Top Shelf Productions

Congratulations to Élodie Durand, whose heartfelt and harrowing graphic memoir Parenthesis has just been shortlisted for the inaugural Graphic Medicine Award from the Graphic Medicine International Collective.

This landmark story, exploring the subjective experience of living through a brain tumor, has already received many honors around the world, including the Revelation Prize, Liberation Readers’ Prize, and Poland Prize from the Angoulême International Comics Festival and inclusion in such lists as the American Library Association's Best Graphic Novels for Adults, FNAC’s Top 10 Graphic Novels About Illness, and JAMA's Top 2 Best Graphic Novels of 2021. Discover why the Guardian called it "extraordinary" and Publishers Weekly dubbed it "unforgettable" — and why Top Shelf is eager to bring you the next graphic novel from Élodie Durand next year!

A huge congratulations to Filipe Melo and Juan Cavia: their book Ballad for Sophie made the Top Ten of the American Library Association's 2021 Best Graphic Novels for Adults list! The list also features three other phenomenal Top Shelf titles: The Delicacy by James Albon, Parenthesis by Élodie Durand, and Under-Earth by Chris Gooch.

Rob Harrell's beloved book Monster on the Hill now gets the star treatment on Paramount+ as an original animated film! Launched on the streaming platform today, Rumble is set in a world where monster wrestling is a global sport and monsters are superstar athletes... but one monster needs a little bit of help to find his flow.

Top Shelf Productions and IDW Publishing are thrilled to see this underdog story reach Hollywood heights — bringing new readers to Rob's lively, tender, and hilarious graphic novel.

Perfect for monsters of every age, new and old fans will delight in the new 10-page epilogue in Monster on the Hill (Expanded Edition). Want to know how our melancholy monster Raymond went from zero to hero? Order from your local comic shop, IndieBound, Top Shelf, or wherever books are sold!

L-R: Miya Cech (Jade), Surfside Girls Book One, YaYa Gosselin (Sam), author Kim Dwinell

Top Shelf Productions and IDW Publishing are thrilled to announce that Kim Dwinell's Surfside Girls will stream as a 10-episode, live-action kids and family series on Apple TV+, starring Miya Cech as Jade and YaYa Gosselin as Sam.

Produced for Apple TV+ by Endeavor Content and IDW Entertainment, "Surfside Girls" will be written and executive produced by May Chan ("An American Girl Story: Ivy & Julie 1976," "Avatar: the Last Airbender"), who also serves as showrunner. Alex Diaz and Julie Sagalowsky Diaz ("The Shannara Chronicles," "What's Up Warthogs!") serve as writers and executive producers alongside Chan. America Young ("Roswell, New Mexico," "Legacies") will direct and executive produce the first two episodes. Paul Stupin and Lydia Antonini ("Locke & Key," "Halo Forward Unto Dawn," "October Faction") will also serve as executive producers on the series. Paul Davidson and Jeff Brustrom will serve as executive producers on behalf of IDW.

Check out the exclusive on Deadline to learn more.

Celebrate by picking up Kim's brand-new book, The Science of Surfing: A Surfside Girls Guide to the Ocean, hot off the press this week!

In their second amazing graphic novel, these Cuban American kids are getting even better at using their powers to protect the community... but has their luck just run out?

When an evil curse descends upon the city of Martí, it’s up to Red Panda and Moon Bear to put a stop to it... but it won’t be easy! First, they’ll have to solve weird mysteries, fend off new monsters, and uncover the secret history of their neighborhood. With their trusty dog companions and some magical new friends by their side, Red Panda and Moon Bear must find a way to defeat Mal de Ojo — The Evil Eye — and keep it from ruining the lives of everyone they love!

"A burning bush of a novel full of earthy wonder and wisdom, Voice of the Fire is a head-spinning trip down time’s sacred whirlpool." — The Village Voice

Returning in a gorgeous new paperback format: the astonishing first prose novel from the legendary Alan Moore — an epic yet intimate portrait of a single English town across the whole span of human history.

In a story full of lust, madness, and ecstasy, we meet twelve distinctive characters that lived in the same region of central England over the span of six thousand years. Their narratives are woven together in patterns of recurring events, strange traditions, and uncanny visions.

With a new cover design by John Coulthart.

You won the election... now what? Activist organizing meets government gridlock as a millennial New Yorker cartoonist follows a first-year state senator on her unforgettable journey — from outsider to insider.

In early 2018, cartoonist Sofia Warren was not paying attention to New York state politics. But that summer, her Brooklyn neighborhood began buzzing about Julia Salazar, a 27-year-old democratic socialist running for state senate whose grassroots campaign was inspiring an army of volunteers. When they beat the odds and won, Warren found herself wondering what would happen next. How does it work when an outsider who runs on revolutionary change has to actually do the job? So she decided to find out.

A graphic memoir to be published by Top Shelf Productions in June 2022, Radical: My Year with a Socialist Senator is a remarkable first-hand account of Warren’s experience embedded with Julia Salazar and her staff during their first year in office. From candid conversations and eyewitness experiences, Warren builds a gripping and intimate portrait of a scrappy team of community organizers battling entrenched power structures, particularly to advance Julia’s marquee issue of housing rights.

