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Koyama Press Announces Their Fall 2015 Line-Up and Oh My Goodness

By | April 10th, 2015
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Toronto based small-press publisher Koyama Press announced their Fall 2015 line-up and it’s a doozy. Proclaimed to be their ‘biggest season ever’ the announcement heralds the arrival of work from veteran cartoonists, an all-ages title, and even a collection of not-comics-but-still-comics-related art.

Michael DeForge is well represented in the announcement with two books set to hit shelves in September. The first is a collection of strips and short stories that have appeared elsewhere, in the vein of 2013’s “Very Casual.” The second is the latest in the artist’s “Lose” series. “Lose” is a one person anthology where DeForge can basically play with the form and tell whatever sorts of stories he sees fit. Past issues of “Lose” have had strips with themes ranging between body horror and disinterest in super heroes. Each issue is a glimpse into where this talented cartoonist’s focus happens to be at the time of creation, giving the collections a feeling of immediacy, especially when the series is considered as a whole.

In addition to the double-dose of DeForge readers will also find themselves excited for new works from Jane Mai and Julia Wertz, kids’ comics from Nathan Jurevicius, a collection of Robin Nishio’s photographs of alt cartoonists, and more. Koyama has gained a reputation for being one of the finest curators of comics work in the industry, so seeing this caliber of comics announced is both unsurprising and very exciting. The full line-up and announcement follows.

Koyama Press is pleased to announce its biggest season ever!

We’ve got a double dose of Michael DeForge with Dressing, a collection of short stories, zines, and anthology work in the vein of Very Casual, and the annual appearance of Lose. This year’s issue, the seventh, is now in full and fully wild colour. Along with DeForge, we’ve got a number of returning artists including Cole Closser who unleashes Black Rat, a melange of styles and stories led by a mysterious black rat; Jane Mai continues her days of the week series of equally acerbic and ardent autobio comics with See You Next Tuesday; and Julia Wertz brings her seminal tale of life in and out of New York, Drinking at the Movies, to the Koyama Press fold.

We also have a number of new faces making their debut with us this season. Robin Nishio’s raw, gritty and illuminating photography book Wailed documents the characters that make up cartooning’s avant garde, and features many faces that will be familiar to comics fans. Crossways introduces the architectonic forms and magnificent Memphis-inspired structures that make up the world of newcomer Phil Woollam.

This Fall we have a new edition to our kids’ comics line, noted illustrator, animator and toy designer Nathan Jurevicius brings us Junction, a modern myth for all ages in the psychedelic mode.

It’s a Fall season as variegated as the changing leaves here at Koyama Press, but way more kickass. Find out more about the books and take a peek at their covers above.

DRESSING
ISBN: 978-1-927668-22-1
$19.95
5 ½ x 8, 120 pages, colour, paper over board
September 2015

Like Very Casual, a collection of very odd odds and sods from the outré oeuvre of Michael DeForge.

Michael DeForge makes comics like no one else. This collection of the cartoonist’s mini-comics, zines, anthology work, and more, is a follow up to the award-winning Very Casual, and shows the artist at the height of his occasionally fever-induced powers.

MICHAEL DEFORGE currently lives and works in Toronto as a cartoonist, commercial illustrator and designer for the hit Cartoon Network program Adventure Time. His one-person anthology series Lose has received great critical and commercial success, having been nominated for every major comics award including the Ignatz and Eisner Awards.

“Everything and everyone in his [DeForge’s] drawings is dripping, bubbling and developing unsightly growths. He warps and dents the assured, geometrical forms of vintage newspaper strips and new wave-era graphics into oddly adorable horrors; his stories are prone to whiplash formal shifts.” — Douglas Wolk, The New York Times

LOSE #7
ISBN: 978-1-927668-18-4
$10.00
7 ⅛ x 10, 52 pages, colour, trade paper
Continued below



September 2015

Lose, now in full colour!

The multi-award winning Lose series is Michael DeForge’s comics laboratory. The art form is pushed to its limits in these first-time-in-full-colour pages. Revel in a cartoonist at the height of their powers exploring the eccentricities of a woman who befriends her dad’s doppelgänger, and the realities of a flightless bird/boy hybrid.

“Prolific young Canadian-born avant-garde artist DeForge has become one of his generation’s most admired cartoonists, and this is his first sizeable collection…While often willfully unsettling, DeForge’s work resonates on many levels.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

BLACK RAT
ISBN: 978-1-927668-24-5
$15.00
6 x 7 ½, 160 pages, colour, trade paper
September 2015

This aesthetically varied collection of nine graphic short stories is loosely linked by the recurring appearance of a black rat.

Black Rat is the sleeper in the shadow, the wanderer in the woods. He walks between worlds and travels through time—slaying monsters, solving mysteries and philosophizing with his fists amidst a barrage of butchered quotes and borrowed styles in a series of seemingly disparate, sometimes violently visceral vignettes.

COLE CLOSSER is a cartoonist and a graduate of the BFA program at Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri, as well as a graduate of the MFA program at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont. His graphic novel Little Tommy Lost was named one of the ten best graphic novels of 2013 by A.V. Club (the Onion), and nominated for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Award in the category of Best Publication Design at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con. Cole currently lives in Springfield, MO and teaches drawing at Missouri State University and Drury University.

