Acclaimed French cartoonist Emmanuel Guibert, had a bit of a press triumph this weekend as the subject matter of his two award-winning books from First Second — THE PHOTOGRAPHER, the story of a dangerous medical mercy mission in 1983 Afghanistan, and ALAN’S WAR, the remembrances of an American GI in WW II — resonated with the Memorial Day holiday.

He was on NPR:

Guibert says that Cope wasn’t a hero — he arrived in Europe too late to see battle — but his stories are still powerful. He first set foot on European soil in the bombed out city of Le Havre, northern France. One day, while trudging along amidst the ruined city with their heavy packs, Cope suddenly remembered that it was his birthday.

“He’s in the middle of this world in ruins and he’s 20 years old, and he forgot his own birthday,” says Guibert. “It was very moving to me to listen to his story because it made me realize something that we all know, which is that war is always made by kids.”

THE PHOTOGRAPHER was reviewed in the NY Times:

The book has the feel of a film, attesting to the skill of Guibert and Frédéric Lemercier, the graphic designer. But there is nothing romantic about Afghanistan or the Afghans, who can be at once courageous and generous as well as heartless and menacing. Lefèvre, on the way back, is abandoned by his feckless guides; his horse collapses and eventually dies; and the photographer nearly succumbs in the snowy mountain passes. “I take out one of my cameras. I choose a 20-millimeter lens, a very wide angle, and shoot from the ground,” he says — “to let people know where I died.” The next page shows his exhausted pack horse amid snowy boulders, followed by a bleak spread of the gloomy mountain pass. Lefèvre is saved by a band of brigands, who shake him down for much of his money but get him out. The physical toll of his trip left him suffering from chronic boils. He lost 14 teeth. But before he died he returned to Afghanistan seven more times in an attempt to tell the stories of those he first met in 1986, whom he could not abandon or forget.

And on Friday, he appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show:

We were so impressed by the above segment that we made a little screen cap:

Let’s take a moment to enjoy this image: a well known TV pundit (who reads graphic novels) is interviewing a world class cartoonist, with respect, about world events — not some superhero dying or getting married or getting zapped by Dr. Light — and she has the book sitting right in front of her on her TV news desk. (Dr. Juliette Fournot, who led the mission, is the other guest.)

And the result for THE PHOTOGRAPHER? We all know Amazon is a bit wonky as a sales indicator, but there has clearly been a surge:

Congrats to the First Second team for putting together this assault on Media Beach. And congrats to Guibert for producing work of such power and clarity that it is deserving of such attention.

We’re told that Emmanuel Guibert and THE PHOTOGRAPHER will be featured on tonight’s Rachel Maddow Show on MSBNC, which runs at 9 pm EDT.

Maddow is known to be a graphic novel reader. Guibert is an award winning cartoonist whose work defines the potential of the medium. So it should be a good segment!

Via the First Second blog:

Derek Kirk Kim, Sarah Oleksyk, and Jesse Reklaw read from their latest works at Powell’s Books this coming Monday, April 27th. Kim will debut his latest graphic novel, “The Eternal Smile” (in collaboration with writer Gene Luen Yang) from First Second Books, Oleksyk will read from a brand new chapter in her “Ivy” series, and Reklaw will read from his recently released “The Night of Your Life” from Dark Horse Comics. A Q+A and signing will follow the reading.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and First Second Books are pleased to present a unique exhibit featuring photos and illustrations from the graphic novel The Photographer.

This exhibit offers a sample of the book that combines the late photojournalist Didier Lefèvre’s dramatic images and Emmanuel Guibert’s stunning artwork to bear witness to the hardships endured by the Afghan people throughout this conflict—and to the present day.

Location:
VII Gallery
28 Jay Street
Dumbo, Brooklyn, NY
Three blocks west of the York St. F-Train subway station.

Reception:
There will be an opening reception April 23 at 6:00pm.

