Jerusalem

Awards | The gold medal for Best Graphic Album at the Angoulême International Comics Festival went to Guy Delisle for Jerusalem, and the jury awarded a Special Prize to Jim Woodring for his Congress of the Animals. Veteran French creator Jean-Claude Denis was awarded the Grand Prix de la ville d’Angoulême, so he will preside over next year’s festival, as Art Spiegelman did this year. Two manga won awards as well: Kaoru Mori’s A Bride’s Story won the Intergenerational Award, and Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s autobiographical A Drifting Life received the World Outlook Award. The Heritage Award went to Glenat’s edition of Carl Barks’ Donald Duck. [Paris Match]

Conventions | New Orleans Comic Con, held over the weekend, receives plenty of coverage, with spotlights on Stan Lee’s panel, aspiring creators and cosplayers. [Reuters, The Times-Picayune]

Creators | Paul Hornschemeier has received the first graphic novel residency from the Columbus (Ohio) Museum of Art and Thurber House. The three-week residency, designed to help graphic creators develop a work in progress, includes a stipend and housing in an apartment near the boyhood home of James Thurber. [press release, via Comics Worth Reading]

Creators | Garth Ennis gives a brief interview on his plans for The Shadow, which he promises will continue to be “set firmly in 1938.” [ICv2]

Hell Yeah #1

Creators | Brian Truitt talks to Joe Keatinge about Hell Yeah, his new series about a world where ordinary mortals and superheroes live side by side; Truitt calls it “Keatinge’s blender of awesomeness, taking everything he loves about the medium and turning it up to 11.” [USA Today]

Creators | Gene Luen Yang pays a visit to a manga club at a Gainesville, Florida, middle school [The Gainesville Sun]

Retailing | The local paper peers inside the door of Salinas, California, comic shop Current Comics and chats with the staff a bit. [The Salinas Californian]

Comics | Five artists give their take on superheroes in an art exhibit located, appropriately, in Riverdale, New York. [New York Daily News]

Comics | Joey Manley confesses that he took up cigar smoking at least in part because of the influence of comics. [Mr. Manley]

Merchandising | We had heard about the Wonder Woman lipstick, but it turns out that Smurfette and Hello Kitty have inspired lines of cosmetics as well. [The New York Times]

Valiant Entertainment

Retailing | Former retailer Atom! Freeman, now sales manager for the revived Valiant Entertainment, has set out to contact every comics retailer in the direct market to promote the publisher’s upcoming superhero line. What has he learned? Retailers are divided on the importance of variant covers, and they don’t place a high value on returnability, but they care a lot about timeliness: “I try to ask every retailer I speak with what his or her biggest concern is in dealing with a new publisher. The number one answer I get is timeliness. Retailers want to know that they will have a consistent product shipped on a consistent schedule.” [ICv2]

Retailing | Todd Allen’s survey of readers of The Beat, admittedly a specialized audience, reveals that more than two-thirds use pre-ordering as their primary method of buying comics, although many will pick up a few off the rack as well. [The Beat]

Awards | Paul Register, founder and organizer of the Stan Lee Excelsior Awards, writes about how the awards, which are selected by 11- to 16-year-olds in the U.K., came to be and why they are important: “In a system that rarely studies complete texts and doesn’t overtly place a huge importance on the clear benefits of children reading outside the classroom, comics have become marginalised in schools at a time when their potential for raising literacy standards amongst teenagers has arguably never been greater. The Excelsior Award is an attempt to give children the opportunity to take ownership of their own reading and to feel that reading books that they actually want to read – as opposed to being told to read – is not a waste of time.” [Comics Forum]

Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes

Publishing | Fantagraphics President Gary Groth comments on Matthias Wivel’s review of Carl Barks’ Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes, adding some insight with regard to re-coloring the comics, numbering the volumes, the order of the stories, and the shortcomings of earlier reprint editions. [The Comics Journal]

Digital comics | Webcomics creator R. Stevens used iBooks Author to compile a collected edition of the December Diesel Sweeties comics, and just a week later, he reckons that 10,000 people have downloaded the free e-book. He discusses the pros and cons of the system, as well as distribution (he chose to use Dropbox rather than the iBooks store) and sees it as a serious strategy for the future. [Diesel Sweeties]

Creators | Alex Berry talks to Zegas creator Michael Fiffe about making comics and writing about them: “Well, I’m a cartoonist first and foremost. All the other stuff is just a way of sorting through my own interests and learning curves. The first interview I conducted was based on a personal need to find something out. I had tracked down the cartoonist Trevor Von Eeden and wanted to know what he was up to and how his career developed. You know, basic interview stuff, except it didn’t exist for him, so I sought it out myself. From that, I learned to somewhat voice my own views and approaches to comics.” [Spandexless]

Sugar Falls: A Residential School Story

Creators | David Robertson talks briefly about his graphic novel Sugar Falls: A Residential School Story, which tells the true story of a Native American girl who was sent away to a boarding school and subjected to abuse and discrimination. There is a short preview at the site as well. [CBC Manitoba]

