Fresh from their success at the Doug Wright Awards at TCAF, Canadian indie publisher Koyama Press have announced their line-up of books to debut in September. It is, as will surprise no one, another cracking selection of eclectic styles and approaches from one of the very best outfits in the business. The full press release is below and we’ve taken the liberty of adding some links to past Broken Frontier coverage of some of the artists involved for those wanting to check out their work further.
Flowers are blooming, but we’re getting ready for an awesome autumn with our slate of Fall 2018 titles!
Whether you call it Nicky, Nicky nine doors or ding dong ditch we’ve all done something a little delinquent, but Michael DeForge chronicles the world’s greatest JD, who is down on their luck and looking to excite the world with their mischievous masterpiece, in his new long form story Brat. Mickey Zacchilli chronicles the galactic melodramas of middle schoolers in the hilarious Space Academy 123. Nathan Gelgud makes his debut with us presenting House in the Jungle, which finds a jungle dwelling recluse’s quest for enlightenment disrupted by townies clamouring for his lysergic pineapples, mystery and mysticism abound. Patrick Kyle combines punk rock, tabletop RPGs and Tolkienism into a carton world with a roughhewn zine aesthetic; this is a fantasy world that gets postered on poles and shoved into your hands at basement shows. Keiler Roberts’ follow up to Sunburning, Chlorine Gardens portrays her life in a brutally honest and relatable way, which results in a work of non-fiction that, like life, can be hilarious and heart wrenching at the same time. Martz brings the thrill of campfire stories to comics-inspired picture books with Evie and the Truth About Witches a book that doesn’t shy away from a bit of OG fairy-tale darkness. Few cartoonists today channel the Looney Tunes-like expressive energy into such an original design sense and storytelling skill, like Britt Wilson does in Ghost Queen the follow up to Cat Dad, King of the Goblins. Wilson’s comics from Elsewhere are unbridled adventurous fun.
Familiar and fresh faces fill out our Fall season, which is chockfull of the diverse selection of artists and stories you’ve come to expect from Koyama Press!
BRAT
ISBN: 978-1-927668-60-3
$19.95
6.5 x 9”, 160 pages, full colour, paper over board
September 2018
Ms. D. is THE JD, but she’s losing her edge. Will her next act of delinquency restore her legacy?
A major star of minor crime struggles for delinquency relevancy as she ages out of the delinquent scene she pioneered. Michael DeForge presents the mid-career crisis of a merry prankster in his singular style that blurs the banal with the absurd.
MICHAEL DEFORGE lives and works in Toronto, ON as a cartoonist and commercial illustrator. 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.
(Read Broken Frontier reviews of Michael DeForge’s On Topics #2, Frontier #10 and Lose 7)
SPACE ACADEMY 123
ISBN: 978-1-927668-63-4
$18.00
6.5 x 9”, 216 pages, b&w, trade paper
September 2018
Classroom crushes, school plays, gym class, all-knowing Grandfather Computer, maintenance guy scouring planets for resources, you know, typical school stuff.
Surviving school is tough; now imagine peer pressure and midterms while hurtling through the vacuum of space. Mickey Zacchilli blends Starfleet with Degrassi to make a classroom saga that recalls manga, Sunday funnies and composition book epics scrawled while ignoring the periodic table.
MICKEY ZACCHILLI was born in 1983 and lives in Providence, RI. She is a massage therapist and a purple belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Zacchilli’s sprawling, wild and woolly, romance, adventure epic RAV was published in two collections by Youth in Decline.
(Read Broken Frontier reviews of Mickey Zacchilli’s RAV and her work in Lovers Only and Screwjob #1)
HOUSE IN THE JUNGLE
ISBN: 978-1-927668-62-7
$24.95
6.5 x 9”, 288 pages, full colour, trade paper
September 2018
A potent pineapple dealing hermit’s transcendental quest is disrupted by the encroaching townspeople he supplies. Then things get weird.