PRAISE FOR PETER & MARIA HOEY:

• "Spectacular... each page is a feast for the eyes. Challenging, entertaining, and crisply beautiful stories." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
• "Right up there with Chris Ware for craft, composition and complexity... like nothing at all that I can recall." — Page 45

After tremendous acclaim for their series Coin-Op Comics, two brilliant creators present their first graphic novel: a menagerie of wild tales. Pushing the boundaries of their dazzling and unique narrative style, Animal Stories weaves together six short stories exploring the mysterious relationships between humans and other animals.

The recent San Diego Festival of Books featured two Top Shelf authors on fascinating panels that you can watch online now:

Jarod Roselló (Red Panda & Moon Bear) joined the amazing Stan & Julie Sakai (Usagi Yojimbo) to discuss "Comic Consciousness": morality, personal growth, and characterization in comics for young readers. You can watch the conversation, moderated by Comic-Con's Laura Jones, here!

Kim Dwinell (The Science of Surfing: A Surfside Girls Guide to the Ocean) chatted with Theanne Griffith (The Magnificent Makers) about making science come alive for kids, on the panel "From Surf to Science in Middle-Grade STEM," moderated by Jose Cruz of the San Diego Council on Literacy. Don't miss it!

News from down under! The prestigious Ledger Awards, which are now called the Comic Arts Awards of Australia, livestreamed their 2021 ceremony on Friday night and — would you believe it? — all three of Top Shelf's "Australian Invasion" graphic novels were honored with awards!

Pat Grant received a Bronze Award for The Grot: The Story of the Swamp City Grifters, while Silver Awards went to Campbell Whyte for Home Time II: Beyond the Weaving as well as Chris Gooch for Under-Earth. To hear their heartfelt acceptance speeches and see all the great winners, you can watch the award ceremony below.

If you're feeling "Zoom fatigue," you're not alone! With San Diego Comic-Con gone virtual again, we knew we had to get creative. So Edgar Camacho and James Albon promoted their thrilling foodie graphic novels with a virtual cooking show, and Kim Dwinell headed to the beach — and the famous Long Beach Shark Lab — to discuss The Science of Surfing! You can watch both programs on-demand on our YouTube channel.

Comics Kitchen: Incredible Food-Themed Graphic Novels!
Reading comics can really make you hungry . . . especially if it’s the gorgeous full-color artwork and juicy storytelling of Edgar Camacho (Onion Skin) and James Albon (The Delicacy)! Visit these international talents in their very own homes and learn how they started from basic story ingredients from their native lands of Mexico and Scotland and cooked them up into sizzling graphic novel adventures—full of romance, murder, food fights, and magic mushrooms! Hosted by @ThatHangryGurl Nikki Hendry, this nourishing conversation will also invite viewers to follow along at home and whip up a tasty treat! A free PDF download of this exclusive recipe inspired by the graphic novels is available, as well as previews of each book!

Dive into an Ocean of Science with Surfside Girls!
Kids, families, and water-lovers of all ages: join Kim Dwinell (creator of Surfside Girls) and the CSULB Shark Lab’s Dr. Christopher Lowe for a light and lively walk on the beach and visit to the Shark Lab, as they discuss tide pools, awesome animals, wave physics, surfing tips, caring for the ocean, and much more—all explored within Kim’s new middle-grade graphic novel, The Science of Surfing: A Surfside Girls Guide to the Ocean! Whether you live on a mountain or a plain, in a big city or right on the beach . . . see how much fun it can be to discover the natural world all around you!

Top Shelf Productions is thrilled to announce that our whimsical and handsomely crafted graphic novels have received a combined FOUR nominations for the 2021 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards.

We've completely fallen in love with the sprawling musical epic that is Filipe Melo & Juan Cavia's graphic novel Ballad for Sophie.
Now you can see and hear it come to life, read a gripping preview excerpt, and pre-order for its September release!

When a young journalist prompts a reclusive musical superstar to finally break his silence, he pours out an astonishing saga of rivalry and regret, starring child prodigies and bitter old men, beautiful dancers and demonic managers, Nazi commandants, compassionate nuns, and lifesaving animals.

Ballad for Sophie is a sweeping tale that spans the twentieth century, packed with all the drama of a rock & roll biopic and more twists than a night at the opera. Filipe Melo and Juan Cavia have composed a stunning graphic symphony exploring a lifetime of ambition, betrayal, compassion, anguish, long-buried secrets, and flying pianos.

Hannah Templer's epic lesbian-gladiators-in-space adventure, Cosmoknights, has been one of our biggest hits of recent years... so we're thrilled that the story is finally about to continue! Like the first volume, Book Two will be serialized as a webcomic on cosmoknights.space — starting in just a couple weeks! The collected graphic novel will be published next year, so stay tuned for more details and pre-order options as we get closer.

And if you're new to the Cosmoknights story, there's no better time to dive in! Check out the webcomic and/or pick up Book One from your favorite shop today.