Tag Archives: ted rall

Review: The Stringer

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Mark Scribner was an award-winning journalist but due to business decisions and technology, journalism is dying. This is the story of one man who goes from reporting on reality to manufacturing it.

Story: Ted Rall
Art: Pablo Callejo

Get your copy now! To find a comic shop near you, visit http://www.comicshoplocator.com or call 1-888-comicbook or digitally and online with the links below.

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NBM provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review
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Journalism in Jeopardy in Ted Rall and Pablo Callejo’s The Stringer Coming From NBM

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Mark Scribner is your typical hard-bitten journalist and war correspondent. Egged on early by his reporter father, he enters the newspaper business to follow in his footsteps and valiantly search for and uncover the truth wherever that may be. The only problem is, when he does so, newspapers are cutting back right and left, feeling the disruptive effects of the internet.

He manages one way or another as a freelance war correspondent until even that becomes a very cheap commodity. His innate reporter cynicism takes over. He sees what is happening through technology. Truths can now be fabricated, pictures ‘deep faked’. It doesn’t take long for him to realize how much can be made from this new reality. Hey, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, right? Now in the war business, it’s not much of a jump, after aiding conflict for a good story, to get into the weapons business…

Beautifully painted by Pablo Callejo and written by Ted Rall, The Stringer is a thriller with a timely message that sticks with you. Through the travails and deeply flawed decisions Scribner takes to get to success, any success, we get to see how the present-day situation with news has become very seriously compromised and what the consequences can be.

We’re seeing this unfortunately right now in our own country in a most dramatic way. Imagine such forces wielded internationally as Scribner engineers.

The Stringer is out in April 2021 from NBM.

The Stringer

Journalism in Jeopardy in Ted Rall’s The Stringer Coming From NBM

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Suffering from budget cuts, layoffs, and a growing suspicion that his search for the truth has become obsolete, veteran war correspondent Mark Scribner is about to throw in the towel on journalism when he discovers that his hard-earned knowledge can save his career and make him wealthy and famous. All he has to do is pivot to social media and, with a few cynical twists,  abandon everything he cares about most.

A paean to when fact-based journalism mattered, The Stringer, set at an important turning point a few years ago, is a globe-trotting action-packed timely statement about how a society without a vibrant independent culture of reporting can degenerate into chaos and a warning of the dangers of sophisticated new technologies that enable the manufacture and modification of ‘truths’ with no basis in fact.

The Stringer is written by Ted Rall with art by Pablo Callejo. The graphic novel from NBM is scheduled to be released on April 20 and can be pre-ordered now.

8 ½ x 11, 152pp, full color HC, $24.99, ISBN 9781681122724 Ebook: 9781681122731, $16.99

The Stringer

NBM Announces its Upcoming 2021 Releases

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NBM Graphic Novels has announced the release schedule from Winter 2021 through Summer 2021, including brand new music biographies of Michael Jackson by Ceka & Various, Janis Joplin by Nicolas Finet & Christopher. In addition, they’ll have new non-fiction titles including Women Discoverers by Christelle & Marie Moinard focusing on 20 women who made valuable contributions to science and Canicones of Federico Garcia Lorca, focusing on one of Spain’s foremost cultural and literary figures byTobias Tak.

Other titles include The Stringer byTed Rall & Pablo Callejo focusing on the life and career crossroads of a veteran war correspondent, and the culinary adventure, The Secrets of Chocolate: A Gourmand’s Trip Through a Top Chef’s Atelier by Franckie Alarcon.

And coming later in 2021?  Dungeon Returns!

Michael Jackson In Comics

By Ceka and Various Artists
Out in February

Well beyond his passing in 2009, Michael Jackson remains one of the most adulated and mysterious stars in the world. Incredible singer, brilliant musician, amazing performer, he was just as talented as he was eccentric, adored as well as reviled with sordid accusations, sadly caught between a stolen childhood and a suffocating star system.Discover in this biography mixing comics and documentary chapters, how the youngest of the Jackson 5 was propelled to the front of the stage and then onto one of the most extraordinary solo careers in music.The next volume in the sellout series featuring the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Bob Marley.

192pp., 7 ½ x10, full color HC, $26.99, ISBN 9781681122281,; e-book $16.99; ISBN 9781681122304

Michael Jackson In Comics

Women Discoverers: Top Women in Science

By Christelle Pecout and Marie Moinard
Out in March

20 women who made a difference in Science are presented here. From Ada Lovelace (computing) to Marie Curie (Physics and Chemistry) these exceptional women enabled the world to advance in all fields of science including space exploration (Mae Jamison), telecommunications (the actress also genius discoverer Hedy Lamarr) and Biology (Rosalind Franklin). An inspiration going counter to preconceived notions about women and science, presenting a diverse group from around the world.

