Links: San Diego and Beyond!

Comic-Con is over for another year, and there was plenty of excitement, as usual! Here’s a quick roundup of announcements from the show:

Yen Press will launch a new middle-grade graphic novel imprint, JY, which will follow up on the success of Svetlana Chmakova’s Awkward and Brave, publishing her next graphic novel, Crush. Also in the works: An original graphic novel adaptation of the Disney movie Big Hero 6 and the return of the W.I.T.C.H. graphic novels, which were popular in the early 2000s.

Sonic the Hedgehog gets a new comics home, as Sega ended their relationship with Archie Comics and moved the popular license over to IDW.

Scholastic announced some new titles: Jarrett Krosoczka’s graphic memoir of growing up in his grandparents’ home, Hey Kiddo; Jeff Smith’s first picture book, Smiley’s Dream, featuring Bone character Smiley Bone; and the two winners of its “Get Published by Graphix” contest, Kelly Fernandez’s Manu and Breena Bard’s Trespassers.

Check out all the news in my overviews of the SDCC manga announcements at ICv2 and the kids’ comics scene at Publishers Weekly.

In other news…

Svetlana Chmakova and her editor, JuYoun Lee, talk about how they worked together to shape Chmakova’s graphic novel career.

I rounded up some new YA graphic novels at SLJTeen.

ICv2 lists the top 10 children’s graphic novel franchises of Spring 2017.

Abraham Riesman takes a long and broad look at the growth of comics for children and teenagers over the past ten years, giving due credit to librarians as well as the manga boom and several forward-looking publishers. He interviewed a number of people (including me) for the story, and it’s a great long read for the weekend.

Filed under: News