NEW YORK – Up With Paper, the world’s leading pop-up greeting card company, unveiled the first pop-up book title from its new license with Marvel Comics and Disney Publishing, Marvel Super Heroes vs. Villains: An Explosive Pop-Up of Rivalries, at the National Stationery Show today.
The nine-inch square, eight-spread book, to be published by the company’s Jumping Jack Press imprint, features original artwork by the world’s top comic book creators of the leading Marvel Super Heroes and Teams, matched against their primary villains. Spreads include flaps with additional pop-ups and information about the characters and their origin stories, including comic book covers of first appearances. The book has a suggested retail price of $29.99 and will be available in comic stores July 4, book and specialty stores September 3, and all other retail channels in North America for Christmas.
The line-up of comic characters and creators includes the industry’s best: original paintings of the Fantastic Four vs. Dr. Doom by Alex Ross, of Hulk vs. Abomination by Joe Jusko, of Captain America vs. Red Skull by Dave Dorman, of Spider-Man vs. Venom by Greg Horn, or Iron Man vs. Mandarin by Christian Nauck, and of X-Men vs. Magneto by Leinel Yu; original pencils and inks of Thor vs. Loki by Amanda Conner, with coloring by Paul Mounts; and classic Wolverine artwork by Jim Lee.
Up With Paper Lead Paper Engineer Yevgeniya Yeretskaya, who won the 2011 Moonbeam Award for Best Pop-Up Book for her work on the company’sSnowflakes title, provided layouts and paper engineering for the book. Company President, George White, who worked extensively with Marvel in the 1990’s to create and market some of the industry’s best known trading card series, including Marvel Masterpieces and Marvel Trading Cards from SkyBox, concepted the book and provided the copy.
“This book is a dream project,” said White. “To be able to put together this team of artists, characters and paper engineer is remarkable. The book is simply a must-have for collectors of Marvel comics and artwork, as well as any comics fan.”
Jumping Jack Press is releasing single-spread blads to promote the book, each featuring Nauck’s Iron Man artwork on the cover, Ross’ Fantastic Four spread, and thumbnails of each piece of artwork on the back. The promotional blads are available in limited quantities at the Up With Paper booth at the National Stationery Show and at the Book Expo.
Jumping Jack Press was founded in 2007 as the pop-up book imprint of Up With Paper. The imprint has captured five juried Moonbeam awards since its founding, including Pop-up Book of the Year Gold Awards in 2007, 2009, and 2011, Silver in 2008, and a Bronze Holiday Book of the Year in 2007. Originally founded as PopShots, Inc., in 1978, Up With Paper has been recognized for design excellence more than 55 times with the International Greeting Card Association’s highest honor, the “LOUIE” award, including the “Card of the Year” LOUIE Award in 2005 for the company’s first Tres Panache design. Up With Paper’s Treasures, Panoramics, Sight ‘n Sound™, and Tres Panache® lines of pop-up greeting cards, as well as the company’s UWP Luxe Boxed Notes, and Trinkets® gift enclosures,Pop Up Notepads, and Pop-Up Snow Globe Greetings® are available in thousands of specialty retail outlets throughout the United States and around the world, and may be seen on the company’s website at www.upwithpaper.com. Images of book spreads, as well as videos showing every spread of every title created by Jumping Jack Press, may be viewed on the company’s website as well.
About Marvel
Marvel Entertainment, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, is one of the world’s most prominent character-based entertainment companies, built on a proven library of over 8,000 characters featured in a variety of media over seventy years. Marvel utilizes its character franchises in entertainment, licensing and publishing. For more information visitwww.marvel.com.