While "researching" a recent Nexus Graphica, I had reason to look through my collection of Comics Of Unusual Size. This set of the big and small and odd of comicdom offers many gems. Deciding that I really should share some of these largely forgotten and sometime rare pieces, I’m taking you through a tour of the more interesting selections.

Click on images for full sized versions.

Brian Biggs‘s 7 3/4" x 7 3/4" graphic novel Frederick & Eloise (Fantagraphics, 1993) remains one of the prides of my collection. Biggs expertly uses his Gorey-esque stylings to relate this unusual, disturbing love story.

Page from Frederick & Eloise

Judging from the book’s back cover, I wasn’t alone in my assessment.

The quality isn’t the only reason I hold this copy in high regard.

Inscription from title page of my copy

I first learned of Brian Biggs when he lettered "Scales" (written by Lewis Shiner Art by Carlos Kastro) in my anthology Modern Perversity (Blackbird Comics, 1991).

Page from "Scales", Modern Perversity (Blackbird Comics, 1991)
Written by Lewis Shiner Art by Carlos Kastro Letters by Brian Biggs

Soon after, Brian sent me a proposal for Frederick & Eloise. Okay, actually, he sent me the entire book photocopied at the original art size of 3 3/4" x 4 1/2"! His initial plan was to produce the book with one panel per page as opposed to the two per page in the final version.

Sample page from original Frederick & Eloise submission

Envelope from original Frederick & Eloise submission

Even though Blackbird (where I was editing at the time) passed on the project (I don’t recall why), I managed to convince Brian to illustrate the second issue of my never completed series Wings. Through no fault of the creators, the entire project fell apart. Brian completed six incredible pages.

Unpublished p.9 from Wings #2
Words by Rick Klaw Art by Brian Biggs

Unpublished p.11 from Wings #2
Words by Rick Klaw Art by Brian Biggs

I did include a story by Brian in my Eisner-nominated anthology Weird Business.

Page from "The Stranger", Weird Business (Mojo Press, 1995)
by Brian Biggs

Brian Biggs has gone on to a career as a successful, award-winning children’s illustrator. He’s currently developing Frederick & Eloise as a film.

While "researching" a recent Nexus Graphica, I had reason to look through my collection of Comics Of Unusual Size. This set of the big and small and odd of comicdom offers many gems. Deciding that I really should share some of these largely forgotten and sometime rare pieces, I’m taking you through a tour of the more interesting selections.

In the late eighties and early nineties, cyberpunk was all the rage. Not just in literature but as a lifestyle complete with it’s own fashions, language, and media. The mini-comic, kata sutra in Beyond Cyberpunk! was produced by Mark Frauenfelder & Gareth Branwyn to promote their Computer Lab production Beyond Cyberpunk: a Do-It-Yourself Guide to the Future. This was 1991, long before the days of the World Wide Web or even cd-roms. Computer Lab offered their essential guide on four 800k floppies for $29.95! It came complete with this mini-comic and an intro booklet. Thankfully, the entire contents are now available for free online.

The comic itself is nothing special. More or less an advertisement for the far more interesting stack. Basically, our heroine kata sutra saves the day thanks to the vital info found within Beyond Cyberpunk: a Do-It-Yourself Guide to the Future.

Interiors of kata sutra in Beyond Cyberpunk!

Perhaps my favorite part of the comic is at the very end of the story that informs the purchaser that they "MUST lick this sticker before booting up the program." How Timothy Leary of them!

And let’s not forget the advertisement for the PRINT version of boing boing, the precursor of both the Boing Boing blog and Wired!

Diamond announced their best selling graphic novels for the year.

2008 TOP 10 GRAPHIC NOVELS & TRADE PAPERBACKS

Quantity
Rank Description Price Publisher
1 WATCHMEN TP $19.99 DC Comics
2 BATMAN THE KILLING JOKE SPECIAL ED HC $17.99 DC Comics
3 JOKER HC $19.99 DC Comics
4 Y THE LAST MAN TP VOL 10 WHYS AND WHEREFORES $14.99 DC Comics
5 WALKING DEAD TP VOL 08 MADE TO SUFFER $14.99 Image Comics
6 BATMAN DARK KNIGHT RETURNS TP $14.99 DC Comics
7 FABLES TP VOL 10: THE GOOD PRINCE $17.99 DC Comics
8 WANTED GN $19.99 Image Comics
9 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER SEASON 8 TP
VOL 02: NO FUTURE FOR YOU $15.95 Dark Horse Comics
10 Y THE LAST MAN TP VOL 01 UNMANNED $12.99 DC Comics

Also included were the rankings of the top comic book publishers. (These figures include individual comic book issue sales.)