They had an agreement: He would provide them with his strange fruit and they would leave him to his jungle home. But the townsfolk are welching on their deal and their expanding border is infringing his mind expansion making things come to a head in this magical realist noir.
NATHAN GELGUD is a cartoonist and illustrator based in South Pasadena, CA whose clients include: The Paris Review, Nike, Penguin Random House, ESPN, New York Review of Books (NYRB Classics), BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), Ford Foundation, and The Believer.
ROAMING FOLIAGE
ISBN: 978-1-927668-64-1
$15.00
7.25 x 10”, 144 pages, b&w, trade paper
September 2018
The inhabitants of a garden grown from a robot’s imagination are thrust into turmoil due to its creator’s crisis.
Flora, fauna, fantasy, and fine art combine in Patrick Kyle’s ramble through a bramble that is as art brut as it is Tolkien. Mythopoetic and punk, Kyle builds worlds, and in this case gardens, that are uniquely his own.
PATRICK KYLE lives and works in Toronto, ON. He is the author of the graphic novels Black Mass (2012), Distance Mover (2014), Don’t Come In Here (2016), and Everywhere Disappeared (2017). At the 2016 Doug Wright Awards, he won the Pigskin Peters Award for New Comics #6 and 7.
(Read Broken Frontier’s review of Patrick Kyle’s Don’t Come in Here)
CHLORINE GARDENS
ISBN: 978-1-927668-58-0
$12.00
7 x 9”, 128 pages, b&w, trade paper
September 2018
Keiler Roberts doesn’t do slice of life; she gives you the whole pie.
Dealing with pregnancy, child-rearing, art-making, mental illness, and an MS diagnosis, the parts of Chlorine Gardens’ sum sound heavy, but Keiler Roberts’ gift is the deft drollness in which she presents life’s darker moments. She doesn’t whistle past graveyards, but rather finds the punch line in the pitiful.
KEILER ROBERTS is a Chicago-based artist whose autobiographical comic series Powdered Milk has received an Ignatz Award for Outstanding Series and was included in The Best American Comics 2016. Her first book with Koyama Press, Sunburning, was published in 2017.
(Read Broken Frontier reviews of Keiler Roberts’ Sunburning and Miseryland)
ALL AGES TITLES
EVIE AND THE TRUTH ABOUT WITCHES
ISBN: 978-1-927668-59-7
$19.95
5.5 x 7.5”, 56 pages, full colour, paper over board
September 2018
Witches have a bad rap, and Evie’s ready to learn the truth, but remember some spells are better left unsaid!
We’ve all read about witches, those pointy hat wearin’, broom ridin’, spell castin’, superlative olfactory organ sportin’, child nappin’ creepies. But Evie wants to be scared, and Evie has found out the truth about witches, and she didn’t find it in a book.
JOHN MARTZ is a cartoonist and illustrator in Toronto, ON. His book, A Cat Named Tim and Other Stories, was shortlisted for The Governor General’s Literary Awards, and it and his book Burt’s Way Home were nominated for the Eisner Award for Best Publication for Early Readers.
GHOST QUEEN
ISBN: 978-1-927668-61-0
$15.00
6.5 x 9”, 112 pages, full colour, trade paper
September 2018
The good news: the house is parent free. The bad news: it’s lousy with ghosts.
Luey, Miri and Phil don’t need a babysitter, but they might need an exorcist. With dad out of town and mom hosting an emergency yoga retreat everything was junk food and scary movies until the ghosts popped up. Now it’s up to the kids to banish the banshees. Britt Wilson presents another rollicking romp in this fun-filled phantasmagorical fantasy.
BRITT WILSON is an illustrator, cartoonist and letterer, living in Toronto, ON with her husband, toddler and two cats. Her lettering on the miniseries Fionna and Cake (Boom! Studios) was nominated for a Harvey and Eisner award. Her first book from Elsewhere, Cat Dad, King of the Goblins was published in 2014.
