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Happy October, everyone! Or as we’ve been calling it, “Magnetic Month!” Why “Magnetic Month?” Because there’s just so much going on! We’re so busy juggling production tasks, marketing incentives, new titles, and community-building ideas, that there hardly seems to be a spare minute anywhere on the calendar! But we do it because we love it, and because we love these books and their creators. And we love YOU for following us with interest!
October is traditionally a month full of Halloween-inspired horror, so the timing couldn’t be better to announce the December release of DAOMU, by Chinese best-selling author Kennedy Xu and Ken Chou! And we couldn't have picked a more suitable month for Tony Sandoval’s DOOMBOY to hit retail shelves, either! Definitely a good month for darkness!
We've got a HUGE issue for you this month, adding a few new editorial articles that cover topics that have come up in conversation and email recently. We’d like to run similar insightful articles each month to keep the curtain pulled back, so that you can learn a little bit about how things are made here at Magnetic Press. We welcome any feedback or ideas you might have. Please feel free to contact us at contact@magnetic-press.com about anything that’s on your mind! We’ll try to get back to you directly right away, or reply in a forum if it’s a topic of public interest!
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ANNOUNCING
DAOMU!
CAVE HUNTING NEVER LOOKED SO GOOD...
OR SO FRIGHTENING!!
Sean Wu had no idea of the secrets kept by his estranged father, until his death kicked open the gates to a mysterious world of international tomb robbers and ageless myths. Now the sole heir to this critical legacy, he must survive the darkest terrors haunting the most sought after treasures buried within a globe-spanning labyrinth of ancient catacombs in order to solve his father’s murder and perhaps even save the world…
Based on the best-selling Chinese novel series DAOMU JOURNAL, written by Xu “Kennedy” Lei, this original graphic novel collects the sold-out series created by the celebrated artists under the direction of James Zhang’s Concept Art House, with over 20 million fans declaring Xu ‘China’s Stephen King’.
This 244 page hardcover features a soft-touch textured cover with spot-glossed elements, highlighting the strikingly rendered artwork on both front and back cover. The 225 page epic storyline is supplemented by concept artwork and additional design material further exploring the world of Daomu.
Mockup cover shown - final design may vary slightly.
Check out the Daomu webpage for preview pages, trailer video, an interview with Kennedy Xu, and more! |
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REVIEW QUOTES
“Bengal’s art breaches the pinnacle of beauty here.” “provocative whilst leaving enough room for your own thoughts to saturate” - Comicsalliance
“Its philosophical tones will definitely leave the reader pondering for a while after he closes it.“
- Therefore I Geek
"An original story with an original point of view" “Reading this really opened my eyes to a whole different angle of telling a story.” - SuperRobotMayhem
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NOW SHIPPING!
DOOMBOY
by Tony Sandoval
“the art is gorgeous with a delicate otherworldy quality that fits the slightly dreamy premise.”
– WomenWriteAboutComics
DOOMBOY tells the story of an ordinary, lonely teenager with an active imagination and a love of metal music. When his girlfriend passes away suddenly, he decides to broadcast songs to her beyond the grave, playing his heart out under the secret name “Doomboy”. What he doesn’t realize, however, is that those broadcasts are picked up all across town… and beyond. Soon the music of Doomboy becomes legendary, and his innocent private life quickly turns inside out...
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- PAGES: 136 pages
- FORMAT: Quarterbound landscape-formatted hardcover with curved corners
- SIZE: 11" x 8" landscape
- COVER PRICE: $24.99
- ISBN: 978-0-9913324-9-6
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COMING SOON!
LUMINAE
by Bengal
Estimated release: October 28th
A sisterhood of six young warriors are tasked with protecting the mysterious Luminae, a holy creature of Light in exile from those forces of Darkness that would decimate humanity. Each chosen for their individual strengths, powers, and force of will, they serve their duty in tales most believe to be merely legend. When one of their sisters disappears after a surprise attack by otherworldly creatures, the others know it is the sign of a superior evil soon to arrive… and a looming danger for the saint under their protection!
A stylish dark fantasy written and illustrated by Bengal, the celebrated artist of Naja and Meka.
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- PAGES: 160 pages
- FORMAT: Hardcover with curved corners
- SIZE: 8.5" x 11"
- COVER PRICE: $24.99
- ISBN: 978-0-9913324-6-5
LIMITED EDITION SLIPCASE BUNDLE WITH COLLECTIBLE PRINT ALSO AVAILABLE, EXCLUSIVELY FROM OUR WEBSTORE!