8 ½ x 11, 96pp. full color HC, $19.99; ISBN 9781681122700; Ebook: 9781681122717, $13.99

Women Discoverers: Top Women in Science

The Stringer

By Ted Rall and Pablo Callejo
Out in April

Suffering from budget cuts, layoffs and a growing suspicion that his search for the truth has become obsolete, veteran war correspondent Mark Scribner is about to throw in the towel on journalism when he discovers that his hard-earned knowledge can save his career and make him wealthy and famous. All he has to do is pivot to social media and -with a few cynical twists- abandon everything he cares about most.

A paean to when fact-based journalism mattered, The Stringer, set at an important turning point a few years ago, is a globe-trotting action-packed timely statement about how a society without a vibrant independent culture of reporting can degenerate into chaos and a warning of the dangers of sophisticated new technologies that enable the manufacture and modification of ‘truths’ with no basis in fact.

8 ½ x 11, 152pp, full color HC, $24.99, ISBN 9781681122724; Ebook: 9781681122731, $16.99

The Stringer

The Secrets of Chocolate: A Gourmand’s Trip Through a Top Chef’s Atelier

By Franckie Alarcon
Out in June

Following Jacques Genin for a year, Franckie Alarcon hobnobbed with one of the biggest chefs of Chocolate.
Former chef and pastry chef for prestigious restaurants, this super-talented autodidact shares all his passion and knowledge of chocolate and his process for creating recipes. In this docu-comic, we travel with the starry-eyed author, satisfying many a craving from the chef’s amazing atelier above his store, trying his hand as an assistant, all the way to the Peruvian cocoa plantations where the chef shows how he carefully chooses his beans, starting from scratch.

8 ½ x 11, 112pp., full color HC, $19.99, ISBN 9781681122786; Ebook: ISBN 9781681122793, $13.99

The Secrets of Chocolate: A Gourmand’s Trip Through a Top Chef’s Atelier

Love Me Please: The Story of Janis Joplin

By Nicolas Finet and Christopher
Out in July

Love Me Please is a biography in comics of the amazing rock singer Janis Joplin, which recalls, respecting the chronology, the highlights of her journey from childhood, after the Second World War, to her abrupt death in late 1970.

It is one of the most fabulous musical adventures in America of the second half of the twentieth century. Yet it lasted only five years.


How did a very young messed up woman, a drug addict filled with doubt, become in a few years a planetary icon of rock music?

She went from the shadows to the blinding light of fame in only four records (the last one issued a month and a half after her tragic death). Thanks to a worldwide movement of emancipation which would consecrate for a long time the ideals and modes of alternative lifestyles from counterculture to the flower power generation, Janis, the ugly duckling, gave free rein to her impulses.

Fed by the thirst for freedom of the Beat Generation and the desire for emancipation expressed by American youth in the early 1960s, Janis Joplin left for San Francisco, the epicenter of cultural innovation. She will live there a freedom of which she would hardly have dared to dream, abandoning herself to all impulses, overcoming without hesitation all the taboos of the time: bisexuality, alcohol, drugs, doing so not only with delight, but with the taste for excess which came naturally from her spontaneous character. A lively, fascinating story of a woman ahead of her time.

7 ½ x 10, 160pp. full color HC, $24.99, ISBN 9781681122762; Ebook: ISBN 9781681122779, $16.99

Love Me Please: The Story of Janis Joplin

Canciones of Federico Garcia Lorca

By Tobias Tak
Introduction by Christopher Maurer
Out in August

Federico García Lorca is one of Spain’s foremost cultural and literary figures. In 1927, he published his masterpiece Canciones, a volume of lyrical poetry. Tobias Tak transformed twenty of these poems into a series of richly detailed and inventive comics.

With his boundless imagination, Tak’s illustrations add a new depth and energy to Lorca’s poetry. This collection will appeal to lovers of visual art, graphic novels and poetry and aims to bring the colorful and atmospheric landscape of Lorca’s work to a new audience. Includes an introduction by Lorca scholar, editor and translator Christopher Maurer (“The Collected Poems of Lorca”).

8×10, 160pp., full color HC, $24.99; ISBN 9781681122748; Ebook: ISBN 9781681122755, $16.99

Canciones of Federico Garcia Lorca

Around the Tubes

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powerless-posterIt’s new comic book day! What’s everyone excited for? Sound off in the comments below!

While you wait for shops to open, here’s some comic news and reviews from around the web in our morning roundup.

Around the Tubes

A New Domain – Ted Rall: So The Los Angeles Times Is Shaking Me Down … – This is beyond bullshit. Help support Rall and teach the Times a lesson.

Kotaku – Supergirl Added To Lego Dimensions In The Worst Way – Sigh.

