koyamapress:
In 2017, we’ll be 10 years old! We will have been making comics and art books for a decade, and we are excited to enter our anniversary year with an incredible slate of comics and a number of celebration surprises.
Our Spring season starts off with a rainbow-hued, transdimensional trip down the rabbit hole, or should I say washing machine, with Jesse Jacobs’ latest mind-bending magnum opus Crawl Space. Next up is Ben Sears’ Volcano Trash, which marks the return of Plus Man, our favourite rapscallion, and his robot pal in another rip-roaring, all-ages Double+ Adventure. Changing gears, we have the elegant road journal, You & a Bike & a Road by Eleanor Davis, which catalogues her days spent cycling from Tuscon, AZ to Athens, GA. Keiler Roberts’ Sunburning continues the autobio theme, and features Roberts’ uncanny ability to lay bare the everyday realities of family life as an artist in a singularly droll way. Jane Mai and An Nguyen bring together comics, personal essays and an interview with Novala Takemoto in a hybrid work that analyzes the global phenomenon of the Lolita subculture, which is as nuanced and layered as the Victorian and Edwardian clothing it emulates. Our final title of the season, is the album closer to the disco album that is urbanity, Eric Kostiuk Williams’ Condo Heartbreak Disco is a story pitting epic super heroics against the death stare trajectory of late Capitalism.
Our Spring season is just the start of an exciting year celebrating an eventful 10! Check out all of the covers and details of our forthcoming comics below!
CRAWL SPACE
ISBN: 978-1-927668-41-2
$19.95
6.5 x 9”, 96 pages, colour, paper over board
May 2017
A washer and dryer provide gateways to higher levels of reality and psychedelic weirdness for a group of neighbourhood children.
In the basement, through the appliances and past the veil that separates realities, lies a rainbow-hued world where a group of kids have found retreat from their suburban mundanity with a coterie of iridescent creatures. But in the fraught realm of adolescence, can friendship survive the appeal of the surreal?
JESSE JACOBS was born in Moncton, New Brunswick, and now draws comics and things from his home in Hamilton, Ontario. In 2009, his books Small Victories and Blue Winter were short listed at the Doug Wright Awards for Canadian Cartooning. He received the Gene Day Award for Canadian Comic Book Self-Publisher of 2008. Even the Giants (AdHouse, 2011) marked his major publishing debut after several award-winning, self-published titles, and his work has appeared in the acclaimed Latvian comics anthology š!, as well as the 2012 edition The Best American Comics edited by Françoise Mouly and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He made his debut with Koyama Press in 2012 with the psychedelic creation myth By This Shall You Know Him, which was followed by the trippy take on nature versus nurture Safari Honeymoon in 2014.
“Jacobs makes some of the most intricate, most fascinating, and oddest stories in comics today.” — Publishers Weekly
VOLCANO TRASH
ISBN: 978-1-927668-42-9
$12.00
6.5 x 9”, 120 pages, colour, trade paper
May 2017
The boys are back to their temple raidin’ ways, but has the long, crooked arm of the law caught them?
Corrupt cops, hive-like henchmen, begoggled boy heroes, labyrinthine HQs, unlikely team ups, heartbreaking best friend breakups, and a liberal dose of super science, zingers and explosive action. Sound like a Double+ adventure? It is.
BEN SEARS is a cartoonist, illustrator and musician born and raised in Louisville, KY where he continues to live and work. His Plus Man character has appeared in a number of zines, online anthologies and the all-ages adventure comic Night Air, where he has been perpetually in over his head.
Praise for Night Air
“[I]magine Indiana Jones as told by Hayao Miyazaki.” — Zainab Akhtar, The Guardian
YOU & A BIKE & A ROAD
ISBN: 978-1-927668-40-5
$12.00
6 x 8.5”, 160 pages, b&w, trade paper
May 2017
Collecting a raw, immediate and moving journal that chronicles a two-month long bike tour from Tuscon, AZ to Athens, GA.
In 2016, acclaimed cartoonist and illustrator Eleanor Davis documented her cross-country bike tour as it happened. The immediacy of Davis’ comics journal makes for an incredible chronicle of human experience on the most efficient and humane form of human transportation.
ELEANOR DAVIS is a cartoonist and illustrator. She lives in Athens, GA. She was born in Tucson, Arizona. In 2009, Davis won the Eisner’s Russ Manning Most Promising Newcomer Award and was named one of Print magazine’s New Visual Artists. In 2013, her short story In Our Eden received a gold medal from the Society of Illustrators. In 2015, her book How To Be Happy won the Ignatz Award for Outstanding Anthology or Collection.
Praise for How to Be Happy
“Eleanor Davis’s stylistic inconsistency is one of her greatest strengths, and How to Be Happy, a collection of her short pieces, shows off the breadth of her artistic range.…Almost all of her characters are casting about for ways to fight off despair…They’re doomed to failure, of course, but they keep trying.” — Douglas Wolk, The New York Times
SUNBURNING
ISBN: 978-1-927668-44-3
$12.00
7 x 9”, 120 pages, b&w, trade paper
May 2017
Collecting the moments that make up the days of a bipolar artist and mother. They are messy, funny and real.
In an era where personal lives are meticulously curated and presented, Keiler Roberts’ unflinching and intimate comics reveal real life to be as absurd as it is profound. In a sequence of vignettes, Roberts delineates the complicated life of a mother and artist that can be comical, melancholic and delightful.
KEILER ROBERTS’ autobiographical comic series, Powdered Milk, has received four Ignatz Award nominations and one win, and was included in the Notables List of The Best American Comics 2014, 2015 and 2016. Her work has been published in The Chicago Reader, Mutha Magazine, Nat. Brut, Darling Sleeper, Newcity, and several anthologies. She was a Special Guest at CAKE (Chicago Alternative Comics Festival) in 2015 and Chicago Zine Fest in 2013. Miseryland, Roberts’ third book, has been reviewed by Publishers Weekly, The Comics Journal, Broken Frontier, Sequential State, and more. Newcity named Roberts one of the Top Five Comics Artists in Chicago in 2015. She was a panellist in The Chicago Architectural Biennial, and has performed readings of her comics at Brain Frame, Sector 2337 Gallery, Quimby’s, and Two Cookie Minimum. In 2016, she had a solo show at The Naughton Gallery at Queen’s University in Belfast. Keiler teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and DePaul University.
“Keiler Roberts’ autobiographical graphic memoir captures the feeling of being a parent as well as an artist and writer better than any book I’ve ever read. There are no cliffhangers or life lessons. It’s more about the texture of being alive: the melancholy, the unexpected small delights, and its unavoidable sense of aloneness. This book is written with insight, intelligence, and a deadpan sense of humor. I loved it.” — Roz Chast
SO PRETTY / VERY ROTTEN
COMICS AND ESSAYS ON LOLITA FASHION AND CUTE CULTURE
ISBN: 978-1-927668-43-6
$18.00
5 x 7”, 300 pages, b&w, trade paper
May 2017
A short story and essay collection exploring the Japanese fashion subculture, Lolita, by two cartoonists who go beyond the clothes.
In a series of essays and comics that are at once academic and intimate, cartoonists Jane Mai and An Nguyen delve into Lolita subculture and their relationship with it. Empowering and beautiful, but also inescapably linked to consumerism, the Rococo-inspired fashion is indulgent and sublime, pretty and rotten.
AN NGUYEN is a cartoonist and illustrator based in Ottawa, ON best known for her romantic comic series Open Spaces and Closed Places. She has drawn comics for Spera: Ascension of the Starless, Electric Ant zine, and various Love Love Hill anthologies. In addition to So Pretty / Very Rotten, she and Jane Mai also released a zine titled Don’t Talk to Me or I’ll Set Myself on Fire.
JANE MAI is a freelance illustrator and comic artist from Brooklyn, NY. Her work has appeared in several anthologies and self-published zines. Koyama Press published her first book, Sunday in the Park with Boys, which was followed by the zine Sorry I Can’t Come in on Monday I’m Really Really Sick, and See You Next Tuesday.
NOVALA TAKEMOTO is a Japanese author, fashion designer and prominent promoter of the Lolita lifestyle. Soleinuit (Kokushokankai), his first collection of essays, was published in 1998. He debuted as a novelist in 2000 with Missin’ (Shogakukan). He achieved wide recognition when his 2002 novel Shimotsuma Monogatari (Shogakukan) was adapted into the movie, Kamikaze Girls, in 2004. His most recent work is Rakkusei (Cyzo, Inc.).
“Expertly mixing comics and essays, An Nguyen and Jane Mai take us on an excursion into the fascinating culture of Lolita fashion. These beautifully realized stories, which range from humorous to haunting, involve young people looking for context and place, searching for a balance between materialism and identity within their chosen social reality. Nguyen’s and Mai’s work blends together seamlessly, each approaching the theme with their own unique vision and aesthetic. So Pretty / Very Rotten reveals universal experiences within a distinct and subversive style of self-expression.” — Jesse Jacobs, author of Safari Honeymoon and By This Shall You Know Him
CONDO HEARTBREAK DISCO
ISBN: 978-1-927668-45-0
$10.00
7 x 10”, 52 pages, b&w, trade paper
May 2017
The condopocalypse is engulfing Toronto and a dynamic duo of gender fluid superheroes is all that’s left to stop it.
Towers of steel and glass are decimating Toronto’s neighbourhoods; replacing communities with condos. Can the city’s primary purveyors of socially motivated revenge and personal guidance, Komio and The Willendorf Braid, save the city from condo hell, or are they too late to save this Hogtown from the twisted CEO?
ERIC KOSTIUK WILLIAMS is a cartoonist and illustrator based in Toronto, ON. His debut autobiographical work Hungry Bottom Comics was nominated for the 2013 Doug Wright Spotlight Award, and each issue of the series was selected for The Best American Comics’ Notable Books of 2013, 2014 and 2015, respectively. Recent commercial clients include Joe Fresh, the Drake Hotel, Xtra!, and the Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention.
“Evil and urbanity parry in this oh-so-very accurate portrait of Toronto the Good—or is it Toronto the Bad? A pair of superheroes (or perhaps demons) is queered into a deliciously devilish duo, kind of like Ab Fab on steroids. Denizens of Queen West, and specifically Parkdale, they skewer the shadow that lurks behind the explosion of condo high-rises, or “artists’ studios” as one developer so coyly names them. But will our heroines stand up for community and neighbourhood values or will they give in to the side of darkness? A kind of roman à clef for the hipster know-it-all. In other words, a must-read!” — AA Bronson