Comics | Ben Morse celebrates the exploits of The Ray, a superhero who didn’t quite make the big time. [The Cool Kids Table]

Comics | Tom Gill takes a long look at the work of Garo manga artist Yoshiharu Tsuge, with particular attention to his classic work The Incident at Nishibeta Village. [The Hooded Utilitarian]

Lucky Star

Publishing | Longtime industry hand Jason Thompson has written a thoughtful essay on why the manga industry is in trouble, going beyond the American scene to point out structural problems in the Japanese market: An aging readership, the decline of print and the reluctance of Japanese publishers to embrace digital publishing in any coherent way. “Perhaps wary of creating an iTunes-like behemoth which could drive prices down,” Thompson writes, “publishers haven’t united in any reasonable way to create a consistent digital newsstand/bookstore format for their titles.” This, of course, has just made life easier for the scanlators. He also points to a shift toward the individual creator — it’s the big publishers who are hurting, while self-published and indy manga are on the rise. All this may sound familiar to American comics fans, but Thompson’s prescriptions for the future — more gag manga, simpler art, more color, and motion comics — don’t seem like convincing ways to rescue the industry. An iTunes-like behemoth is probably the way to go. [io9]

Awards | The Horror Writers Association has released the preliminary ballot for the 2011 Bram Stoker Awards, which includes a graphic novel category. [Horror Writers Association]

Awards | The Japanese publisher Shogakukan has announced its 57th annual manga awards. [Crunchyroll]

Retailing | The comics business is booming in Johnson City, Tennessee, and the retailers are giving a lot of credit to DC’s New 52. [Johnson City Press]

Fukitor

Creators | Jim Rugg interviews Jason Karns, the creator of Fukitor. Don’t feel bad if you have never heard of Fukitor, but do check out the article: Rugg starts out by explaining why the comic is important — and why he thinks it is deserving of greater renown. [The Comics Journal]

Creators | This interview with Caleb Melby, writer of The Zen of Steve Jobs, makes some interesting points about journalism and, in particular, journalism that uses the graphic novel medium. However, it’s hard to get past the fact that Forbes assigned Melby to write the Jobs book when he was an intern at the magazine, just out of college. [@PSFK]

From The Sixth Gun #5

Creators | Cullen Bunn walks through his process for writing an issue of The Sixth Gun. [CullenBunn.com]

Creators | Lunch Lady creator Jarrett Krosoczka hands out some solid advice to elementary school students about drawing comics and perseverance: “I tell the kids to write for the love of coming up with stories. I try to show them what I did as a child and show them it doesn’t have to be great … The main thing is they use their imagination. Writing is using your imagination on paper.” [The Press of Atlantic City]

Comics | Paul Gravett treats us to a brief survey of comics creators in the Middle East, an area where sequential art seems to be flourishing right now. [Paul Gravett]

Comics | An exhibit in New York looks at the way comics have portrayed Tibet over the past six decades. [PRI's The World]

Persepolis

Legal | The trial resumed today, if only briefly, in Tunis for the president of a Tunisian television network accused of “insulting sacred values” when he aired the adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. Tensions were so high in the courtroom that proceedings were postponed until April. The Oct. 7 broadcast resulted in an attempted arson attack on the network’s offices and the arrest of some 50 protesters. Nessma TV President Nebil Karoui, who apologized in October, is charged with “insulting sacred values, offending decent morals and causing public unrest” because of the outrage triggered by a scene in Persepolis showing God, which is prohibited by Islam. [AFP]

Organizations | Stumptown Comics, the organization that puts on the Stumptown Comics Fest every year in Portland, Oregon, has added three new members to its board: Comic Book Legal Defense Fund Executive Director Charles Brownstein, Boilerplate co-author Anina Bennett and editor Shawna Gore. [Stumptown Comics]

Awards | The First Fictions literary festival and the publisher Myriad Editions announced the winner of its First Graphic Novel competition: Gareth Brookes, whose graphic novel The Black Project will be published next year by Myriad Editions. Blogger Richard Bruton notes that the shortlist of seven graphic novels was so strong that one judge, Bryan Talbot (Alice in Sunderland) felt they were all “worthy of publication.” [Forbidden Planet]

The Massive

Creators | Brian Wood talks about his upcoming Dark Horse series The Massive. [Biff Bam Pop!]

Creators | Shane Houghton and Matt Whitlock discuss their work on BOOM! Studios’ Peanuts comic book. [Biff Bam Pop!]

