Poetry Girls

As we worked on our latest book, “How to Talk to Girls at Parties”, adapted from the Neil Gaiman short story, we referred to the story with our editor Diana as “Poetry Girls”. It was a reference to one of the best ideas of the original story, probably the one that motivated us to adapt it – besides the obvious chance to work on a Neil Gaiman story.
I see poetry girls everywhere. I see them in the streets, in movies, inside the pages of books, I hear them in songs and click on them accidentally on the internet.

The picture above is the best poetry girl image by far. My mother and my niece, sitting at my table in a convention in Brazil next to my giant banner – the cover of our poetry girls book. Grandmother and granddaughter, looking at each other, a million stories shared in that look, with two paper crowns to add to the magic.

Those eyes

Writing for comics

Every now and then, when I have to prepare a workshop or a lecture, I go back to study my own process so I understand the choices I made and what the results from those choices were.

There's no right or wrong way to write or draw comics, but if you try to think about the process, maybe you'll discover some storytelling possibilities, or you'll find out you still have questions that might motivate and inspire you to keep pushing your work further.

Some very late and unusual commissions

I don't usually do commissions, but last year I offered to help a crowdfunding campaign to help pay for a cartoonist's medical bills, and I offered commissions as a reward. I ended up with a dozen requests, and I figured I'd do them in a month's time.

Stupid, silly me.

Almost a year later, I have finally done them all.

I'm glad I could help in some way, and I'm thankful to those to contributed, but now it's back to the pages, and to the stories, where my passion really lies.

Wonder Woman

This week, this 75th anniversary special issue of Wonder Woman was published, with several stories from many artists to celebrate one of the most longstanding characters in comics. I have a story in it. This is the first time I write and draw a story for DC, and one of the main reasons I accepted the invitation was a chance to work on Wonder Woman, a character who I think is still as symbolic and relevant when it was created as she is now.

Another reason why I did the story was a conversation I had with Frank Miller a week before I received the invitation, but that's another story.

I made this sketch as I was creating the story, to see it was was going to be able to pull this off. You'll find out the result inside the issue. I hope you like it.

SaveSave

CHINA!

There're no words to describe the thrill of having your book published in China. Or maybe there is, but it's in Chinese.




That's the beauty of telling stories. There's no limit where they can go.

谢谢

Rose City Comic Con 2016

We’re going to Portland for the Rose City Comic Con. We’ll have a table in the Artists Alley so all of you can find us really easy, and we’ll have signings and panels.

Our tables in the Artists Alley are Q13-14. We’re really close to Matt Fraction and Kelly Sue and most of the Milkfed crew.
Here’s our schedule:

Saturday, September 10th

- CASANOVA -- The First 10 Years!
Room: Panel Room 3
Time: 1:00PM - 1:50PM

Take a backward glance at the future of comics with this panel celebrating the ten-year anniversary of CASANOVA ⎯ the most genre-bending, dimension-jumping, time-traveling, postmodern-head-spinning comic book of the 21st century! With writer Matt Fraction and artists Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon. Moderated by Professor Ben Saunders.

- Signing at the Dark Horse booth #1011, from 3PM to 4PM

- MILKFED LOUNGE PARTY
Room: Panel Room 9
Time: 7:30PM - 10:00PM

After the crowds disperse, join Team Milkfed for a mixer of music, nosh and art demos! Bonus points for Milkfed cosplay! In addition to Milkfed mainstays Kelly Sue DeConnick and Matt Fraction, get your nerd on with Gabriel Bá & Fábio Moon, Christian Ward, Valentine De Landro, Kelly Fitzpatrick, and more!

Sunday, September 11th

- Artists Who Write: On the Craft and Creation of Comics
Room: Panel Room 4
Time: 12:30PM - 1:20PM

Whether it’s an underwater murder mystery or a retelling of past histories, there’s a lot of thought put into the sequential art that drives stories told in comics. Join the industry’s best artists Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá (Two Brothers), Matt Kindt (Dept H, Ether), Patric Reynolds (Joe Golem), Kel McDonald (Buffy: The High School Years), Jonathan Case (Dear Creature) and Mike Oeming (Aleister & Adolf) as they discuss turning an idea into a full-fledged story—and how they continue to keep their writing fresh.

- A Spotlight on Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon
Room: Panel Room 8
Time: 2:30PM - 3:20PM

We’ve seen siblings in comics before, but these artist twins have taken their success and art to another level. With titles such as Casanova, Daytripper, Umbrella Academy, and more under their belt, a lot can be learned here about collaboration and technique.

The rest of the time, find us at our table, or occasionally walking around the convention. We’re shy, so we’ll be looking at the world in a suspicious way, but we don’t bite, so don’t be afraid get closer.

TWO BROTHERS - Harvey Award Winner!