2008 TOP COMIC BOOK PUBLISHERS

QUANTITY SHARE RETAIL SHARE
MARVEL COMICS 45.82% 40.81%
DC COMICS 31.67% 29.94%
DARK HORSE COMICS 5.05% 6.49%
IMAGE COMICS 3.32% 3.73%
IDW PUBLISHING 2.92% 3.08%
OTHERS 11.22% 15.95%

While this is all very interesting, I would like to see the rankings for all bookstores. I imagine that Viz sneaks in there, probably 3rd behind Marvel and DC. Also, with the popularity of Batman and name recognition of Superman, I wouldn’t be surprised to see DC overtake Marvel in general bookstores.

The other thought is what about traditional comic publishers like Fantagraphics whose entire line is geared toward older, general bookstore readers? Where do they fit in when all the numbers are tabulated?

And of course there are the traditional prose publishing houses such as Del Rey, Pantheon, and Scholastic who have produced popular graphic novels. How do they affect the overall picture?

All things to ponder as comics continue to move away from the specialty stores and into the mainstream.

And how is this different from any other year?

Year of the Gorilla news

Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived in the mail here at the Geek Compound.

Righteous Kill

Promo copy:

Turk and Rooster, two aging NYPD detectives who have been longtime partners are faced with a serial killer who is murdering sociopathic criminals. They both have personal issues, and when they start working with a younger team, Perez and Riley, tensions between the pairs of partners is inevitable, especially since Turk is now living with Perez’s ex-girlfriend, also a homicide detective.

The Twilight Herald: Book Two of the Twilight Reign by Tom Lloyd

Promo copy:

Lord Bahl is dead and the young white-eye, Isak, stands in his place; less than a year after being plucked from obscurity and poverty the charismatic new Lord of the Farlan finds himself unprepared to deal with the attempt on his life that now spells war, and the possibility of rebellion waiting for him at home.

Now the eyes of the Land turn to the minor city of Scree, which could soon be obliterated as the new Lord of the Farlan flexes his powers. Scree is suffering under an unnatural summer drought and surrounded by volatile mercenary armies that may be its only salvation.

This is a strange sanctuary for a fugitive abbot to flee to–but he is only the first of many to be drawn there. Kings and princes, lords and monsters; all walk the sun-scorched streets.

As elite soldiers clash after dark and actors perform cruel and subversive plays that work their way into the hearts of the audience, the city begins to tear itself apart–yet even chaos can be scripted.

There is a malevolent will at work in Scree, one that has a lesson for the entire Land: nations can be manipulated, prophecies perverted and Gods denied.

Nothing lies beyond the reach of a shadow, and no matter how great a man s power, there some things he cannot be protected from.

The Twilight Herald is the second book in a powerful new series that combines inspired world-building, epoch-shattering battles and high emotion to dazzling effect.

Midwinter by Matthew Sturges

Promo copy:

Winter only comes to the land once in a hundred years. But the snow covers ancient secrets: secrets that could topple a kingdom.

Mauritaine was a war hero, a Captain in the Seelie Army. Then he was accused of treason and sentenced to life without parole at Crere Sulace, a dark and ancient prison in the mountains, far from the City Emerald. But now the Seelie Queen–Regina Titania herself–has offered him one last chance to redeem himself, an opportunity to regain his freedom and his honor.

Unfortunately, it s a suicide mission, which is why only Mauritaine and the few prisoners he trusts enough to accompany him, would even dare attempt it. Raieve, beautiful and harsh, an emissary from a foreign land caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Perrin Alt, Lord Silverdun, a nobleman imprisoned as a result of political intrigues so Byzantine that not even he understands them. Brian Satterly, a human physicist, apprehended searching for the human victims of the faery changeling trade.