Creators | In an interview tied to the upcoming release of the George Lucas film Red Tails, Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder (who worked on the film) reflects on his life in comics and the end of Boondocks: “My issues were totally about: one, I just burnt out on the strip and the deadlines were brutal. Two, I didn’t feel like there was much of a future in print. I thought I needed to quit because I saw the newspapers slowly going away. I didn’t want to be caught off guard. I felt more comfortable being a screenwriter, and as I learned how to become a producer, it seemed like a more natural fit for me than cartooning.” [Comics Alliance]

Goliath

Creators | Tom Spurgeon talks to Scottish writer and artist Tom Gauld, whose Goliath, which retells the Biblical story of David and Goliath, is due out from Drawn & Quarterly in a few weeks. Gauld’s work is not well known in the U.S., but he deserves to be; it’s worth clicking over just to see the art. [The Comics Reporter]

Creators | Writer and editor Shaenon Garrity makes her list of the best cartoonists of her generation, by which she means cartoonists born in the 1970s. That’s a fairly broad range and includes Craig Thompson, Gene Yang, and Chris Onstad, among others. [comiXology]

Creators | Michael Cavna interviews CW Cooke, the writer of the Steve Jobs bio-comic — the Bluewater one, not The Zen of Steve Jobs — about the challenges of writing about such an iconic and polarizing figure. [Comic Riffs]

Criticism | Sexism in Tiny Titans? It’s different from the type you find in adult comics, but J.L. Bell notices that the girls do a lot of babysitting—and the boys do almost none. [Oz and Ends]

Retailing | Darrin Williams, owner of Comic Envy in Asheville, North Carolina, answers questions about comics, why he became a retailer and his approach to Free Comic Book Day: “It’s a program that started about 10 years ago, and each year it has been the biggest day of the year for me. Ostensibly, it is designed to promote comics in general and get new readers in. All the publishers put out ‘free’ books, but it still costs the shops. I try to go pretty deep, but I run out of books. I think it’s successful, and I try to do stuff above and beyond. I’m working on a puppet show and lining up a kid-friendly band. I want it to be an event.” [Asheville Citizen-Times]

Friends With Boys

Comics | Faith Erin Hicks discusses the role of “acting” in comics: “I remember when I was drawing the final episode of my old webcomic, Demonology 101 (the 5th episode). That episode ended up being something like 100 pages more than all the other episodes, because that was when I started to explore the idea of acting in comics. I wanted to spend time on characters’ emotional reactions and inner thoughts in the comics, so everything ended up being much more decompressed. I had to give space to the characters, so they could react to a cruel/funny/sad comment by another character, or silently work through their inner struggles. That episode was the first time I connected drawing comics with the idea of myself as a director: the characters were my actors and I was directing them in a performance. And it was up to me to make sure that their performance supported the story to the best of my ability.” [Friends With Boys]

Comics | The Mindless Ones annotate the gigantic last issue of the pre-New 52 Batman Incorporated. [The Mindless Ones]

Creators | Gary Mann posts an appeal for help for colorist Tom Ziuko, who is facing serious health problems with no insurance and limited financial resources. [20th Century Danny Boy]

Commentary | David Brothers recommends Giannis Milonogiannis’ Old City Blues, which is now available on comiXology. [ComicsAlliance]

Events | Floating World Comics in Portland, Oregon, will host artwork from Emi Lenox and Natalie Nourigat beginning Feb. 2. [Floating World Comics]

The Captain and the Kids

The judges for the 2012 Eisner Awards have selected The Katzenjammer Kids cartoonist Rudolph Dirks and Archie artist Harry Lucey as this year’s automatic inductees into the Will Eisner Awards Hall of Fame.

Dirks created The Katzenjammer Kids in the late 19th century for William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal, and wrote and drew the comic strip until 1912, when he decided to take time off to travel around Europe. Hearst replaced Dirks with Harold H. Knerr, leading to a court battle between Dirks and the Hearst organization over who owned the characters. Hearst kept The Katzenjammer Kids, but Dirks was allowed to use the same characters elsewhere as long as he used a different title for the strip. Dirks moved to one of Hearst’s rivals, Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World, kicking off a half-century run on The Captain and the Kids. The Katzenjammer Kids, meanwhile, continues to run in newspapers worldwide today. Dirks passed away in 1968.

Harry Lucey began his comics career in the late 1930s, going on to draw Madam Satan, Magno, Crime Does Not Pay, Sam Hill and Captain America. From the 1950s until the 1970s, he was the primary artist for Archie, drawing not only the flagship title but also in-house ads, covers and various other comics for the publisher. His work went on to inspire many current artists, including Jaime Hernandez: “My favorite being Harry Lucey—he did the actual Archie title, while [Dan] DeCarlo did Betty & Veronica. I like them both, but Lucey just happens to be a personal favorite, because I think he was better at drawing natural characters—just their expressions taught me a lot about how I do my comics.” Lucey passed away in 1984.