Newsarama – Noted Anti-Comic Book & Anti-RPG Doctor Sent to Prison – Hypocrite! Anyone shocked?

Comics Alliance – DC Comedy ‘Powerless’ Loses Showrunner to Creative Differences – When it happens to other shows, no big deal. When DC? Complete meltdown!

 

Around the Tubes Reviews

Newsarama – Hadrian’s Wall #1

Around the Tubes

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It was new comic book day yesterday. What’d everyone get? What’d folks like? What’d folks dislike?

Around the Tubes

Newsarama – Michael Madsen Joins Powers – Interesting addition.

The Comics Journal – Ted Rall vs the Los Angeles Times – Damn! Hell of a take down and look at what’s going on.

 

Around the Tubes Reviews

The Outhousers – Archie #3

CBR – Book of Death: The Fall of Harbinger #1

Comic Vine – Captain America: White #1

Comic Vine – The Flash #44

Comic Vine – Fury: S.H.I.E.L.D. 50th Anniversary #1

The Outhousers – Godzilla in Hell #3

Comic Vine – Grayson #12

Comic Vine – Martian Manhunter #4

CBR – The Sandman: Overture #6

Comic Vine – Sinestro #15

Comic Vine – Spider-Island #4

Comic Vine – Tokyo Ghost #1

Comic Vine – Weirdworld #4

Review: Snowden

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Snowden coverAs many as 1.4 million citizens with security clearance saw some or all of the same documents that would later be leaked by Edward Snowden. Why did he, and no one else, decide to step forward and take on the risks associated with becoming a whistleblower and then a fugitive?

For many of us, there’s so many unanswered questions about Edward Snowden. In Snowden, writer and cartoonist Ted Rall delves into Snowden’s early life and work experience, his personality, and the larger issues of privacy, new surveillance technologies, and government intrusion.

I consider myself very liberal and progressive, and even now I’m torn as to my thoughts about what Edward Snowden did, and how he did it. Rall does a decent job of giving us a timeline as well as laying out Snowden’s life growing up, and how it shaped him to be the man he is today. There’s lots of questions, there can only be without it being an autobiography. But, you get a good sense of things.

My issue with the story, as well as the Snowden saga as a whole, is the fact that the American public haven’t had the finger pointed at us enough for our allowing legislation to be passed and our privacy eroded. Whistelblower Mark Klein spoke out in 2007, well before Snowden had the positions he was in. I know, I was part of the Dodd internet Presidential team that worked with Klein to raise awareness of the information he brought forth. We knew we were being sold an empty bag of goods, yet we allowed it anyways. That to me is missing from a lot of the discussion. Rall touches upon it, but ignores some of what was done, such as the advocacy that delayed the passing of FISA.

Rall does a good job of giving us the facts. For those that want to learn more about what happened, and why, this is a good way to start, especially due to its ease of reading. By the time you’re done, you have just the facts, and from there you can hopefully come to your own conclusions or continuing your own investigation.

Story: Ted Rall Art: Ted Rall
Story: 8 Art: 8 Overall: 8 Recommendation: Read

Seven Stories Press provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review

SPX 2015 Announces Special Guests Derf, Jessica Abel and Ted Rall

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spx-logo-240SPX has announced Derf, Jessica Abel (Saturday only) and Ted Rall as guests at SPX 2015. This is in addition to the previously announced guests Kate Beaton, Luke Pearson, Noelle Stevenson, Michael DeForge, Gemma Correll, Noah Van Sciver, Matt Bors, Lilli Carré, Theo Ellsworth, C. Spike Trotman, Jennifer Hayden, Stuart Immonen, Scott McCloud, Bill Griffith and Kathryn Immonen.

SPX 2015 takes place on Saturday and Sunday, September 19-20, and will have over 650 creators, 280 exhibitor tables and 22 programming slots to entertain, enlighten and introduce attendees to the amazing world of independent and small press comics.

Making its debut at SPX will be the latest autobiographical graphic novel by Derf, Trashed from Abrams Books. Derf’s squiggly, wonderfully exaggerated cartoon style is used to tell the story of what it was like to be a twenty-something garbage man, replete with all the losers and idiosyncratic townsfolk he had to deal with while collecting the trash. His previous graphic novel My Friend Dahmer won the Prix Révélation at Angoulême in 2014, and was listed as one of Time Magazine’s Top 5 Non-Fiction books of 2012. Derf’s long running alt-weekly strip, The City, which he ended in 2014 after 25 years, led him to win the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award.