We're incredibly happy that our book TWO BROTHERS won a Harvey Award for "Best American Edition of Foreign Material".

Thanks a lot for everyone who keeps supporting our work.

TWO BROTHERS at the Eisner Awards

We still have a hard time believing it, but it did happen. And we have it on video now.


Thanks to all of you.

SDCC 2016 - Thank you, Darwyn.

We publish comics in the U.S. since 1999, first work with a publisher was in 2003 things started to hit off only in 2006, but we still live in Brazil and that keeps us distant from the market. The upside is that we don't get influence by trends, imediata statistics or business gossip. We do our work isolated in the safety of our studio. The downside is that we don't have direct contact with the readers and retailers. We throw our books into the ocean hoping they'll find the reader. Throughout all these years, San Diego Comic Con International has been the moment we have to connect with the market, the editors, artists and readers. We've been going since 1997, and this trip serves to recharge our batteries and fuel another year of production.
The convention has changed a lot since we started going, but it's still a unique experience and the best portrait of the North American market in every sphere, from the indy artists with their first mini-comic, to the Small Press area filled with tiny publishers you've never heard of, to alternative oasis like Drawn & Quarterly and Fantagraphics, going through book publishers having their go on comics like Penguin and Scholastic and First Second, finally getting to Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Image, as well as "younger" companies like IDW or Boom Studios. Besides, there're many artists and writers scattered around on tables, signing sessions and panels. Yes, Hollywood has taken a gigantic space on the Con – physical space as much as the attention of the media and the public –, but if you're going there for the comics, you're still gonna have the best experience of your life.



We shared tables on small press area and booths on the main floor for years, but since 2012 we don't have a table anymore, a place to stay for the whole day selling our books. This year we had one signing every day and a couple of panels, giving us all the time in the world to walk around, enjoy the show and rest. We miss the close contact with the readers that having a table allowed us, but it was great to do things calmly and really enjoy our days. With such a big demand and a 7 years waiting list, I'd say it's rather unlikely we'll have a table in SDCC again.
But our signing sessions were awesome, full of old and new readers, known faces, people who we connect only by social media, who comment, share and like the smoke signals we send throughout the year, from afar. During these moments of brief interaction, we could have a glimpse of the the readers' reaction about TWO BROTHERS, released last October, and also about our new book, HOW TO TALK TO GIRLS AT PARTIES, released last month. With two recent books, readers had a lot to talk about.
Between parties and dinners, one of the highlights of SDCC is the Eisner Awards Ceremony Friday night. Long and boring like any other award ceremony, the Eisner is, however, a moment to stop and celebrate Comics, the creators and the work. We're ALL isolated in our studios, separated by miles, continents and oceans, but right there we're all together, with all our attention on the art. Throughout the night you'll discover works you didn't know, see some comics that had not caught your attention earlier with new and fresh eyes, and get to know a little closer artists whose work you appreciate for years. Over the weekend, you can walk the convention floor looking for the winners. All of them will be there, waiting for you.
Once more, we were.






Over the course of twenty years, we met a lot of people in Comics. We've seen our idols become our friends and some of our friends turning into professionals. SDCC is also a big reunion, a big party.
This year's edition was one of the best SDCC for us, for all the reasons described above, but specially for bringing a deeper feeling of recognition. We're always trying new things, every new project is different from the last, and every year we meet new artists and new works that inspire us and push us to keep innovating and believing there's still a lot to be done in Comics. One of these artists, whom we've met personally in 2008, was Darwyn Cooke. He showed us with his “Parker” series that it was possible to make an good adaptation, keeping his own voice while doing it and blowing the readers' minds. This was the work that convinced us it was possible to adapt Two Brothers. He showed us (and everybody else) an adaptation can be relevant, feel original and look amazing. Throughout the years, his work would guide us, and I hope to have achieved just a bit of the prime he's presented us.
Last Friday, in the heat of the moment and nervous as hell, while thanking everyone who helped us making Two Brothers a reality, I forgot the most obvious and important person of all. Without Darwyn Cooke, our book wouldn't exist. The Eisner we won is dedicated to him.
 

TWO BROTHERS got the EISNER AWARD!

After all these years, the excitement of having a new idea remains the same, the thrill of finishing a story remains the same, the happiness of being nominated for an award remains the same, the nerve-wracking rollercoaster ride during the award ceremony remains the same, and winning the award remains as unbelievably amazing as ever.

TWO BROTHERS is a very special project, an amazing story we had the honor of working on and we had the chance to introduce to new readers. This book deserves all the attention it may get and this award fills our hearts with joy.



Thanks for all who’ve read it and got us this far. E if you haven’t read it yet, get it on your local comic book store or book store, or buy it online, and after you read it, go look for the original novel that originated this work. Do yourself this favor.

