The small publisher About Comics is returning to the direct market after a decade of direct-to-customer and print-on-demand sales, with two new titles that will be distributed through Diamond Comics Distributors: The Jam: Urban Adventure Vol. 1 Beginnings and Scott Shaw!s Comix & Stories. Both are slated for January 2024 release.

The publisher, founded by writer Nat Gertler in 1998, left Diamond because they were having trouble making minimum orders for many of their publications, which include both new material and reprints of older work.  That helped them grow, and Diamond actually reached out to them about including the two upcoming books in their November catalog.

Scott Shaw!s Comix & Stories is a collection of creator-owned comics and other artwork by Shaw, an artist, animator, and comics historian whose oeuvre includes Sonic the Hedgehog, The Flintstones, and Captain Carrot comics as well as work on a host of well known animated series and ads.  The book collects his underground, funny-animal, and autobiographical comics as well as artwork from posters, t-shirts, and coloring books, animation pitches, and collaborative work with Mark Evanier and Dave Stevens, among others.  The 336-page paperback will be released on January 24, 2024, with an MSRP of $30.00.

The Jam: Urban Adventure Vol. 1 Beginnings, is the first collection of the original storyline of Bernie Mireault’s 1980s alt-superhero series about a The Jammer, self-made crimefighter in Montreal.  Mireault has remastered his original artwork for this book.  The 168-page paperback will be released on January 31, 2024, with an MSRP of $20.00.

Gertler won a 2023 Eisner Award for his book Charles M. Schulz: The Art and Life of the Peanuts Creator in 100 Objects (with Benjamin L. Clark).  About Comics published the early Charles M. Schulz comic strip It’s Only a Game (see “Bookstores 40 Percent of Schulz Collection Orders”).