Top Shelf Productions

In Álvaro Ortiz's Ashes, hitting stores today, three old friends reunite for the road trip of a lifetime.

• “Ortiz’s classic cartoon art style lends itself well to the wacky and surprising elements of his road trip story, while the characters’ reasons for growing apart and coming back together feel true. Ortiz’s English debut will be perfect for fans of Guy Delisle’s work.” —Booklist
• "Subtle, lyrical, friendly and funny... An adventure paced like a madcap movie plot, with underlying minor chords." —Library Journal
• “This laid-back, sneakily smart charmer should garner Ortiz a new audience.” —Publishers Weekly

Our parents can’t stop a galactic war… but maybe we can? Strap in for a colorful and action-packed space adventure about friendship, family, and fear of the unknown!

Humanity has gone to the stars, and the ESS Khonsu and its crew are leading the charge to explore the galaxy. As the son of the ship’s captain, Jimmil might not always live up to his mom’s expectations… but right now he and his friends might be the galaxy’s only hope.

Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story: The Graphic Novel has just hit stores, and readers are loving it:

• Featured in Interview Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, and The Daily Beast
• "A provocative coming-of-age story, adapted for a new generation of readers, offering further insight and emotional depth to a landmark work in the panoply of LGBTQ fiction." —John Irving, author of The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules
• "This is a vivid and sensuous new take on White’s coming-of-age classic." —Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home and The Secret to Superhuman Strength
• "A revelatory account of growing up gay, Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story is an honest, affecting graphic memoir." —Foreword Reviews
• "This artful, heartfelt adaptation illuminates a modern classic for a new generation of readers." —Publishers Weekly
• “A Boy’s Own Story is lyrical, witty, unabashed, and authentic…The poetic nuances of White’s language float across sumptuously painted panels that evoke 1950s Cincinnati, 1980s Paris, and every dreamlike moment in between.” —Graphic Policy
• “[A Boy’s Own Story] is made artfully new, transformed into an impressive, dazzling graphic novel.” —Shelf Awareness

• Radical: My Year with a Socialist Senator, Better Place, and Doughnuts and Doom have all been selected for the Texas Library Association’s Maverick Graphic Novel List!
• Balascz Lorinci’s bubbly YA graphic novel, Doughnuts and Doom, has been nominated for the 34th GLAAD Media Awards!
• Publishers Weekly shouted out the upcoming Shelley Frankenstein: CowPiggy by Colleen Madden in their Spring 2023 Cutie Classics round-up!
• Nick Tapalansky and Kate Glasheen’s sci-fi stunner, A Radical Shift of Gravity, will be adapted into a feature film by Oscar-nominated screenwriter Matt Charman!

Luca Debus and Francesco Matteuzzi’s Must-Have Hardcover Tribute Evokes the Style, Pathos, and Gentle Comedy of the Peanuts Comic Strip

SAN DIEGO, CA (November 30, 2022) – In celebration of the cartoonist’s recent 100th birthday, Top Shelf Productions is proud to announce Funny Things: A Comic Strip Biography of Charles M. Schulz, an imaginative and tender-hearted tribute to the man behind Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the Peanuts gang, created in the style of Schulz by Luca Debus and Francesco Matteuzzi and scheduled for publication in August 2023.

We've just wrapped up an amazing month of children's and young adult graphic novels!

It's so good to be back! Come join us at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, MD this weekend to meet your favorite cartoonists — longtime favorites and newcomers alike. Plus: don't miss a slew of great panels for old and young, including the Top Shelf spotlight on Sunday @ 2:30!

Come to the Top Shelf table (W56-59) to meet:

• Sofia Warren (Radical: My Year with a Socialist Senator) — SPX GUEST
• Jeffrey Brown (Loved & Lost: A Relationship Trilogy, Incredible Change-Bots)
• Jonathan Schnapp (Order of the Night Jay)
• Jarod Rosello (Red Panda & Moon Bear: The Curse of the Evil Eye)
• Jared Cullum (Kodi)

This week our colleagues at IDW Entertainment announced five new TV development deals, including three based on Top Shelf graphic novels:

• Dan Berry and David Gaffney's dryly profound Rivers at HBO Max,
• Filipe Melo & Juan Cavia's achingly beautiful Ballad for Sophie at Universal International Studios,
• and James Albon's sumptuously grim The Delicacy at WBTV.

With Kim Dwinell's beloved middle-grade series Surfside Girls making its live-action debut on Apple TV+ next Friday (August 19), it's a very exciting time to bring these creators' amazing books to new audiences!

We're so excited to see you all at Comic-Con's return and to celebrate our 25th anniversary!

Read on to find our author signing schedule, our 25th-anniversary panel, and the just-released video trailer for Kim Dwinell's Surfside Girls TV show!

Comic-Con International has announced the nominees for the 2022 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, and congratulations are in order for the creators of three outstanding graphic novels that showcase the breadth and richness of Top Shelf's 2021 lineup:

• The transatlantic team of Filipe Melo and Juan Cavia have received a record-breaking four Eisner Award nominations for their heart-wrenching tale of passions and pianos, Ballad for Sophie, in the categories of Best Graphic Album: New, Best U.S. Edition of International Material, Best Writer, and Best Painter/Multimedia Artist!
• The Science of Surfing: A Surfside Girls Guide to the Ocean, the newest adventure in Kim Dwinell's beloved Surfside Girls series, follows Sam and Jade as they discover the joys of ocean science and is nominated in the category of Best Publication for Kids (ages 9-12). Don't miss the chance to join the Surfside Girls before their live-action TV debut on Apple TV+, just announced for August 19th!
• Finally, French cartoonist Élodie Durand's critically acclaimed Parenthesis, which depicts with stunning power the subjective experience of living through a brain tumor, is nominated in the category Best Graphic Memoir.

Congratulations to these outstanding creators and all the nominees — we look forward to celebrating with you at San Diego Comic-Con in July!

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!