Anyone who finds themselves firmly engrained in the music scene has assuredly heard of Daniel Johnston. A prolific and tragic songwriter with seventeen studio albums to his name, Johnston has been creating music for almost his entire life, beginning in the late 1970’s. He has also been diagnosed with schizophrenia and manic depression, and was the subject of a documentary in 2006 entitled The Devil and Daniel Johnston (a film which, to put it lightly, left me in tears — especially this scene).
In addition to his music, though, Johnston is also an artist, having published an art book through Rizzoli in 2009. Now, Johnston is taking his art and creativity to the world of comics with an upcoming graphic novel called Space Ducks: An Infinite Cmic Book of Musical Greatness, to be released in April of this year from BOOM! Town.
As explained in BOOM!’s press release (which you can find entirely after the cut), the comic book will be combined with an app and an album that compliments the story. The album will be Johnston’s first new album since 2009, and the app “will virtually take readers through Daniel’s Outer-Space world of Ducks and Devils, with games to play, surprising voices from different talents, animations and videos from the comic book, links to exciting new Space Ducks merchandise, and a slew of Easter eggs, including contributions from some of the critically-acclaimed musicians who number amongst Daniel’s biggest fans.”
While there will assuredly be many great graphic novels throughout the year, I think preemptively assuming Johnston’s will be one of the finest is putting it a bit lightly. Given his ability to so effectively imbue emotion into his music and art, Space Ducks is already one of our most highly anticipated releases of the year, and April can’t come soon enough.
For the full press release from BOOM! Studios, please check behind the cut.
BOOM! Town and Wieden + Kennedy Entertainment bring world-famous underground musician and artist Daniel Johnston to comics this April with his new graphic novel SPACE DUCKS: AN INFINITE COMIC BOOK OF MUSICAL GREATNESS.
A celebrated musician and recording artist with a 30-year career that includes over 20 albums — including covers by Death Cab for Cutie, The Flaming Lips, Tom Waits, Beck, and TV on the Radio — Johnston was the subject of the 2006 documentary “The Devil and Daniel Johnston” which won the Sundance Film Festival Director’s Award. His drawings and paintings have hung in art galleries and museums across the world, including the Whitney Museum of American Art. Johnston rocketed to global notoriety in the early 1990s when album artwork from his “Hi, How Are You?” record was featured on a t-shirt worn by Kurt Cobain at the height of Nirvana’s exploding popularity.
SPACE DUCKS: AN INFINITE COMIC BOOK OF MUSICAL GREATNESS is Johnston’s debut graphic novel. Johnston, a long-time and dedicated fan of comic books, realizes his life-long dream of being a comic book artist with this release.
SPACE DUCKS is more than just a graphic novel, it’s a one-of-a-kind interactive comic book experience, complimented by the Space Ducks album and iOS App. The companion app will virtually take readers through Daniel’s Outer-Space world of Ducks and Devils, with games to play, surprising voices from different talents, animations and videos from the comic book, links to exciting new Space Ducks merchandise, and a slew of Easter eggs, including contributions from some of the critically-acclaimed musicians who number amongst Daniel’s biggest fans. The app will also debut Daniel Johnston’s first new album since 2009.
On March 13th, in Austin Texas, SPACE DUCKS launches at SXSW with a show and invite-only, launch party, including headliners Built to Spill, along with Daniel Johnston and many more.
“This is another instance of bringing it all back home for me personally because I’m a native of San Antonio and went to school in Austin,” says Ross Richie, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of BOOM! Studios. “Daniel is a fixture of the central Texas music scene and an international symbol of the unique creativity the region offers. Getting a chance to work with a seminal voice like Daniel is exactly why I got into publishing in the first place.”
Continued belowSPACE DUCKS follows a banner first year of publishing for BOOM! Studios’ lit comix imprint, BOOM! Town, which saw Shannon Wheeler win an Eisner Award for his work I THOUGHT YOU WOULD BE FUNNIER. BOOM! Studios is enjoying back-to-back “Best Publisher” awards from Diamond Comic Distributors for 2009 and 2010.
SPACE DUCKS: AN INFINITE COMIC BOOK OF MUSICAL GREATNESS, written and drawn by Daniel Johnston, will ship this April. This title features 96 pages of story and carries a price point of $19.99 and a Diamond code of FEB120868.
About BOOM! Town
BOOM! Town is the lit comix imprint of the Eisner, Harvey, and “Best Publisher” Award-winning BOOM! Studios (www.boom-studios.com). BOOM! Town recently won the Eisner Award for its first book, Shannon Wheeler’s I THOUGHT YOU WOULD BE FUNNIER. BOOM! Studios generates a constellation of bestselling comic books and graphic novels with the industry’s top talent, including Mark Waid’s series IRREDEEMABLE, new HELLRAISER comics written by Clive Barker, PLANET OF THE APES, 28 DAYS LATER, and Philip K. Dick’s DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?. BOOM!’s all-ages imprint KABOOM! publishes Charles Schulz’ PEANUTS, Roger Langridge’s SNARKED, Cartoon Network’s ADVENTURE TIME and Scholastic’s WORDGIRL.
