‘A Guest in the House,’ ‘Blackward’ among the nominees for the 2024 Lambda Literary Awards

The annual awards recognize LGBTQ+ books, poetry, comics and more.

The finalists have been announced for the 36th annual Lambda Literary Awards, which celebrate and recognize outstanding LGBTQ+ literature. The awards include an “LGBTQ+ Comics” category.

The finalists were selected by more than “70 avid readers, critics and literary professionals” from more than 1,300 submissions. Both First Second and Drawn & Quarterly received two nominations, while Silver Sprocket rounded out the category. Previous winners in the comics category include Sas Milledge’s Mamo, Lee Lai’s Stone Fruit and Bishakh Som’s Apsara Engine.

And the finalists are …

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Jillian Tamaki + Mariko Tamaki’s 2023 graphic novel gets a name + cover

‘Roaming!” will arrive in the fall of 2023.

Drawn + Quarterly announced a new graphic novel by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki project for 2023, and this week they revealed both the title and the cover.

Roaming!, which is about two best friends going to college in New York, will arrive in stores in fall 2023. Here’s the cover:

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D + Q announces a new Jillian Tamaki + Mariko Tamaki project for 2023

The as-yet-untitled graphic novel will feature two college freshman who go on an “eye-opening trip” to New York.

Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki, the creators of the award-winning, critically praised graphic novels Skim and This One Summer, will team up once again for a new graphic novel in 2023.

While the graphic novel does not yet have a title, Drawn and Quarterly revealed that it’s about two college freshman who head to New York for Spring Break.

“In 2010, Jillian and Mariko exploded the YA graphic novel market with a nuanced queer goth coming of age story filled with subtext. Skim raised the bar on what we consider young adult both in subject matter and art style,” said D+Q Publisher Peggy Burns. “With this new book, they’re now shifting their focus to early adulthood, capturing female friendship and the perils of growing up via an eye-opening trip to NYC. Their magic of being able to completely intertwine their individual art forms into a cohesive, spectacular whole is on display yet again.”

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Sunday Comics | Paying tribute to Milton Glaser

Check out comics by Jillian Tamaki, Grant Snider, Matt Bors, Richard Pace and more.

Here’s a round up of some of the best comics we’ve seen online recently. If we missed something, let us know in the comments below.

Graphic designer Milton Glaser passed away last week, and Incidental Comics creator Grant Snider posted this strip in his honor:

“RIP Milton Glaser, one of the greatest designers and illustrators of our time,” Snider wrote. “This comic was inspired by his iconic Bob Dylan poster.” In addition to the Dylan poster Snider referenced, Glaser is also known for his work for AMC’s Mad Men, designing the logo for the “I Love NY” campaign, his work on New York magazine and creating arguably the most recognizable DC Comics logo of the last 50 years, the “bullet” logo.

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Sunday Comics | Ezra Claytan Daniels designs ‘new agencies that serve and protect’

Check out new comics by Jillian Tamaki, Ethan Sacks, Dalibor Talajić, Gavin Guidry and more.

Here’s a round up of some of the best comics we’ve seen online recently. If we missed something, let us know in the comments below.

As calls to “defund the police” spread in protests, on the news and in social media, Ezra Claytan Daniels imagines a few “departments that will replace police in the not-too-distant future.”

Posted at The Nib, Daniels’ new concepts include the “Los Angeles Department of Food Security,” pictured at the top of this post, and the “Department of Crime Deduction,” pictured above, which he calls a “diversely skilled roster of detectives who excel in creative thinking and problem solving.” Probably recruited heavily from crime podcasts.

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Comics Lowdown: Mark Waid’s attorney asks for dismissal of Richard C. Meyer’s lawsuit

BOOM! Studios cancels ‘Husband and Husband’ collection after plagiarism charges! Image stops selling DRM-free digital comics directly! Chicago Sun-Times drops two pages of comics! Plus: Chip Zdarsky, NaNoWriMo, best of 2018 lists and more!

Mark Waid’s legal representative has asked the U.S. District Court for the Western district of Texas to dismiss the lawsuit filed against him by Richard C. Meyer. The civil lawsuit was filed in September and claims “tortious interference with contract and defamation.” You can read the motion on Newsarama.

“[Meyer] asserts claims against Mr. Waid for tortious interference with contract and defamation. These claims are completely meritless. But the problem at the outset, and which is proper to address, is that this Court lacks personal jurisdiction over Mr. Waid,” reads the motion. “Plaintiff’s Complaint fails to identify any allegations or facts establishing any connection between Mr. Waid and Texas. Instead, Plaintiff merely alleges a single phone call between Mr. Waid, who was in California at the time, and a San Antonio publishing company. That is far short of the necessary substantial connection with Texas to justify personal jurisdiction.”

