Editorial director Calista Brill offers a look at all that 23rd St. accomplished in its first year:
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| Calista Brill | |
I joined Mark Siegel in a glorious experiment of graphic novel publishing in 2008, when I started working with him at First Second. The imprint has been a dream come true for all of us: editors, designers, authors, artists.
And now, a new dream is becoming a reality: 23rd St.! With 23rd St., we've created a new imprint for grown-ups that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with First Second, sharing an ethos of craft, care, and risk-taking while giving our adult graphic novels their own place to live.
23rd St. has defined its voice and identity as an eclectic, risk-taking publisher for a diversity of readers through its first-year list. Allow me to elaborate! First, Saint Catherine by Anna Meyer is a bracing, funny, ferocious debut about faith, desire, and the gnarlier parts of adulthood; it's the kind of book that proves that comics can hold multitudes. Plus: demonic possession!
On its heels comes Youssef Daoudi's The Giant, a sweeping graphic portrait of Orson Welles that thinks as ambitiously as its subject. And Antoine Revoy's The Harrowing Game delivers a taut, uncanny thrill ride that channels the greatest in horror manga. A masterwork, truly! These three alone announce an imprint that can do intimate storytelling, grand biography, and high-concept suspense without breaking stride.
Then there's Kasia Babis's Breadcrumbs, a memoir that braids a personal coming-of-age with Poland's transition from communism to democracy. Breadcrumbs is political/personal history told with wit, warmth, and wistfulness. And get ready to be wowed: Jesse Lonergan's Drome is a big swing in the very best sense. It's a mythic, formally inventive epic that reminds us how elastic the comics page can be. And Lucas Wars, by Laurent Hopman and Renaud Roche, gives us the kind of cinematic, behind-the-curtain reportage that film obsessives and story nerds will pass around for years. (Plus Star Wars fans, natch.)
Rounding out the year, I love the range: Mia Jay Boulton and Laurel Boulton's Of Swamp & Sea, Vol. 1 (lush, sexy, transportive fantasy); Paul Pope's Total THB, Vol. 1 (a definitive, remastered edition of a cult-classic worldbuilder); and Sander Funneman and Peter Brouwers' Electric Life (pop-science nonfiction that crackles with wonder). This is exactly the span we hoped for—books that entertain, provoke, and linger.