Each year the judges typically choose two nominees who are automatically inducted into the Hall of Fame, along with a list of nominees who voters can select from. This year they’ve chosen 14 nominees, from which voters will choose four to go into the Hall of Fame: Bill Blackbeard, Howard Chaykin, Richard Corben, Carlos Ezquerra, Lee Falk, Bob Fujitani, Jesse Marsh, Tarpé Mills, Mort Meskin, Dennis O’Neil, Dan O’Neill, Katsuhiro Otomo, Trina Robbins and Gilbert Shelton. The judges were assisted by students at Vermont’s Center for Cartoon Studies, who made suggestions for Hall of Fame nominees and provided background information on the people they suggested.

The Eisner Awards will be presented during Comic-Con International in San Diego July 12-15.

Neil Gaiman

Internet | Sandman co-creator Neil Gaiman joined with Trent Reznor, Aziz Ansari, OK Go and 14 other members of the creative community in signing an open letter to Congress against the PROTECT IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act. “We fear that the broad new enforcement powers provided under SOPA and PIPA could be easily abused against legitimate services like those upon which we depend. These bills would allow entire websites to be blocked without due process, causing collateral damage to the legitimate users of the same services – artists and creators like us who would be censored as a result,” the letter states.

Warren Ellis and Fantagraphics have also come out against the bill, while Peter David, who is against the bill in its current form, takes aim at those who “endorsed the piracy, supported the piracy, enabled the piracy, felt their own actions weren’t piracy, and now refuse to accept the consequences of their own actions.” ComicsAlliance has posted an editorial against the bill and rounded up webcomic reactions to the blackout. [NeilGaiman.com]

Alex de Campi

Creators | Artist Jimmy Broxton, a.k.a. James Hodgkins, shares his side of being asked to leave Ashes, the sequel to Alex de Campi’s Smoke that held a successful Kickstarter campaign last year. “… I’m incredibly sorry about the whole thing, and for me, it’s not just about the money, or lost earnings, or how Kickstarter works, this has come as a huge creative blow. I had committed to spend the next year drawing Ashes, the script is quite brilliant, Alex is an extremely talented writer, I very much wanted to be part of something that I thought was going to be special. I hope people can see that commitment from the work I have already produced for the series.” De Campi responds on Kickstarter, relating what she contends was a tumultuous collaboration process in which she “felt bullied” by Hodgkins. [The Beat, Kickstarter]

Retailing | Ryan Haupt argues that better comics shops are one solution to the problem of piracy, a notion that gets some pushback in comments. Regardless, he does make some good suggestions as to how comics shops can improve (some are obvious, yet widely ignored) and points out the problems with buying comics at bookstores. [iFanboy]

Retailing | ComicsPRO President Joe Field talks up the sixth annual meeting of the retailer trade and advocacy group, being held Feb. 9-11 in Dallas. [Flying Colors Comics]

DC Comics

Publishing | DC Comics Co-Publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee talk at length about the thinking behind the company’s line-wide relaunch. “I’ve been using the expression ‘death by a thousand cuts,’” DiDio says. “There are a lot of things that we could have been doing better across the line: We could have been writing better, we could have been drawing better, we could have been editing better, we could have been marketing better. By doing the relaunch it allowed us to examine every aspect of our business and look at it from a point of view of if we were building a business today, how would we build it? How would we create characters? What types of stories would we tell? How would the world feel? And we changed the interior look of our books and we changed the exterior of our books. And by introducing the same day digital aspect, it forced us to rethink our production process. We were faced with a lot of delays. And we were losing loyal fans who were coming week in and week out because the books weren’t there. And we had to make a new commitment to deliver our product on time. People said to me, ‘How’d you let things get so out of control?’ It’s like one day waking up and you’re 30 pounds overweight. You’re not exactly sure how you got 30 pounds overweight, but you know you didn’t eat 30 pounds of food the night before. It just happened.” [Fast Company]

Awards | Sarah Glidden’s How To Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less won a 2011 MEOC Middle East book award, presented last month at the Middle East Studies Association conference in Washington, D.C. [Middle East Outreach Council]

Kim Yale

Sue at DC Women Kicking Ass came up with an interesting idea in light of the demise of Friends of Lulu and its annual Lulu Awards for female comics creators. She points out the variety of categories the Lulus celebrated as well as the Hall of Fame, but specifically misses the Kim Yale New Talent Award, named in honor of the late writer whose many accomplishments include, with husband John Ostrander, developing Barbara Gordon into Oracle.

“I hate to see an award that honors and remembers a vital creator like Kim Yale no longer exist,” Sue wrote. “While one can debate whether there is still the need for an organization like Friends of Lulu, recognizing and encouraging new female creators — especially in light of the discourse that’s gone on in this market this past year — is, I believe, still very important.”

She doesn’t have any concrete ideas yet, but suggests that “the most expedient way is probably for one of the larger comics sites to step up and take it on,” because, “for the award to exist it will also require the support and involvement of organizations far larger and influential than mine. It needs creator and publisher support, publicity and access to a database of industry participants. It could be hosted separately by one of the comics sites or it could be folded into an existing set of awards such as the Eisners. Or it could simply be open to voting by the comic community. As long as it is supported and treated with respect, I don’t think it matters.”

