Monday, March 4, 2013

7:30am – Arrive at the Flatiron. No, I don’t usually get into work at 7:30, but it’s awesome to do it every week or two because it gives you chance to bang out a bunch of emails before people start replying to them and requiring you to write still more emails.

7:32am – Wander into a TV shoot while seeking breakfast potatoes. Eisenberg’s seems to have been taken over by whatever they’re filming; oddly, none of the boom mic operators will give me breakfast potatoes. They suggest I leave. I find inferior potatoes at the deli next door.

7:45 – In the office, eating breakfast, checking email, etc. I have a giant picture of a tiny squid on my computer, it makes me happy. Meet Sepiola Atlantica.

8-8:45 – Go through last week’s notes, sorting out to-do list, checking off small items. Lots of emails. Today I’m also checking on what standard trade paperback trim sizes are, for Gene Leun Yang’s latest book. He’s working with Sonny Liew on this one and it’s amazing.

8:45 – :01 Editorial Director Mark Siegel arrives, and we compare notes on a bunch of things. He’s catching up on his reading, I’m falling behind. It’s always something.

8:45-9:00 – Research comics-friendly podcasts for REASONS.

9:00 – Really wishing I’d gotten fresh OJ with my breakfast. Listening to Elvis Costello.

9:02 – “New Amsterdam” comes on and I get sort of verklempt.

9:02-9:10 – Respond to emails from students who have written recently inquiring about internships.

9:10-9:20 – Look out the window to the film shoot I wandered into earlier. They’re filming Spider Man out there! That’s what I walked into on my blind search for breakfast, evidently? You will note the car hanging upside down over the street, dangling from that crane.

9:20-9:30 – Email, email, email.

9:30-9:45 – Looking out the window at the Spider Man shoot across the street. Seems like they might be planning on dropping the car suspended from a crane onto a cab parked on the sidewalk outside Eisenberg’s.

I really hope this is the case.

9:45-10:15 – Read industry blogs. Briefly sidetracked by the new Elfquest T-shirts, which are splendid. Very much want at least five of them.

10:15-11:00 – Compile sales numbers for our last year’s releases and sending out the report to our publisher, marketing and publicity departments, and etc. Great sales on Hades!

11:00-11:05 – Look out the window in the hopes that they’re dropping that car onto the cab. Not yet.

11:05-11:10 – Stare at computer in blank confusion, wondering which of the umpteen things on to-do-list I should do now. I keep my to-do-list on my computer as a text file. It is alarmingly long.

11:10-11:15 – Count the number of items on to-do-list. There are exactly 75. So umpteen=75.

11:15-11:25 – Write an email introducing an awesome new project to the participants of our Senior Editorial Meeting – we’ll discuss this project soon and hopefully I’ll be able to bring it to an acquisitions meeting next week.

11:30-12:00 – Meeting with Colleen to discuss the cover design and tag line for Danica Novgorodoff’s new book.

12:00-12:05 – Check in on the dangling car. Still dangling!

12:05-12:10 – Get very briefly involved in a Facebook dispute about whether feminists are by definition man-hating female supremacists. (Spoiler alert: I disagree with this assessment of feminism!)

ABORT ABORT ABORT. Get off of Facebook.

12:10-12:40 – Email email email.

12:40 – Meet with another designer to discuss another book cover. Exciting times in the life of Calista Brill! (Not joking)

12:40-12:45 – Reading industry blogs

12:45-1pm – Talk with Mark about our Spring 2014 season. It’s going to be amazing!

1:00-1:40 – Walk outside to grab a burrito for lunch, and stop by the shoot on the way back – they dropped the car and I MISSED IT!

1:40-2:00 – Eating burrito at my desk and read… you guessed it… industry blogs.

2:00 -3:20 – Weekly First second Staff Meeting in the conference room

3:20-4pm – Delightful phone call with Joe Flood, the talented artist on MK Reed and Greg Means’ CUTE GIRL NETWORK.

4pm-4:45 – Attend a scheduling meeting to discuss our Spring 2014 list. Some pretty exciting stuff here!

4:45 – 5:10 – Discuss cover designs with Colleen some more and watch a Vegan Black Metal Chef video on youtube – it’s totally work related. What? It is!

