This week’s PWCW has a number of fine articles to peruse, but the a look at the art-comix publisher PictureBox and their fall line-up:
PictureBox’s fall 2007 slate—five graphic novels and a photo book—is “a little lopsided,” Nadel said. He’s excited to introduce his favorite new Japanese artist to the American market: Yuichi Yokoyama, who he describes as “sort of Jack Kirby crossed with Chris Ware plus Mat Brinkman. I met him in Tokyo a few weeks ago. He doesn’t like comics, he doesn’t read comics—he said his favorite artists are Sol LeWitt and William Blake. He’s got a clothing line, catalogues—he’s a one-man industry.” The first Yokoyama book PictureBox will be publishing is New Engineering; Yokoyama’s work will also appear in the new issue of Nadel’s cartooning-and-design-and-whatever-else-comes-to-mind periodical anthology The Ganzfeld. This issue is subtitled “Japanada,” and it’s divided between what Nadel describes as “the lineage of Japanese psychedelic artists” and Canadian artists—the latter group includes Marc Bell, Julie Doucet and Destroyer singer/songwriter Dan Bejar.
Also due in the fall are a new edition of Frank Santoro’s Storyville, as an oversized hardcover with a new introduction by Chris Ware; Lauren Weinstein’s graphic novel Goddess of War; and a 120-page black-and-white graphic novel drawn by the Kramers Ergot-associated artist who calls himself C.F. The longest-awaited book on PictureBox’s docket, though, has to be Brian Chippendale’s Maggots, originally scheduled to be released by the now-defunct Highwater Books some years ago, and drawn in 1995 on a very unusual medium: Chippendale covered every surface of a 360-page Japanese book catalogue with his frantic, scribbled comics narrative. “It’s unbelievable,” Nadel said. “It’s bonkers. We’re going to do a complete facsimile of it, as a softcover.”
Nadel also talks about the recent decision to stop publishing the pamphlet version of Cold Heat.
If that’s not enough for you, there’s also coverage of the recent Glyph Awards, interviews with Gilbert Hernandez and Rutu Modan, a look at an upcoming series of educational texts from the Center for Cartoon Studies, and a look at the Hong Kong comics industry via Alan Wan.
