Official Press Release

Papercutz, a new division of NBM Publishing devoted to comics for kids, has announced the first comic featuring the world's most famous girl detective, Nancy Drew! With Stefan Petrucha (X-Files) scripting and Sho Murase (Sei) providing artwork, the classic character is poised to make a big impact on the exploding graphic novel market.

The Nancy Drew digest will be a full-color, pocket-sized 96-page graphic novel priced at $7.95, with the first original graphic novel debuting in February 2005.

Nancy Drew was recently re-launched by Simon & Schuster in an all-new series of novels, with the first book landing on the New York Times bestseller list. The Papercutz graphic novels will feature the same new and exciting version of the character in which Nancy narrates her own adventures, has a cell phone and drives a hybrid car. Despite the fun updating, she still loves a mystery and manages to solve the cases that baffle Police Chief McGinnis. The rest of the supporting cast will also be on hand; Nancy's pals Bess Marvin and George Fayne, boyfriend Ned Nickerson and attorney/father Carson Drew.

When looking for a writer for the series, Papercutz Editor-in-Chief Jim Salicrup, "immediately thought of Stefan. It's amazing how effortlessly he's able to capture the voices of established characters -- whether it's Duckman, Mulder and Scully, Kolchak the Nightstalker, or Nancy Drew. He's such a great writer; While Nancy Drew is aimed at a tween female audience, I'm personally enjoying every page he's writing -- he's that good!"

As for the crucial artwork, Salicrup says, "We were trying to find someone who would re-imagine Nancy Drew visually for a new generation. Sho Murase's cutting edge style does just that. In fact, when I think of Nancy now, it's Sho's version I think of first! I predict Sho's going to be a superstar."

Nancy starts her graphic novel series off literally hanging from a cliff. In "The Demon of River Heights," Nancy and co. are involved with student filmmakers chronicling a local monster legend that may turn out to be real! For the second graphic novel, "Writ in Stone," Nancy and her friends must recover a missing boy and an important artifact - a stolen shorestone marker which supposedly proves the Chinese discovered America in 1421, decades before Columbus!

NBM founder and president Terry Nantier and Salicrup (who was the editor of Marvel's best-selling Spider-Man #1 by Todd McFarlane and later Editor-in-Chief of the Topps Comics line.) have been planning Papercutz for several years. "We're both interested in reaching new audiences for comics, and both have had success doing just that for years. NBM gets into all sorts of places traditional comics hadn't been in before -- for example, four out of the Top Twenty Non-Fiction Graphic Novels for school libraries recommended by School Library Journal are NBM titles. The first comic to be featured in TV Guide was the X-Files, which I edited at Topps, and that comic's audience was over 50% female."

The idea for Papercutz is a simple one. "Creating original graphic novels for the tween market featuring popular established characters. When the opportunity presented itself for Papercutz to obtain the graphic novel rights to Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, we jumped on it! Papercutz can be seen as our response to Michael Chabon's Keynote Speech at the 2004 Eisner Awards asking for 'more great comics for kids."

For a preview of Nancy Drew, click here

For more information, or to request an interview with Stefan Petrucha please write presspetATpetrucha.com.

###

Stefan Petrucha is internationally acclaimed as the writer of Topp's X-Files comic. His "Kolchak: The Devil in the Details" graphic novel was nominated for a 2003 Bram Stoker Award. Most recently, he's written The Tunnel at the End of the Light, a Time Hunter novella from Telos Publishing and "The Grass Is Always Greener", which was named the 2003 "Best Novella" by the Pen & Paper Fan Awards. More on his work can be found at www.petrucha.com.