News

Alternative Comics to sub-distribute Xeric Grant books

Gainesville, Florida, June 18, 2001: Florida comic book publisher Alternative Comics will sub-distribute three Xeric Foundation Grant Award winning books to ship October 2001: Jacob Weinstein's Dirty Boxes; Frederick Noland's Shpilkes; and Ben Catmull's Paper Theater. These books will all also be available from all of Alternative Comics' standard distributors. Alternative Comics is sub-distributing these books to help give readers a better chance to find these great books. "We're doing this so that these books will be carried by all of our distributors, ordered by stores, and ultimately in the hands of readers," said Alternative Comics publisher Jeff Mason, "we've also done this with Jen Sorensen's Slowpoke: Cafe Pompous book just now being released." Independent book publisher Top Shelf Productions has also sub-distributed Xeric Foundation Grant Award books in the past including Scott Mills' Cells, Jason Little's Jack's Luck Runs Out, and Aaron Augenblick's Tales of the Great Unspoken. Publisher Highwater Books sub-distributed Dave Choe's Slow Jams and Jason Shiga's Double Happiness and will sub-distribute Brian Ralph's upcoming Shiprecks.

Dirty Boxes
by Jacob Weinstein. Mature Readers, 96 pages, perfect bound, B&W, color cover; $6.95 US; ISBN: 1-891867-11-3.
Winner of the Xeric Foundation Grant Award, Dirty Boxes is a graphic novel consisting of three stories. 'Refuse' is a post-industrial chutes & ladders game as if designed by Alexander Rodchenko. 'Cleft Mallet' places Huckleberry Finn before a cracked rear-view mirror. And finally, 'Egg-Minus', stirs Russian legend, vaudevillian comic strip mayhem, and grimy Berlin realism into a meaty gallinaceous cocktail, as three tangentially related narratives, are woven around the motifs of love, betrayal, decapitation, and poultry. Tottering between a belly-laugh and pretentious slush, Dirty Boxes is a stylistic slumgullion with a deliciously hollow center.

Shpilkes
By Frederick Noland. Mature Readers, 32 pages, B&W, color wrap around cover; $3.50 US.
Winner of the Xeric Foundation Grant Award, Shpilkes itself is difficult to describe; A Yiddish name; expressionistic and dark with precious moments of backhanded slapstick humor and a decidedly underground sensibility. Stories include 'Stagger Lee', the infamous hard drinking, hard gambling and itchy trigger fingered outlaw of lore, Cracked Actor, the tale of a long since fallen star, 'King Curmudgeon', a suburban punk day-in-the-life-of, and the other worldly 'Automaton'. Noland's art draws the reader in with its intricate settings. His eccentric and humorous characterization of both the familiar and fantastic makes no apologies and takes no prisoners. But more than that, it's entertaining! Does contain naughty language, senseless violence, sexual indiscretion and existential angst.

Paper Theater
By Ben Catmull. Mature Readers, 8 1/2" x 11 1/2", 64 pages, perfect bound, B&W, color cover; $5.00 US; ISBN: 1-891867-10-5.
Winner of the Xeric Foundation Grant Award, Paper Theater is a collection of Ben Catmull's self published short stories. Included are a dream like story of childhood memories titled 'Emily'; A Victorian era space Adventure in 'An Illustrated depiction of the 273rd day of Interstellar Bathysphere 12'; 'Jeff goes to the Store' in which everything goes wrong on a mans quest for a bottle of whiskey, and more. See Death try in vain to keep zombies dead. Watch a drunken astronaut accidentally fly his rocket down to hell. Fun for the whole family except kids and old people.

The Xeric Foundation has awarded in excess of $945,000 to comic book creators and non-profit organizations since its first grant cycle in September 1992. Established by Peter Laird, co-creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Northampton, MA based foundation offers financial assistance to self-publishing comic book creators in the US and Canada and to qualified charitable and nonprofit organizations in western Massachusetts.

Alternative Comics, publishers of cool comic books, releases some of the most original and intelligent titles being created today, including work from Graham Annable, Nick Bertozzi, Ed Brubaker, Tom Hart, Dean Haspiel, Sam Henderson, James Kochalka, Dave Lasky, Jon Lewis, Josh Neufeld, Jen Sorensen, Greg Stump, Robert Ullman, and Steve Weissman. Alternative Comics' flagship title indy Magazine started its critically acclaimed publication in 1993, went exclusively to the web starting in 1999 and has been the guide to alternative comics ever since. indy Magazine covers independent, alternative, and self-published comic books, featuring news, interviews, reviews, convention reports, and articles about the incredibly diverse world of independent comics.

For more information about Dirty Boxes, contact Jacob Weinstein at jweinste@haverford.edu.

For more information about Shpilkes, contact Frederick Noland at fred_nice_00@yahoo.com or visit his website http://www.altgeek.net/.

For more information about Paper Theater, contact Ben Catmull at ben@uncommonplace.com or visit his website http://www.papertheater.com.

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For more information or requests, please contact publisher Jeff Mason, c/o Alternative Comics, 503 NW 37th Avenue, Gainesville, FL 32609-2204; Phone: 352.373.6336; E-mail: jmason@indyworld.com.