Leave, leave it all behind

I've been working on the Couch to 5K that the Mfam have used. I run like I drive- too fast. So this has helped me set a slower and more even pace. Today I ran about 2 miles.

The weather is getting warm, and I have a 4 day weekend. I will go to the beach one day (love reading comics at the beach; I can get through a big stack) and the mountains for a few days.

Have a great holiday weekend! Drink beers, get fresh air, and enjoy!
Next weekend: Wizard World! And leading up to my OYL...one year of Redhead Fangirl.


Comics Take the Stage At BookExpo

The big mainstream publishers were gearing up for summer tie-ins with blockbuster movies—Superman Returns at DC and X-Men: The Last Stand at Marvel—and also fanning the flames for future titles with star writers: DC is publishing Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier for the holiday season, and Marvel has projects with Stephen King, Neil Gaiman and Eric Jerome Dickey that it will serialize en route to hardcover publication, as well as a hotly anticipated Halo graphic novel.

Meanwhile, Dark Horse was preparing to roll out more Star Wars titles, and a few newer publishers were fielding questions about their own media tie-ins, especially Transformers and forthcoming Oz and Clive Barker projects at IDW, and Family Guy at Devil's Due.

Manga continues to be huge with bookstores and librarians alike, and manga publishers are delving into licensed properties and cross-medium synergy. This year Viz is celebrating its 20th anniversary.

Vertigo evolves with original graphic novels
This year, Vertigo's OGN lineup is an exceptionally strong one, with Veitch's Can’t Get No (June), Gilbert Hernandez's Sloth (July) and The Pride of Baghdad by Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon.
Vertigo executive editor Karen Berger:
We're also working with a number of novelists and screenwriters new to the comics form, so we do spend time guiding them though the visual thinking, structural, storytelling and pacing elements that are unique to our medium.

On the art side, the schedule for art is defined differently for a graphic novel, giving the artist more deadline flexibility from the pressures of producing a monthly comic. The artist also has the opportunity to approach the storytelling and layouts with greater freedom, since there are no ad flat constraints.

Spring Round-Up: Superman to Sandman
By far the most serious of these new releases is Fantagraphics' The Sandman Papers, edited by Joe Sanders ($18.95 paper, ISBN 1-56097-748-5). This is a collection of academic essays concerning Neil Gaiman's now classic Sandman comics series, and demonstrates the intellectual depth that comics can achieve as literature.