The prestigious mainstream publisher W.W. Norton has paid a substantial advance to artist Robert Crumb for a major graphic novel project that is expected to take Crumb at least two years to complete.  Crumb has requested that his agent, Denis Kitchen, keep the nature of the project and the amount of the advance confidential.  Kitchen did say that the advance was in keeping with what an artist of Crumb's stature who devotes two years of his life to such a project should receive.

The increase in sales of graphic novels in bookstores has obviously gotten the attention of mainstream publishers -- not only have Random House and more recently Penguin mounted ambitious manga publishing efforts -- big publishing houses have been reaching out to the creators of 'literary' or 'alternative' graphic novels.  Random House (Pantheon) will publish a Dan Clowes (Ghost World) graphic novel next year, while Norton, in addition to its signing of Crumb, will also release Will Eisner's new graphic novel expose about 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion' in 2005 and Scholastic Books is preparing to publish low cost full color editions of Jeff Smith's Bone.  'It's getting to the point,' Denis Kitchen told ICv2, 'where every major literary house is going to want to field a line of graphic novels.'

Superheroes do not appear to be part of this equation, but publishers of alternative comics face competition from mainstream publishers in a classic 'fattening frogs for snakes' scenario in which comic book publishers see the creators they have helped develop lured away by big cash advances.  The situation is not without its ironies -- Fantagraphics, Crumb's primary publisher, has its titles distributed to bookstores by W.W. Norton.