In 2001, comix--fiction or nonfiction book-length comics--continued their incremental growth as a category in the general trade book industry. Trade book publishers are beginning to see comix as the manifestation of a newly emerging literary sensibility, appealing to a young, loyal, highly educated and affluent market. Pantheon continued to publish selected artists (such as Chris Ware, Ben Katchor and Daniel Clowes) with success, while Norton is distributing for Fantagraphics Books. Ever more comics publishers are reporting that trade paper and hardcover publishing is becoming a bigger share of their business--and not a minute too soon. Most comics publishers, alarmed at the decline in the numbers of comics specialty shops, see the general book trade as the future of comics publishing.
Box Office PoisonAlex Robinson (Top Shelf)
An ebullient, character-driven graphic novel preoccupied with the nature of people and their relationships over time, this manages to be both funny and emotionally honest. As in Michael Chabon's Kavalier & Clay, the beginnings of the comics industry in the 1930s serves as a platform for a fictional portrait of life in New York City.
Heavy LiquidPaul Pope (DC/Vertigo)
Set in the year 2075, this graphic novel is an urban love story and a futuristic international crime thriller based in New York and Paris.
Berlin: City of Stones, Book OneJason Lutes (Drawn & Quarterly)
This first volume of a planned trilogy follows a fascinating cross-section of Berliners during Germany's volatile Weimar Republic with the city itself--its architecture, cabarets, parlors, plazas and alleyways--the true main character of this evocative work