5:10-5:20 – Talk about Battling Boy pub plan with Mark.

5:20-5:45 – Secret Battling Boy stuff that I can’t talk about! Sorry!

5:45-6:00 – Run across the street for a snack. Duane Reade, ILU.

6:05-7:15 – Email, email, email, and a conversation with Gina Gagliano about two amazing books coming out this Winter and Spring – Templar, and Jerusalem.

You will note there are one or two other amazing books coming out this Winter and Spring. And this isn’t even all of them!

7:15 – Out to dinner with pals! Good night!

A few weeks ago, our designer did a post about the cover printing process for our upcoming graphic novel Astronaut Academy: Re-entry.  It was awesome and personally filled us with glee, because not only did it mean our book was going to have a shiny cover, it meant that we were going to get it some day very soon, as the cover was already printing.

That day is today!

So, here’s the best part of these photos: the gold foil cover is shiny enough that you can actually see a reflection of me taking a picture of the book in it.  Crazy, right?

Because the back cover has few images on it, you can see the reflection of me taking a picture of it even more clearly!  Plus there are some good quotes and fireball equipment on it too.

Here’s the spine — against the gold foil, the printing of the text (and the fireball — you can tell it’s a fireball at the top because it’s a ball and also on fire)  really pops excellently!

Here’s the title page — a really great, stand-out design.  This title page says, ‘this book takes place in outer space.’

Security bears are one of the most adorable parts of this book — and therefore one of my favorites!  Here’s an interior page that includes them.

And, fireball!  Parts of the plot of this book center around dangerously on-fire outer-space sports, and here is a picture!

The book concludes with a page explaining how Dave Roman’s creative process works.  If you buy this book, you too can be informed of this!

Astronaut Academy: Re-entry comes out in May.  It is going to be delightful.

It’s such a pleasure to work with someone as talented as Mike Cavallaro. Every stage of his process gives me its own distinct pleasure… Put together, the steps of page 47 from Curses! Foiled Again (written by Jane Yolen) is a feast for the eyes. First, Mike’s rough thumbnails, where he works out his basic page and panel compositions, word-balloon placements and such. The dynamic feel and the emotional staging of the page is here already:

 Then in the pencils stage, Mike establishes volumes and shading, and more detail, and in his case, this is without word balloons, which will reappear at the end—Then he inks the whole thing. Each stage involves choices, little things added, or taken away…

With inked page scanned in, color tests will explore different palettes (click to enlarge):

And words return with the final color! More Mike Cavallaro Magic!  This man is a pro, and a pleasure to work with. This is only one of his varied processes for making comics. In his next First Second project, prepare to be surprised and enchanted in a whole new way! In the meantime, discover Mike’s beautiful work in Jane Yolen’s Foiled! and Curses! Foiled Again…

New book new book!

We just got in copies of Prudence Shen and Faith Erin Hicks’ Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong.  You may be following along with our online serial of this most excellent book (in which everything that could go wrong does, starting with chainsaws).

It looks marvelous!  Here are pictures.

The title on the cover has spot gloss on it, which is why it is shiny in this picture.  And despite the ominous title, (almost) nothing is going wrong on the cover!

On this most excellent back cover, you can see that things have already started to go wrong for our valiant characters and their robot.

Here’s the book’s spine.  It’s got author names!  Book titles!  The works!

Here is a whole pile of books all stacked up!  Nate looks up in dread on each and every spine!  Plus there is spot gloss.

Here’s what all the signatures of the book look like together — you guys, I have to tell you: it’s pretty long.  And that’s always a good thing with a graphic novel.

I love this dedication!

Here’s the title page.  You can see in this picture that nothing seems to be going wrong — but a lot is happening secretly behind the scenes.

The first appearance of the robot.  It’s important.

This book includes: hilarious and contagious dialogue!  You can’t help but want to read it.

I love these two panels.  Clearly, Charlie is planning something . . . bad.  Very, very bad.

We can’t wait for this book to be on sale in May!

I read on the subway every day and keep track of the books…including which ones were able to make me cry in public like a big o’ baby. Here are the 48 that made strangers stare at me weird from 2008-2012.

Graphic novels are marked in RED.

