In a first for BookExpo America, this year's show will hold a breakfast panel featuring four acclaimed comics creators offering their insights into the growth of the graphic novel category. Pulitzer Prize—winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman, Hellboy creator Mike Mignola and writer and Heroes producer Jeph Loeb will be interviewed by Jeff Smith, creator of the bestselling fantasy graphic novel series Bone, who will act as moderator. The event will kick off Graphic Novel Day on Saturday at BEA, which will feature a day of panels and programming focused on the category.
Diamond Book Distribution, a division of the comics distributor Diamond Comics Distribution, is sponsoring the event. Diamond's Janna Morishima, who organized the event, said the company has been hoping for several years to get a BEA breakfast panel on comics, and the timing was finally right. “BEA is the pinnacle event for booksellers, and the breakfast will be part of an all-out push to get independent booksellers excited about graphic novels,” said Morishima. “We wanted a mix of literary, action and adventure comics storytellers,” she added, about the panel, “and Jeff can make a passionate argument why the industry should embrace the category.”
In a phone interview from his Ohio studio, Smith called the BEA breakfast panel “a big deal for comics.” When Smith first self-published his Bone collections in the early 1990s, he said, it was impossible to get bookstore distribution. He emphasized that along with Mignola and Loeb, he was part of the generation influenced to make comics by Spiegelman's Maus. “These are all important guys,” he said of the panel, “and we've got a chance to put the graphic novel category into perspective, discuss where graphic novels came from and where they're going.”
