Posted in: Comics | Tagged: about comics, bernie mireault, diamond, nat gertler, scott shaw

Nat Gertler Brings About Comics Back to Diamond Comic Distributors

Nat Gertler's About Comics is returning to the Direct Market distribution system courtesy of Diamond, with Scott Shaw and Bernie Mireault.

Nat Gertler is a comic book-and-related hero, an Eisner Award-winning comics history writer, putting work back into print that had been unduly forgotten, missed out from the canon or in urgent need of archiving. From religious-themed cartoons to superhero comic The Factor, from Stephen Weiner's analysis of Jeff Smith's Bone, to a facsimile of The Green Book, his work as About Comics is always worthy of note. But it is generally sold direct to the customer, or direct to interested bookstores.

But now, About Comics is returning to the Direct Market distribution system courtesy of Diamond Comic Distributors, for the first time in over a decade. Turns out that when a distributor loses a chunk of Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse and IDW, all sorts of things are possible. And so, for About Comics' 25th anniversary, Nat Gertler says that;

 "We're doing something that is quite normal for the typical comics publisher: we're putting books through Direct Market distribution channels. Over a decade since we last solicited a book through Diamond Comics Distributors, we now have not one but two books in the just-released November 2023 issue of Previews — The Jam: Urban Adventure Vol. 1 Beginnings and Scott Shaw!s Comix & Stories.

"We left Diamond originally because we were scrambling with many releases to get enough orders to reach their minimums, and that kept us from focusing on what we most wanted to do. By switching to a print-on-demand-driven publishing model, we were able to put out a lot more titles — some of which did well, others did not, but the net effect that we became both more creative and more profitable as a publisher. A few months ago, someone at Diamond noticed some of our recent output and thought that it really should be made available to comic shops, and of course, yes! Are we going to offer everything through Diamond? Well, no, there just wouldn't be enough interest in, say, some of our reprints of nun cartoon booklets of the 1950s for it to make sense.

"Scott Shaw!s Comix & Stories is a whomping thick collection of the creator-owned work by the great Scott Shaw, including not only hundreds of pages of his underground, funny animal, and autobiographical comics, but a ton of art pieces from posters, coloring books, t-shirt designs,  animation pitches, and more. Most of it is Scott by his lonesome, other pieces are his collaborations with such folks as Mark Evanier and even Dave Stevens. 336 pages, thirty bucks, Diamond catalog number NOV231072.

"The Jam: Urban Adventure Vol 1: Beginnings collects for the first time the original storyline of Bernie Mireault's The Jam: Urban Adventure, the alt-superhero series acclaimed in the 1980s. Gordon Kirby is one laid back individual… but when duty (or boredom) calls, he dons his homebrew hero outfit and patrols the streets and rooftops of Montreal as The Jammer! Mireault himself remastered and enhanced the work for this first-even Jam TPB. Paperback, 168 pages, twenty bucks US, Diamond catalog number NOV231073.

"We already have several more existing titles and upoming releases that we will be offering through Diamond in the months to come. Be sure to tell your local comic shop that you want them!"

THE JAM URBAN ADVENTURE TP VOL 01 BEGINNINGS
ABOUT COMICS
NOV231073
(W) Bernie Mireault (A/CA) Bernie Mireault
Gordon Kirby is one laid back individual… but when duty (or boredom) calls, he dons his homebrew hero outfit and patrols the streets and rooftops of Montreal as The Jammer! Collected here for the first time is the original five-issue storyline of Bernie Mireault's cult favorite alt hero series The Jam: Urban Adventure, newly remastered and enhanced by Mireault himself. As an added bonus, the book leads off with a series of shorter pieces that appeared in New Triumph Featuring Northguard and The Jam Special.In Shops: Jan 31, 2024
SRP: $20.00

SCOTT SHAWS COMIX & STORIES ABOUT FANDOM & COMIC INDUSTRY (C
ABOUT COMICS
NOV231072
(W) Scott Shaw (A/CA) Scott Shaw
For over fifty years, Scott Shaw! has been writing and drawing allegedly funny stuff for mainstream comics sold on spinner racks (including Sonic the Hedgehog, Captain Carrot, and The Simpsons), underground comix sold in head shops -and almost everything in between. Finally, here's the first collection starring the award-winning cartoonist's most notorious characters (including Scott himself!), with over 200 pages of offbeat stories, plus surprises and silliness from the depths of his archives!In Shops: Jan 24, 2024
SRP: $30.00

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