: The Years Have Pants, Jeff Lemire's Essex County, and Kevin Cannon's Far Arden receiving the honor of a nomination.
In his acclaimed career, Eddie Campbell has won multiple Eisners for the monumental From Hell (with Alan Moore) in addition to countless nominations for his solo work on the Alec and Bacchus stories. This year sees him nominated for Alec: The Years Have Pants, a "Life-Sized Omnibus" collection of his groundbreaking autobiographical comics, in the category of Best Reprint Graphic Album.
Jeff Lemire is nominated this year for The Complete Essex County, his sweeping portrait of the power of family in small-town Ontario, as Best Reprint Graphic Album. In previous years, the individual Essex County volumes earned nominations in the Best Writer/Artist and Best New Graphic Album categories. Jeff is also up this year for his Vertigo series Sweet Tooth, which is nominated as Best New Series!
Kevin Cannon has got to be pleased to receive an Eisner nomination for his debut graphic novel Far Arden, a rip-roaring adventure on the Arctic high seas. He broke onto the scene drawing science-based nonfiction comics with studio mate Zander Cannon, but Far Arden, his first full-length solo graphic novel, has established him as a master storyteller and is now up for an Eisner in the category Best Publication for Teens.
Our proudest congratulations to Eddie, Jeff, and Kevin, as well as all the other fine nominees!
April 5, 2010 / More →
Advance praise is starting to roll in for Kathryn & Stuart Immonen's gripping drama of Nazi occupation, art smuggling, and impossible choices, Moving Pictures! Booklist reviewer Francisca Goldsmith awards it a starred review: "This elegant and evocative historical graphic novel explores the personal relationships involved in protecting internationally recognized works of fine art during the Nazi occupation of Paris ... the storytelling and the characters are as sober as the crisp, heavy black-and-white of its images ... Deftly told, the whole story resonates long after its appropriately ambiguous final pages."
The full review will run in the May 1 issue of Booklist. For more info on Moving Pictures or to pre-order the book, click below!
April 4, 2010 / More →
Prominent industry journalist Tom Spurgeon (The Comics Reporter) has finally presented his picks for best comics of the year, with Eddie Campbell's landmark collection Alec: The Years Have Pants receiving the #1 spot for archival/reprint books. Also honored as one of the year's best was Far Arden, the rip-roaring Arctic adventure by Kevin Cannon.
Spurgeon singles out Alec as "extraordinary" and "life-affirming," pointing out that "Campbell's work reflects not just a life as lived but mirrors the process of understanding that life." He praises Far Arden, meanwhile, not only for its formal tricks but also for "its world-building and capacity for melancholy." Click here to read the whole list!
April 2, 2010 / More →
Comic Book Resources staff writer Alex Dueben emcees a great in-depth interview with JD Arnold and Rich Koslowski, creators of the upcoming blues/racism/revenge thriller BB WOLF AND THE THREE LPs! Find out how the JD's script and Rich's art made "a story that is so familiar" into something "as moving and powerful as this book is," and find out why Alex calls it "one of the best graphic novels of the year and a must read for any comics fan!" Click here to read the interview!
April 1, 2010 / More →
THE SWEDISH INVASION BEGINS AT ROCKETSHIP COMICS ON FRI APRIL 9TH & CONTINUES ALL MOCCA WEEKEND APRIL 10TH-11TH!
Come meet and party with Simon Gärdenfors (THE 120 DAYS OF SIMON), Mats Jonsson (HEY PRINCESS), Kolbeinn Karlsson (THE TROLL KING), Niklas Asker (SECOND THOUGHTS), Fredrik Strömberg (SWEDISH COMICS HISTORY), as well as Chris Staros, Leigh Walton, Johannes Klenell, and many of the contributors to the Swedish Anthology FROM THE SHADOW OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS at:
THE ROCKETSHIP SWEDISH INVASION PARTY
FRI, APRIL 9TH, 8:00PM
@ 208 SMITH ST, BROOKLYN, NY
&
THE MoCCA ARTS FESTIVAL
SAT & SUN, APRIL 10TH & 11TH
@ THE 69TH REGIMENT ARMORY
68 LEXINGTON AVENUE (BETWEEN 25TH & 26TH)
(And they’ll also be at C2E2, the CHICAGO COMIC & ENTERTAINMENT EXPO (FRI - SUN, APR 16TH-18TH) and at the Nerd City/Top Shelf Swedish Invasion Party on SAT APR 17TH at the famed Chicago nightclub, the Double Door.)
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March 31, 2010 / More →
We just had some fantastic recent appearances in Seattle for Emerald City Comic-Con (with Andy Runton, Matt Kindt, and Jeff Lemire), in Memphis for the ComicsPRO retailer conference, and in Portland for the Public Library Association's conference! All three were excellent events, with some great opportunities to hear from fans, retailers, and librarians. The 2010 convention season is off to a beautiful start, and we can't wait to see you at the next show!
