My new book, once again sharply designed, by Peter Stanbury isThe Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics, officially out July 18. You may have seen their previous fine comics anthologies, clocking in at around 500 pages, like Best New Manga 1 & 2 (the all-colour third volume is coming this autumn), or Best War Comics and Best Horror Comics.
When Constable approached me to do a Crime collection, they were still looking at doing this book, as well as War and Horror, in the same smaller manga format, which would have seriously shrunk the comics pages down way too small. Thanks to our insistence, they enlarged the format of this series, and in fact for Crime Comics, expanded it a little further still, letting the pages breathe and fill the page area far better.
Stories by Alan Moore top and tail the book perfectly and other contributors include Dashiell Hammett, Mickey Spillane, Will Eisner, Jack Cole, Jack Kirby, Jacques Tardi, Muñoz & Sampayo, Neil Gaiman and more. Another distinction is in Peter’s exemplary graphic design, which lends the whole 480-page compendium class and atmosphere. Peter also put in amazing effort to restore and refurbish the comics pages, which appear mainly in crisp black and white with no murky greys, to suit the strong, black-and-white noir style. And the contents really are some of the very best, no padding, no also-rans, but two dozen of the cream of crime comics, first-class throughout. You can read more about them here on my site, and there will be sneak previews and sample pages online there too very soon.
http://www.paulgravett.com/books/crime/crime.htm
The very first copies, touch wood, will be with me a week on Wednesday, June 11th, at the ICA, for the next COMICA event, BETWEEN THE PANELS 2. So as well as being a rare opportunity to hear from four of today’s finest graphic novelists – Mike Dawson, Mio Matsumoto, Woodrow Phoenix and Warren Pleece (who is also in Best Crime Comics) – you can get your hands on this latest Gravett & Stanbury co-production. Book now and I’ll sign your copy for you!:
http://www.ica.org.uk/Between%20the%20Panels%202+16888.twl
Before that, if any of you will be near the Arctic Circle this coming weekend, I’ll be at Kemi June 5-8, the most northerly comics festival in the world, in funky Finland, enjoying saunas, reindeer and days without hardly any night – it should be amazing. I’ll be reporting soon on the Finnish comics scene on my site.
I’ll be talking all about Crime Comics at the Dundee Literary Festival Sunday June 22, so hope to see some of you there:
http://www.dundeeliteraryfest.org/comics.htm
And we’ll have copies for the June 29th Comic Mart in London too:
http://www.beerlines.com/comicmart2/National/national.html
Moving into July, I’ll be at the Ipswich Arts Festival with Bryan Talbot and Hannah Berry:
http://www.ip-art.com/event_listing_details.php?id=164
And then I am off to Semana Negra, an incredible Spanish festival about mystery literature and art in all its forms, where I’ll be "officially" launching BEST CRIME COMICS on July 17th, hopefully with cover artist Jordi Bernet of Torpedo fame (tbc): www.semananegra.org
And with The Beano’s 70th Birthday fast approaching, Comics Britannia finally gets its terrestrial TV premiere, starting July 12th on BBC2. If you’ve not got GREAT BRITISH COMICS already, now’s the time to add this "Tardis of delights" to your bookselves and complete your Gravett & Stanbury Collection!
http://www.paulgravett.com/books/gbc/gbc.htm