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FEATURED INTERVIEW / KENNEDY XU
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He's been referred to as "China's Stephen King," having created the breakout genre-defining tomb-robbing novel Dao Mu Bi Ji (or "Daomu Journal"). With over 20 million fans worldwide, Xu "Kennedy" Lei has inspired countless fans to explore the hybrid archeological-underworld adventure genre that he single-handedly defined. It was only a matter of time for his original tale to be translated into a visually-stunning graphic novel, produced by James Zhang's Concept Art House.
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DAOMU is such an intriguing blend of high-adventure, horror, and contemporary criminal underworld. What inspired you to create this unique universe?
My family background is rather special, as a child heard a lot of stories in this genre, and it made me look at the world with more curious eyes. If you grow up with stories, you want to tell stories. If you grow up with scary stories, you want to scare people. I wanted to create this world for a long time. Finally, I couldn’t stand not writing it.
 
There is a lot of history in your story, stretching back centuries and even millennia. How much of this intricate backstory is based on facts you have discovered versus fiction that you created?
Most of the novels have a strong historical background with real elements. How these elements are arranged is the imaginary part. I like novels based on history, and to rely on actual history. It links the story to reality.
How involved were you with the visual development of the book? Did you work closely with James Zhang, Ken Chou, and the art directors at Concept Art House?
I love it very much. I liked the design of Ken Chou, he has a talent very few people have, the ability to blend Chinese and Western culture, which makes the combination of Chinese and Western parts of the story very reasonable. James has been working very hard to promote the story in the United States, and I am very grateful to him. If he had not had such confidence, I probably would not have started this thing.
Sean’s family has a very long history with the Daomu (and will clearly continue to for quite some time to come after this story’s ending). Do you have future stories ready to be told? Or ancient stories yet to reveal?
The series of stories has continued in China so far, and if possible, I hope to present this story with all its characters and their families to the United States. This is an ambitious project and would take a long time to properly translate. I want to be able to make the story global. It is a difficult translation though, we use the Chinese character and it is not a phonetic alphabet. I hope in my lifetime, we can break this divide between language and culture.
How would you like to follow this complete edition of Daomu in North America? Are you working on new adventures now?
Ha ha ha, this is a secret for now.
For more information on DAOMU, visit the
DAOMU WEBPAGE!
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WE'RE EXHIBITING AT
STAN LEE'S COMIKAZE!
If you live in or around the Los Angeles area, you gotta come out to the LA Convention Center on Halloween weekend (October 31st through November 2nd) for STAN LEE'S COMIKAZE! There will be comics, toys, actors, cosplay, and -- oh yeah -- MAGNETIC PRESS!
Swing by booth #1108, which is right in front of the main entrance! You'd have to be pretty well distracted to miss us so close to the front doors! We'll have Limited Edition slipcases, catalog shwag, running videos, and all of our latest titles, including DOOMBOY and LUMINAE on hand and for sale (weeks before stores)! Plus, we'll be revealing a VERY COOL NEW PROJECT that is being prepped for announcement later this month! You won't want to miss out on that big sneak peek!!
For more information about the show, including tickets, times, and a full list of guests and events, visit www.comikazeexpo.com! We'll see you there! |
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SURVEY RESULTS!
Wow, what a great response to last month's survey! Almost 100 responses, which is a pretty nice sampling considering it was only our second newsletter! And the results were very interesting and revealing:
This tells us that A) the majority of you are considering these titles for the first time, as if brand new for all intents and purposes, B) more than a third of you have been eagerly waiting for some of this material to reach the US (possibly for quite some time), and C) you are a discerning, sophisticated crowd who prefer to read books vs "comics". That's not in any way a jab at sequential-art story-telling, but rather the preference to digest complete stories delivered in a sturdy, non-disposable format. Which when added together tells us D) we've chosen a like-minded group of fans to cater to!
Many of you also replied with a number of great title suggestions for consideration, a few of which we're already looking into, and some of which we hadn't even heard of before ourselves! We also happen to know that some of the titles mentioned are already on their way from other publishers, though we'll let them announce those plans when they see fit.
As promised, we decided to select not one but THREE random respondents to reward with a 50% off discount code good for a single shopping-spree checkout at our webstore! This month's winners are:
- lathspell.pedersen@***.com
- mazick@***.com
- punkrockmazinga@***.com
Please email us at contact@magnetic-press.com, and we will send you your individual code, which will be good for 50% off a single order, not just one item, so use it to get one of everything!
For this month's survey, we'd like to know a bit about your purchasing preferences -- where do you buy your books, and what motivates you to buy from a particular resource? Please take a minute to help us out, and you'll be entered in next month's drawing for a 50% discount code of your own!
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WHAT IS THE GOLD SEAL?