Dates:
April 23 - May 19, 2009

Hours:
Monday - Friday
10am-6pm
Saturday & Sunday 12pm-6pm

If you have a little downtime over the holidays, you could do much worse than by reading The Comics Reporter’s yearend series of interviews:

Fantagraphics co-publisher Kim Thompson
Scholar and critic Jeet Heer
A looooong interview on mainstream comics with Tucker Stone
Indie comics with Sean T. Collins
PictureBox’s Dan Nadel
and the always interesting Eddie Campbell.

There are some newsy bits scattered here and there — PictureBox will be putting out retrospectives of John Kricfalusi and Syd Mead in their non-comics publishing arm. Also, Campbell, who it would seem to be impossible to interview poorly, has quite a bit to say about the recent reorganization at Macmillan which put his publisher, First Second, into the Macmillan’s Children’s Group:

I’m not surprised, because the book world, by which I mean the mainstream book publishers as well as the libraries and the Library Association, has been viewing “the graphic novel” as a young reader’s genre for quite some time. In part I think it’s because the part of a publishing house that is likely to be interested in bright illustrated narratives is the children’s books department, and in part also because those publishers, and America’s libraries, see the “graphic novel” as a way of grabbing a part of the literate populace that has hitherto proved elusive. Now, I have no objection to young folks having their own literature specially designed for them, though when I was a young ‘un myself I would have been highly suspicious of anything that the adult world thought I should read because it was supposed to be good for me. Let’s not forget that this is one of the things that drew us to comics in the first place, the very fact that they were not approved by our adults; they were our visual rock’n'roll, the things we knew that they didn’t. However, let’s not get bogged down on that point. The problem with this development is that comics were supposed to have grown up and become the “graphic novel,” but now we are apt to find articles telling us that the “graphic novel has grown up.” In other words we’re back where we started.

While Campbell has every right in the world to fret about his publisher, Tom Spurgeon also had made a bit note of First Second’s move. Nothing can be taken for granted in the publishing world, but this isn’t quite a shocker — First Second was ALWAYS part of Holt’s children’s division, as the initial press release from 2005 made clear:

Long rumored in the publishing press, children’s publisher Roaring Brook Press today announced it’s new Graphic Novel imprint, First Second, with an impressive line up of established creators like Jessica Abel, Warren Pleece, Eddie Campbell and others. The line will be guided by Editorial Director Mark Siegel and the first books will see publication in early 2006. The full press release of their announcement follows.

Tom mentions that First Second EIC Mark Siegel has his own response that will probably be even more forceful, but it’s worth pointing out.

Which doesn’t mean that Campbell’s general point doesn’t stand. While we’ll have more on this (hopefully) when we sit down (in March!) to do our own Year in Review, the fact is that juvenile graphic novels did much, much better in 2008 than literary comics from major (i.e. book) publishers did. Indeed, several of TCR’s interviewees ponder the effects of traditional publishers’ forays into graphic novels, and those effects do bear continued scrutiny.

Paul Pope’s BATTLING BOY isn’t due until 2010 from First Second, but it already has a coveted movie option from Brad Pitt’s Paramount shingle.

Paramount Pictures has acquired Paul Pope’s upcoming graphic novel “Battling Boy,” with Brad Pitt’s Plan B shingle to produce the adaptation.

Gritty tale centers on the son of a god or superhero who comes down from the top of a mountain at his father’s behest in order to rid a giant city of monsters.

Plan B has also optioned BLACK HOLE and World War Z.

ALAN’S WAR, the US edition of an award-winning French graphic novel by Emmanuel Guibert, is one of the best-reviewed books of the year. Here’s a video of Guibert’s drawing techniques.

Over on his blog, award-winning cartoonist Nick Bertozzi teases the new book he’s illustrating for First Second, written by COLBERT REPORT writer Glenn Eichler.

Here are a couple of pages from STUFFED!, the graphic novel I just finished for First Second Books. It was written by Glenn Eichler of The Colbert Report renown and drawn by me with coloring-help from Chris Sinderson. It’s about a certain kind of sexual practice racism. To be published in late 2009.