  Hello everyone! Sean here with a metric ton of updates for you. First and most immediate news, our presale/Kickstarter for TIHKU, our cutting-edge anthology of Finnish-language cartoonists, is live NOW! The book has already arrived domestically (it was printed in Spain) and is now on the way to the Diamond warehouse and Living the Line HQ via freight. We’ll be doing a brief ten-day campaign to presell this 104-page book of exotic, wildly-inventive comics, and we hope you’ll be the first to pick up your copy!  Here comes the UFO MUSHROOM INVASIONSecondly, those of you who have been following us on Instagram have no doubt seen the news that we’ve announced the second in the new line of SMUDGE, the historic genre manga line curated and translated by award-winning scholar Ryan Holmberg. This second book is called UFO Mushroom Invasion, and it’s a doozy!  Deep in the mountains of Japan, a flying saucer smashes into the earth. Fearful of the strange and hyper-intelligent beings they find inside, the government hides from the public all news of the alien craft. But it’s not the aliens themselves that they should be afraid of-the real danger is the parasitic spores they brought with them! Will earth survive the UFO MUSHROOM INVASION?! Originally published in 1976, Shirakawa Marina’s UFO MUSHROOM INVASION is unanimously considered a masterpiece of Japanese sci-fi horror. Pulling on his deep knowledge of Japanese ghost stories and folklore, Shirakawa serves up one of Japanese comics’ cult classics and an unforgettably creepy entry in the canon of spore-horror. UFO MUSHROOM INVASION is the second volume of SMUDGE, a line of classic pulp, horror, and dark fantasy manga, curated and translated into English by award-winning historian Ryan Holmberg.Shirakawa is a remarkable author whose classic art and unique perspective make his rediscovery inevitable. We couldn’t be more pleased to be bringing him to English language audiences.Although this is only our second book in the Smudge line, UFO Mushroom Invasion makes it clear that we are taking our mission statement seriously, to bring previously-unknown genre classics to the English language market, key books and authors that have been virtually unknown outside of enthusiastic collectors mostly within Japan.  Not to mention the books currently at the printers…We currently have two books in production at one of our international printers. Her Frankenstein (Kawashima Norikazu) and Moonray Book Two (Brandon Graham and Xurxo G Penalta) have both been delivered and are currently awaiting final file approval. We should have more news on both books soon… Charles Dana Gibson Definitive Collection Coming! Ozzy the Production Assistant is on the caseLastly, please say hello to our new production assistant and designer @dekuman_crybaby_ Ozzy, who is at this moment working on our upcoming release by legendary American cartoonist Charles Dana Gibson. Pictured in the foreground — a dissected first edition of The Education of Mr. Pipp, Gibson’s socio-comic graphic novel masterpiece. We’re hopeful that this first volume in our definitive Gibson collection will arrive at the tail end of the year.Thanks for reading everyone! Be sure to follow us on Instagram for more content than you can shake a stick at. |