PRAISE FOR EISNER-NOMINATED LITTLE TOMMY LOST: BOOK ONE

“Closser’s magnificent book has nobly earned its spot on the shelf next to the revered legends and recently rediscovered masters he’s emulating.” — Jake Austen, Chicago Tribune

SEE YOU NEXT TUESDAY
ISBN: 978-1-927668-25-2
$12.00
7 x 10, 128 pages, b&w, trade paper
November 2015

Autobio with bite.

This collection of diary comics features the ennui and wee of twenty-something Jane Mai whose emotions and art traverse the high and low. Moments of visual poetry and heartbreak are interspersed by bad body hair and bathroom disasters; much like life.

JANE MAI is a freelance illustrator and comic artist from Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in several anthologies and self-published zines. In 2012, Koyama Press published her first book, Sunday in the Park with Boys, which was followed by the zine Sorry I Can’t Come in on Monday I’m Really Really Sick.

“Jane Mai is an artist specializing in food, eye patches, and bugs. Her work stands at the intersection of cute and disturbing.” — Ivan Hernandez, Boing Boing

DRINKING AT THE MOVIES
ISBN: 978-1-927668-26-9
$15.00
6 ½ x 9, 220 pages, b&w, trade paper
November 2015

Julia Wertz is the anti-Bridget Jones; her diary comics are filled with life’s real and often really hilarious moments.

Representing Julia Wertz’s critically acclaimed first graphic memoir in a new format, with brand new material from Wertz, and an introduction by Janeane Garofalo. But don’t worry; we haven’t replaced any of the wrenching and ribald, whiskey-soaked coming-of-age tale. This is Wertz at her best, which is sometimes her worst.

JULIA WERTZ was born in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1982 and currently lives in Brooklyn. She is the author of the autobiographic comic books The Fart Party Vols. 1 and 2 (Atomic Books, 2007, 2009) both volumes were collected as Museum of Mistakes in 2014, Drinking at the Movies (Random House, 2010) and The Infinite Wait and Other Stories (Koyama Press, 2012).

“Delightful.” — Time Out New York

WAILED
ISBN: 978-1-927668-19-1
$21.95
8 ¾ x 10, 80 pages, CMYK rich-b&w, trade paper
November 2015

Page through the lives of contemporary cartooning’s enfants terribles.

Wailed is an intimate chronicle of a group of friends who also happen to be the vanguard of alternative comics making. In stark black and white, the lives of these young artists are illuminated. Comics are often associated with the past, but this is a document of their future.

Continued below

ROBIN NISHIO is an accomplished illustrator and storyboard artist and his artistic acumen is also reflected in beautiful and raw photographs. His high-contrast black-and-white images recall the pioneering work of Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama. Straddling two market groups, art photography and cartooning, Wailed is a book with an easy hook, but a depth that allows it to transcend easy categorization.

“As someone used to working behind the scenes to make clients look good, Robin’s cultivated anonymity serves him well here. On the one hand, he provides a way in for us, the voracious fly on the wall.” — Nicholas Brown, Canadian curator based in Brooklyn, NY

CROSSWAYS
ISBN: 978-1-927668-23-8
$22.95
10 x 13, 52 pages, 3 spot colours, trade paper
November 2015

A modern Mondrian; Woollam sees cities as a latticework of vibrant colour and fluid forms.

Crossways presents the ever-changing grids that make up the modern urban center, be they intersecting streets, crisscrossing wires or the ladder that climbs up the side of a building, as pure abstraction. For Woollam, landscape is liquid and the city is a medium as fluid as ink.

PHIL WOOLLAM is an artist living in Toronto whose drawing based practice often focuses on multiples that recall the colourful geometry of the Memphis movement and De Stijl. Trained as a sculptor, Woollam has also created three-dimensional works including mascots based on the characters and designs of cartoonist Michael DeForge.

“Phil Woollam‘s Memphis movement inspired illustrations have always struck me as wildly original and fascinating — if not slightly unsettling. From their vibrating shapes to their hypnotic line work, it seems the more you look at Phil’s work, the more kinetic it begins to feel.” — Jamie Umpherson, Stimulant

KIDS’ COMICS

JUNCTION
ISBN: 978-1-927668-21-4
$19.95
8 ½ x 10, 52 pages, colour, paper over board
November 2015

Make a face when the wind changes and it will stick, but, in this myth, you might just love it.

For generations the Face Changers have made the clay tokens that change the winds and faces of their kin. This month the youngest is tasked to take the ten thousand footsteps to the top of the mountain and engulf the town in the winds of change.

NATHAN JUREVICIUS is an Australian-Canadian illustrator who has worked in a variety of media including designer toys, video games and animation. He is best known for his acclaimed multi-platform project the psychedelic and heartfelt modern folktale Scarygirl. Nathan currently lives and works in Toronto.

“Nathan Jurevicius’ work achieves the minor miracle of being aggressively weird, deeply compelling and entirely satisfying…a rare achievement that only a true master of mysterio autentico can accomplish.” — Jim Woodring, creator of Frank and Jim


Mike Romeo

Mike Romeo started reading comics when splash pages were king and the proper proportions of a human being meant nothing. Part of him will always feel that way. Now he is one of the voices on Robots From Tomorrow. He lives in Philadelphia with two cats. Follow him on Instagram at @YeahMikeRomeo!

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