D&Q Winter Preview

Hey, look at that! I actually finally fixed up my links! Now clicking on "The Beat" won't take you to Heidi's old site. Plus I added a few nice, new links to the lists. See if you can find them.

Anyway, it's that time of year again, where all the book companies send out their catalogs to the press for the coming year. And since Farrar Straus Giroux handle book distribution for Drawn and Quarterly, we get a sneek peek at what they've got planned for the first few months of 2007. What fun!

First up on their list is a translation of the highly acclaimed French graphic novel "Aya" by Marguerite Abouet and Clement Oubrerie. I'm pretty sure this was already announced a few months ago, so no real surprises here. It's about a 19-year-old West African girl, her friends and their adventures growing up in an increasingly liberated and modern Africa. It sounds about 180 degrees from books like "Degroatis," and ideally should provide a more nuanced picture of life on that continent. It's due in stores in March.

Next up is "King Cat Classics" by John Porcellino. This, as you may well guess, is a "best of" collection of stories taken from Porcellino's ongoing "King Cat" mini-comic. Considering how long he's been doing that series, and how many issues have long since been out of print, this book has been long overdue. It'll hit stores in April.

After that we have "One Eye" by Charles Burns, which is part of the Petit Livres series. Neither a sketchbook, nor a minicomic, "One Eye is a collection of paired photographs, two to a page. The idea seems to be to juxtapose two strikingly different or subtly similar works together to create a disturbing cumulative effect. Look for it in March.

Next we have the book I'm probably looking forward to the most: "Oh Skin-Nay!" by Clare Briggs. Briggs, for those who don't know, is an early 20th-century cartoonist who largely depicted rural and middle class American life with sly humor. The catalog text says "Oh Skin-Nay is a collaboration between Briggs and poet Wilbur D. Nesbit and potrays a year in the life of small-town American through the eyes of a 12-year-old boy." It comes out in January.

Finally, there's "Hey Dork," which is the second in the ongoing mini-sized sketchbook collections by Gary Panter. I liked the first one, "Satiroplastic" and fully expect the second to be of the same high quality. I mean, it's Panter. It's due in January.

And that's all for now. Peace out.