Alternative comics or independent comics cover a range of American comics that have appeared since the 1980s, following the underground comix movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Alternative comics present an alternative to mainstream superhero comics which in the past have dominated the American comic book industry. They span across a wide range of genres, artistic styles, and subjects.
Phaidon Press is a global publisher of books on art, architecture, design, fashion, photography, and popular culture, as well as cookbooks, children's books, and travel books. The company is based in London and New York City, with additional offices in Paris and Berlin. With over 1,500 titles in print, Phaidon books are sold in over 100 countries and are printed in English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Mandarin, and dozens of other languages. Since the publisher's founding in Vienna in 1923, Phaidon has sold almost 50 million books worldwide.
Disney Publishing Worldwide (DPW), formerly known as The Disney Publishing Group and Buena Vista Publishing Group, is the publishing subsidiary of Disney Experiences, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company. Its imprints include Disney Editions, Disney Press, Kingswell, Freeform, and Hyperion Books for Children. It has creative centers in Glendale, California, and Milan, Italy.
Candlewick Press, established in 1992 and located in Somerville, Massachusetts, is part of the Walker Books group. The logo depicting a bear carrying a candle is based on Walker Books's original logo.
Parragon Books Ltd, a United Kingdom publishing company, was formed in 1988 by friends Guy Parr and Paul Anderson. In 2001, it became part of D. C. Thomson & Co.
Michael O'Mara Books is a small, family-run, privately owned publishing house in the United Kingdom. Established in London in 1985, by an American expatriate, Michael O'Mara, a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and his British wife, Lesley, the company focuses on non-fiction books from autobiographies and memoir to colouring. O'Mara Books won the Independent Publishers Guild International Achievement Award in 2007 and the Lambeth Made Charter Mark Award for Best Apprenticeship Employer in 2021.
The Overlook Press is an American publishing house based in New York, New York which considers itself "a home for distinguished books that had been 'overlooked' by larger houses".
Diary of a Wimpy Kid is a children's novel written and illustrated by Jeff Kinney. It is the first book in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. The book is about a boy named Greg Heffley and his attempts to become popular in his first year of middle school.
Abbeville Publishing Group is an independent book publishing company specializing in fine art and illustrated books. Based in New York City, Abbeville publishes approximately 40 titles each year and has a catalogue of over 700 titles on art, architecture, design, travel, photography, parenting, and children's books.
Jeffrey Patrick Kinney is an American author and cartoonist. He is best known for creating, writing and illustrating the children's book series Diary of a Wimpy Kid. He also created the child-oriented website Poptropica.
Lerner Publishing Group, based in Minneapolis in the U.S. state of Minnesota since its founding in 1959, is one of the largest independently owned children's book publishers in the United States. With more than 5,000 titles in print, Lerner Publishing Group offers nonfiction and fiction books for grades K-12.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid is an American children's book series and media franchise created by American author and cartoonist Jeff Kinney. The series follows Greg Heffley, a middle-schooler who illustrates his daily life in a diary.
Média-Participations is a French media concern, controlled by a Belgian holding concern, specialized in Franco-Belgian comics. It has some forty publishers in its portfolio, including Dupuis, Dargaud, Le Lombard, Fleurus, La Martinière, and Abrams.
Lena Tabori is the founder of Welcome Enterprises, Inc., co-founder of Stewart, Tabori & Chang (STC), and co-founder of www.climatechangeresources.org, a website to combat climate change. She began her publishing career in 1967 at Harry N. Abrams, remains a partner at Welcome Enterprises Inc, after selling the Welcome Books imprint to Rizzoli in 2014. Welcome Enterprises continues to package books for other publishers, including Disney. Her activity is primarily focused on the website, however. On January 15, 2020, she was named Chair of East Hampton Town’s Energy Sustainability and Resiliency Committee. She also sits on the Executive Board of The Association of Foreign Correspondents. A native of Sweden, Tabori lives in East Hampton, New York and New York City.
Jess M. Brallier is a publisher working in various media, genres, and formats, such as bestselling books, popular web sites, apps, and virtual worlds including Poptropica, one of the Internet's largest virtual worlds for kids. He helped launch bestselling brands such as Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Galactic Hot Dogs; and extended the Poptropica brand into toys, global education, and books. He is also the author or co-author of 31 books, including Lawyers and Other Reptiles.
La Martinière Groupe is a French publishing house. It was formed in 1994. Subsidiaries include France's Éditions du Seuil and the United States' Abrams Books. In 2018, La Martinière was acquired by Média-Participations.
Originally established in 2004 as 'Abrams Books UK', the London office was the subsidiary of the prominent French publisher La Martinière Groupe. Abrams encompassed Abrams Books, Abrams Image, Abrams ComicArts, Stewart, Tabori & Chang, Abrams Books for Young Readers, Amulet Books.
Penguin Random House Limited is a British-American multinational conglomerate publishing company formed on July 1, 2013, with the merger of Penguin Books and Random House. Penguin Books was originally founded in 1935 and Random House was founded in 1927. It has more than 300 publishing imprints. Along with Simon & Schuster, Hachette, HarperCollins and Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Random House is considered one of the 'Big Five' English language publishers.
Papercutz Graphic Novels is an American publisher of family-friendly comic books and graphic novels, mostly based on licensed properties such as Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and Lego Ninjago. Papercutz has also published new volumes of the Golden Age-era comics series Classics Illustrated and Tales from the Crypt. In recent years they have begun publishing English translations of European all-ages comics, including The Smurfs and Asterix. They publish several titles through their imprint Super Genius.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Meltdown is the 13th book in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney. It was published on October 30, 2018. The story takes place soon after the events of The Getaway, in the winter and centers on a snowball fight in protagonist Greg Heffley's neighborhood. The Meltdown was advertised through a live book tour by Kinney. Upon release, the novel sold several hundred thousand copies and received positive reviews from critics.