A couple of prominent women who write about comics, Heidi MacDonald and Kelly Thompson, offer support in the comments, as does Jill Pantozzi at The Mary Sue. And while I don’t speak for Comic Book Resources or even Robot 6, reviving the Kim Yale New Female Talent Award in some form is something I’d love to see happen, too. Consider this another attempt to spread the word. If enough people do, maybe something will come of this.

Kim Yale photo found at Ladies Making Comics.

Legal

Legal | A teenager was sentenced Monday to seven years in prison for his role in the July 2010 theft of a valuable comic collection from an elderly Medina, New York, man, who later died of a heart attack. Eighteen-year-old Juan C. Javier, who pleaded guilty last fall to attempted second-degree burglary, is one of seven people whom police say were hired by businessman Rico J. Vendetti to break into the home of Homer Marciniak to steal his comics. Marciniak, 77, awoke during the burglary and was beaten, suffering only cuts and bruises. However, he had a fatal heart attack later that day. Eight people, including Vendetti and Javier, were indicted in November 2010; the indictments were dismissed against four of the accused so the U.S. Attorney could charge them with murder under federal law. [The Daily News]

National Cartoonists Society

Awards | Michael Cavna talks with National Cartoonists Society President Tom Richmond about the addition of the Online Comics Strips category to the prestigious Reuben Awards: “This is definitely a “first step” in recognizing online cartooning in the NCS divisional awards. It’s been discussed and explored for several years, and there are a lot of challenges involved. I picked the brains of several big names in online comics, and worked with the board to try and come up with criteria for eligibility that were in keeping with the other divisions and the NCS rules. This is what we came up with.” [Comic Riffs]

Digital comics | Comics and religious apps account for the 10 top-grossing iOS book apps this week. [eBookNewser]

Digital piracy | Bryan Young consider who should shoulder the blame for comics piracy: “Comic publishers need to understand why people are doing it and address the issues. People are pirating these comics, right or wrong, because they don’t believe they should be paying the same price as for a print copy of a comic. It’s as simple as that. The average comic book, in print or digital, costs about $2.99 per issue. With print, you have printing costs, shipping costs, wholesale costs and everything else to contend with to turn a profit. It makes sense that they’re priced the way they are. But a digital comic? Digital comics have far less overhead.” [City Weekly]

Thief of Thieves #1

Creators | Entertainment Weekly chats briefly with Robert Kirkman about Thief of Thieves. [Shelf Life]

Creators | Young artists should have a five-year plan, Sean Gordon Murphy firmly believes, rather than sitting around tweeting and waiting to be discovered. He offers some concrete steps, some of which are counterintuitive: “With a little bit of effort, could you write a C+ story? Of course you could! C+ is better than most comics. We deal in an industry where characters fight crime in their underwear — don’t be intimidated into thinking you couldn’t put together a half decent script if you tried.” Writing is not only an asset for the beginning artist, he points out, it also helps them become planners. [deviantART]

Comics | Oliver Sava considers what makes a good all-ages comic: “The best titles have elements adults can latch on to as well. Roger Langridge’s The Muppet Show is one of the best humor comics published in the past decade, using the comic-book form to capture the spirit and energy of the television series. Each issue has an overarching plot broken up by one- or two-page comic strips depicting the show’s different sketches, and Langridge’s experience with adult humor on titles like Fred The Clown keeps the jokes from being too infantile.” [The A.V. Club]

Stumptown

Seven comics creators are among the finalists for the 2012 Oregon Book Awards, which recognized accomplishments by Oregon writers who work in genres of poetry, fiction, literary nonfiction, drama and young readers literature.

The shortlist for the Pacific Northwest College of Art Graphic Literature Award is:

• Graham Annable of Portland for Book of Grickle
• Aidan Koch of Portland for The Whale
• Sarah Oleksyk of Portland for Ivy
• Greg Rucka of Portland for Stumptown
• Joe Sacco of Portland for Footnotes in Gaza

The winners will be announced April 23 during the Oregon Book Awards ceremony. Voting is also open through April 16 for The Oregonian’s Reader Choice Award.

