Tag: Katie Skelly

Smash Pages Q&A | Katie Skelly on ‘Heaven’

The creator of ‘Nurse Nurse,’ ‘Maids and more talks about her newest graphic novel, the end of her “cool girls” era and what she’s planning next.

Katie Skelly has spent more than a decade creating stylish graphic novels centered on unforgettable women navigating worlds of horror, desire and mystery. From My Pretty Vampire and Operation Margarine to Nurse Nurse, Skelly has developed a visual style all her own, blending cute images with bold colors, emotional honesty and, at times, brutal violence.

Katie Skelly photo
Katie Skelly

Her latest graphic novel, Heaven, is her first in about six years, following 2020’s Maids. It arrives in stores today courtesy of Fantagraphics. The supernatural strip joint story follows Dolly, a young woman searching for purpose who is drawn to “Heaven,” a mysterious club on the outskirts of town.

Combining supernatural horror with themes of identity and belonging, Heaven also marks the end of an era for Skelly. As she recently revealed, it’s the final story she’ll tell featuring the “cool girl” protagonists who have defined much of her work over the past decade.

I spoke with Skelly about the origins of Heaven and why this graphic novel felt like the right place to close one creative chapter before beginning another.

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Jay Stephens + Oni Press are preparing more ‘Dwellings’ to haunt your nightmares

The bloody ode to Harvey Comics returns with a Halloween special in October and a new miniseries next year.

One of the delightfully horrific surprises to arrive in comics in the past few years was Jay Stephens’ Dwellings, which started life as a crowdfunded project but went on to be published by Oni Press and pick up an NCS Divisional Awards nomination.

And now it’s coming back, as Oni Press has announced not only a Halloween special for October, but also a new miniseries for next year.

The ‘Saturday Morning’ meets ‘Stroke Of Midnight’ retro cute horror is back just in time for tricks and treats! The Dwellings: All Hallows’ Eve Special arrives this October, with all the old-school fake ads and blood-stained vintage kids’ comics stylings you’ve come to squeamishly love,” said Stephens. “This standalone story brings us back to the haunted streets of Elwich for a tale about a tall, dark, and handsome visitor Hell-bent on hunting down the monsters who hide in the town’s shadows. Set in the tight-knit underground ‘Sangunarian’ Elwich goth scene, “Come Hither” flips the classic bloodsucker tale in it’s grave, as a delusional, self-proclaimed ‘vampire hunter’ seduces the black-clad youth one by one in order to lay them to rest for eternity. Happy Halloween, Dwellers!”

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Quick Hits | ‘Demon Slayer,’ Dav Pilkey, Bill Watterson top 2023 graphic novel sales charts

Plus: ‘Monica’ wins in Angouleme, the Bram Stoker Awards ballot and more.

Pulling information from Circana BookScan, ICv2 has listed the top 20 graphic novels sold in 2023 in the superhero, manga and “author” categories. They’ve also posted lists of the top adult and kid’s graphic novels.

Looking through the lists (which don’t provide exact numbers, just rankings), it looks like the first volume of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba by Koyoharu Gotouge is the big winner, topping both the manga chart and the adult graphic novel chart. Or maybe I should say “a big winner,” because over on the kid’s graphic novel chart, Dav Pilkey rules supreme, as Dog Man and its Cat Kid Comics Club spinoff took 13 of the 20 positions, including the top 3.

Also, I’m not exactly sure how the superhero and author categories are defined. For instance, the Invincible Compendium shows up on the author list — which makes sense, given how popular the Amazon show is — with Robert Kirkman listed as the author. But I would have expected it to be on the superhero list, given it’s about superheroes and Kirkman isn’t the sole author.

Then for superhero graphic novels, IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin hardcover topped the list, followed by Tokyopop’s Nightmare Before Christmas: Battle for the Pumpkin King manga. I think you could make the argument that the Last Ronin is a superhero title, but the Nightmare Before Christmas manga seems like it’s in the wrong place. But maybe I’m misunderstanding the catgeories.

All that aside, sales numbers for comics disappeared during the pandemic when the industry went from a single distributor to multiple distributors, so seeing any kind of data like this is appreciated and interesting.

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Sunday Comics | An AI-generated comic about conservation and the apocalypse

Check out comics from T. Kingfisher, Katie Skelly and Ben Fleuter.

