Coming Soon from SelfMadeHero: Polka Dots, Bowie, Butterflies, and “The Compleat Angler”

How has January found you? Cold and reluctant? Understandable. But now it’s time for the reassurance you surely need most: the Spring 2025 list from SelfMadeHero, where the publisher follows polka dot fashions, David Bowie’s Berlin years, and angling during the English Civil War…

Please note, all links to books following are AmazonUK Affiliate Links

APRIL RELEASES

KUSAMA: POLKA DOT QUEEN
Writer/ artist: Simon Elliott
Hardback/colour/ 144pp
ISBN: 978-1914224300
Price: UK £14.99 / US $19.99 / CAN $24.99
UK publication date: 10th April (US release: 20th May)
Preorder from AmazonUK (Affiliate Link)

Following on from his previous works on David Hockney and Vincent Van Gogh, SelfMadeHero welcome Simon Elliott to their Art Masters series with Kusama: Polka Dot Queen.

From her days in 1960s New York as a proponent of free love and peace to her current position as internationally recognised Queen of Polka Dots and creator of infinity, Yayoi Kusama’s life is an extraordinary story of triumph over struggle through art.

“Elliott’s new graphic novel vividly portrays Kusama’s unusual youth and family troubles, her discovery of a new style of painting, her struggles with mental illness, and her rise to international art stardom,” say SelfMadeHero. “For those seeking an introduction to this incredible artist or searching for a fresh take on her story – this is Yayoi Kusama’s life as you’ve never seen it before.”

Simon Elliott is a criminal barrister, art obsessive and stand-up comedian. Inspired by Hockney’s message in 2021 that “spring cannot be cancelled”, Simon put his lockdown to good use by engrossing himself in all things Hockney, learning how to paint on an iPad, and creating his first graphic novel – Hockney: A Graphic Life (Frances Lincoln, 2023), which was published with Mr Hockney’s blessing. His other works include Vincent: A Graphic Biography (August 2024).

MONARCH’S JOURNEY: A STORY TO COLOR
Artist: Peter Kuper
Paperback/ 48pp
ISBN: 978-1914224294
PRICE: US $9.99/ CAN $12.99
US publication date: 29th April (No UK publication date)
Preorder from AmazonUK (Affiliate Link)

After his Eisner-winning eco drama Ruins successfully returned in paperback last year, Peter Kuper is back with Monarch’s Journey: a colour-in story about this beloved but endangered butterfly and the environmental challenges it faces on its yearly flights.

Peter Kuper‘s work appears regularly in The New Yorker, The Nation, and Mad, where he wrote and illustrated “Spy vs. Spy” for 26 years. In 1979, he cofounded World War 3 Illustrated, a political comix magazine that is still published to this day. He has produced over two dozen books, including Sticks and Stones, The System, Diario de Oaxaca, Drawn to New York, adaptations of many of Franz Kafka’s works, including The Metamorphosis and the short story collection Kafkaesque, as well as Joseph Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness. Translations of his work have appeared in Greece, Italy, France, Spain, Slovenia, China, Brazil, Poland, Sweden, Israel, Turkey, Germany, and Mexico. Peter has lectured and exhibited his work extensively throughout the world and teaches Harvard University’s first ever class dedicated to graphic novels.

In 2016, his graphic novel Ruins won the Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album. He was also the 2020-21 Jean Strouse Fellow at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center, received a 2022 Yaddo residency, and won the 2024 RFK Cartoon Award.

His graphic novel on the history of insects, and the people who study them, Insectopolis: A Natural History, will be published in June by WW Norton & Co.

MAY RELEASES

LOW: BOWIE’S BERLIN DAYS
Writer/ Artist: Reinhard Kleist
Paperback/ Colour
ISBN: 978-1914224287
Price: UK £16.99 / US $19.99 / CAN $24.99
UK publication date: 22nd May (US publication date: 8th July)
Preorder from AmazonUK (Affiliate Link)

Having explored the stardust years in Starman, the legendary Reinhard Kleist concludes his Bowie duology with Low, detailing the former Thin White Duke’s legendary time in Berlin as he searches for inspiration and records his 1977 album LOW.