Justice League #1

Publishing | Four months in, the DC Comics relaunch seems to be a success. The most recent sales figures show Justice League #1 selling more than 360,000 copies since August, and Batman #1 and Action Comics #1 selling more than 250,000. By contrast, Marvel’s strongest seller was Ultimate Spider-Man #160, which was in the 160,000-copy neighborhood. These figures seem to reflect sales in the direct market only; it would be interesting to see how many digital copies have been sold. [The Hollywood Reporter]

Awards | Nominations are open for this year’s Eagle Awards. [Eagle Awards]

Retailing | San Francisco retailer Brian Hibbs shares the top-selling graphic novels in his store for 2011, by units and by dollars. [Savage Critics]

Retailing | Christopher Butcher looks back on the events of the past year in the comics store he manages, Toronto’s The Beguiling. [The Beguiling blog]

Commentary | Mike Gold explains why the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is a terrible idea. [ComicMix]

Comics | Enough with the best-of lists: Ron Richards presents his lovingly compiled list of the worst things in comics in 2011. His No. 1 point stands in stark contrast to The Hollywood Reporter piece: Overall, sales are dropping. [iFanboy]

Gingerbread Girl

Comics | Tom Spurgeon continues his holiday interview series, talking to Rina Piccolo, Steve Bissette, Colleen Coover, Todd DePastino and Robot 6′s own Chris Mautner. [The Comics Reporter]

Comics | The Houston Chronicle covers the arrival of its own local superhero, the Scarlet Spider. [Houston Chronicle]

Publishing | Jim Shooter recounts his time at Broadway Comics, as well as dealings he had with the World Wrestling Federation when Valiant had the rights to produce wrestling comics: “VALIANT, as you may know, was forced into a license to do WWF comics by my corrupt partner Steve Massarsky, who represented both Leisure Concepts International (the WWF’s licensing agency) and VALIANT. Can you say ‘conflict of interest?’ Massarsky made a ton of money personally by making a deal with himself with utter disregard for what made sense for VALIANT, and I was stuck with actually producing WWF comics.” [Jim Shooter]

Creators | Christopher Irving and Seth Kushner profile Legion of Super-Heroes writer and former DC Comics president and publisher Paul Levitz. [Graphic NYC]

Brilliant #1

Creators | This profile of Mark Bagley covers his entry into comics and his collaborations with Brian Michael Bendis on Marvel’s Ultimate Spider-Man and Avengers Assemble and their own Brilliant. [Creative Loafing]

Creators | Ron Marz reports he raised $500 last month for Toys for Tots by selling signed comics to fans. [Messages from Marz]

Creators | Guest-blogging for Whitney Matheson, Grace Bello interviews Tony Millionaire. [Pop Candy]

Creators | Kurtis Wiebe discusses Green Wake, The Intrepids and his new series Peter Panzerfaust. [The Outhouse]

Craft | Colorist Matt Wilson explains how he went about coloring a page of Wonder Woman #4 that presented some challenges. [SeeEmWhyKay, via Blog@Newsarama]

Commentary | Filmmaker and blogger Becki Burrows interviews Paul Gravett, author of many books on comics and graphic novels, most recently, 1001 Comics to Read Before You Die. [Paul Gravett]

Commentary | David Uzumeri makes the case for why The Flash is “the most visually inventive book of the [DC Comics] relaunch”: “The first hint of this came when DC began promoting the first issue’s title page the promotional rounds, an absolutely gorgeous piece of work that integrated the design sense of the logo into not only the artwork but the actual storytelling. Manapul drew Barry Allen disarming an army of mysterious sci-fi marines in a breathtaking clockwise sequence that was immediately readable despite its complexity, guiding the eye in a circle across a sequence where the Flash basically hands all of these dudes their butts in a series of small panels within the letters of his own name. Then it kept getting better.” [ComicsAlliance]

Commentary | Sean Kleefeld examines the world view of One Piece and wonders if some of the folks at the Occupy protests were there because of Luffy and the Straw Hats. [Kleefeld on Comics]

Review | Rob Clough reads Seth’s The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists. [The Comics Journal]

Bandai Entertainment

Publishing | The anime and manga company Bandai Entertainment will stop distributing new products in February, although its existing catalog will continue to be available until the licenses expire. The company will shift its focus to licensing its properties for digital distribution and merchandising. President and CEO Ken Iyadomi said the decision to shut down new-product operations was made by the Japanese parent company without his input, and he strongly implied the underlying problem was that the corporate parent wanted to charge more for its anime than the current market will bear. Bandai published the Lucky Star, Kannagi and Eureka Seven manga, among others; all new manga volumes have been canceled, which means Kannagi will be left incomplete, at least for now. [Anime News Network]

Awards | The finalists for the Cybils, the blogger’s literary awards for children’s and YA books, have been posted, and they include five nominations each in the children’s and YA graphic novel categories. [Cybils Awards]

Fatale #1

Creators | Frequent collaborators Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips discuss their new horror-noir series Fatale, which debuts today. “You can scare people with a movie because you’re in control a lot more,” Brubaker says. “In a book, you’re making them imagine pictures, and it’s a different amount of control. With a comic book, it’s very hard to write something that puts people on edge. That’s an important thing: Let people know they have no idea what’s coming in this story and no idea what anything is going to be.” [USA Today]

Creators | Paul Grist digs into his new Image Comics series Mudman, whose fictional setting is inspired by his own town on the southwest coast of England. [USA Today]

Creators | King City writer and artist Brandon Graham talks about getting published, and names his favorite comics creators in an interview with David Harper. [Multiversity Comics]

