While I’m busy congratulating people, belated congrats are in order to Jake Parker and Ben Hatke, whose comics have been picked up by publishers! The Beat reported (via Publishers Weekly) that Jake Parker has signed a deal to produce two Missile Mouse graphic novels for the Scholastic Graphix line, and Ben Hatke will also have two Zita the Spacegirl graphic novels to be published by First Second!

Both characters made their first appearance in the pages of Flight Explorer. As reported, Missile Mouse: The Star Crusher (pictured below) will see print in 2010. Jake talks about the announcement a little more on his blog.

Congratulations, guys! This is awesome news indeed.

Matt Forsythe’s Eisner nominated webcomic, Ojingogo, is finally complete, and is now available in print, care of Drawn & Quarterly! And to celebrate the release of Ojingogo, Matt has this to say:

Here’s the new Ojingogo book that’s coming out at the end of August; published by Drawn & Quarterly under their Petits Livres imprint. There’s going to be a launch party in Montreal at the Drawn & Quarterly store on August 27 at 730pm.

Drawn & Quarterly store
211 Bernard W.
Montreal

Congratulations, Matt! I’m really looking forward to holding a copy in my hands. Montrealers, don’t miss out!

I’m a little late on the game with this one, but Jeff was recently featured on NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS. In it, they highlight the success of Bone and talk about the recent gallery show featuring Jeff’s work, alongside works by other cartoon greats (Seger, Kelly, Schulz, Herrimann). Check out the video and audio streams here. They also posted a follow-up podcast here.

This Saturday, Gallery Nucleus will be hosting the opening reception of The Great Great Grand Show, featuring a bunch of artwork from Flight artists Scott Campbell, Graham Annable, Jon Klassen, and Israel Sanchez. The pieces I’ve seen so far are hilarious, and beautiful. This is going to be one of the best shows this year, so be sure not to miss it. The opening reception begins on Saturday at 7pm to 11pm. The artists will be at the show, along with quite a few other Flight folks, so drop by and say hello!

Jake Parker has done a study of the internal structures of Lightning McQueen from the Pixar movie Cars. It’s pretty awesome.

Here’s a preview of what you’ll find in Flight 5. The book comes out this week, and we’ll have 600 copies on hand at the Comic-Con. You can also pre-order the book on Amazon if you’re too far from a comic book retailer. Be sure to drop by the booth (#1228) and say hello to the Flight artists, most of whom will be signing all week. We’ll again be joined by Gallery Nucleus and Out of Picture, so you’ll be sure to find plenty of cool new stuff to pick up, like the beautiful Out of Picture 2!

San Diego Comic-Con is almost here! July 23-27! For the first time since Volume 1 (all the way back in 2004), Flight 5 will be making its debut at the convention, so make sure you swing by the Flight booth and check it out.

Some of the artists that will be appearing at the show, and where they can be found are:

Flight Comics (booth #1228)
- JP Ahonen
- Bannister
- Scott C
- Tony Cliff
- Phil Craven
- Michel Gagné (signing on Saturday at 1-3 PM)
- Amy Kim Ganter
- Rodolphe Guenoden
- Steve Hamaker
- Kazu Kibuishi
- Reagan Lodge
- Johane Matte
- Kean Soo

The Those Guys (booth #1033)
- Dik Pose
- Justin Ridge
- Israel Sanchez

Douglas R. TenNapel, Inc. (booth #1031)
- Doug TenNapel

Dumbrella (booth #1335)
- Scott McCloud (signing on Friday at 3 PM)

Oni Press (booth #1834)
- Chuck BB

Image Comics (booth #2729)
- Becky Cloonan
- Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá
- Hope Larson (signing on Friday at 12-1 PM and on Saturday at 1-2 PM; see link for full signing schedule)

Biocreep (small press table #G2)
- Pascal Campion

Little Bird Books (small press table #P1)
- Lark Pien

Comics Bakery (small press table #P2)
- Dave Roman
- Raina Telgemeier

…and I’m certain I’ve left out some people! Updates to come as more information becomes available.

Newsarama has a small preview and interview with the PIXU team: Fábio Moon, Gabriel Bá, Becky Cloonan and Vasilis Lolos. The first issue of PIXU will be debuting at the San Diego Comic-Con, with the second issue to be released in September. Self-published and limited to 1000 copies, it will be available only at conventions and online, via khepri.com (you can already place pre-orders for the first issue).

The Newsarama interview also mentions the post-SDCC signing at Meltdown in Los Angeles on July 30th — and Becky has more information about the signing on her blog.

