News: New ‘Avatar’ Spinoff in the Works

Here’s some news for Avatar the Last Airbender fans: Toph Beifong will get her own spinoff graphic novel series, Avatar: The Last Airbender—Toph Beifong’s Metalbending Academy, to be published by Dark Horse in February 2021. Faith Erin Hicks, who took over as writer from Gene Luen Yang, is the writer for this graphic novel as well, and Peter Wartman (Stonebreaker) is the artist.

Chris Schweizer has set aside his Crogan Adventures series for now, as he’s busy with other projects (his History Comics: The Roanoke Colony: America’s First Mystery just came out from First Second last month), but he has shared an unfinished Crogan book on his Patreon. “It never clicked for me, I never found its heart, and my storytelling/art/narrative priorities have changed too much since its inception for me to return to it,” he says, so it’s never going to be published, but there may be more Crogan in his future.

Jeremy Whitley and Jamie Noguchi discuss their new graphic novel, School for Extraterrestrial Girls: Girl on Fire, in which a teenage girl has to deal with the revelation that nothing in her life is what it seems to be.

JW: I think one of the few things that’s universal about being a teenager is that at some point every one of us think “nobody is going through what I am right now” and to some extent knowing that everybody is going through that is pretty powerful.  Even if the specifics are different, we all feel isolated, we all feel alone, and the only way to get through that is to keep going and keep reaching out to other people and letting them know they’re not alone.

Kat Leyh talks about her middle-grade graphic novel Snapdragon and Trung Lê Nguyễn discusses his upcoming YA title The Magic Fish at The Booklist Reader

For those interested in learning how to draw their own manga-style comic, creator Natalia Batista is offering a free tutorial on YouTube, with a new lesson every other Wednesday. Batista is a Swedish creator whose Sword Princess Amaltaea is published by Tokyopop.

John Freeman reviews the Tammy & Jinty Special 2020, a revival of a classic British girls’ comic from the 1970s and 1980s, featuring two new stories and the first episode of a classic, “Ping Pong Paula,” plus an interview with Paula’s creator, Alison Fitts. The cover is by Marguerite Sauvage, whose American credits include Faith and DC Bombshells.

Reviews

Kendra on Bear (No Flying, No Tights)
Sterge Botzakis on Jack Kirby: The Epic Life of the King of Comics (Graphic Novel Resources)
Kendra on Lumberjanes: Campfire Songs (No Flying, No Tights)
Gloria Romano on Space Bear (No Flying, No Tights)

Filed under: All Ages