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

T. Kingfisher, aka Ursula Vernon, is a multiple award-winning author and comics creator, whose books include The Hollow Places, The Twisted Ones, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking and many more. She’s also the creator of the award-winning webcomic Digger.

Her most recent work, though, is A Different Aftermath, a comic she posted to Twitter that she made with the help of th Midjourney AI. When I first scrolled by the post and saw the artwork, I never would have guessed it was AI generated, and the story itself is very lovely — it’s about what happened to the wildlife, like bees and such, after the collapse of society.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Katie Skelly brings ‘grotesquerie’ and spectacle to ‘Twisted Romance’

The creator of ‘My Pretty Vampire’ and ‘Nurse Nurse’ discusses the story she drew for Alex de Campi’s romance anthology, the romance genre, what it’s like working with another comics writer and more.

2017 saw the publication of My Pretty Vampire, which may be Katie Skelly‘s most acclaimed book to date. The writer-artist best known for books like Night Nurse and Operation Margarine has always worked on her own projects, so it was a surprise to some of us when it was announced that she would be collaborating with writer Alex de Campi on Twisted Romance, the new anthology series out this month from Image Comics.

Their story “Old Flames” opens the first issue of the series, which is out this week and I asked Skelly a few questions about the project, genre and how it fits in with her body of work.

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Love, Image Comics Style: Alex de Campi helms ‘Twisted Romance’ anthology

Katie Skelly, Alejandra Gutiérrez, Carla Speed McNeil, Trungles and more contribute to a new miniseries featuring stories about love.

Image Comics has announced Twisted Romance, a four-issue, weekly miniseries featuring “love gone right, wrong and everything in between” that will run in the most romantic month of the year, February.

“This project is a dream for me,” said writer Alex de Campi. “I’m getting to collaborate with some of comics’ coolest creators and some amazing prose fiction voices. Everything everyone is doing looks so amazing. I’m just giddy that Image basically handed us the reins and said, ‘do whatever you want. This looks cool.’ So, yeah: come February, we’re going to break your heart, fill you with joy, and give you awkward pants feels. Sometimes in same story. Occasionally, even on the same page.”

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Comics Lowdown: Artist OK with defacement of Zunar mural

Also: Moto Hagio returns to the Poe saga, Tini Howard and Gilbert Hernandez talk ‘Assassinistas,’ and Annie Koyama looks back at her first decade as a comics publisher

Someone has defaced a mural of the Malaysian cartoonist Zunar—but the artist who created the mural is OK with that. “I don’t see it as ruined but as a response, and it does not matter to me who is responding,” said Bibichun, the artist. “It’s in the public domain and it’s for members of the public to consume in their own way.” The mural depicted Zunar with his mouth covered by the flag of UMNO, the dominant political party of Malaysia (and therefore a frequent target of Zunar’s cartoon). Recently, an unknown man painted the flag black. “The piece was a response to the suppression of Zunar’s exhibition at the Penang Literary Festival last year,” said Bibichun. “I’m surprised it took Umno supporters such a long time to respond.” Zunar recently canceled a planned exhibit of his work out of concern that it, too, would be attacked.

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Comics Lowdown: Analyzing gender representation of 34,476 comic characters

Plus: Calexit sells out, climate change comics, Adam West as the Dark Knight, Becky Cloonan, Gerald Way, Jay Baruchel’s thoughts on Canadian superheroes and more!

A fascinating study takes a look at the gender representation of 34,476 comic book characters. Journalist Amanda Shendruk asks, “Female characters appear in superhero comics less often than males — but when they are included, how are they depicted?”

Wonder Woman gif by Nicole Dirksen

She examined 34,476 different characters. The study results were published with a plentiful helping of graphs, graphs, and more graphs looking at everything from the types of powers a character has, to the gender make-up of their superhero team, to the naming scheme and frequency of character’s aliases. Some of the findings include:

  • The data suggest that less-physical powers — such as empathy, intellect, and telepathy — tend to be more represented among female characters. Men however, often have highly physical powers, as well as those that involve gadgets.
  • 30% of all teams have no women, and only 12% have more female team members than male. The majority of those 12%, however, are exclusively female teams.
  • A full 30% of male characters with gendered names get ‘man’ in their name. That number is only 6% for ‘woman’. However, ‘girl’ is the third-most common gendered name for a female character (13%). ‘Boy’ only shows up sixth for males (5%).

The study was then topped with very cute pixel art by Vancouver’s Nicole Derksen.

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