Row 1:
Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore
A Game for Swallows by Zeina Abirached
Taft 2012 by Jason Heller
Saga by Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples
The Last DragonSlayer by Jasper Fforde
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Row 2:
The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta
The Silence of Our Friends by Mark Long, Jim Demonakos, and Nate Powell
Rotters by Daniel Kraus
Joe and Azat by Jesse Lonergan
13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher
One Bloody Thing After Another by Joey Comeau

Row 3:
Feed by Mira Grant (not to be confused with MY FAVORITE BOOK OF ALL TIME THAT MAKES ME CRY EVERY SINGLE TIME: Feed by MT Anderson. I really should re-read that again!)
Beauty Queens by Libba Bray
Of Blood and Honey by Stina Leicht
The Canning Season by Polly Horvath
Machine of Death (short story collection by various)
Divergent by Veronica Roth

Row 4:
Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
Masterpiece by Elise Broach
White Cat by Holly Black
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
Abby Cornelia’s One and Only Magical Power by David Pogue
Happyface by Stephen Emond

Row 5:
The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
Y The Last Man, Vol 10: Whys and Wherefores by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
The Hate List by Jennifer Brown
Sixteen Miles to Merricks by Barnaby Ward
Top Ten by Alan Moore and Gene Ha
Flipped by Wendelin Van Draanen

Row 6:
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
Overqualified by Joey Comeau
So Yesterday by Scott Westerfeld
Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson
Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott
Bone #9: Crown of Horns by Jeff Smith

Row 7:
Three Shadows by Cyril Pedrosa
The Ticking by Renee French
Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
Slow Storm by Danica Novgorodoff
The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson

Row 8:
The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex (illustrated novel but it has mini-comics INSIDE of it)
The Arrival by Shaun Tan
Neptune’s Children by Bonnie Dobkin
Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
Bone by Bone by Bone by Tony Johnston
Robot Dreams by Sara Varon

We’re very excited to be publishing a Medieval adventure of love and loss and Knights Templar on the hunt for stolen/missing treasure: Templar, by Jordan Mechner, LeUyen Pham, and Alex Puvilland.

This book may seem familiar to you if you’ve been following along with First Second for a few years now.  Our original intent was to publish Templar as a trilogy, but after releasing the first book (Solomon’s Thieves), we thought better of it (see: Publishers Are Only Human), and now instead of a trilogy, we have one giant book that collects all three ‘volumes,’ including Solomon’s Thieves.

We just got in final books, and they look stunning!

Here’s the cover (as usual, designed by our A+ designer Colleen AF Venable — she did a fantastic job on this one).

And here’s the back cover.  These images are from medieval French tombs (which, obviously, feature into the book).

And here’s the spine.  You guys, this book is going to be giant.

I am emphasizing the giant-ness of this book by taking a picture of all the signatures in it.  There are so many!  It’s crazy.

Here’s the unwrapped case, with the title on the spine printed in foil.  It’s very shiny, and looks great!

Here’s the front flap — introducing the Knights Templar!

And the back flap, which has authors (and ravens) instead of knights.

And some interior pages — you can see here where the figures on the back cover came from.

This interior includes the title page for the third ‘volume’ of the book — again with the dead tomb-based people.

And here’s a final interior.

Templar comes out in July.  We can’t wait!

…And all you got is this lousy blog post.

Hey guys! :01 Senior Editor Calista Brill here, with a report on my doings in New Delhi, India, where I went to run the First Second booth at the third annual Comic Con India.

New Delhi is a big city, but it’s a small world, after all, so of course the first night we were there we ended up in a restaurant with big comic panels on the walls. Obviously! (Close observers will recognize Frank Miller’s work, I’m guessing from Sin City?)

Our hotel, the Ivory 32, was small but very chic-looking, in a neighborhood in New Delhi called “Greater Kailash, Part I.” I spent some time trying to find “Son of Greater Kailash” and “Greater Kailash: The Reckoning” but had no luck. There was, however, a “Greater Kailash, Part II” just a few blocks away, so that’s a relief.

I regret that I did not try any of the 50+ varieties of milkshake on the menu at the All-American Diner but I can verify that their decor looked completely authentic to me, and if no diner in the US has apple-honey milkshakes, we should get on that, because doesn’t that sound delicious?