Jerusalem

Creators | A Lebanese newspaper profiles cartoonist Guy Delisle, creator of Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City. [The Daily Star]

Comics | Larry Cruz takes an affectionate look at Golden Age vamp Phantom Lady, a creation of the Eisner-Iger studio. [The Webcomic Overlook]

Commentary | Alan David Doane argues that Alan Moore’s veto of a reprint of 1963 is an argument for, not against, creator-owned comics. “But Moore, as an individual and as a comics creator, has more than earned the right to associate with, both personally and professionally, only those he chooses to associate with. He should not be forced into business contracts or personal relationships he does not wish to be a part of, and we should respect that.” [Trouble With Comics]

Critique | Domingos Isabelinho discusses the decision to re-color Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes, as well as some of the tropes that were left untouched. [The Hooded Utilitarian]

Eric Stephenson

Publishing | Image Comics publisher Eric Stephenson talks about the ups and downs of the past year, including getting Todd MacFarlane’s Spawn on a tighter schedule and the difficulties of selling all-ages comics: “There’s this really blinkered mentality in comics that “all-ages” means only for kids, despite the relatively easy to understand implication that all-ages books can be enjoyed by readers of all ages. Diamond even has this graphic they use for all-ages comics in Previews and it’s these two children that look like toddlers or whatever. People seem to miss the point that most the comics we love from the ‘60s or ‘70s or even the ‘80s to a large degree, were all-ages comics. Stan & Jack’s Fantastic Four was an all-ages book. And it was brilliant.” [Multiversity Comics]

Digital | Viz Media, the largest manga publisher in the United States, began releasing its graphic novels on Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet and Nook Color devices today. As on the Viz iOS app and website, the manga are priced from $4.99 to $9.99 per volume, and they read from right to left, in authentic Japanese fashion. 107 volumes from 18 series are available at launch, although the selection skews a bit older than what’s available on the iOS app, with no sign of the Shonen Jump blockbusters Naruto, Bleach, or One Piece, at least in the initial announcement. [press release]

Art Spiegelman

Creators | Tom Spurgeon kicks off his annual holiday interviews with a talk with Art Spiegelman. [The Comics Reporter]

Comics | Joey Esposito makes the case for a Lord of the Rings comic series. [IGN]

Comics | Health care economist Jonathan Gruber talks to NPR’s Radio Boston about his new graphic novel, stirringly titled Health Care Reform. What It Is. Why It’s Necessary. How It Works, which does for the Affordable Care Act what Project X: Cup Noodle did for ramen-in-a-cup—takes something boring and turns it into a stirring adventure tale. Or at least makes it less boring. [Radio Boston]

Creators | Funky Winkerbean creator Tom Batiuk reflects on the many ways in which Cleveland influences his work, including real places and real people that have popped up in his comics over the years—including fanatical band director Harry L. Dinkle, who was based on Batiuk’s junior-high band director, Harry Pfingsten: “With most real characters, I exaggerate their traits. With Harry, I had to tone him down just a little.” [Cleveland.com]

Reviews | Larry Cruz reviews Tony Cliff’s swashbuckling adventure comic Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant. [The Webcomic Overlook]

Comic strips | Seattle Times book editor Mary Ann Gwinn highlights Fantagraphics’ Pogo collection and a Pogo exhibit at Fantagraphics’ bookstore in Georgetown, Wash. [Seattle Times]

Awards | The Japanese Ministry of Cultural Affairs has given out its 15th Japan Media Arts Festival Awards, and top honors in the manga division went to Hisae Iwaoka’s Saturn Apartments, which is published in the U.S. by Viz. Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home also won an Excellence Prize. [Anime News Network]

Dark Horse Digital

Digital | Retailer Brian Hibbs responds to recent comments around the price of digital comics, commenting on how “channel migration” could effect comic retailers: “The concern of the comics retailer isn’t that there IS digital — fuck, I’m totally all for a mechanism to drive a potentially wide segment of customers to the medium of comics itself. How can that NOT help me? But, rather, that enough customers will ‘change channels’ (of purchase), so as to make segments of work unprofitible to carry. I’ve been pretty straight with you — most periodicals are but marginally profitible; most books are largely unprofitible. That we have stellar, break out, oh-my-god-it’s-like-printing-money successes like WALKING DEAD or BONE or SANDMAN doesn’t mean that this is the way all books can follow. Quite the opposite in fact! So what this means is that even losing a TINY portion of the readership through Channel Migration could potentially have dire effects. Seriously, if I lost just 10% of my customers, I’m done. And what we also know is that when physical stores close, most of that readership for comics UTTERLY VANISHES. The gist of this is that losing 10% of sales to migration could mean that the other 80% of that stores’ sales are COMPLETELY LOST.” [The Savage Critics]