Coming up next are these events in the month of April:
APR 10-11: MoCCA ART FESTIVAL (New York, New York)
APR 16-18: C2E2 - CHICAGO COMIC & ENTERTAINMENT EXPO (Chicago, Illinois)
APR 24-25: SWEDISH SMALL PRESS EXPO (Stockholm, Sweden)
APR 24-25: STUMPTOWN COMICS FEST (Portland, Oregon)
APR 24-25: CALGARY COMIC EXPO (Calgary, Alberta, Canada)
March 22, 2010 / More →
Indie superstar James Kochalka is famous for creating huge amounts of material in all sorts of areas (graphic novels, kids' books, webcomics, painting, music), but this year he looks to be busier than ever before! As this new profile in WIRED explains, he's got a lot on his plate!
The long-awaited vinyl-bound collected edition of his foul-mouthed super-sitcom comic SuperF*ckers hits stores in just a few weeks, he's got a successful series of kids' graphic novels called Johnny Boo (and a new one coming this summer called Dragon Puncher), and he's just teamed up with indie game developers PixelJam to make his dream video game Glorkian Warrior a reality. They used the website Kickstarter to solicit $10,000 in donations from fans in order to fund the game's creation, surpassing that goal well before their deadline! Finally, he has a significant role in the new rotoscoped sci-fi romance film Mars, which just debuted at SXSW! Pretty sure that officially makes him the busiest man in Burlington, Vermont.
See below to grab copies of some of his books, or click here for our full Kochalka catalog!
March 20, 2010 / More →
The good folks at Comic Book Resources just unveiled an exclusive first look at the opening scene of The Playwright, coming this June from Top Shelf!
Written by Daren White with full-color painted art by Eddie Campbell, The Playwright is a truly delightful piece of work that blends romance and emotional complexity with a dry British wit. It's a dark comedy about the sex life of a celibate middle-aged man. Take a look at the first scene now!
March 17, 2010 / More →
The prestigious Joe Shuster Awards, honoring Canadian comic book creators, have announced their nominees for 2010... and three Top Shelf creators are on the list!
First up, the excellent Stuart Immonen is nominated for Best Artist/Dessinateur, largely for his work at Marvel on Ultimate Spider-Man and New Avengers. Scripter supreme Kathryn Immonen likewise earns a nomination for Best Writer/Écrivain primarily for Runaways and Patsy Walker: Hellcat. Also mentioned is the Immonen-Immonen collaboration "Trampoline Hall" from a CBLDF benefit book. Finally, Shuster veteran Jeff Lemire returns for another shot at the award he won two years ago, Best Cartoonist/Créateur. The nomination honors his work on The Nobody and his story from Awesome 2: Awesomer, among other things.
But the best part? All three have amazing new graphic novels coming up from Top Shelf!
- Kathryn and Stuart have collaborated on the nail-bitingly dramatic thriller Moving Pictures -- about love, war, and Nazi art theft -- which is in Previews now for a May 2010 release.
- And Jeff Lemire has just announced his next major book with us, The Underwater Welder, for a 2012 release!
Congratulations to Stuart, Kathryn, Jeff, and all the nominees!
March 16, 2010 / More →
Library Journal's Neal Wyatt and Tom Batten have assembled a cream-of-the-crop short list of absolutely essential graphic novels -- "classics that not only stand out as great starting points for newbies but also serve as examples of the best work done by masters of the form." Such a list would hardly be complete without something by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, and the writers kill two birds with one stone by recommending Alan & Eddie's monumental collaboration From Hell!
As Batten writes, "Moore weaves together a huge cast of characters, ranging from royalty to doomed footmen, and Campbell's scratchy, dark illustrations create a gloriously grimy and terrifyingly realistic London for them to inhabit." If you haven't braved the dark depths of From Hell before, why not dive in today? We can safely say that it will blow your mind.
March 8, 2010 / More →
Hey folks, those of you in the Pacific Northwest should get ready for the Emerald City ComicCon this weekend (March 13-14) in Seattle! We'll be there in full force all weekend, with Top Shelf superstars Matt Kindt (Super Spy), Jeff Lemire (Essex County), and Andy Runton (Owly) at the Top Shelf booth -- and Owly fans have an extra reason to go, as this year's official ECCC T-Shirts for both women and children feature an awesome "Owly in Seattle" design by Andy Runton!
See you in the Emerald City!
March 5, 2010 / More →
Wow! No sooner do we announce a new graphic novel by Eric Orchard (Maddy Kettle, coming in 2011) than we receive news that Eric has won a Spectrum Award!
The Spectrum Awards celebrate the best in art and design in the fields of fantasy and science fiction, as selected by a peer jury of working artists. The winning pieces will all be included in volume 17 of the Spectrum fantasy art anthology, to be published this fall. Eric's winning page comes from his mini-comic "The Cloud Cave," which he's currently expanding and adapting into his full-length graphic novel debut, Maddy Kettle. So we're totally claiming this one for Team Top Shelf! Congratulations, Eric, and hats off to all the winners.
