Graphic Novel Reporter’s 2010 Favorites List!

Another “best of” list — Graphic Novel Reporter’s. I’m especially thrilled to see Hereville on this list, because it’s not a specialty list — it’s not for kid’s graphic novels, or Jewish graphic novels, but simply a list of their favorite graphic novels. And the other cartoonists on the list are simply awesome!

Here’s the list’s description of Hereville:

In a word: brilliant. Barry Deutsch’s webcomic about a young girl in an Orthodox Jewish community gets wider exposure in this collection. Hopefully, as broad an audience as possible will find its way to this utterly clever book, which follows Mirka as she faces a witch, a mean pig, and a troll in an effort to win a sword…and begin her life’s mission of slaying dragons. The explanations of Jewish culture and language that run throughout the book are always helpful and never intrusive. This is another book for kids that adults will love too.

Thank you so much, Graphic Novel Reporter!

Barry Intereviewed on Comic Geek Speak!

Comic Geek Speak, a terrific comics-yak podcast, has posted their newest episode, which includes a lengthy interview with me!

The interview with me begins at about 40 minutes into the podcast. This was a fun interview for me — just a bunch of comic book geeks getting together to discuss, well, me. Topics include fairy tale logic, my word balloons, Pogo, Eleanor Davis’ Secret Science Alliance, getting started as a cartoonist, the thousand pages, Dave Sim’s influence on Hereville, and lots of other stuff.

Barry to be interviewed on “Word & Pictures” radio show on Thursday

The press release from Words & Pictures, a Portland radio show devoted to comics:

Tomorrow morning (Thursday December 9th) from 11:30am to noon (PDT), Words & Pictures celebrates its seventh anniversary on the air by returning to its local roots. This month’s guest is up-and-coming Portland author Barry Deutsch, who’s just published his first graphic novel Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword, the adventures of a troll-fighting eleven-year-old Orthodox Jewish girl.

Words & Pictures airs on KBOO community radio, 90.7fm, Not near a radio? You can listen to the real-time webstream at http://kboo.fm/listen via iTunes or Abacast. And look for the webcast version on KBOO’s home page shortly after the show airs.

More info and links to recent webcasts can be found at http://www.tooningin.com

Jake Richmond, Hereville’s colorist, will be there as well. Should be fun!

“Tablet” Magazine on Hereville: “Perfect Throughout”!

Marjorie Ingall has included Hereville in her annual listing of the year’s best Jewish books for kids! There’s also a mini-review of Hereville:

Perfect throughout is Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword, by Barry Deutsch. It’s a very weird, confidently drawn graphic novel about an 11-year-old Orthodox girl who fervently wants to fight dragons. Mirka Herschberg lives in a tight-knit community in an unknown time and place where boys have payos and married women cover their hair, but where the woods are full of trolls and witches and humongous crazed pigs. I love that the stepmother in this book is good instead of evil, and I love that Deutsch really knows how to tell a story in his chosen medium. Characters burst free of their panels; the interplay of image and text is flawless; the entire book is kinetic and action-filled, but thoughtful too. A must for graphic-novel fans.

Thanks so much, Marjorie! Check out her full list to see what great company Hereville is in!

Barry Interviewed On “The Enchanted Inkpot”

A new interview with me, conducted by Leah Cypess (author of the fantasy novel Mistwood), has been posted on The Enchanted Inkpot. Check it out!

Hereville is the perfect Chanukah gift!

It’s also the perfect Chanukkah, Hanukkah, Hanuka, or Channuka gift!

Chanukah begins the night of December 1 (this Wednesday), and continues until December 9. Plenty of time to buy a copy of Hereville from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powells, or your favorite local indy bookstore.

Just sayin’…

If you’d like to know more about Hereville, you can read some reviews here, or read a preview here.

(Please excuse this moment of absolutely shameless sales pitching. Regular blogging will now resume.)

Christian Lipski’s Many Articles About Hereville

I’ve been neglecting the Hereville blogging for the last few weeks, and I have a bunch of articles to link to!

Today, I’ll link to a series of four (!) articles by Christian Lipski in The Portland Examiner. First, there’s Christian’s detailed report of the Premiereville event at Powell’s on Hawthorne. (I posted some photos of the event here.)

Although he got 100 details right, Christian did get one small fact wrong — my friend Jenn Frederick, who read the part of Gittel at Premiereville, isn’t my sister. But Christian’s article has made me realize that when I eventually do a reading in Ithaca, New York, I have got to make my real-life older sister Allison Andersen read the part of Mirka’s older sister Gittel!