If you've purchased books directly from us through our webstore or at an event, then you've probably noticed the gold seal fixed to each copy. This gold seal is an exclusive feature only available from editions purchased directly from Magnetic Press! It not only looks fancy, adding a spot of extra luxury to the case, but it shows that you're an active and supportive member of our fan community! Only 500 seals were produced for 2014, so if you're lucky enough to have one, you're gold! And if you'd like your edition to be a gold seal edition, be sure to order from us directly!
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DESIGN ELEMENTS: PAPER STOCK
In the months ahead, we're going to start spotlighting various elements that go into consideration when designing and producing our books. There are a lot of factors involved in putting a book together: size, weight, cost, turnaround, and value. And each of those factors need to be considered when selecting each individual design element: paper stock, binding, cover lamination, endpapers, color processing, lamination, and extras (such as head-and-tail bands, ribbon bookmarks, etc). While it would be easy to simply select all the default boxes on the list, we make a concerted effort to design each book in a way that (we feel) best suits that title or art style.
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This month we're going to discuss paper stock. There are dozens, if not hundreds (possibly even thousands, if you count regional differences), of types of paper stock available to choose from, and each one comes in a variety of "weights" or thicknesses. Paper weight is typically measured in pounds (per ream of 500 sheets) in North America or grams per square meter ("gsm") internationally. The weight of a paper stock affects not only the thickness of the book when all pages are stacked together, but also the opacity of each page, the stiffness when turned or curled, the prominence of creasing when folded, etc.
Many stock types are offered as "coated" or "uncoated", which refers to a process where the paper is treated with an agent that fills in the tiny pits of the fiber, giving it a smoother, sometimes brighter sheen. "Coated" papers tend resist ink to varying degrees, which can offer sharper details, but also introduce imperfections such as registration problems. Coated paper is also considerably shinier, reflecting more light, particularly when curled. The amount of reflection is determined by whether the coating is "glossy" (very reflective) or "matte" (less reflective), but even matte coating will wash out against a strong light from an angle. "Uncoated" papers, however, absorb ink into the fibers more quickly and evenly, but because of the extra absorption, can affect the palette and sharpness of a color image in favor of the added tactile quality of the paper itself. There are also "woodfree" paper types -- these are paper types created from chemical pulp, where most of the organic cellulose of the wood is separated out. Woodfree paper tends not to yellow as quickly as regular mechanical pulp paper.
To illustrate the difference, we intentionally chose a heavier, toothier uncoated woodfree stock for ZAYA, which has a noticable grain to it. The grain of this particular stock was chosen to complement the grain of Huang-Jia Wei's graphite work, which is very close to the board grain of his original illustrations. We could have used a smooth, coated stock, but chose instead to emulate the physical, tactile qualities of an original illustration on board, where the ink and colors are absorbed into the grain, rather than resting on bright, reflective coating. Its sort of the difference between digital projection vs analogue film in theaters these days -- call us purists, but we thought this work should be presented in its 'analogue' rawness. The story isn't clean sci-fi; it is pulp-ier, grittier, and the grain of the graphite and paper stock help to emphasize that mood. While such a toothy stock suits Wei's work, however, it didn't suit Bengal's work on NAJA or MEKA. We found that Bengal's coloring technique tends be very high-contrast by nature, with very sparse, light, exterior sequences cutting to extremely dark interior sequences. Since his style is more digital, we decided that a coated matte stock would better reflect the surface of the screen he is working on.
Ultimately, however, the stock chosen is a subjective design decision, and one we carefully consider on a case-by-case basis for each project and art style.
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PROJECT STATUS REPORT
Here's where our current projects stand as of today! Note that blue bars indicate finished, printed books on their way from the printer to the distributor warehouses, yellow bars indicate books currently at the printers, and orange bars indicate projects in finishing stages of pre-press production. The dates on the right represent the current anticipated on-sale date. (Note that this date is up to 2 weeks after the anticipated warehouse date... and we ship them right away if you order from our webstore!) 100% means it is on the shelves!
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WHERE TO BUY
Wondering where you can get your hands on these works of wonder?
Magnetic Press books are available wherever books and comics are sold --
if your local store doesn't have it, tell them to get it!!
For the most immediate service, however,
you can order directly from us through our webstore! |
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DIGITAL RELEASES
Did you know that many Magnetic Press titles are available digitally?
Some even ahead of print!
Check out or library of titles, including NAJA, MEKA, SUPER-EGO, ZAYA, and debuting this month, LUMINAE!
All available at
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That's it for this month, but come back next month for a BIG TITLE REVEAL, as well as information about an exciting Ambassador Membership Club we're putting together, full of incentive rewards and exclusive items. Have a great Halloween, and don't eat too much candy!
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FOLLOW US!
Tune in to our our Facebook page, Twitter account, and Website for all the latest Production News and Previews!
Updated (almost) daily!
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SHARE THIS NEWSLETTER WITH YOUR FRIENDS!
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