I did a little tourism: a few hours spent at the Red Fort…

…And a blissful afternoon on the serene grounds of Humayun’s Tomb.

I was happy also to get a chance to visit the famous Lotus Temple, a center of the Bahá’í faith in India.

“But enough of this self-indulgent, generic tourism,” you cry! “Give us the goods! We want to know about Comic Con India!”

Okay, but first: DOGGIES!

There’s a huge stray dog population in New Delhi, and I found the dogs hanging around the Dilli Haat especially charming.

The Dilli Haat is a gorgeous open-air market with folks selling textiles, pottery, and other crafts from all over India. It’s a very cheery scene.

It’s also the location of COMIC CON INDIA!

We arrived at the show Friday morning and began to set up our booth. The organizers of the convention had very kindly put us in the care of two able volunteers, Shalvi and Shubham, without whom I would have perished a thousand times over. They are pictured above! And also: below!

My booth babe beard model luggage handler husband Perry helped out a great deal as well.

There was a lot of really great cosplay, including this awesome Lady Loki, who won the cosplay contest on Friday. (Thor won it on Saturday, in case you were wondering.)

Thank-you gifts for our wonderful friends at the :01 booth! Shubham got an advance copy of Matt Kindt’s awesome new book Red Handed: The Fine Art of Strange Crimes, which doesn’t come out until May…

And Shalvi got a copy of Relish: My Life in the Kitchen, by Lucy Knisley, which comes out April 2.

I had no idea what to expect when I was shipping books to India to sell at the show, but I was delighted to find that our sales were very strong. And the books that people are drawn to at our US shows were the ones that got the most love in India, as well, which was cool: First Second books speak to people on some universal level, apparently.

By the end of the day Sunday, our table was empty. But our hearts were full! Okay, I know how dorky that sounds. But it was a really fun, well-run, high-energy, friendly show, and it was such a thrill to make new friends and meet Indian comics fans and introduce them to First Second’s awesome books. I’m very grateful to have had the opportunity.

We can’t wait!

We’re going to be publishing Steven T. Seagle and Teddy Kristiansen’s graphic novel Genius this July.  It’s full of, well, geniuses, and also ethical struggle and a lot of really great art on top of that.

We’ve just gotten in the final books.

Here’s the cover.  And yes, that’s Einstein in the background.  Can you not see him?  Pretend it’s like Highlights hidden pictures and try again!

Here’s the back cover, again with Einstein.  (He’s going to be kind of a theme in this book, in case you couldn’t tell.)

Here’s the spine — it’s got an atom on the bottom around the :01 logo.  So cool!

And here’s the perspective from the other side.  This book even looks good on a slant!

Here’s the front flap — with the vital question, ‘what does it mean to be a genius?’  You will find out in this book!

And the back flap and the page of indicia.  Wondering if Steven or Teddy thanked you in this book?  You can find out now!

Here’s where the story begins.

Teddy’s art is really super — here’s a sample page.  It looks even better in person!

And here’s one of my favorite panels from this book — because who doesn’t love Einstein, especially when he’s full of atoms?

Genius comes out in July.  It’s going to be spectacular.

(graphic novels you could be reading instead of engaging with all this hearts-flowers-Valentines treacle)

Battle Royale, by Koushun Takami and Masayuki Taguchi

Skip the ‘love in the ruins’ idiom for ‘killing people in the ruins,’ perfectly emblematized in Battle Royale.   There will be so, so many dead schoolchildren by the end of this series. . . .

Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel

What more could you want out of your Valentine’s Day book than a funeral home?  Plus, this book also has people wearing turtlenecks.

King City, by Brandon Graham

No one’s love life in King City even has a hope of ending happily.  At least this book has exceedingly floppy cats to alleviate your romance-related sorrows.

Moomin, by Tove Jansson

Strangely-shaped Moomin is never happy in his love life and so spends time going on mysterious adventures instead, usually punctuated by strange and unhappy endings.  A perfect Valentine’s Day book for the ennui-inflicted reader.

Shark King, by R. Kikuo Johnson

Sharks are, in my personal opinion, the least romantic animal that there is, and this book includes both the danger of getting eaten by sharks (obviously very problematic) and the danger of getting mobbed by angry villagers (also distressing).  What better to put you in an acrimonious mood?

Happy Valentine’s Day!