‘Stone Fruit’ by Lee Lai wins the 2022 Lynd Ward prize

Lai and Fantagraphics add another award to a growing list.

Stone Fruit, Lee Lai’s graphic novel about a queer couple and their relationships with their families, has added another award to its growing collection. Penn State University Libraries has awarded it the Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize for 2022. The graphic novel was published by Fantagraphics in May of 2021.

The award comes with a $2,500 prize, and the winner is chosen by a jury. In their write-up, the jury said, “Lee Lai’s ‘Stone Fruit’ is one of those rare graphic novels where everything — story, text, images, style — comes together in full complement to create a memorable, moving experience for readers.”

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Harley + Ivy adorn these new Pumas designed by Jen Bartel

DC’s power couple appear on shoes and shirts designed by the artist, which can be found on the Foot Locker website.

Puma has released a new collection of shoes and shirts designed by artist Jen Bartel featuring Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn. The shoes went on sale on the Foot Locker website and in select Foot Locker stores earlier today.

“This collab was truly a labor of love that started nearly 2 years ago, and of all the collections I’ve had the opportunity to design for Puma, it’s definitely my favorite,” Bartel said in her Substack newsletter. “Very excited to finally be able to share it with you in full!”

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Sgt. Rock takes on ‘Army of the Dead’ in a new miniseries from Campbell + Risso

The first issue arrives in September.

Bruce Campbell, who has literally fought zombies*, will put what he learned to good use in DC Horror Presents: Sgt. Rock Vs. The Army of the Dead. Eduardo Risso will illustrate the six-issue series.

Campbell has appeared in numerous televisions shows and movies over the years, including Burn Notice, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., Evil Dead, Army of Darkness and most recently he had a cameo role in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. Risso is probably best known for his work on 100 Bullets, the long-running Vertigo series.

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Nominees announced for the Excellence in Graphic Literature Awards

Pop Culture Classroom will recognize graphic novels across four categories, plus a new reader’s choice category.

Pop Culture Classroom, an organization that provides educational resources to classrooms that use comics, graphic novels and other pop culture media, has announced the nominees for the 2022 Excellence in Graphic Literature Awards.

The awards have been presented annually since 2018, and recognize creators and their works across four categories, based on the targeted age group.

“We’re thrilled to be celebrating the fifth anniversary of the Excellence in Graphic Literature Awards,” said Pop Culture Classroom Education Program Manager Matt Slayter. “Our juries and advisory board have carefully evaluated this year’s submitted works, and these graphic novels represent the best and most inclusive titles published in 2021. This list will help libraries and classrooms build diverse and educational graphic novel collections with titles that readers AND teachers of all ages will love!”

The nominees are:

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Three Count | Roachmill, George Pratt, Kevin Conroy

Here are three things in comics to support, to see and to watch today.

1. To support: Roachmill returns from It’s Alive!

The 1980s saw a huge explosion in the number of comics coming from independent comics publishers. It was mainly driven by a couple of factors, one being the creation and growth of the direct market, and also by what’s known as the black-and-white comics boom (and subsequent bust) that was sparked by the creation of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and fueled by a speculator’s market of low print run, and often low quality, B&W comics. But there were certainly some gems amongst the garbage.

One of the companies in the mix back then was Blackthorne Publishing, a company born when Pacific Comics closed down, who would go on to be quite successful for a number of years publishing 3-D comics, comic strip reprints, licensed comics and original stuff. One of those originals was Roachmill, by Rich Hedden and Tom McWeeney, which was definitely a gem.

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Segura + Gallagher + Kambadais resurrect ‘The Black Ghost’ this summer

The Comixology Originals title returns digitally in August and in print from Dark Horse next year.

Following an intriguing debut back in 2019, The Black Ghost will once again haunt your digital devices when it returns from Comixology Originals in August.

The new five issue miniseries by writers Alex Segura and Monica Gallagher, artist George Kambadais, colorist Ellie Wright, letterer Taylor Esposito and editor Greg Lockard will be collected by Dark Horse in January.

“When Hard Revolution, the first arc in our series was received so warmly – and got the attention of places like The Hollywood Reporter, The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and a print edition from Dark Horse Comics – we started to think of more,” Segura said. “I could almost feel Monica and I looking at each other from across the country and thinking, ‘Well, what do we do now?'”

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‘New Mutants’ #30 will mark the team’s 40th anniversary

Vita Ayala, Alex Lins, Jason Loo, Emma Kubert, Alyssa Wong, Bob McLeod and more will contribute to the oversized issue.

Although they don’t look that much older than when they first debuted, Marvel will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the original New Mutants #1 in issue #30 of the current series, which comes out in September.

The oversized issue will include a collection of shorter stories starring “classic and new characters alike,” and will feature the work of Vita Ayala, Alex Lins, Jason Loo, Emma Kubert, Alyssa Wong and more. Wong, actually, will write a new Deadpool story for the comic, as Deadpool made his first appearance in New Mutants #98.

