NEWS FROM THE COMIC-CON: BOOKS, PART 2

The oddest book I saw as I was buffeted down the bustling aisles at the San Diego Con was Siegel and Shuster’s Funnyman: The First Jewish Superhero (194 7x10-inch pages, b/w and color; paperback, Feral House, $24.95). The book reprints several of Funnyman’s comic book stories, some Sunday strips, and some dailies, and it comes with argumentative text by Thomas Andrae and Mel Gordon. Among Gordon’s pronouncements: the Jewish sense of humor was born in a July day in 1661. I haven’t read much of the tome, but I fully expect that it will assert Funnyman’s Jewish roots; but I’m not sure it will do so in all seriousness. Something about Gordon’s prose leads me to think he may not be altogether serious about his thesis. We’ll see. And when we do, I’ll let you know.

“Despite the bombast of Hollywood studio hype,” publishersweekly.com’s Heidi MacDonald said, “indie comics publishers still made some noise with their own announcements.” Drawn & Quarterly plans to produce a memoir, Over Easy, by Mimi Pond, “a cartoonist-illustrator and writer perhaps best known for writing the first episode of ‘The Simpsons’; her book will tell the tale of her youth in the growing punk rock scene of 70s Oakland. ‘In this day and age of the graphic novel, it's astonishing to come across a fully-realized and seasoned cartoonist who has yet to release comics in long-form,’ said acquiring editor Tom Devlin.”

D&Q will also add to its growing library of "gekiga" manga “two books from manga legend Shigeru Mizuki, perhaps the most famous living cartoonist in Japan. Onward  Towards Our Noble Deaths is a semi-autobiographical account of the final weeks of WWII, as Japanese soldiers deal with orders to die for their country. (Mizuki served in the war and lost an arm.) NonNonBa is a less horrific story set in Mizuki's youth in the 30s, as he dreams of creating his own worlds with the help of an old neighbor woman.”

Top Shelf announced “a slew of new projects”: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century No. 2: 1969, the latest in the series by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill, and new works by the publisher’s regular stable of cartoonists: The Homeland Directive by Robert Venditti and Mike Huddleston, Any Empire by Nate Powell, Super Natural by Matt Kindt; The Underwater Welder by Jeff Lemire; and a new volume of Incredible Change-Bots by Jeffrey Brown. The publisher also has new works by Jess Fink and Jennifer Hayden on tap as well as a reprinting of Kagen McLeod's Infinite Kung Fu, and Masahiko Matsumoto's Cigarette Girl, “a collection of short stories by another founding father of gekiga who worked alongside Tatsumi. Finally Top Shelf will bring to English Lucille by Ludovic Debeurme, a recent prizewinner at Angouleme.”