JasterBull wrote:But so far one comic shop by me is great the other the guy has the personalty of a wet towel. So ofcurse I shop at the other one.

Villard to Publish American Widow
Random House editor Chris Schluep has acquired American Widow, a graphic memoir by A.R. Torres that tells the story of her husband's life and subsequent death in the collapse of the World Trade Center towers during the 9/11 attacks. Artist Sungyoon Choi will illustrate the book.

Agent Judy Hansen negotiated the deal. Random House's Villard imprint will publish the book in the fall of 2008. Schluep is a Ballantine Books editor. Outside of the Pantheon graphic novel program, Villard, a part of Ballantine Books, has become the publishing destination for nonmanga original graphic novels at Random House.

"It's sad, alienated and very funny," Schluepdescribed the book. "It's the story of a normal person having an abnormal experience." He said American Widow is the story of Torres's relationship with her husband, a financial analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald, who started out as an illegal immigrant working in New York's garment district and worked his way up the American ladder of achievement. But it also turned out that his first day on the job at the World Trade Centerwas September 10, 2001. Torres was pregnant at the time of her husband's death.

Schluep has also acquired and worked on comics works by Harvey Pekar, and Kazu Kibuishi's Flight anthologies, also published by Random House. The illustrator for American Widow, known professionally as Choi, is a graduate of the School of Visual Arts in New York City and has produced short comics as well as illustrations for the New York Times.

The deal is for one book, but Schleup said, "We're talking about more. You're not going to make a lot of money on graphic novels, so you better be passionate about the medium." He called comics works "a new kind of book. People are discovering the medium, and manga has done so well here, it has given us a cushion to do other things."

In a telephone interview, A.R. Torres told PWCW that she considers herself "a stay-at-home mom" with her now TK-year-old son/daughter and a "personal essayist and writer." While she has read comics since she was a kid, she said she has "minimal experience" creating graphic novels, but her experience as a 9/11 widow drew her to the comics medium.

"It just seemed like the event was so graphic, the images of the towers collapsing, the images of my husband," she said. "It just seemed to be appropriate to use a graphic format. It seems even more right as we work on the book."

Torres said the book is the story of "my relationship to my husband and a historical telling of the story of a 9/11 victim's family. It's also a book about grief, what you go through when you lose someone extraordinary like my husband." Torres said her husband was from Colombia, originally an illegal immigrant working in New York City sweatshops. "Even his New York Times obituary called him 'A man of achievement,' " said Torres. "He achieved the old-fashioned American dream. He was a very smart man who was very lucky and then turned out to be very unlucky."

Torres said she wrote the script for the book and conceptualized the layout of the pages working with the artist. "I have a background in literature and film theory, and I seem to have a visual eye," she said. She also credited comics artists and New York Times illustrator David Chelsea with helping her very early in the project.

"I love working in the graphic novel form," said Torres. "It's fun and engaging, and people really connect to visual texts. People are beginning to realize just how important this medium is."