The New Mutants were co-created by Chris Claremont and Bob McLeod back in 1982, and they debuted in an original graphic novel that was released in September of that year. The first issue of their ongoing series followed a couple months later and lasted 100 issues before morphing into X-Force during the 1990s. Marvel has revived the title and concept a few times since then, including the current title, which features several of the original members with newer characters.

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Quick Hits | Marvel signs with Penguin Random House for book distribution

Plus: news on ‘Berserk,’ CXC, ‘Lumberjackula’ and more.

Publishers | Marvel and Penguin Random House have announced an expansion to their current partnership — Penguin Random House will take over Marvel’s distribution into bookstores starting next April. Currently Penguin Random House distributes Marvel’s comics into direct market comic shops, which they’ve been doing since March of last year.

The agreement covers “Marvel’s newly published and backlist collected editions and graphic novels to bookstores and major retailers across the Book Market.” Marvel currently uses Hachette Book Group for its book channel distribution.

Manga | Hakusensha’s Young Animal editing department and Kouji Mori have announced plans to continue the manga Berserk after the death of Kentarou Miura last May. In a statement on the Hakusensha website, they said they planned to finish the current arc that was running in Young Animal magazine, with plans to follow it with a new arc. Mori and Miura were close friends, and in his statement Mori said Miura had revealed the whole story of Berserk to him.

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Annie Koyama will receive the 2022 Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award

The former publisher’s grant initiative for comics creators, Koyama Provides, has given out almost $300,000 to comics creators.

Comic-Con International has announced that Annie Koyama and her Koyama Provides grant program for comics creators will receive the Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award this year. According to CCI, Koyama has awarded around 90 grants to artists, with an expected $300,000 to be given out by the end of this year.

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Mail Call | Tynion, Brombal + Goodhart debut ‘Christopher Chaos’

Plus: News and updates on ‘Darkskulls,’ ‘The Bone Orchard Mythos,’ ‘The United States of Murder’ and more.

Mail Call is a roundup of cool things we’ve received in our mailboxes from comics creators, publishers and more. Hit the links for more information.

If you aren’t following James Tynion IV’s TinyOnion newsletter, then you likely missed the launch of his newest comic last week — The Oddly Pedestrian Life of Christopher Chaos. He’s released the first chapter for free via his Substack newsletter.

“This is a comic for folks who like teenage angst and horror monsters,” Tynion said. “I’ve always liked books that don’t fit neatly into one category or another. You’ll see some trappings of young adult storytelling here, but when the horror kicks in we don’t hold back. And we don’t hold back on the language either. Hell, it’s not like teens do, anyways. It’s not a superhero bit, but it doesn’t shy away from some of my favorite superhero tropes. It’s not a YA story, but it similarly doesn’t shy away from the best of those tropes. I think when I first started kicking it around in the back of my mind I thought of it as ‘A queer horror answer to Invincible.'”

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Duchovny + Sevy team for the science fiction story ‘Kepler’

Dark Horse will release the graphic novel co-written by ‘The X-Files’ star later this year.

Actor and author David Duchovny will work with co-writer and artist Phillip Sevy on a new science fiction graphic novel, coming from Dark Horse later this year.

Kepler is not only the title but also the world where the story takes place. It’s a world where homo sapiens went extinct and other hominid species thrived, and focuses on a Neanderthal girl, West, and the Benadem, a group of “benevolent space gods.”

“What if we, humans got another chance with a fresh new world we hadn’t depleted and polluted?” Duchovny told Forbes. “What if we entered into a new phase of colonization, space colonization — would we have learned from our genocidal colonial past? And what if, instead of indigenous peoples we were displacing and decimating, we came upon other types of hominids from our distant earth past? Neanderthals, Denisovans and other intelligent evolving primates native to Kepler. Would we treat them as the evolutionary brothers and sisters they are? Or would we play God and try to remake them and this planet in our own image? I guess this graphic novel is my working out the answer to those questions.”

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Can’t Wait for Comics | DC pulls out the stops for Pride Month

This week brings new comics and graphic novels from Joshua Williamson, Daniel Sampere, G. Willow Wilson, Marcio Takara, Ram V, Christian Ward, Cavan Scott, Andres Ponce, Tee Franklin, Dan Parent, Matt Bors, Ben Clarkson, Christine Larsen and more.

Welcome to Can’t Wait for Comics, your guide to what comics are arriving in comic book stores, bookstores and on digital this week. This week brings several new Pride Month comics from DC, as well as the debuts of Dark Crisis, a Marvel/Fortnite crossover, Justice Warriors, The Ward and more.

I’ve pulled out some of the highlights below, but for the complete list of everything you might find at your local comic shop and on digital this week, you’ll want to check out one or more of the following:

As a reminder, things can change and what you find on the above lists may differ from what’s actually arriving in your local shop. So always check with your comics retailer for the final word on availability.

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