SDCC 2016, here we go again.

Ten years ago, our career in comics started to really happen. By that time, we had just published the first issue of Casanova and released our Eisner nominated anthology, De:TALES. In 2006, we were very excited about all the wonderful possibilities awaiting us, and we made the video below to celebrate it. (the audio is in Portuguese).




Ten years have passed and here we go again, crossing the ocean to attend San Diego Comic Con International, the 5-days-long-pop-culture-craziness that celebrates comics, at least for those who really care and keep going back for it. If you’re going to SDCC for the first time, you may be overwhelmed by the whole Hollywood circus and all the bullshit that takes over the entire Gaslamp District, but if you cross the herds of movie fans standing in endless lines all day and get inside the convention floor, the comics are still in there, and the creators are still in there, just waiting for their fans. We certainly go just to see our friends and meet the fans.

We don’t have a table anywhere, but we’ll have signings and will be on panels, so if you want to find us, here’s our week-long schedule:

THURSDAY, JULY 21th

4pm - Signing at Dark Horse booth (#2615) - Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá

FRIDAY, JULY 22nd

2pm - Signing at Dark Horse booth (#2615) - Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá (ticket event)

3pm - Dark Horse Originals panel (room 7AB) - Dave McKean, Fábio Moon, Gabriel Bá, Peter Hogan, Cullen Bunn and Jonathan Case. How cool is it to be on a panel with Dave McKean?

8pm - Eisner Awards (Indigo Ballroom at the Hilton Bayfront)

SATURDAY, JUY 23rd

12pm - Signing at Dark Horse booth (#2615) - Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá

3pm - Signing at CBLDF booth (#1918) - Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá

SUNDAY, JULY 24th

11am - “CHANGING THE READER, ONE WORLD AT A TIME” panel (room 28DE). Let’s celebrate the power of comics and talk about how the use of images and words together to tell stories leave a unique and incredibly powerful effect on the readers. Find out which stories changed our lives and how we plan to keep changing the world with Comics.

3pm - Signing at CBLDF booth (#1918) - Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá

Stay tuned in our social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc...), for updates on our schedule and activities.

We hope to see you all in San Diego, sign your comics and talk about our love for stories.

Harvey Awards Nomination

Today they announced the nominees for the Harvey Awards and TWO BROTHERS has been nominated on two categories: "Best Graphic Album Original" and "Best American Publication of Foreign Material".

You will find the complete list of nominees here. Lots of great names in there.


The Harvey Awards ceremony takes place on September 3rd, at the Baltimore Comic-Con.

Heroes Con is up ahead.

We’re at the airport in Newark, waiting for our flight to Charlotte. Our first flight from São Paulo was long, and I haven’t slept enough, and we’re about to board another flight for a little while. Still, I couldn’t be more excited for what the rest of the week and next week hold in store for us: a chance to celebrate a long project, and a chance to celebrate a brand new one, and how both of them are just part of this incredible career that we chose and that keeps sending us across the globe.

There’s a convention happening in São Paulo this weekend, and we would probably be going there if we weren’t going to our first Heroes Con, in Charlotte. We have been hearing a lot of good things, and a lot of great things, about Heroes Con, and finally we’re making it to the show. It’s strange to discover this convention exists for years, for there was a long time that for us, who come from Brazil, the only convention in the U.S. was the San Diego Comic Con. Maybe there were others, we thought, but surely they’re very small and unimportant. We discovered that there are much more conventions in the U.S., there’s really a “convention season” when you have at least one convention every weekend, and most of them are not “unimportant”, with a few being even more exciting than San Diego in some aspects.

Casanova celebrates 10 years, and we’ll have a exhibition of artists we admire taking a shot at our characters in the kick-off party of Heroes Con, on June 16th.

We’ll have exclusive copies of our new book, adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s HOW TO TALK TO GIRLS AT PARTIES, at our table (artists alley #1815-1816).

We’ll have original artwork at the table as well, from a selection of the stories we have drawn over the years.

And then there will be all the people, and the places, and the foods, and the stories that we expect to discover this week in Charlotte as we catch up with old friends and make new ones.

The forbidden signing, not so forbidden

Our new book, an adaptation of Neil Gaiman's How to Talk to Girls at Parties, comes out on June 22nd, and we'll be in the States for the occasion. The week before, we'll have exclusive copies for Heroes Con, in Charlotte, but on the official release day of the book, we'll be in New York City, and we couldn't let this opportunity to interact with new yorkers pass us by, so we reached out and arranged a special signing to celebrate the release of the book.

The Forbidden Planet comic book store in NYC was the very first comic book store I went to, when we were young teenagers, around the age the main characters of the new book are, and by then we certainly didn't quite know how to talk to girls anywhere, let alone at parties.

