Category: Quick Hits

Quick Hits | Spider-Man joins the Comic-Con Museum Character Hall of Fame

Plus: News on Danica Novgorodoff, Lucy Knisley, ‘Gender Queer’ and more.

Events | The Comic-Con Museum has announced the latest character to be inducted into their Character Hall of Fame. Spider-Man will join Batman, Pac-Man and Wonder Woman. The induction ceremony will take place on July 20 during Comic-Con International. The museum will also host a Spider-Man exhibit, “Beyond Amazing,” starting on July 1, which will showcase art, costumes and interactive experiences featuring everyone’s favorite web-slinger.

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Quick Hits | Danica Novgorodoff receives the Yoto Kate Greenaway medal

Plus: ‘Duckman’ creator Everett Peck passes away, and news on ‘The Dark Knight Returns,’ Grant Morrison and more.

Awards | Danica Novgorodoff has received the Yoto Kate Greenaway medal — “the UK’s longest running and best-loved book awards for children and young people” — for her graphic novel adaptation of Jason Reynolds’ novel Long Way Down. According to the press release, it’s the first time since 1973 that a graphic novel has received the prize. The book features hundreds of “stunning” watercolors depicting the decision that 15-year-old Will must make when his brother is shot.

“Long Way Down is a book that asks us to empathise with a character who is planning to harm another person, and endanger his own life, out of grief and revenge,” Novgorodoff said in a statement. “He’s in a complicated, difficult situation, and he needs to make a very hard decision. Through the illustrations, I wanted to show this emotional torment, to make his internal feelings come alive on the page. The book doesn’t preach, but it asks readers, ‘What do you feel, and what would you do?'”

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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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Quick Hits | Artist Ken Kelly passes away

Plus: News on Popeye’s new artist, Free Comic Book Day and more.

Passings | Fantasy artist Ken Kelly, whose art appeared on rock albums, book covers, magazines, video games and comics, passed away June 3 at the age of 76. Kelly was heavily in demand as a painter in the 1970s and painted the covers of two albums by the band KISS — Destroyer and Love Gun. Comic fans in the 1970s would know his work on covers for The Spirit, Vampirella and Creepy, and in the 1990s for some of the Star Wars titles when Dark Horse held the license. A cause of death has not been reported.

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Quick Hits | Comixology removes in-app purchases from Android app

Plus: People moves at AWA Studios and Image, Joshua Williamson, Al Madrigal and more.

Digital Comics | Similar to a move they made on iOS devices about eight years ago, Comixology has announced that they have removed the ability to purchase comics from their Android app. The email to users said that the change was made to “remain in compliance with updated Google Play Store policies,” which, as The Beat points out, are intended to close loopholes that allowed companies to sell items in their Android apps without paying fees to the Google Play Store. The move follows those made by two other Amazon entities, Audible and Kindle Books, earlier this year.

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Quick Hits | ‘Gender Queer’ remains at the center of Virginia controversy

The American Booksellers for Free Expression responds as politicians continue trying to ban ‘Gender Queer.’ Also: comiXology’s app is ‘annoying,’ the first graphic novel to win the Jhalak Prize and more.

Censorship | The American Booksellers for Free Expression “strongly condemns” a recent decision by a judge in Virginia that the graphic novel Gender Queer and the book A Court of Mist and Fury might be “obscene for unrestricted viewing by minors.” Two politicians in Virginia are attempting to restrict access to the book by minors not only in libraries, but also in bookstores like Barnes & Noble.

Activism | In Washington State, students at Walla Walla High School responded to attempts to ban certain books like Gender Queer from the school library by forming a Banned Book Club. There plan is to read one “banned” book per month, and a local bookstore is giving them a discount on the books they choose.

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Quick Hits | AWA, GlobalComix partner on ‘Lesser Evils’

Plus: news on United Workers of Seven Seas, censorship attempts in Michigan, FurnaceCon and more.

Brooklyn’s local BKReader spotlights Lesser Evils, a new comic series from AWA Studios that is set in the NY borough. The comic debuted digitally earlier this week on GlobalComix, as part of a “Global First” localization partnership between the online comics platform and AWA. GlobalComix plans to release it in multiple languages, including English, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian and Hindi.

“It’s not just going digital first, it’s going Global First,” said Christopher Carter, founder and CEO of GlobalComix, in a press release. “We believe that when companies go digital first, they are no longer constrained to the same up-front investment costs of physical market validation, distribution, supply chain, required for localization and global audiences.”

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Quick Hits | Chick Tracts artist Fred Carter passes away

Plus: Rachel Pollack, Luke Healy and the Siancong War!

Passings | Fred Carter, an artist whose work was seen by millions in the form of Chick Tracts, passed away earlier this month from heart failure at the age of 83. Carter worked anonymously for Jack Chick, publisher of Chick Publications, and is credited with drawing more than half of the Christian comic pamphlets. He also worked with Chick on The Crusaders, a comic that featured a white former Green Beret and a Black ex-militant who “went on adventures for Christ.” The duo looked a lot like Chick and Carter.

People | Mad Cave Studios has added two new senior editors to their team, Lauren McGrew-Hitzhusen and Chas! Pangburn.

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Quick Hits | More details emerge on several Frank Miller Presents projects

Featuring news on Dan DiDio, Christian Cooper, two new comics retailers and more.

Over the weekend, IGN posted a story featuring artwork and quotes from Dan DiDio about Frank Miller Presents, the new initiative he’s been named publisher for. They also revealed the date of publication for Ronin: Book Two, the first project coming out of FMP — Nov. 23. Miller is working with Phillip Tan and Daniel Henriques on the sequel to his 1980s miniseries.

“Frank’s intimately involved in everything going on. The reason why we’re doing Ronin is because it’s never been exploited before,” DiDio told IGN. “We feel that there’s a lot of areas that Frank has story for. And actually, he’s had this story in mind for Ronin: Book Two since the end of the original series 40 years ago. So this is exciting for him to be able to tell that story because he still carries it with him and he’s finally getting it out.”

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Quick Hits | A quick awards round-up

‘The Inhabitant of the Lake’ wins the Bram Stoker Award, plus nominations for the Graphic Medicine International Collective Award, Locus Awards and more.

It’s awards season, so today seems like a good day for a quick awards round-up post. Here we go …

The Horror Writers Association has announced the winners of the 2022 Bram Stoker Awards. In the graphic novel category Alessandro Manzetti and Stefano Cardoselli’s The Inhabitant of the Lake, published by Independent Legions Publishing, won the award, beating out what started as a large and very competitive field.

You can find the complete list of winners across all categories on the HWA website.

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Quick Hits | Rest in peace, Dijjo Lima

A round-up of news on colorist Dijjo Lima, ‘Heartstopper,’ ‘Batman: The Dark Knight Returns’ and more.

Passings | Artist Mike Deodato, Jr. announced on Twitter that colorist Dijjo Lima, whose work included X Deaths of Wolverine, Devil’s Reign: Omega, Amazing Spider-Man and many other titles, passed away. A cause of death was not given. Multiversity Comics has posted an obituary for the 34-year-old Brazilian. You can see more of his work on his website.

Original Art | Frank Miller and Lynn Varley’s original art for the cover of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns #1 will go up for auction on June 16, and Bloomberg is reporting it could go for up to $2 million.

Crowdfunding | If Kickstarter’s weird blockchain announcement from late last year left you scratching your head, Erin Ptah writes up a lengthy explanation about what it all means for The Beat.

Webcomics | Writing for Cherwell, Hetta Johnson provides some background on Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper, the webcomic turned hit Netflix adaptation.

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