Welcome To Bestselling Comics UK — Scholastic Brings Its Graphic Novel Imprint Graphix To The UK
by Richard Bruton
Missed this a while back, but worth mentioning — Scholastic is going to bring its phenomenon of comics selling success, the Graphix imprint, to the UK. This will be big.
You should all know just how successful Scholastic’s Graphix imprint has been in the USA and worldwide. Every year, the sales charts for both comics and books are loaded with their titles, multi-million sellers such as Dav Pilkey‘s Dog Man series, all of Raina Telgemeier‘s library, Kazu Kibuishi‘s Amulet, and so many more. It all began back in 2005 with their inspired decision to reprint Jeff Smith‘s Bone series in colour and, frankly, it’s never looked back from that moment on. And millions of children worldwide have discovered a love of comics through them.
Well, now they’re setting up Scholastics Graphic UK. Announced authors include Sarah Bowie, Jim Smith, Rosie Talbot, Sarah Maxwell. Recent acquisitions including Aoife Dooley’s Squid Squad, Denzell Dankwah’s The Power Keepers and Wilomina: The Land of Dreams and Nightmares by John Chalmers and Sandra Marrs (known collectively as Metaphrog). All of them to appear under the Graphix imprint. All of them will more than likely go on to be huge sellers, with the power of the Scholastic brand and its marketing behind them.
This from Scholastic fiction publisher Lauren Fortune:
‘Scholastic has a very strong track record of publishing the books that children really want to read, never more so than in our market-leading list of graphic novels and manga publishing. We know that children love their accessibility and strong visual storytelling and the opportunities that they provide to learn about our world or journey to mind-blowing fantasy lands.’
‘We are excited to bring all of these brilliant books under one umbrella so that we can continue to advocate for graphic novels and manga as legitimate reading formats that benefit children’s literacy and amplify their discoverability to inspire a future generation of readers and creators.’
So, once more, when some old bloke on some Internet group or social media tells you kids don’t read comics anymore or that comics nowadays are nowhere near as good as when they were young, you know what to do. Point them in the direction of all the incredible work devoured by millions of children every year.