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Illustration by Christina "Steenz" Stewart

When people consider the early history of comics, a few names spring immediately to mind – Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Bob Kane, Steve Ditko, and newspaper cartoonists like Charles Addams and Charles Schultz. Rarely do you hear about the women who paved the way for modern comics, especially not the women of color who created pioneering comic strips. One such voice is Jackie Ormes, the first black female syndicated newspaper cartoonist, who created dynamic characters that rejected the negative stereotypes that permeated depictions of black women at the time.

C2E2 is creeping up and we're getting excited! Visit us at booth #516 from April 21 – 23. Not convinced? We'll have awesome swag, so you should be.

C2E2 is creeping up and we're getting excited! Visit us at booth #516 from April 21 – 23. Not convinced? We'll have awesome swag, so you should be.

March 31^st is Hug A Medievalist Day, the most important holiday of the year if you chose to devote your course of study to Chaucer, Charlemagne, or Camelot. As Quirk’s resident medievalist, I am DELIGHTED to provide you with some additional ways to celebrate that special Middle Ages expert in your life (especially if they’re not too keen on the hugging thing). Let us sally forth!

[The Book of Dust]

Last month, fans of Phillip Pullman’s incredible coming-of-age fantasy series His Dark Materials were overjoyed to hear that Lyra Belacqua is coming back in a whole new series: The Book of Dust, which is set for release October 19^th, 2017. The upcoming trilogy starts ten years before the events of The Golden Compass, with the later novels to be set ten years after The Amber Spyglass. This news immediately set people wondering about what we’ll find out about Lyra’s story, both before and after the events that made her famous in so many worlds. Pullman created a beautifully detailed universe in Lyra’s Oxford, and in the many worlds that she and Will discover, so we always knew that there were still so many more stories to tell…and now we get to hear them!

Beloved books are popular for a reason, but what if those stories had gone just a little bit… differently? Just a few letters can make a world of difference to a story. We’ve taken a whack at pitching a few classic titles that have taken a bit of a turn for the silly, strange, and ridiculous!

Feel inspired? Share your own pitches for famous novels with a twist @QuirkBooks on twitter with #Pitchatwist!