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Gainesville, Florida, March 12, 2001: Alternative Comics, billed as "publishers of cool comic books," announced its publishing schedule for the remainder of 2001. The year’s roster of eight comic book and graphic novel titles marks Alternative Comics’ most ambitious lineup of print releases in the Florida publisher’s eight-year history. "We started with Indy Magazine in 1994," said publisher Jeff Mason about Alternative Comics’ flagship Harvey Award nominated magazine dedicated to the coverage of independent and alternative comics, "and now we have eight different titles coming out this year." The current positive market for non-superhero, non-mainstream, comic books is a primary reason for such a high number of new releases, "We are very fortunate that so many great cartoonists are creating comic books today," said Mason, "the market for well written comic books is presently the best it has been in years and is continually improving with more and more college-aged people reading non-traditional, non-superhero comics."
April 2001 will see the graphic novel release of Grickle from the new comics talent, award-winning Canadian-born animator Graham Annable. May 2001 is the release month for Jen Sorensen’s Xeric award-winning Slowpoke: Café Pompous book collection of her alternative weekly comic strip. June 2001 will have both the second issue of award-winner James Kochalka’s all ages Peanutbutter Jeremy
comic books series and Xeric
and Ignatz Award winner Nick Bertozzi’s The
Masochists graphic novel.
July 2001 will see the first of two of Sam Henderson’s Magic
Whistle comic books being
released this year as well as Dean Haspiel’s very personal Opposable
Thumbs autobiographical
book.
During Fall and Winter of 2001, Alternative Comics will time the release
of books to debut at several comic book conventions, including Josh Neufeld and
R. Walker’s satirical Titans of Finance, another installment of Jon Lewis’ fantastic True
Swamp series, and another
issue of Sam Henderson’s Magic Whistle to debut at the Small Press Expo in late
September.
At 128 pages with a cover price of $14.95,
Grickle is truly a chance to
dive headfirst into the deep end of Graham Annable's world. Grickle collects two
dozen beautiful stories in which devilish comedy and eye-watering art enclose a
rich, chocolatey center of sad poetry and bruised but intact innocence. Annable
has been creating these stories for his own satisfaction concurrent with his
commercial animation work, and it shows in their intimate, conversational tone
and wholly personal outlook. The skills honed at his day job are just as evident
in the deft, fluid way he puts his stylish figures through their paces - it's
like listening to the eloquent solo improvisations of a jazz musician who has
sharpened his chops playing every night in the band. Even several panels of an
Annable character just sitting still at a table practically glitter with life
and cartoon joy. A man is carried safely through the ugly harshness of the world
by his own Polaroid-enabled brand of narcissism. The sadistic make-believe of
two little boys is no match for the laid-back cruelty of their grandfather. Two
buddies go on an ice fishing trip. One finds enlightenment, but the other
catches a whole hell of a lot of fish. A factory drone discovers his creative
side with the help of the toilet. Vehicular manslaughter turns to be pretty okay
as long as there aren't any witnesses. Sound interesting? Wait till you see them
come to life in vivid black-and-white! Grickle is a hefty treasure trove of
visually arresting, hilarious, wise, and emotionally rereadable cartoon stories.
Graham Annable was classically trained as an animator
at Sheridan College in Toronto, graduating in 1992, and has worked as an
animator ever since, including work on British children's TV, story boards for
Chuck Jones Enterprises, Disney's "A Goofy Movie," and since 1994 an extended
string of computer game projects for LucasArts such as Full Throttle, The Dig,
Afterlife, Outlaws, and The Curse of Monkey Island. Annable is the Lead Animator
for the forthcoming LucasArts video game Star Wars: Obi-Wan. His projects have
won numerous animation and graphics awards including the ASIFA Annie Award,
animation's highest honor, in 1998 for "Outstanding Achievement in an Animated
Interactive Program". Graham currently resides in the Bay Area, California.
