The Robot 6 Second Birthday Bash Round-Up

How was your weekend? Ours was pretty grand, as we here at Robot 6 celebrated our second birthday yesterday by taking over the Comic Book Resources home page. If you were still nursing a New Year’s hangover or watching reality TV marathons yesterday, not to worry — here’s what you missed:

• We saw a lot of excitement around the announcement that Fantagraphics will publish a definitive collection of Carl Barks’ seminal run of Donald Duck comic stories. Fantagraphics publisher Gary Groth spoke with Chris Mautner to officially and exclusively announce the project.The first volume is due this fall. Both Groth and Fantagraphics’ Kim Thompson show up in the comments thread to answer additional questions from our readers.
• A lot of our friends at various publishers gave us some great gifts in the form of exclusive previews. Marvel sent over two exclusives, for the last issue of Thor: The Mighty Avenger (buy the trades!) and the first issue of Wolverine and Jubilee. IDW Publishing gave us a great look at the start of their upcoming Infestation crossover, which will feature Transformers, GI Joe, Ghostbusters and Star Trek … and zombies! BOOM! Studios gave us a look at many of their April covers — specifically for their Disney titles, the Stan Lee Presents books and what I like to call the Waid-o-verse books — as well as Irredeemable #21. Tokyopop shared the cover art for the upcoming Priest Purgatory. Oni Press shared a lengthy preview of Possessions Vol.2. And lastly, Dark Horse Comics gave us a look at the big finale to Buffy Season Eight in the form of an exclusive preview of Buffy the Vampire Slayer #40. The book ships on Buffy Summers’ birthday, and they’ll be holding their own birthday bashes around the country on that day.
• And we had a lot of great guests stop by to talk to us. Tim O’Shea spoke with Dan Abnett about Heroes for Hire, with Dan in turning asking our readers which characters they’d like to see in the book. Check out the comments thread to see people’s suggestions and to leave your own!
• Sean T. Collins spoke to Brecht Evens about his recent work on The Wrong Place, and to Ben Katchor about his upcoming graphic novel The Cardboard Valise.
• Michael May, meanwhile, spoke with Archaia’s Editor-in-Chief Stephen Christy, Mouse Guard’s creator David Petersen and Return of the Dapper Men’s Jim McCann and Janet Lee about blowing through the print runs of both books and what that means.
• And I caught up with several folks about their recent and soon-to-be projects. Johnny Zito, Tony Trov and Paul Maybury told me about D.O.G.S. of War and shared some exclusive artwork. Ryan Cody talked to me about his self-published work Icarus. Matt Kindt told me about Super Natural, the followup to Super Spy. Jim Zubkavich answered my questions about Skullkickers and shared not noly some exclusive artwork, but also some really cool process pieces. And AdHouse publisher Chris Pitzer gave me the scoop on all of their big projects for the first half of 2011, as well as shared some details on 2010 projects like Duncan the Wonder Dog and AdDistro.
• And speaking of party guests, we invited all of Comic Book Resources to be our special guests for this week’s edition of What Are You Reading?
• Brigid Alverson looked back at the year in digital comics, a post she followed up today with a look back at the year in comics piracy.
• The Robot 6 team looked back at last year as many of us counted down our favorite comics of 2010.
• And finally, in the post that almost left me for dead, more than 60 comics folks answered our questions about comics in 2010 and 2011, told us about some of their upcoming projects and in some cases even shared some artwork. There’s a lot of great stuff in this lengthy post; it’s like the gift that’ll keep giving long after we’re over our hangover.

A lot of folks really helped make our big birthday bash special, so my thanks to everyone who gave us previews, answered our questions and sent us art. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t thank the CBR crew for all their help, not only yesterday but on a daily basis. In particular, CBR news editor Kiel Phegley, and Stephen Gerding, whose name doesn’t always appear in the spotlight but without him, we probably wouldn’t have a blog. And finally, to CBR head honcho Jonah Weiland, who not only gave us the opportunity to take over the home page yesterday, but also to blog here every day.

Thanks everyone! Now on to 2011 …