Tom Spurgeon certainly knows how to frighten me, running a cover image from Fred Chao’s delightful Johnny Hiro to illustrate a piece clarifying the position of AdHouse Books on Diamond’s new policies and possible changes in AdHouse’s strategy. According to AdHouse Publisher Chris Pitzer, the planned collection of the first three issues of the series will be expanded to include the yet-to-be-published fourth and fifth installments instead of releasing them as pamphlets.
In one of those interesting internet coincidences, Greg McElhatton opened his review of the first two issues thusly:
“Every now and then, I hear people talking about the idea of going away from single issues of comics (in favor of strictly longer-form graphic novels) and I think to myself, ‘Would that really be such a bad thing?’ What always makes me come to my senses, though, is coming across a comic that uses the single-issue format perfectly. And so, with that in mind, another book to add to that list is Fred Chao’s Johnny Hiro, one that can best be summed up as 32-page bursts of sheer fun.”
For me, I’ll take the book however Chao and AdHouse can manage to deliver it, and I certainly hope they decide it’s worth whatever hassle, because the book is a real charmer… nifty art, endearing characters, a quirky sense of humor, and so on. So when you see the collection listed in Previews, I’d urge you to consider pre-ordering it, because I think you’ll really like it.