When I was living in New York, going to NYU and studying film in the summer of 1999, Forbidden Planet was my local comic book store. I wondered if someday I would be back there to sign my own books.

"Of course you will", I'd tell myself.

"One day".
SaveSave

Casanova is back!

Casanova is back. As 2016 marks our tenth anniversary working on our crazy super interdimentional spy adventures, we decided to put a little extra effort in this year's issues. The storyline continues as dense and unpredictable as always, but we decided to go back on memory lane and dig some hidden treasures.

Our newest issue has a special variant cover the reproduces the original drawing used as the cover of the very first Casanova comic. It's our mix of "artist's edition" with "coloring book", which I hope gives a chance for the reader to see what our originals look like.

Inside the comic, past the regular or special variant cover, past the main storyline and before Bá and Chabon Metanauts back-up, you'll also find two pin-ups by artists we admire who helped us celebrate that the first issue of Casanova also came out in June, 10 years ago: Rafael Albuquerque and Eduardo Medeiros. I hope you like their version of some of our characters.

In two weeks, we'll go to Charlotte to be guests at our first convention of the year, Heroes Con, and we'll continue the Casanova Celebration there. I'll post more details as we get closer.

Let us know what you thought of the newest issue, and get ready for more.

Back to the drawing board for me.

Casanova celebrates 10 years

CASANOVA returns in June, celebrating 10 years since its first publication.
CASANOVA: ACEDIA #5 Cover A (Diamond Code APR160677) and Cover B (Diamond Code MAR168905) hit stores on Wednesday, June 1.

The Final Order Cutoff deadline for retailers is Monday, May 9.

(See more at: https://imagecomics.com/content/view/casanova-acedia-celebrates-ten-years)

Eisner Nomination!

They have just announced the 2016 Eisner Award Nominees and we're extremely glad that TWO BROTHERS has been nominated for "Best Adaptation from Another Medium".

And congrats to all the nominees! What a great year for comics.

NCS Rueben Award nomination

I'm really thrilled and honoured to have been nominated for a NCS Reuben Award, on the Graphic Novels division (or category), for my work on TWO BROTHERS.

The winners will be announced on May 28th at the annual NCS Reuben Awards dinner in Memphis, Tennessee.

Coming back from the dream world

I’ve been having some interesting dreams. A lot of cliffs and sea shores, a lot of dark and mysterious parking lots, and a lot of strange and exotic hotels. In these dreams, I’ve met people I know in real life, people I don’t ( or even can’t in case they’re dead) and a lot of imaginary characters from my imagination, and some from others. It’s nice to meet a character from a book you read in your dreams, and it’s fascinating to see two actresses swimming on the still waters of the sea shore, by some cool looking rocks, discussing how they never thought they would act together, playing the same character in two different ages.

There was a seductive quality to the fabric of these dreams of late, and it left me wondering how to replicate such fabric in a comic book. Maybe it’s the mix of raw honesty you find in dreams, when people say what you think and know how you feel, and the surreal quality of this imaginary world.

How to talk to girls in JUNE, 2016

You can already order our Graphic Novel "HOW TO TALK TO GIRLS AT PARTIES" HC, adaptation of the short story by Neil Gaiman.
It comes out in June 15th, 2016, by Dark Horse Comics.
Item Code: FEB160019In Shops: 6/15/2016SRP: $17.99

====
Two teenage boys are in for a tremendous shock when they crash a party where the girls are far more than they appear! 

From Neil Gaiman-one of the most celebrated authors of our time-and award-winning artists Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá, this sumptuous graphic novel is not to be missed! 

• Moon and Bá adapt the Gaiman story they were born to draw!

"Gaiman, Moon, and Bá have created a triolet of a book, lyrically powerful and utterly unforgettable."

-Junot Díaz

"How can something so strange and so beautiful also be so sad? Like a poem, a pattern, and a people whose world was swallowed by the sea, How To Talk To Girls at Parties is three things at once." 

- Kelly Sue DeConnick

"Had sneak peek at How to Talk to Girls at Parties. What boys fear! That girls are very smart aliens who will do frightful things to you in The Upper Room! Teenage angst. Lovely drawing/painting." 
-from a Tweet by Margaret Atwood

"A haunting ode to the lyric of girls, who for our protagonists represent a vast, uncharted universe. An extraordinary comic from three extraordinary creators."

- Marjorie Liu

"Gentle, strange, and full of perfectly good advice ('You just have to talk to them!'), How to Talk to Girls at Parties is wise and odd. Neil Gaiman's writing is sweetly complemented by Fábio Moon & Gabriel Bá's art. It's a quirky delight."

-Audrey Niffenegger

http://www.previewsworld.com/Catalog/STL001158