"Grickle is breath of fresh air in the indy comic
world," says animation legend Colin Brady, currently Animation Director for
George Lucas' Industrial Light Magic, the largest digital production
facility in the world, "Sometimes strange, sometimes gross, Grickle always
offers a poignant message beneath the deceptively simple artwork."
Jen Sorensen returns with her Xeric
Award-winning Slowpoke: Café Pompous, a collection of alternative newsweekly strips.
Jam-packed with gags, Slowpoke tackles the absurdities of present-day American
life with rib-tickling gusto. Uptight Mr. Perkins, jaded Little Gus, and horny
Drooly Julie provide a witty commentary on the politics and culture of our
times. Find out whether evil scientists succeed in cryogenically freezing
Julie's libido. Sorensen was nominated for the 1999 Friends of Lulu Kimberly A.
Yale Award for Best New Talent for her first collection of
Slowpoke strips.
The second issue of James Kochalka's all ages
Peanutbutter Jeremy
finds Peanutbutter working on the Flibbledibble File. Jeremy the sneaky old crow
is getting tired of his old run down nest. When he overhears Peanutbutter crying
about getting fired he decides to run a scam on the vulnerable little kitty cat.
After all he's a clever old crow, and Peanutbutter is just a silly office
kitten. Peanutbutter may be gullible but Jeremy's scam is so over the top that
it backfires. Watch the feathers and fur fly in the fight of the century. James
Kochalka's distinction as a "rock star" has been tempered more and more lately
by his acclaim as a cartoonist. Critics and fans have responded like crazy to
his ubiquitous and instantly recognizable one-pagers in comics and magazines
across the U.S., and to his full length comic books and graphic novels. Kochalka
has won and has been nominated for many prestigious awards such as the Ignatz
award, the Eisner award, the Firecracker Alternative Books award, and the Harvey
award.
The Masochists is a dramatic look at obsession, an examination of isolation, and a
eulogy for three people slowly crushing everything good out of their lives.
"Passing Out", the first story in The
Masochists, delves into
the torturous world of adolescent pecking orders in which a boy is forced into
an act of self-humiliation. The simultaneous destructive and redemptive quality
of music-making in "U.V.Katastrophe" follows the central character on his
journey out of an artistic dead-end and into his redemption, through a surreal
rock concert. The rhythms of "5/4" are made up of the beats of compulsion
self-mutilation and the very short distance between art and obsession. The
Masochists, a 128-page squarebound book of three cartoon short stories, is an
unflinching look at human behavior and will sit well with those intrigued by the
early humanist dramas of Fellini or Kurosawa. Nick Bertozzi lives in Brooklyn,
New York with his wife. His comics credits include: Comix
2000 (L'Association),
Boswash for
which he also received both the Xeric Grant Award and the Ignatz Award, several
stories for the Big Book series (Paradox Press), and many other cartoon anthologies across the
globe.
Opposable Thumbs is Dean Haspiel's new, solo series about a born bred New
Yorker and the trials and tribulations of living in the big bad city which
serves as the backdrop for the informed, existential expression in his
sociological comics. Taking its lead from the pages of the critically acclaimed
two-man anthology Keyhole (with Josh Neufeld), Opposable Thumbs promises to be the new
leader in autobiographical storytelling. The first issue is a 48-page
collection, culling Dean Haspiel's best semi-autobiographical stories from the
pages of Keyhole, Minimum Wage, Non, The Expo
Anthology, and Dirty Stories. Subsequent issues of Opposable Thumbs will present fresh
and new semi-autobiographical stories.
