Bookexpo America Embraces Comics

novel.jpg”>With general attendance down, BookExpo America’s return to Los Angeles was a bit of a mixed bag for traditional prose book publishers. But this year’s BEA still showed off the continuing growth and enthusiasm around comics and graphic novel publishing—despite the rumors swirling around Tokyopop’s restructuring, especially their decision to not exhibit at the San Diego Comic-con, the biggest and most influential comic convention of the year.

Diamond Book Distribution v-p marketing Kuo-Yu Liang said this year’s BEA was “absolutely fantastic for us. It’s been a great show.” He dismissed concerns about floor traffic, noting “I had meetings every half hour with the people I need to see.” Liang said he spoke with graphic novel buyers from Canadian retailer Indigo Chapters, Amazon.com and Buy.com as well as buyers for U.S. military bases—he even said it looked as though independent bookstores were finally getting on board after lagging behind the chains in embracing the category.  “Traffic doesn’t matter if you’ve got appointments with the people you need to talk to,” said Liang.

Viz Media’s publicity director Evelyn Dubocq was much the same. She said there “was a steady stream of traffic at the Viz booth; lots of interest in Pokemon; and lots of librarians.”  Dubocq said she was happy with the media coverage, “there was a lot of media and different media—a lot of TV people looking to do things later, rather than on the floor,” she said.

Nevetheless some publishers did complain about a lack of traffic as well as the lack of any real news announcements. And traditional book publishers, generally showing off their new comics projects and graphic novel imprints also seemed happy with the reception their projects were receiving. MacMillan’s First Second graphic novel imprint is publishing a graphic novel version of Prince of Persia, the bestselling videogame developed by Jordan Mechner, who was on hand to discuss what retailers and librarians need to know about videogames.

Abrams’ down-to-earth superstar creator Jeff Kinney, creator of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, was on hand to sign at the Abrams booth and emcee an evening children’s dinner event. And this year’s BEA featured the first-ever graphic novel breakfast on Saturday—At BEA, early morning literary panels are a sign a book or a category’s importance—and comics of all kinds were a significant presence on the show floor and throughout BEA programming.

In fact, Saturday was officially dubbed “Graphic Novel Day,” and offered so many panels and workshops it was difficult for PWCW to keep up with the everything. The Saturday morning Graphic Novel breakfast—featuring Art Spiegelman, Hellboy creator Mike Mignola and comics writer and Heroes producer Jeph Loeb—was sponsored by Diamond Comics Distriburors and sold out “to the surprise and pleasure of BEA,” said Bone creator Jeff Smith, who moderated the 8 a.m. panel discussion/comics lovefest in front of an enthusiastic crowd of more than 200 early risers. Immediately following the breakfast panel was a lineup of panel discussions and programming focused on everything from comics distribution to kids comics, manga, emerging artists, film and TV and much more.

Cartoonists Kazu Kibuishi; Danica Novgorodoff, Neil Babra were featured on a panel on on Young Cartoonists (it was moderated by Gene Yang) and discussed their techniques and work process; while a panel on Hollywood and Comics focused on the problems facing comics properties with female leads. There was a panel on Sex in Comics as well as a panel examining the ways that graphic novels, videogames and the web have influenced young readers.

There wasn’t a lot of news announced during BEA, but publishers were talking up a number of forthcoming titles. Fantagraphics was showing off galleys of Blake Bell’s much anticipated Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko and Love and Rockets: New Stories, an annual paperback original, due in the fall. It’s an L&R “throwback” collection, that features original super hero stories by Jaime and a series of short, typically unsual stories by Gilbert.

Kazu Kibuishi was a big hit, doing drawings at the Scholastic/Graphix booth that were raffled away, while copies of his new graphic novel series Amulet were a hot giveaway item. Pantheon’s Art Speigelman was everywhere, signing lecturing and providing a guided tour (adults only!) to Breakdowns, the long awaited re-release of his early underground comix. And Pantheon was also handing out blads of David Heatley’s My Brain is Hanging Upside Down, due out in September.

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