Comicbookland

Every June 16th, readers, writers, and bloggers gather in Dublin to commemorate the journey that James Joyce's character took around the Irish city in 1904 during the novel, "Ulysses."

As we shuffle through this recession, most literary travelers won't make the trip to Dublin this year. Luckily Throwaway Horse LLC has created a hyperlinked graphic novel based on the book--visualizing the novel in full-color for readers stuck behind computers.

Here's more about the project: "'Ulysses 'SEEN'' is the inaugural project of Throwaway Horse LLC. Throwaway Horse is devoted to fostering understanding of public domain literary masterworks by joining the visual aid of the graphic novel with the explicatory aid of the internet. By creating 'Web 2.0' versions of these works, we hope to proliferate and help to not only preserve them, but ensure their continued vitality and relevance." (Via Literary Kicks)

Batman obsessive, book design guru, and author Chip Kidd will write a Batman story for DC Comics.

According to Paste, Kidd has written or co-written three books about the Dark Knight. In 2008, the book nerd published "Bat-Manga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan," a loving tribute to wacky world of Batman comics in Japan during the 1960s--a technicolor Manga treatment of the all-American hero.

Here's more: "The news came via Twitter (where else?) from one of the audience members at the Chicago Tribune Printers Row Lit Fest, who witnessed Kidd's announcement and promptly spread the good news throughout the nerd world." (Via Afterword)

Last summer, we told you about the bookbag Adrian Tomine designed for Strand Books. This year, the New York institution is unveiling a bag with illustrations from Seth, a writer/artist of equal renown in the indie comics world. The bag, which officially debuted last night at an in-store event featuring Seth and Tomine, features George Sprott, the main character from a serial strip Seth drew for The New York Times Magazine in late 2006 and early 2007.

Seth admits that Times appearance was a career milestone, but, as he told Gothamist this week, "being a cartoonist is not like being in a band. You don't get to see anyone read the work. At best you vaguely perceive the work going out into the world. You're still all alone in the studio. Nobody applauds."

One word. Phenomenal. I didn't really expect to like this book for a number of reasons. First of all, the cover: plain, some would say boring at first glance, until you read this brilliant graphic novel, Stitches (W.W. Norton) by David Small and realize it is so fitting.

Full disclosure, I've never read a graphic novel before. So, some may ask, how could I call it brilliant? But a good story is a good story, and Stitches is not a good story, but rather a great one.

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While introducing his Supreme Court nominee, Judge Sonia Sotamayor, President Barack Obama pointed out the judge's fondness for the Nancy Drew detective series.

That's a ringing endorsement from the U.S. president on the 80th anniversary of the teen sleuth, who now has over 200 titles in print from Grosset & Dunlap, Simon & Schuster, and graphic novel publisher Papercutz. The detective joins a number of other authors on the illustrious Barack Obama Book Club.

Check out his comments here: "Judge Sotomayor's interest in the law was sparked as a young girl by reading the Nancy Drew series. And that when she was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of 8, she was informed that people with diabetes can't grow up to be police officers or private investigators like Nancy Drew. In essence, she was told she'd have to scale back her dreams."

Once you've finished reading Christian Moerk's debut novel, Darling Jim, and checked out the acknowledgments, you'll find this closing expression of gratitude: "I'm indebted to Howard Chaykin for graciously agreeing to lend Niall his talent and his quiver of pencils," Moerk writes. "The poor kid would've never got it right, otherwise. Thanks, pal."

Now, we've been Howard Chaykin fans for nearly a quarter-century, ever since we ventured into our first comic book shop and came out with a copy of American Flagg! (which may or may not be turned into a movie some day). So we flipped through the pages of Darling Jim again, but we didn't see any artwork, let alone anything in Chaykin's distinctive style. So we emailed Moerk, and it turns out he's been a fan about as long as we have—he even had a letter in one issue, back when comics had reader mail columns—and he explained that when the book came out in Denmark two years ago, he asked Chaykin to create a drawing that is described in the novel's closing paragraphs. "I thought it was a really cool addition that would drive home the point of the book," Moerk explained.

But that artwork didn't make it into the American edition of Darling Jim, so we asked if we could publish it here. Moerk and Chaykin both gave their consent—but here's the deal: If you've read the novel, the illustration fits perfectly, but if you haven't, we would have to tell you more about the novel's ending than you might want to hear. So we've cropped a small section, maybe about one-fourth of the total drawing, and published it above. You can also look at a larger cropping (in a pop-up window) that gives you a fuller sense of Chaykin's vision, OR the complete illustration (another pop-up window). (Both those windows are big, one large enough to require scrolling; we tried reducing the artwork, but this is as small as we felt we could get it and still do right by the artist.)

And if you really want to know what the illustration is all about, you can keep reading. Or you could just bookmark this page, go out and buy the novel, and come back to us when you reach the end. However you want to play it is okay by us.

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Graphic novelist Daniel Clowes--author of "Ghost World" and this week's whimsical New Yorker cover--pulled back the curtain on his next as-yet-untitled book this afternoon.

According to the Book Bench, the new graphic novel will be about a man who loses his father and tries to forge familial bonds by "joining people together." The blog post also includes a sample panel.

Here's more from the post: "Each page of the book is an individual scene, a joke on the format of a Sunday cartoon strip, but cumulatively the scenes create a larger narrative that turns from comic to tragic."

When comics fans think Wolverine, they often think Chris Claremont: The author (seen here at far left) spent 15 years writing the adventures of the X-Men for Marvel Comics, as well as an acclaimed series starring the metal-clawed mutant that was illustrated by Frank Miller. On Wednesday night, Claremont dropped by the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art for a panel discussion with Matthew K. Manning (center), the author of Wolverine: Inside the World of the Living Weapon, an illustrated guide to the character's history that coincides with the release of X-Men Origins: Wolverine tomorrow.

Joining Claremont and Manning were Karl Erickson and Peter Sanderson of MOCCA, and Susan Stockman of DK Publishing.

(photo: Jennifer Wendell)

Comic book fans are waiting for Marvel Comic's "indie project," an unnamed anthology that throws independent comic artists into the Marvel universe.

Recently Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada revealed more about the indie project list: "Just to name a few of the talents involved, we've got Paul Pope, Stan Sakai, Paul Hornschemeier, Dash Shaw, Junko Mizuno, Jim Rugg, Corey Lewis ... and a bunch more small press superstars contributing some truly amazing stories. We just got some outstanding pages in from the cartoonist JASON and I gotta tell you, this is going to be one awesome book."

Robot 6 posted more news on the project, suggesting that Marvel should add one comic in particular: Jeffrey Brown's take on Wolverine. The artist behind the graphic novel, "Clumsy" did a short piece pitting a slacker Wolverine against hordes of zombies. (Image via Comics Bulletin)

Recently Bluewater Productions released a 32-page comic book biography of former Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, tapping an unexpected demand--the book has already entered its second printing.

The book is part of the company's "Female Force" series which included a comic about Hillary Clinton. They also plan to release comic books about Michelle Obama and Caroline Kennedy later this year.

Before the election, the company planned two versions of the comic. While they ultimately abandoned the triumphant Palin ending, GalleyCat would love to read that comic: "[There were] two prepared endings readied for print. One, if Palin and Senator John McCain are successful in capturing the White House and another if their bid fail[ed]." (Via Colleen Lindsay)