Goodreads has eliminated its graphic novel category for Best of the Year. The Goon is returning for its 25th anniversary. Drawn & Quarterly is unionizing. All on Comic Book Club News for November 17, 2023.
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Episode Transcript:
Goodreads eliminates graphic novel category.
The Goon returns.
Drawn & Quarterly is unionizing.
This is Comic Book Club News for November 17, 2023.
Goodreads Eliminates Graphic Novel Category In Best Of The Year:
Every year, Goodreads, the social platform for rating and reviewing books, has a public vote for their best of the year. Only this year, those categories won’t include graphic novels.
As announced earlier this week, Goodreads is cycling out several categories: Children’s & Middle Grade, Poetry, and Graphic Novels. In their place, the site will introduce a new category, Romantasy, which in case it isn’t clear is a made-up portmanteau of romance and fantasy. Goodreads will continue to have categories for both Romance and Fantasy, by the way.
Why this change? Unclear, though the culprit is rumored to be not enough nominees in the removed categories, which sounds a little… Insane? To put it lightly.
While the Goodreads Best of the Year isn’t the be-all, end-all of lists, the site is a major driver in raising awareness around books in general. And I will say personally as a user of Goodreads, I always add any graphic novels I haven’t read over the course of the year to my “want to read” list on the site. So this is a net negative for me, personally.
And before we move on, it is perhaps of note that Goodreads is owned by Amazon, who also earlier this week eliminated the Comixology app and replaced it with Kindle. While we’d caution not to look into the two as related events or an outright attack on comics by Jeff Bezos, it does point to a general lack of respect for the art form from the company. As for the lack of Goodreads list, we’ll have to make do with the three hundred other Best Of lists that will be released over the next two months.
The Goon Returns For Its 25th Anniversary:
Eric Powell’s critically acclaimed The Goon is coming back for its 25th anniversary. Titled The Goon: Them That Don’t Stay Dead, the new series will find a new threat facing the title character.
Here’s the synopsis, per The Beat: “The return to Lonely Street hasn’t been easy for the Goon and Franky. And just as they’ve finally got the various gangs of bloodsuckers and night stalkers back in line, and they can finally relax with a nice night out bowling, a new threat appears. One that will shake the very foundations of Nameless Town. Also, Spider gets hooked on the junk. Drama!“
The new title will be published through Dark Horse Comics, a reversal from the past few years. While The Goon was released through the publisher for two decades, Powell moved the title to his own publishing line in 2019. However, for the new mini, The Goon is right back at home. The first issue arrives in stores on March 20, 2024.
Drawn & Quarterly Is Unionizing:
Workers at Drawn & Quarterly, the Canadian publisher best known for putting out the works of Lynda Barry, Kate Beaton, Daniel Clowes, Chris Ware, and many more have voted to unionize. This marks the third comic book publisher to form a union after Image Comics, and Seven Seas Publishing.
As reported by Popverse, the union was formed under a lot of French words that I’m not going to mangle here, but trust me when I say they sound very official.
Said an anonymous Drawn & Quarterly employee: “While there are lots of opportunities to take on more responsibilities and learn more skills in the publishing office, there are rarely paths to promotion for assistants. It’s hard to see or commit to a future if there are not transparent conversations about what all our learning and acquired skills might lead to. This is a concern for us in the office as well as for our colleagues in the stores. We need to be able to see futures for ourselves at D&Q, and to do that, we need salaries that sustain us and benefits that support us to continue to show up for our coworkers and authors.”
Good luck to the new union. And is a wider-scale effort to unionize comic book workers that far off? More on that as it develops.
For Comic Book Club News, I’m Alex Zalben. And technically, this podcast falls under the category of Romantasy. I’ll let you figure out why.
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