Day: August 4, 2022

A new ‘Dog Man’ book will arrive in March

The 11th volume of the popular graphic novel series by Dav Pilkey arrives next year, along with a special anniversary edition of the first ‘Captain Underpants’ book.

Dav Pilkey’s world-conquering Dog Man series will return to shelves next March with its 11th volume — Dog Man: Twenty Thousand Fleas Under the Sea.

This will be the first new Dog Man volume since 2021, when Mothering Heights was released. But Pilkey hasn’t been resting — several volumes of his Cat Kid Comic Club series, a Dog Man spinoff, have filled in the gaps, with the fourth volume, Collaborations, set to arrive in November.

“I am humbled and grateful to do what I love for a living,” Pilkey said in the press release. “Since the pandemic began, I have been inspired to create even more stories and to learn and grow as an artist–from experimenting with various mediums to make comics using photography, poetry, and calligraphy, to building character models and sets by hand, as well as exploring different themes and storylines. My hope is that my books foster creativity and imagination, and instill a lifelong love of reading.”

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Smash Pages Q&A | Taki Soma on ‘Sleeping While Standing’

The artist of ‘Rapture,’ ‘The After Realm,’ ‘Sinergy’ and more discusses her deeply personal new graphic novel, her creative process and more.

Taki Soma is a writer, artist and colorist best known for comics like Rapture, The After Realm, Sinergy, Bitch Planet, The Old Guard: Tales Through Time and many others. But her new book Sleeping While Standing, which is out now from Avery Hill Publishing, is a departure from what she’s done previously.

A collection of stories four pages or less, it’s a deeply personal work, as Soma explores her father’s suicide, moving to Minnesota as a child and her complicated relationship with her mother, among other events in her life. It also looks at the horrifying way she learned that she has MS, features laugh-out-loud stories about pets and children, and shows her deep and complex storytelling skills.

It’s an incredible work by a talented creator, and Soma was kind enough to talk about why she made the book, her creative process and why she makes comics.

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Quick Hits | Behind the scenes at Oni Press

Plus: News on Ron Zimmerman, Paul Coker Jr., Frederik L. Schodt, Ed Brubaker and more.

Publishers | Although it might be hard to believe that there’s anyone left at the Oni-Lion Forge Publishing Company to speak anonymously at this point, Popverse has an interview up with one such staffer, who gives more details on what’s been going on behind the scenes — and offers some context about that not-at-all-thought-out statement that was released on social media. The statement, the anonymous source says, came from parent company Polarity. “They thought it was so good. They did not listen to anyone who told them it was not, and then we reaped the whirlwind of their failure, like pretty much every week this month.”

This unsurprising account by the anonymous staffer follows several rounds of layoffs and departures from the Oni-Lion Forge Publishing Company. Associate publisher Michelle Nguyen left the company voluntarily, following the layoffs of James Lucas Jones, Charlie Chu, Alex Segura, Amanda Meadows, Jasmini Amiri and Henry Barajas in July.

Publishers | Both The Beat and Popverse have reported that webcomics platform Tapas Media has laid off several staff in what’s being described as both a consolidation with sister companies Radish and Wuxiaworld, as well as a shift toward more user-generated content. Bleeding Cool reports that Tapas Media Chief Creative Officer Michele Wells is one of the people impacted by the layoffs. All three companies are owned by Kakao Entertainment, which acquired them in 2021.

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