Merging the worlds of comics and verbal podcasts/radio, Jessica Abel interviewed the creators of such shows as This American Life, Radiolab and Snap Judgement, for her latest book, Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio from Broadway Books. The book uses the visual world of comics to uncover the narrative techniques now being used by the best journalists and storytellers in the world of podcasts and radio. Ms. Abel is a long time teacher of comics, having written two well-known and often used books on the subject, Mastering Comics and Drawing Words & Pictures. Her graphic novel, La Perdida, won two Harvey Awards and was Comic of the Year at Time Magazine. Ms. Abel will only be at SPX on Saturday, September 19th.

An enfant terrible of the political cartoon world, Ted Rall’s latest work is appropriately about the enfant terrible of the surveillance world, Eric Snowden, who was interviewed extensively for this book. In his latest graphic novel, Snowden from Seven Stories Press, he talks about how Snowden and other whistleblowers revealed the full extent and impact of the surveillance being performed by the NSA and other government agencies. Mr. Rall is a long time political cartoonist, comic’s journalist and writer, having won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and the James Aronson Award for Social Justice, as well as being a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Editorial Cartooning.

Small Press Expo (SPX) is the preeminent showcase for the exhibition of independent comics, graphic novels, and alternative political cartoons. SPX is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit that brings together more than 650 artists and publishers to meet their readers, booksellers, and distributors each year. Graphic novels, mini comics, and alternative comics will all be on display and for sale by their authors and illustrators. The expo includes a series of panel discussions and interviews with this year’s guests.

The Ignatz Award is a festival prize held every year at SPX recognizing outstanding achievement in comics and cartooning, with the winners chosen by attendees at the show.

As in previous years, profits from the SPX will go to support the SPX Graphic Novel Gift Program, which funds graphic novel purchases for public and academic libraries, as well as the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF), which protects the First Amendment rights of comic book readers and professionals.

Tales From the Crypt of Democracy by New York Times-bestselling authors Greg Palast and Ted Rall

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Greg Palast‘s forthcoming book, Billionaires and Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps is due in stores September 18. And we’ve got a first look at Ted Rall‘s Tales from the Crypt of Democracy a 48-page piece of comics journalism contained within.

Rall’s comic, based on journalism by Palast, marks the second major collaboration between the pair, the first being 2008’s Steal Back Your Vote, written by Palast, Rall and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and featuring art by Rall, Lukas Ketner and Lloyd Dangle. Like that comic, which was published by Top Shelf Productions and distributed by The Nation, this new comic gives voters ideas to reclaim their right to vote if they’re being challenged or have been removed from the rolls by shady political operatives that have loyalty to a particular party rather than American democracy.

A close presidential election in November could well come down to contested states or even districts–an election decided by vote theft? It could happen this year. Based on Greg Palast and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s investigative reporting for Rolling Stone and BBC television, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps might be the most important book published this year–one that could save the election.

Billionaires & Ballot Bandits names the filthy-rich sugar-daddies who are super-funding the Super-PACs of both parties–billionaires with nicknames like “The Ice Man,” “The Vulture” and, of course, The Brothers Koch. Told with Palast’s no-holds-barred, reporter-on-the-beat style, the facts as he lays them out are staggering. What emerges in Billionaires & Ballot Bandits is the never-before-told-story of the epic battle being fought behind the scenes between the old money banking sector that still supports Obama, and the new hedge fund billionaires like Paul Singer who not only support Romney but also are among his key economic advisors. Although it has not been reported, Obama has shown some backbone in standing up to the financial excesses of the men behind Romney. Billionaires & Ballot Bandits exposes the previously unreported details on how operatives plan to use the hundreds of millions in Super-PAC money pouring into this election. We know the money is pouring in, but Palast shows us the convoluted ways the money will be used to suppress your vote.

The story of the billionaires and why they want to buy an election is matched with the nine ways they can steal the election. His story of the sophisticated new trickery will pick up on Palast’s giant New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.

NBM – Come see us in San Diego!

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Official Press Release

NBM

We’ll be having Mark Badger and Gerard Jones in to launch Networked: Carabella on the Run hot off the press, Ted Rall, Richard Moore (Boneyard), Rick Geary, and Sean Michael Wilson signing an ashcan of his forthcoming Story of Lee and note he’s got a new book out with Top Shelf just now “AX: Alternative Manga.”

NBM author appearance schedule
day 10:30-noon 1-2:30 2:30-4 4-5:30 5:30-7 7-8:30 (wed)
Wednesday Rall
Thursday Moore Wilson; Rall Geary;Jones Moore
Friday Moore Badger/Jones Wilson; Geary Rall; Moore Badger/Jones
Saturday Badger/Jones Wilson Rall; Moore Badger/Jones Moore; Geary
Sunday Rall Badger/Jones

Come meet our authors at booth 1528, say Hi and get books signed!

And also, if you see Papa Smurf running around, that’s from our sister co. Papercutz’ booth 2046 promoting their launch of the Smurfs comics!

See ya there.