First Second Books - Doodles and Dailies

B.B. Leak III: No Regular Kid

B.B. LEAKS: another secret sneak peek at the raw pages for Paul Pope's upcoming Battling Boy.

 

This, my dear friends, is what we call A BAD GUY. So badass even the back of his head could give you nightmares.

 

 

We Hope You Have an Excellent Non-Denominational Winter Holiday Season

Dear Internet:

Happy Holidays from all of us at First Second!  We'll be back in the office and online the first week of January.

(photo by Marion Post Wolcott, from the Library of Congress -- I'm crossing my fingers that we'll get this kind of snow next week while we have the time to go out and frolic in it!)

Comics of History

(a recommendation list)

Here is a whole list of comics that we like from a single subject category: history.  Now that comics are all popularized, more people seem to be using them to do things like write nonfiction.  So without further ado: some of our favorites!

Jason Lutes did an amazing job on this book.  Actually, all of his stuff is amazing, and you should really go check it out.  Also worth taking a look at -- all the kids nonfiction that CCS did with Hyperion -- you can find most of them here. 

Another biography -- for some reason, biographies are really popular in the comics nonfiction realm.  Maybe it's the visual centrality of a main character.  I would imagine that it would be difficult, for example, to write an intensely illustrated account of the Napoleonic War.  It is full of people!  And also ships!

This biography of Isadora Duncan has no ships, but it is instead full of dancing, which is just about as good. 

It turns out that history can be funny!  Before Kate Beaton, who knew?

This is a comic you might not have heard of yet, because it's coming out in January.  But you should buy it then!  Because it is very good, and also pretty. 

This book is so cool!  It is a collection of short comics about girls who cross-dress for the greater good (the book says: love, freedom, and adventure).  There is Mulan in it!  And also Willow Dawson's art is gorgeous, as it always seems to be.

We have an Official Office Argument about this book!  Is it a great unknown (at least in the US) but eminently worthy piece of North American history?  Will Chester Brown's next book cause even more interdepartmental strife?  Stay tuned!  We may have a cage match.

Aw, it's one of our books!  The American West is discovered; yay!

B.B. Leak, the Second

As promised here's another B.B. LEAK: a glimpse at the raw pages for Paul Pope's upcoming Battling Boy.

 

This week's Leak features the latest in Monster Ocular Fashions. After rereading 100% recently I think I may need to do a whole long post on "Paul Pope: Glasses Designer," and figure out how to make some of these styles a reality...or at least the ones for us non-monsters.

 

Set to Sea

(in the category of 'books that are good despite the fact we didn't publish them')

 
I don't know if you've had a chance to pick up this nautical piratical tale of blood and death and also poetry?

It is delightful!

Added bonus, which you can't tell from the .gif image here -- the type on the front cover is printed in gold ink!  So Set to Sea gets added points for shinyness. 

THE FIRST BBLEAK!

B.B.LEAKS!

Leaked cables and snapshots of BATTLING BOY, from Paul Pope's studio

A new regular feature on the First Second blog!

The closely guarded secrets of Paul Pope's studio, released in a controversial leak, include cell-phone snapshots by an unnamed intern, taken at great risk!

This is the first such photo, with ink barely dry on the BATTLING BOY original page.

We are threatening to release more if, uh, you want.

Things To Read

Looking for something to read this morning?

Try Ben Hatke's Zita the Spacegirl.  The first four chapters are up on MTV Geek now.

And let us know what you think!

Kampung Boy

A few years ago, we published two books by the Malaysian cartoonist Lat: Kampung Boy and Town Boy.

(here are covers!)

It's always interesting to read graphic novels from around the world because the pictures give you a window into other peoples' lives in a way that's both visual and personal. And Lat does an amazing job just opening a window into a world that's individual and fascinating. 

There is also added bonus interest, because he created these books around the time of Malaysia's industrialization movement, so he's writing and drawing about a time period that was rapidly disintegrating and re-forming into something new. 

In conclusion: Malaysia is very different from the United States!  And if you didn't know this already firsthand, you can read these books and find out exactly how.

A Holiday Story

It snowed in New York this week!  Taking this as a sign that it is actually becoming winter, I thought I'd post some panels from our one and only holiday-related story. 

What story, you may ask?

Tiny Tyrant: The Ethelbertosaurus.

This is my favorite part!

Mario Vargas Llosa on Literature

from last night's Nobel Lecture

[photo ganked from here]

"Thanks to literature, to the consciousness it shapes, the desires and longings it inspires, and our disenchantment with reality when we return from the journey to a beautiful fantasy, civilization is now less cruel than when storytellers began to humanize life with their fables. We would be worse than we are without the good books we have read, more conformist, not as restless, more submissive, and the critical spirit, the engine of progress, would not even exist. Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life. When we look in fiction for what is missing in life, we are saying, with no need to say it or even to know it, that life as it is does not satisfy our thirst for the absolute – the foundation of the human condition – and should be better."

[full text here]