In 1976, David Bowie escaped the frantic madness and substance abuse of his life in Los Angeles for the Wall of the divided city of Berlin. With his friend Iggy Pop in tow, Bowie quit drugs and created LOW, the first album of his “Berlin Trilogy”. But even here, during some of the happiest days of his life, Ziggy Stardust would not let him go…

Reinhard Kleist, born in 1970 in Hürth, Cologne, has worked and lived as an illustrator and comic book artist in Berlin since 1996. He made his international breakthrough in 2006 with the biographical comic book Johnny Cash: I See a Darkness, which was awarded the renowned Max and Moritz Prize and nominated for both the Eisner and Harvey Awards.

With The Boxer in 2013, Kleist became the first cartoonist to receive the German Youth Literature Prize. In 2017, Kleist once again tackled one of music’s great storytellers in Nick Cave: Mercy on Me, which was simultaneously released in many languages. In 2018, Kleist was honoured for his work with the Max and Moritz Prize for Best German-Language Comic Book Artist. In 2021, Kleist tackled another extraordinary boxing champion, Emile Griffith, in the Knock Out!

His critically acclaimed graphic biography of David Bowie forms two parts: Starman: Bowie’s Stardust Years (SelfMadeHero, 2023) and LOW: Bowie’s Berlin Years (SelfMadeHero, 2025).

JUNE RELEASES

THE COMPLEAT ANGLER: A GRAPHIC ADAPTATION
Original author: Isaak Walton, adapted by Gareth Brookes
Writer/ artist: Gareth Brookes
Hardback/ 160pp
ISBN: 978-1914224270
Price: UK £14.99 / US $19.99 / CAN $24.99
UK release date: 19th June (US release date: 17th June)
Preorder from AmazonUK (Affiliate Link)

In 2021 Gareth Brookes gave the world The Dancing Plague – no, not the plague itself, but a graphic novel the New York Times called “visually stunning … With fire and needle, Brookes crafts a book the likes of which we’ve never seen before.” This year Brookes returns with another mixed-media masterpiece: his graphic adaptation of Izaak Walton’s Civil War-era classic The Compleat Angler.

A foundational environmentalist text centuries ahead of its time, The Compleat Angler is one of the most reprinted books in the English language. From the ruins of the English Civil War to today, this adaptation is lovingly rendered in both linocut engraving and hand-drawn pen-and-ink to contrast the meditative and the instructional in Walton’s writing. As a guidebook on how to fish, this 350-year-old manual makes the perfect gift for any angling enthusiast, and its reflective writing connects with post-pandemic desires for calm, mindful pursuits and a return to nature.

Gareth Brookes studied printmaking at the Royal College of Art. His graphic novels include A Thousand Coloured Castles (2017) and The Black Project, which was nominated for an award at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, 2018. His work has appeared in ArtReview, been published by Kuš, and was included in the “Comics Unmasked” exhibition at the British Library in 2014. His last graphic novel, The Dancing Plague (SelfMadeHero, 2021) was hailed by The New York Times as “Visually stunning”: “With fire and needle, Brookes crafts a book the likes of which we’ve never seen before.”

Izaak Walton (1593–1683) was an English writer, best remembered today as the author of The Compleat Angler (1653). He also wrote a number of short Lives, including the first biographies of the poets George Herbert and John Donne.

SelfMadeHero is online at selfmadehero.com

Please note, all links to books featured in this item are AmazonUK Affiliate Links



Categories: British Comics - Current British Publishers, British Comics - Graphic Novels, Comic Previews, Comics, downthetubes Comics News, downthetubes News, US Comics

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Discover more from downthetubes.net

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading