NBM Graphic Novels sent Major Spoilers the cover images and solicitation information for titles arriving between March and August 2023.
MARCH 2023
QUEEN IN COMICS!
Emmanuel Marie, Sophie Blitman
“I won’t be a rockstar. I will be a legend.” — Freddie Mercury
Brian May, Roger Taylor, John Deacon, and Freddie Mercury form one of the greatest rock bands in the world.
Under the leadership of its charismatic singer, Queen is a planetary success for each hit with its decadent shows, inimitable aesthetics and style.
“Bohemian Rhapsody”, “We Are the Champions”, “Don’t Stop Me Now” or even “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” are just some of the hits! Discover the great stories and little secrets surrounding the legend!
7 ½ x 10, 176pp., full color HC, $27.99, ISBN 9781681123110; e-book: $16.99 ISBN 9781681123127;
General trade publication: May ’23
JUNE 2023
DARKLY SHE GOES
Hubert, Vincent Mallié
Once upon a time there was a fallen knight, who believed that saving a princess would allow him to atone for his crimes. Once upon a time there was a dark princess, who believed that it was up to her to atone for the crimes of her parents…
Banished for a fault that forever taints his reputation, Arzhur wanders from tavern to field of battle in search of the next contract which will fill his purse. One night, three mysterious old women offer him to regain honor and fortune if he frees the daughter of a neighboring king, held captive in the ruins of an abandoned castle. But Islen is not the damsel in distress that he expected to save…
Magnified by the virtuoso art of Vincent Mallié, Hubert questions the weight of family heritage and delivers, under the finery of a tale, an intimate reflection on our inner monsters.
Darkly She Goes is an ode to redemption where determinism and free will clash, carried by two masters of the fantasy genre.
9×12, 160 pp. full color HC, $29.99, ISBN 9781681123134; e-book $19.99, ISBN 9781681123141
BEAUTY
Hubert, Kerascoet
“Beautifully illustrated with Kerascoët’s magical, dreamy, richly coloured art.” – Publishers Weekly
Now in paperback! When the repulsively ugly Coddie unintentionally saves a fairy from a spell, she does not understand the poisonous nature of the wish granted her by the fairy. The village folk no longer see her as repulsive and stinking of fish—they now perceive her as magnetically beautiful—which does not help her in her village. A young local lord saves her, but it soon becomes apparent that Coddie’s destiny may be far greater than anyone ever imagined.
Caustic and flamboyant, this fairy tale offers grownups an engrossing take on the nature and corrupting power of beauty, in our age of obsession with it.
8 ½ x 11, 152pp. full color pb, $19.99, ISBN 9781681123158
AUGUST 2023
MINGUS
Squaz, Flavio Massarutto
“Anybody can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.” – Charles Mingus
“I play what I am. I play Mingus.”
This comic biography tells the troubled life, the battles against racism, the brilliant music of a master who has left an indelible mark on the jazz scene and beyond. From his beginnings in Los Angeles in the 1940s to his heartbreaking end in Mexico, the story of a man of indomitable and rebellious talent who crossed styles while always remaining himself, in perpetual struggle against a society that wanted him marginalized and subordinated.
Bass player and pianist, composer and band leader, Charles Mingus is universally recognized as one of the greatest musicians in the history of jazz. An overflowing talent, who experienced the last fires of the swing age, the Bebop revolution, the experimental seasons of Third Stream and Jazz Poetry up to Free Jazz. But he was also a tormented and angry soul, a man who, due to his mestizo origins, always had to deal with the hostility of American society.
Journalist Flavio Massarutto and artist Squaz (Pasquale Todisco) retrace the stages of Mingus’s journey, giving life to a non-canonical biography, which proceeds in paginated episodes like a succession of passages that form a musical suite: fragments of existence told by fishing from interviews, writings, testimonies and historical facts. The portrait of a musician who is the mirror of an era comes out of a brilliant composer who was also one of the most clearly committed artists in denouncing racism, with real manifesto pieces such as the famous Fable of Faubus denouncing the segregationist governor of Arkansas.
In the words of Massarutto and in the evocative art of Squaz, which also reinterpret some of the famous covers of Mingus records, we relive the burning parable of a restless man, always in search of perfection, in constant struggle with himself and with the world: a master capable of leaving an indelible mark on the musical and cultural panorama of the twentieth century.
7×10, 160pp., full color HC, $29.99, ISBN 9781681123097;e-book: $19.99, ISBN 9781681123103
