February 16, 2013

Review: Baggage

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Here’s another review by our newest writer, Michael May—that’s him over on the right!
Baggage
by the Etherington Brothers
David Fickling Books
The Etherington Brothers, Robin and Lorenzo, aren’t household names in the U.S., but they do very well for themselves in their native U.K. I first became aware of them through their black-and-white, self-published Malcolm Magic series—following the [...]

Holiday Special: A Comic from James Sturm

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Adventures in Cartooning, Christmas Special, by James Sturm, Andrew Arnold, and Alexis Frederick-Frost, is the third in a series of sprightly books that encourage kids to go out and make cartoons of their own. It’s out just in time for the holidays, and here’s a delightful extra: An original comic by Sturm, Frederick-Frost, and Arnold [...]

Links: Could a graphic novel win the Newbery Award?

Little White Duck

Jonathan Hunt considers whether Hades and Little White Duck would be eligible for a Newbery Award.
Writer Katie Cook discusses her work on the new My Little Pony comics.
Crogan’s Loyalty author Chris Schweizer answers five more-or-less random questions from JK Parkin; click to see him dressed as J. Jonah Jameson!
Viz will be launching a line of [...]

Preview: Ernest & Rebecca, vol. 3

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Ernest & Rebecca is an intriguing little series about a girl and her friend, a germ. Rebecca’s going through some stuff—she’s sickly, which makes having a germ buddy rather problematic, and her parents are fighting in the first book and separated by the third. In this volume she is living with her grandparents out in [...]

The Good Comics for Kids 2012 Gift Guide

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It’s holiday time, and our bloggers have you covered with suggestions for everything from stocking stuffers to gifts for nieces and nephews to that One Big Thing you know the comics fan in your life would like.

I’ll start things off with some ideas for books that really feel like something special. When I was growing [...]

Preview: Smurf Soup!

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How about a little pre-holiday silliness to start off your weekend? The Smurfs: Smurf Soup, the 13th volume of Peyo’s Smurfs comic to be published by Papercutz, came out this past week. Let’s take a look!

Interview: Jeff Kinney on The Wimpy Kid going digital

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When I got the news a few weeks ago that Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid books were to be published as e-books, I had to smile: The very first incarnation of the Diary was on the website Funbrain.com, where you can still read an early version. So in a way, the move to [...]

Preview: The Stereotypical Freaks

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Howard Shapiro’s The Stereotypical Freaks, which comes out today, is a graphic novel about teenagers dealing with the usual issues of high school life—popularity, friends, the Opposite Sex—who are forced to grapple with a much larger issue that puts everything into perspective. To say more would be a spoiler, but this book, which is structured [...]

Links: Mirka Meets a Meteorite—and more!

Kid Beowulf

This won’t be out until next May, but it sounds intriguing: Writer Chris Northrop and artist Jeff Stokeley are working on The Reason for Dragons, a coming-of-age story about a teenager who has an encounter with a knight—who lives in his garage.
Barry Deutsch talks about Hereville: How Mirka Met A Meteorite, and how it [...]

Preview: The Three Stooges, vol. 2

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The folks at Papercutz love a good laugh, and who better to provide it than the Three Stooges? Here’s a look at their second volume of new Three Stooges comics, written by George Gladir and Stefan Petrucha and illustrated by Stan Goldberg. Gladir and Goldberg are old Archie hands, while Petrucha writes a number of [...]

Preview: Ninjago 5: Kingdom of the Snakes

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Who would have thought that one of the best selling graphic novels, for children or adults, would be about Lego ninja warriors? Well, anyone who thought it through, I guess. Here’s a peek at the latest book in the series, Ninjago 5: Kingdom of t…

Review: Upside Down

Michael May chibi

Here’s another review by our newest writer, Michael May—that’s him over on the right!

Upside Down: A Vampire Tale
By Jess Smart Smiley
Top Shelf
It’s tough not to be a hypocrite when it comes to raising or teaching kids. “Do as I say, not as I do” may work when they’re very young, but children soon start to [...]

Links: Disney goes digital-first

Zack Giallongo talks about his first graphic novel, Broxo, a fantasy tale with zombies, which came out last month from First Second.
Chris Schweizer talks about his series The Crogan Adventures, which follows different ancestors of the same family during different periods in history. His latest, Crogan’s Loyalty, features two brothers on opposite sides of the [...]

Preview: Geronimo Stilton: We’ll Always Have Paris

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From the title, you might think that Geronimo Stilton: We’ll Always Have Paris is a take on Casablanca, but it’s actually about the building of the Eiffel Tower. As usual, the cats try to mess things up for their own purposes, and Geronimo and his posse have to travel back in time to stop [...]

Preview: Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew

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The first volume of Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew debuts from Papercutz on October 30, and we have a sneak preview for you. Like the prose chapter books of the same name, this graphic novel features Nancy and her familiar friends from the series as eight-year-olds, so it’s pitched at a younger audience than [...]

Preview: Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew

ClueCrew1-FrontCOV

The first volume of Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew debuts from Papercutz on October 30, and we have a sneak preview for you. Like the prose chapter books of the same name, this graphic novel features Nancy and her familiar friends from the series as eight-year-olds, so it’s pitched at a younger audience than [...]

Review: Billy Fog

Michael May chibi

I want to begin this post by welcoming our newest writer, Michael May, to Good Comics for Kids. You may have noticed Michael popping up in our roundtables; he has been eager to begin contributing to the blog, and because our host, SLJ, is still working on moving everything over to the new platform, he [...]

Preview: Archie’s Giant Kids’ Jokebook

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Archie’s Giant Kids’ Jokebook is a thick, colorful compendium of one-page Archie gags—if you remember the old Archie’s Joke Book comic, it’s basically the trade paperback version. With almost 200 pages of classic Archie gag strips and a backpack-friendly 5″ x 7″ trim size, it’s comparable to the Best of Archie collections that the publisher [...]

Links: New York, New York

Broxo

If things have been a little slow around here, it’s because I was away at New York Comic-Con. Here’s my roundup of the kids’ comics scene for Publishers Weekly.
Oh, and I also put together a roundup of upcoming graphic novels for teens at SLJ Teen.
Graphic Novel Reporter has put together lists of the best fall [...]

Preview: Silly vampire fun with Upside Down

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Just in time for Halloween, Top Shelf has a cute vampire book that’s more treat than trick: Jess Smart Smiley’s Upside Down: A Vampire Tale. You can see a preview of the first few pages at that link; below, we have a bit more of the story. Harold is a cheery vampire who lives in [...]