Mark Waid and Richard Meyer have GoFundMe campaigns going to pay for their legal fees, both of which have reached their goals.

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The 2018 Joe Shuster Award Nominations

Awards celebrate excellence in the Canadian comic creators and publications.

The nominations for the 2018 Joe Shuster Awards have been announced this week.  Commonly nickednamed “The Shusters”, they are Canada’s national comic book awards that honours and raises the awareness of Canadians that create, self-publish and sell comic books, digital comics and graphic novels.

The award winners will be chosen by a jury vote to ensure every nominee is given adequate consideration.

The ceremony will take place at the Montreal Comic Con July 6-8, 2018 at the Palais des congrès, Montreal, QC.

And the nominees are:

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Comics Lowdown: ECCC volunteer suit settled

Plus: the ALA, Jillian Tamaki and more.

The former owners of Emerald City Comic Con will pay $493,227.84 to former volunteers and the attorneys who represented them under a settlement that will keep the matter from going to court. Jerry Michael Brooks, a former volunteer at the con, filed a class action suit on behalf of all volunteers who worked at ECCC in 2014 and 2015, claiming that they were treated like employees and therefore should have been paid for their work. (Seattlish posted the details of the suit when it was first filed.) Under the settlement, Eitane Emerald Corp. and the Demonakos family will pay almost $500,000 to the volunteers, with the lawyers scooping up $123,300 for their troubles, Brooks getting $5,000, and the 250 or so other “volunteers” will divvy up the rest according to how many hours they worked. Although the defendants admit to no wrongdoing, the payments to the volunteers are to be regarded as part wages, part settlement for nonpayment of wages. ReedPOP, which purchased the con in 2015 and ran the 2016 and 2017 events, does not use unpaid volunteers.

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Comics Lowdown: Bricks fly through one comic shop; Grant given to another

Plus: The mother of shojo manga, Naruto and real-life politics and more

Galactic Comics in Ocean Beach, California was vandalized. Screen cap from KGTV San Diego.
David Draize, owner of Galactic Comics in Ocean Beach, California, doesn’t know why someone hurled several bricks through his store window, but he’s grateful for the police response that followed. Security camera footage shows a man in his 40s or 50s, clad in black, throwing several bricks and cinderblocks through the store window at about 1 a.m. on June 12. Nothing was taken from the store, in part, Draize believes, because the police officers who responded stayed to guard the store till he could get there.

Amalgam University Gets Its First Grant: In happier retailing news, Ariell Johnson, proprietor of Amalgam Comics & Coffeehouse in Philadelphia, has been awarded a $50,000 grant from the Knight Foundation to set up a programming space, which will expand the footprint of the store and allow her to create an “Amalgam University.” Johnson says that because she sells self-published work, she sees a lot of comics that have potential but are falling short in terms of craft. She hopes to offer classes to help those who can’t go to art school learn the nuts and bolts of making comics.

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Comics Lowdown: The future of MAD Magazine

Plus: New superhero universe Catalyst Prime, comics to fight fake news, Jillian Tamaki, Rico Renzi’s color palette, and more!

What’s up with MAD Magazine? Mark Evanier lays out a brief history of MAD, which has been part of DC Comics for a long time (it’s complicated!), and updates us on its current status, which is… not good. Like pretty much all print magazines, MAD has been struggling for a while, although Evanier thinks editor John Ficarra has been doing a bang-up job. When the rest of DC packed up and moved to Burbank, California, a while ago, the MAD staff stayed, but they are moving out of their New York office at the end of this year, and DC has not been forthcoming with any news about what will happen next, beyond the fact that the magazine is moving to Burbank and only one staffer, a production artist, will be going with it. The February 2018 issue will be the last one produced by the Usual Gang of Idiots. DC has not made any announcements about what happens next, but Evanier suggests following the blog of artist Tom Richmond, one of the most frequent contributors to the magazine, for updates.

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Comics Lowdown: Comics will break your heart

Plus: Jillian Tamaki on Q, Comic Nurse compiles HIV stories, Drawn to Change wins, Chris Ware, Captain Harlock returns

Today’s thoughtful read is a painful one: Maggie Umber chronicles the end of her marriage and the struggle to make 2dCloud a successful indy publisher. It’s a reminder that nothing is ever simple when viewed from the inside—she writes poignantly about the part she played in 2dCloud and the tension between that and her own career as a cartoonist, and the strain that put on her relationship with her soon-to-be-ex-husband Raighne Hogan:

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Quoted: Jillian & Mariko Tamaki on frequently challenged ‘This One Summer’

As their award-winning book continues to face censorship, they note that, “A book doesn’t stop existing by taking it off the shelf. Nor do the ideas contained within.”

Mariko and Jillian Tamaki, whose This One Summer, landed at the top of the American Library Association’s list of 2016’s most challenged books, issued a statement about the book’s frequent challenges:

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