The Portland Examiner also published a three-part interview Christian conducted with me. Unlike most interviewers, who interview me by email (thus saving themselves the transcribing work), Christian interviewed me by phone — he says that the results of phone interviews are extra-lively enough to justify the extra work.

Part one of the interview (entitled “An Unfinished End“), in which we discuss how Hereville was sold, can be found here. Part two, about Hereville and sexism, and also about the joy of huge open mouths, can be found here. And part three, about the perils of using photo reference when drawing, and about the next Hereville book, can be found here.

Here’s a little bit from part two:

…in Hasidic culture, the boys and girls are so separated there are so many years where essentially, other than their immediate male family, they’re growing up in an all-girl society. Everyone they socialize with other than their brothers and their father is female. Stephanie Levine, an anthropologist, wrote a book about the lives of teen Hasidic girls, and argues that kind of as a result of this separation they are incredibly spirited and in some ways more free than girls growing up in mainstream society. The point where having a boyfriend becomes important and you’re dressing and acting in a certain way so that the boys like you gets stalled for years in Hasidic culture.

A big thank you for Christian Lipski for all this writing about Hereville!

Courtroom Memo Re: Bris (And Judge’s Response)

Despite what this memo implies, typically Jews celebrate the birth of girls as much as the birth of boys — although without the bris, there’s more scheduling flexibility, as I understand it. But still worth posting, especially for Kimba Woods’ scribbled response.

(Via.)

Hereville is a “Kirkus Best Kids Book of 2010” In Three Categories

Kirkus Reviews’ annual “Best Books for Children and Teens” has come out, and Hereville is listed as a “Best” in THREE categories — “Graphic Novel,” “Fantasy and Science Fiction,” and “Fiction With Great Girl Characters.”

Within the book industry, Kirkus has a reputation for being very tough reviewers, so these listings mean a lot.

Congratulations to all the other Kirkus “best” listees as well! It’s an honor to be in company like this. I’ll single out three folks I’m lucky enough to have met in real life: Tom Angleberger for The Strange Case of Origami Yoda (another triple listee! And a book with an even more unique premise than Hereville’s), Raina Telgemeier for Smile , and Hope Larson for Mercury!

My favorite Cerebus covers (gallery)

For my money, few comic books has been as thrilling and interesting as Dave Sim’s Cerebus — and no other comic has been as infuriating and disappointing in the end. Here are some of my favorite covers, drawn by Sim and Gerhard. (Sim does the figures and lettering, Gerhard does backgrounds, objects and colors).

Issue 87. The cover, depicting two characters falling off a cliff during a blizzard, is lovely in its own right. I liked it even better once I realized that it was a parody of Frank Miller’s Dark Knight cover — but Sim and Gerhard’s version looks better.

Issue 123. I love this cover portrait of a character who seemed simple, but turned out to have many sides, some of them quite ugly.

Issue 140, one of many nice Cerebus covers in this period featuring small figures in front of amazing Gerhard drawings of architecture. This cover stands out to me because of the subtle but perfect body language; Sebastian sick and exhausted and facing a long climb still to go, and Robbie so worried for his friend and eager to help.

Issue 206. I wanted to include a cover from “Guys,” because I really liked the way that the covers were just additional pages in the comic, and fit into the paperbook book collection seamlessly — but are still lovely cover designs in and of themselves. Also, these covers feature Sim drawing in his Drucker-influenced caricature style, my favorite of Sim’s drawing styles.

Issue 96, probably my favorite of any cover to an individual Cerebus issue. This was the second of a series of five covers featuring tight close-ups of Cerebus, all drawn in a rough cross-hatched style. It’s a powerful image, and a great use of cropping to create drama.

Then there are my two favorite phone book covers:

High Society. A stunning pen-and-ink drawing of a small Cerebus climbing the steps to an enormous hotel. Click on the image to see it larger, or see a huge, high-quality scan on Cerebusfangirl’s Flickr page.

Click on it to see it bigger! As I said, I love Dave Sim in his Mort Drucker influenced mode, and the huge crowd scene on this cover certainly gives me a lot of that. A zillion elements — the insane crowd, the overwhelming mountain and architecture, and the little tiny Cerebus making huge gestures on top of the building — are held together by Sim’s solid design sense, and form a perfect illustration for the story inside.

This is a wrap-around cover, by the way. I couldn’t find a really great scan of the whole wrap-around, but here’s the best I did find (click on it to see it larger).

I don’t think this is a cover, but while looking for Cerebus covers, I came across this impressive painting by Sim and Gerhard of Cerebus having a nightmare. And I have no idea where the painting came from! So if you know, please leave a comment.