The Comics Reporter notes that the first volume reprinting Tove Jansson‘s Moomin comic strips has gone into a fourth printing, selling 29,000 total copies to date. The strip, drawn by Jansson in the 1950s, chronicles further adventures of the characters from her popular illustrated Moomin books. A second volume is due in October from Drawn and Quarterly.
The website for Comic-Con International carries a full transcription of Michael Chabon’s 2004 Eisner Awards Keynote Address, in which the Pulitzer Prize-winning author strove to impress upon assembled comics industry professionals the need to create accessible comics for kids. Among his suggestions:
Bow-Wow Bugs A Bug, a children’s book in wordless comics form by Mark Newgarden and Megan Montague Cash, won the Society of Illustrators’ first place gold medal in the organization’s annual children’s book competition. The book is the first in a series published by Harcourt Books. Neil Cohn comments on studies examining the comprehensibility of comic book thought balloons to children with autism and more generally to developing children. These results confirm earlier findings of the efficacy of picture-in-the-head teaching about mental states, but go further in showing that thought-bubble training more easily extends to children’s understanding of thoughts (not just behaviour) and to enhanced performance on several transfer tasks. Thought-bubbles provide a theoretically interesting as well as especially easy and effective teaching technique. Nickelodeon Magazine editor Chris Duffy posts a 1965 four-page story by noted children’s comics writer/artist John Stanley. Stanley’s long-running Little Lulu series is currently being reprinted in a series of paperbacks by Dark Horse Comics. |