Kazu Kibuishi is one of my favorite cartoonists in the game today, and someone I regularly forget about until I’m reminded of his brilliance. Kazu is possibly most well known as the creator and editor of the comic anthology series Flight that have been released by Image Comics and Ballantine Books. If you haven’t read them, this series has featured some of the best and the brightest creators (along with some seasoned veterans) in the industry writing wonderful short stories that showcases their talent.
See more after the jump.
The list of creators that have participated is exceptional and includes Kazu himself, Becky Cloonan, Hope Larson, Jeff Smith, Fábio Moon, and a lot more, and now it looks like it’s coming to an end. At Bolt City (Kazu’s personal site) he said that Flight will be wrapping up with Volume 8 (currently on 6), mostly so he can shift focus over to the more youth oriented Flight Explorer series.
While it’s sad that this fantastic series is going away (the walls in my apartment are almost uniformly covered by art from this series, including Kazu’s covers to volumes 1 and 2), the fact that Kazu is focusing on the newly retitled Explorer is very cool. As Kazu himself said:
Its purpose, to introduce kids to comics and reading through bite-sized stories, remains unfulfilled, and a book like this is truly essential, especially now that there are so few places kids can find new comics. With the demise of Disney Adventures and now Nickelodeon Magazine, parents and kids are going to have a difficult time finding premium comics content that is entirely age-appropriate. We hope we can fill that need.
Also, for those that are looking for more Kazu specific work, he stated in that same post that he is looking to produce two volumes of his superb young adult series Amulet a year. This is great news because it’s a brilliantly illustrated and well told series for all ages. Look for my review of the second volume very soon. If you have not read it yet, take a look at it. It is a wonderfully imaginative tale of a brother and sister being thrown into a mysterious world and being deemed saviors of this secret society, all thanks to the amulet their recently deceased grandfather left behind.
