Once again a slew of book catalogs has thumped on my desk. As before, I thought it might be fun to rifle through them and pick out any notable graphic novels slated for release next year.

First up is HarperCollins Children’s books, who’ve been dipping several toes in comics waters lately. Their biggest item of note for me is Magic Trixie by Jill Thompson. This seems to be much along the lines of Thompson’s Scary Godmother series, only cuter and even more kid-friendly. It’s aimed at younger readers “who aren’t quite ready for older graphic novels” according to the pr copy.

Neil Gaiman has a number of children’s books coming out from Harper Collins in the new year, the most interesting of which being The Dangerous Alphabet, a sort of Gashlycrumbs ABC variation with art by Gris Grimly. Gaiman will also be releasing The Graveyard Book, a prose novel about a boy raised by ghosts (and featuring illustrations by Dave McKean) and the graphic novel version of Coraline, though P. Craig Russell will be handling the adaptation (and art) chores on that one.

I should also note that HC will have more volumes in their Warriors and Avalon High Tokyopop team-ups. These series do nothing for me, but I know there are plenty of kids who relish them.

Moving on we turn to Candlewick Press, another children’s book publisher. In May they’ll release Gareth Hinds’ adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Hinds, you may remember has previously tackled Beowulf and King Lear and I’m curious as to how he’ll fare with this rather tricky play.

True believers, meanwhile, will delight in the Fantastic Four Pop-Up book, done in the same fashion as the previous Spider-Man and X-Men books.

From Kensington, which publishes mostly steamy romance novels for women with titles like Hard As Nails, comes City of Lost Souls: The Vampress Girls, Book I by Jacy and Nick Nova. According to the promo copy, college students “Passion,” “Sweet,” “Raven” and “Page.” are also vampires, except they don’t suck blood. No, they “thrive on the energy of Rock and Roll.” Laugh all you want (I certainly did) but it’s cutesy goth vampire crap, so it will probably do very well.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 21st, 2007 at 9:00 am and is filed under Graphic Novels, Independent, Manga, News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.