The Robot 6 Third Birthday Bash round-up

Jan. 2 marked Robot 6′s third anniversary at Comic Book Resources, and once again we took over the CBR home page to help celebrate in style. Here’s a rundown of everything we posted, just in case you missed it:

• Tim O’Shea spoke with Marvel’s Tom Brevoort about a variety of subjects, from Fantastic Four #600 to digital comics to cancelled series to Brain Michael Bendis’ last year on Avengers–revealing the writer coming after Bendis ha already been chosen.
• We had some great news for fans of Ted Naifeh’s Courtney Crumrin books– she’s getting an ongoing series from Oni starting in April. Michael May spoke to Naifeh about his plans for her. Cory at Oni also provided us with a preview of the book.
• Chris Arrant spoke to legendary X-Men scribe Chris Claremont about what he’s been up to lately, the comics industry, comic book movies and a lot more. If you’ve never read Marada the She-Wolf or Black Dragon, some of his non-X-Men work, he said both are coming back this year from Titan Publishing.
• I spoke with Image Comics Publisher Eric Stephenson about how they did in 2011, their 2012 plans and a lot more. He also gave us a glimpse at their new ad campaign, which features creators creating comics.
• Brigid Alverson spoke with Marjorie Liu about writing Astonishing X-Men and “other matters,” as well as comiXology CEO David Steinberger about their plans in area of digital comics.
• Koyama Press gave us the details on their 2012 plans, which includes new comics by Tin Can Forest, Michael DeForge, Dustin Harbin (The Playground War looks very cool!), Jesse Jacobs and Julia Wertz.
• Tim O’Shea spoke with American Barbarian creator Tom Scioli about the collected edition due form AdHouse Books this year, as well as his next webcomics project.
• Sean T. Collins spoke with Sammy Harkham about Kramers Ergot 8, Michael DeForge about his “killer quartet” of comics that came out in 2011 and the Press Gang about their future plans.
• A lot of folks provided us with previews of upcoming comics. Big thanks to Arune and James at Marvel, who sent us previews for Daredevil #8, Winter Soldier #1 and Punisher #8. Jacq at Fantagraphics sent us previews for Jason’s Athos in America, as well as two collections of older material: Is That All There Is? by Joost Swarte and Glitz-2-Go by Diane Noomin. And Joe Keatinge gave us a preview of his new comic coming from Image in March, Hell Yeah.
• If you’d like to read full issues of comic books, Ross Campbell provided the complete second issue of his Mountain Girl minicomics, which are pretty hard to come by, while Van Jensen and Dusty Higgins provided us with the first issue of the third volume of Pinocchio Vampire Slayer. I also spoke to Jensen and Higgins about the book.


Sacrifice #2 cover by Cliff Chiang

• Our friend Sam Humphries stopped by to give us the lowdown on all the references in the first issue of his new comic, Sacrifice. He also showed us Cliff Chiang’s variant cover to the second issue.
• Kevin Melrose shared his annual list of the 50 best covers of 2011. And several members of the team also shared their favorite comics of 2011.
• Our own Carla Hoffman and Ton Bondurant held their annual chat on the year that was for both Marvel and DC Comics. Here’s part one, and here’s part two.
• We invited all of our colleagues at Comic Book Resources and Comics Should Be Good! to join us for a birthday edition of What Are You Reading?
• And last but not least, Tim O’Shea and I asked more than 40 editors, writers, artists, bloggers and other comic industry folks what they were looking forward to in 2012. And they answered, with many of them sharing news and preview art for some of their own projects.

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 CBR senior editor Stephen Gerding. And to CBR head honcho Jonah Weiland, who not only gave us the opportunity to take over the home page for two days, but also to blog here every day. Finally, I want to thank the Robot 6 crew for all their hard work, both in preparing for the anniversary and in general, day in and day out. I’m proud to work with them.

Thanks everyone! Now let’s move into 2012 …