Dean Haspiel is the author of semi-auto-bio
comix and super-psychedelic romances. In the mid-80s, Dino worked as an
assistant to Howard Chaykin on American Flagg!, Bill Sienkiewicz on New
Mutants and Elektra:
Assassin, and Walter Simonson on
Thor. In 1987, Dino
inaugurated his comics career when he co-created and illustrated The
Verdict with writer Martin Powell
and went on to draw two DC Comics Bonus Books in Detective Comics
and Justice League International. Dean illustrated Sony Pictures Classics' SLC Punk
comic and is a regular contributor to Harvey Pekar's American
Splendor. Dino's latest
Billy Dogma work, Boy in My Pocket, is in stores now.
Sam Henderson has just been nominated for a
2001 Harvey Award in two categories, Special Award for Humor for Magic
Whistle, and for Best
Anthology for Nickelodeon Magazine published by Nickelodeon. This marks Henderson's third
consecutive year nominated in the category of Special Award for Humor for
Magic Whistle and the
second consecutive year Nickelodeon Magazine has been nominated as Best Anthology. Sam Henderson is
the funniest writer in comics, hands down. That would be quite enough, thank
you, but he also happens to be a shrewd observer of human nature, media cliches,
pretension, and teen movies. Two new issues of Sam’s hilarious ongoing
Magic Whistle series will be
unleashed this year.
Jon Lewis’ True Swamp: Underwoods and
Overtime was picked as one
of the Ten Best Comics of 2000 by Time Magazine. Jon Lewis’ annual True
Swamp series picks up
where his 2000 issue left off in chronicling the life of Lenny, a self-absorbed
but charming young frog who, when not evading the beaks, jaws and maws of the
swamp's many predators, creates plenty of his own problems with his overactive
mind. Luckily, Lenny has his good friend Hale Marmot (the swamp's only inventor)
to keep his neuroses from getting the better of him. Then there's Lenny's newest
acquaintance, Nikolas: a nicer guy you could never hope to meet, but what the
heck kind of animal is he? And is Lenny ever going to find anything resembling a
girlfriend? With lushly-rendered artwork, uproarious humor, intricately imagined
settings, and striking, inventive page layouts, this new
Swamp will envelop the
reader even more thoroughly than the old one. Lewis' characters fall outside the
conventions of the "funny animal" or "anthropomorphic" comics genres – they look
like animals, and do not wear little waistcoats or drive little automobiles. But
saddled with the full weight of consciousness and speech, they testify just as
much to the Human Condition as to Natural Selection. The reader who falls into
the distinctive rhythm of life in the Swamp will find it neither carefree nor
idyllic, but will be very reluctant to leave.
Titans of Finance aims for where the action is, delivering America a swift kick in the
business. Meet Ron Perelman, the man who made millions while presiding over the
Mighty Marvel Comics train wreck. He's just one of the characters in this
ground-breaking collection of true tales from the world of money and business.
Titans of Finance
features the crisp art of Josh Neufeld (co-creator of
Keyhole), and the
incisive scripts of the mysterious R. Walker. These tales "hit the mark," says
Harvey Pekar, and are "a brilliant use of the medium," according to
TheStreet.com's James J. Cramer. Over the past five years, Titans has
crushed the benchmark SP 500. You've never seen anything like it.
Josh Neufeld has been drawing comics since he was four years old. With his
friend of almost 20 years, Dean Haspiel, Josh co-created
Keyhole, where Josh
does stories about his travel experiences in Southeast Asia and Central Europe.
Keyhole has run for
six issues with two different publishers. Josh has contributed artwork to Harvey
Pekar's American Splendor (Dark Horse), the SPX anthologies, The Big Book of Urban
Legends (DC/Paradox Press), and
Duplex Planet Illustrated (Fantagraphics), among others. He resides in Brooklyn
and makes a living mixing freelance illustration with web design. R. Walker
writes for Slate.com, and lives in New Orleans.
The official Alternative Comics website is: http://www.indyworld.com/altcomics
For more information or requests please contact
Alternative Comics publisher Jeff Mason at 503 NW 37th Ave., Gainesville, FL
32609-2204. Phone: (352) 373-6336. E-mail Jeff Mason at jmason@gator.net
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