Alabama-based publisher 12-Gauge Comics is adapting bestselling crime novelist Ace Atkins’ four Nick Travers prose works into graphic novels. The house will release the first of the graphic novels in Spring 2017.
12-Gauge has already adapted and released Last Fair Deal Gone Down (with artist Marco Finnegan), which is actually a short story about the mysterious death of a New Orleans saxophonist. The story was originally written about 25 years ago by Atkins and introduced the Nick Travers character, a former pro football player turned tough-guy college professor. The graphic novel version of Last Fair Deal Gone Down was published in April and is "expected" to sell-out the first printing, according to 12-Gauge publisher Keven Gardner.
The first of the three full-length Nick Travers novels is Crossroad Blues, Atkins’ southern homage to Dashiell Hammett; it's followed by Leaving Trunk Blues, about a blues singer convicted of murdering her lover/producer; and Dirty South, a novel set in New Orleans that brings together shady characters from the blues and hip hop scenes. 12-Gauge will release one Travers book a year.
Gardner said the April release of Last Fair Deal Gone Down was a test that proved there was an audience for the series. “Ace has a following in [traditional] bookstores and they really supported the book,” Gardner said, noting that it was evidenced in how quickly that first print run sold out. Once the three Nick Travers graphic novels have been released, Gardner said he expects to continue to work with Atkins to publish original graphic stories based on the Nick Travers character.
12-Gauge Comics was founded in 2004 by Gardner with its initial release, The Ride, an anthology of crime comics. After publishing several titles via a packaging partnership with Image Comics, 12-Guage began releasing comics under its own banner in 2009, including comics co-created by celebrities like actress Rosario Dawson (Occult Crimes Taskforce) and country singer Trace Adkins (Luke McBain). 12-Gauge titles are distributed to the trade by Diamond Books Distributors and to the comics shop market by Diamond Comics Distributors.
Atkins is a Pulitzer-nominated former crime reporter and the author of 19 novels, mostly crime fiction set in the South. He was also chosen by the Robert Parker estate to continue writing Parker’s Spenser crime novels.
Asked about the agreement with 12-Gauge, Atkins told PW he is an admirer of the format. “I’m a big fan of the Parker graphic novels from IDW,” he said, referring to the acclaimed comics adaptations of Donald Westlake’s hardboiled Parker fiction created by the late cartoonist Darwyn Cooke.
Gardner, like Atkins, also happens to be from Alabama (and also, like Atkins, attended Auburn University), which sealed the deal.
Atkins said he bonded with Gardner over their mutual love of gritty Southern noir crime fiction. “We speak the same language about the complexity of the South. We love the South, we hate it and we want to expose it. An editor from another part of the country wouldn’t understand.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that the first printing of the graphic novel version of 'Last Fair Deal Gone Down' had sold out. According to the publisher the first printing is "expected" to sell out but there are still "some" copies still available at the distributor level.