Meanwhile, dark forces are at work at home and abroad. In the Seelie kingdom, the reluctant soldier Purane-Es burns with hatred for Mauritaine, and plots to steal from him the one thing that remains to him: his wife. Across the border, the black artist Hy Pezho courts the whim of Mab, offering a deadly weapon that could allow the Unseelie in their flying cities to crush Titania and her army once and for all.

With time running out, Mauritaine and his companions must cross the deadly Contested Lands filled with dire magical fallout from wars past. They will confront mounted patrols, brigands, and a traitor in their midst. And before they reach their destination, as the Unseelie Armies led by Queen Mab approach the border, Mauritaine must decide between his own freedom and the fate of the very land that has forsaken him.

Before Austinite Matthew Sturges gained notice as a writer on several acclaimed comic book series such as Jack of Fables, The House of Mystery, and Eclipso: The Music of the Spheres, he garnered praise for his prose fiction as part of the publishing concern Clockwork Storybook.

[  Mood: Amused ]

My review of Chris Roberson’s End of the Century appears in today’s San Antonio Current.

That Was The Year That Was. Part Two.

Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived in the mail here at the Geek Compound.

The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston

Promo copy:

Webster Filmore Goodhue has found temporary work as one of the mop-up crew for the L.A. county crime division. In other words, he cleans up grisly crime scenes for the cops. But when the daughter of a recent Malibu suicide asks for his help to clean up after her brother got in a little trouble, every cell in Webs brain is telling him to turn it down.

One of the best titles ever!

Getting to Know You by David Marusek

Promo copy:

Not since William Gibson and Bruce Sterling galvanized science fiction in the 1980s has the emergence of a new writer been heralded with such acclaim as that attending David Marusek, whose brilliant first novel, Counting Heads, appeared to rave reviews in 2005. But Marusek did not come out of nowhere. Aficionados of the genre had already taken note of his groundbreaking short fiction: masterfully written, profoundly thought-out examinations of futures so real they seemed virtually inevitable.

Now, in this collection of ten short stories, Marusek’s fierce imagination and dazzling extrapolative gifts are on full display. Five of the stories, including the Sturgeon Award-winning “The Wedding Album,” a shattering look at the unintended human consequences of advanced technology, are set in the same future as Counting Heads. All ten showcase Marusek’s talent for literate, provocative science fiction of the very highest order.

The Vampire Agent by Patricia Rosemoor and Marc Paoletti

Promo copy:

On the sultry streets of New Orleans, Captain Scott Boulder and Leah Maguire are about to begin a deadly mission. The traumatized, genetically altered subjects of a Department of Defense experiment gone wrong have escaped, among them Rachel Ackart, a beautiful, seductive, and powerful woman–who is now under the dangerous influence of Andre Espinoza de Madrid, a vampire of incomparable evil and power.

While Predator drones circle above New Orleans, and the sound of Black Hawk helicopters rends the air, Scott and Leah must fight their growing attraction to each other as they pursue their quarry amid the haunted and the damned. But Rachel is one step ahead of them. Andre’s vampire agent will soon unleash the greatest terror of all.

Just a little aside, Paoletti wrote the Michael Lark-illustrated tale for my anthology Weird Business.

FeedFlix crunches your Netflix data and offers interesting data about your Netflix account, warts and all.

The good? My average movie cost (includes rentals and instant watch) comes to $0.11!

The bad? A good friend told me he had no interest in the new Battlestar Galactica since he despised the original. After telling how I, too, loathed the original, but really enjoyed the politically subversive new incarnation, he decided to give the show a chance.

Later in the same conversation with the same friend, he was telling me how much he loved the new Dr. Who. My dislike of Dr. Who is well chronicled. My friend wisely pointed out that shouldn’t the same logic I used for BG apply to the new Dr. Who?

I know when I’ve been out maneuvered and besides the first three seasons of the new series are available through Instant Watch through my Roku player.

So here’s my current Instant Watch stats.

Guess when Brandy and I started watching Dr. Who?

I’ve officially had to eat crow regarding the new adventures of the good doctor. We’re now in the midst of season three and officially hooked!

The ugly? I now have quantitative evidence of how much time I waste watching DVDs and Instant Watch. Never a good idea to stare into the abyss. It’s frightening in there!