All Good Things, Etc.
News from Kazu Kibuishi (whose Copper is really quite wonderful and you should go get a copy; although suffused with a certain melancholy, it become progressively more optimistic as Copper and Fred have their adventures) regarding that which he is still, perhaps, best known for: Flight. It’s ending. Save your boos and hisses and let the man explain himself:
We will be wrapping it all up with Flight Volume Eight. We had a pretty good run, but it is now time for us to focus on producing full graphic novels. When I started the project, many of us on the book were kids coming out of college with little experience as professional working artists. Years later, the majority of the artists on the project have gone on to create graphic novels of their own, or are now working at major animation, film, and game studios. The original book was created to serve a need. That need was to get our core group published, to have our work be seen, and to get enough practice under our belts to be able to do books of our own. After 7 years, I feel the original needs were met, and the artists are more than ready to go the distance on their own.
So there you have it — two more volumes, and think of how many anthologies Flight has (and will continue to) inspire(d). It would be nigh-impossible for Kibuishi to juggle the editorial duties on Flight, up the production of Amulet to two volumes a year, after volume 5, not to mention the demands of fatherhood. Something almost slipped by in that last sentence that I want to make sure that nobody missed — namely, hard confirmation that Amulet will go beyond the trilogy stage (one knowledgeable source puts the series at ten books), and at a fast production clip. There’s nothing in that thought that isn’t pure, distilled awesome-sauce. Oh, and then there’s this tidbit:
I will, however, continue to produce Flight Explorer, which will be retitled Explorer. Its purpose, to introduce kids to comics and reading through bite-sized stories, remains unfulfilled, and a book like this is truly essential, especially now that there are so few places kids can find new comics. With the demise of Disney Adventures and now Nickelodeon Magazine, parents and kids are going to have a difficult time finding premium comics content that is entirely age-appropriate. We hope we can fill that need.
Flight Explorer (which was released nearly two years ago) was a terrific compendium of all-ages work, and to hear that we’re going to get more of it? Yeah, I’m pre-emptively sad over the loss of Flight in the coming years, but all the rest of Kibuishi’s projects more than make up for it. Flight is [nearly] dead, long live Flight.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to see a man about an interstate highway, and with any luck the drive home will take less than eight hours. Yay?
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