For the past four years, I’ve been doing illustrations for the ecologically friendly trading card game called, Xeko.

Trying to capture the awesomeness of nature’s most exquisite creatures has been a tough challenge, to say the least. Xeko has forced me to come out of my comfort zone and stretch my illustration abilities.

I’m delighted to be able to present some of this work in a new art book called, Wildlife from the Hotspots.

Click here for more info.

The Totoro Forest Project website is now live. From their main page:

Totoro Forest Project is an international charity effort to save Sayama Forest, also known as Totoro Forest. This endangered sanctuary on the outskirts of Tokyo is where director Hayao Miyazaki got the inspiration for his much loved character “Totoro.”

Over 200 top international artists from animation, illustration, and comics are donating artwork especially created for this cause. Find out more about the auction event, preview the incredible art collection and please consider supporting the Totoro Forest Project with your generous contribution!

The online gallery already has art by the likes of Catia Chien, Chris Appelhans, Clio Chiang, Yoko Tanaka, Vera Brosgol and Scott Campbell — who will no doubt be joined by more Flight alumni (Kazu Kibuishi, Khang Le, Enrico Casarosa, to name just a few), alongside many other fantastic artists (James Jean, Tadahiro Uesugi, Ralph Eggleston)!

The benefit auction is going to be held at Pixar Animation Studios in Emeryville, CA on September 6th 2008, with all proceeds going to the Totoro Forest National Fund. Visit the Totoro Forest Project to learn more about the project, and how you can help Sayama Forest.

Edit to add: Enrico talks a little bit more about the project over at his blog.

For those of you that might have missed some of the Newsarama Flight 5 previews, we’ll be collecting all the links to the previews here, so you can browse through them a little more easily. Expect more updates to this post as new previews appear.

• “100,000 Horsepower” by Sonny Liew
• “The Dragon” by Reagan Lodge
• “Voyage” by Kness & Made
• “On the Importance of Space Travel” by Svetlana Chmakova
• “Flowers for Mama” by Paul Rivoche
• “The Courier” by Kazu Kibuishi
• “The Broken Path” by Michel Gagné

I just received several copies of Flight 5 in the mail, and the book looks and reads great. Amy and I both think it’s the strongest volume of the series so far, with the artists really maturing as storytellers. If you liked Flight Volume 3, then you’ll probably really enjoy Flight Volume 5, as it is essentially a stronger version of that book.

I’m noticing a pattern, where the even numbered volumes have a softer, more introspective tone, while the odd volumes have more of a sense of adventure and discovery. Makes me wonder what Flight 6 will bring to the table.

Newsarama has posted an interview with me about the book, and they will be posting previews of the material over the course of a few days, so be sure to check in over there. Here are previews featuring the works of Michel Gagné and Paul Rivoche.

I finally wrapped up the ninth issue of my cute (and somewhat disturbing) sci-fi series, ZED. The books are back from our printer and available at our GAGNE International website. Check out an 8-page preview here.

On a sadder note, we’ve been informed by our distributor, Diamond Comics, that they will no longer carry ZED. This means that you won’t find ZED in comic stores anymore. If you’re a fan or a potential reader who wants your ZED fix, your options at this point are to order the book directly through our website; to catch me signing at a convention; or to encourage your local store to place an order with us.

Will this blow from our distributor discourage me from doing ZED? No way! I thrive on adversity. If there are only a few readers out there who enjoy ZED, that’s good enough for me.

Click here to find out more about ZED.

Flight 4 has been nominated for a 2008 Harvey Award. Last year, Flight 3 won in the Best Anthology category. The award is named after the great Harvey Kurtzman (pictured above), creator of MAD Magazine, and MAD was one of the biggest inspirations in creating Flight. Congrats also to our friends Vasilis Lolos, Gabriel Ba, Mike Krahulik, Jerry Holkins, and Bryan Lee O’Malley for their nominations!

This Saturday, Gallery Nucleus will be holding the opening reception for Into the Woods, a new gallery show featuring work by Chris Appelhans, Catia Chien, Yoko Tanaka, Robert Kondo, and me. The above image is of one of a handful of pieces I created for the show. I’ve seen most of the other pieces and they all make my stuff look like chicken scratch, so you won’t be disappointed! Be sure to drop by the new Gallery Nucleus at 210 East Main Street in Alhambra, CA. The event will go from 7pm to 11pm, and I’ll be hanging out over there for a little while, so be sure to drop by and say hello! Here are some photos of Chris’s work-in-progress pieces. For more info, click here.