Comics | Classic Sunday funnies character Joe Palooka has been resurrected, but this time his sport is Mixed Martial Arts, not boxing. Boxing announcer Joe Antonacci grew up reading the classic comic and when he learned the trademark was available, he acquired it, then hired a stable of writers and artists to turn it into an action-adventure comic about MMA. You can see some samples at Palooka.com. [Sherdog]

Creators | Comics Alliance has another preview of Sacrifice, due out next week from writer Sam Humphries (Our Love Is Real) and artist Dalton Rose, along with a Q&A with Humphries. [Comics Alliance]

Stephen Colbert

Comics | Comedian and television personality Stephen Colbert recommends Mush! Sled Dogs with Issues, the new First Second graphic novel by Glenn Eichler, who writes for The Colbert Report, and artist Joe Infurnari. (If you watch the full episode on his site, you can see it around the 20-minute mark, right after the Black Keys play). [The Colbert Report]

Creators | Sarah Glidden (How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less) chats with Mike Dawson about process and other topics in the latest Talkie Hutt podcast. [The Comics Journal]

Review | Cow Boy, by Chris Eliopoulos and Nate Cosby may look like a kids’ comic, but Ali Colluccio finds it offers plenty for readers of all ages to appreciate. [iFanboy]

Review | David Anderson thinks Robert Berry and Josh Levitas have done a great job of adding visuals to James Joyce’s classic Ulysses in their webcomic Ulysses “Seen,” but it’s probably best for most readers to read the book and the comic in tandem. [Spandexless]

Libraries | Young Adult Librarian Robin Brenner did a survey of her library colleagues to see what sort of graphic novel collections they had. Amazingly, almost 87% had a children’s graphic novel collection and over 83% had a teen graphic novel area. Only 64% had adult graphic novels in a separate collection, although some interfile them with prose books. She also looks at the reasons librarians give for not having a separate graphic novel collection as well as what factors (budget, content, poor bindings, availability) limit the books they acquire. [No Flying, No Tights]

For God and Country

Criticism | Dave Seliger finds GQ‘s comic-book rendition of the death of Osama bin Laden, written by Matt Fraction and drawn by Nathan Fox, to be in extremely bad taste: “Is this really how the whole bin Laden saga needs to be remembered? As a bloody double tap to the head with ‘pok’ and ‘pak’ sound effects? I think the military handled the end quite well, with an unpublicized ceremony and burial at sea. It didn’t need a comic book rendition in a ‘gentlemen’s’ magazine.” [Core77]

Events | The third Comics and Medicine Conference is coming to Toronto next July, and they are currently accepting proposals for papers and workshops. [Comics 212]

Awards | Dave Brown, political cartoonist for the UK newspaper The Independent, has been named Political Cartoonist of the Year by the Cartoon Art Trust. [The Daily Cartoonist]

Snark | Alan David Doane applauds Dark Horse for promoting its watermark so vigorously, by plastering it prominently all over its electronic review copies. [Trouble With Comics]

Here’s what’s interesting about this shortlist: It reflects what tweens and teens are actually reading, as opposed to what the adult gatekeepers think they should be reading. That means the list is fascinatingly eclectic and also devoid of any award winners — I know when I was a kid, that foil Newbery Award seal was the kiss of death. Things don’t seem to have changed much. Here’s the 2012 shortlist:

• Star Wars: Blood Ties
• Gate 7
• Wuthering Heights (Quick Text Version)
• FF, Vol. 1
• Marineman: A Matter of Life and Depth
• Sita: Daughter of the Earth
• Green Lantern: Secret Origin
• Chimichanga

Now that’s eclectic! Last year, the manga Black Butler took first place, Bryan Talbot’s Grandville, Mon Amour was second, and the graphic novel version of Twilight came in third. So when someone asks whether the kids these days are reading superheroes, manga, or original graphic novels, you can safely answer “Yes!”

(via the Forbidden Planet blog)

Eisner Awards

Comic-Con International has announced the judging panel for the 2012 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, which includes Comic Book Resources and Robot 6 contributor Brigid Alverson.

The six-person committee will meet in San Diego in late March to select the nominees to appear on the Eisner ballot, which then will be voted on by comics industry professionals. The winners will be announced July 13 during an awards ceremony at Comic-Con.

Besides Alverson, who also writes MangaBlog and contributes to Publishers Weekly and MTV Geek, the judging panel includes: retailer Calum Johnston, owner of Strange Adventures: Comix & Curiosities in Nova Scotia; Jesse Karp, librarian at the LREI independent school in New York City and instructor of a graduate-level course on graphic novels at the Pratt Institute; veteran cartoonist Larry Marder, creator of Tales of the Beanworld, former executive director of Image Comics and former president of McFarlane Toys; author and educator Ben Saunders, professor of English at the University of Oregon; and Mary Sturhann, longtime secretary on the board of directors of Comic-Con International.

Glyph Comics Awards

Rich Watson, creator and administrator of the Glyph Comics Awards, sent word today that nomination are now being accepted for 2012.

Any comics publisher–small, large, corporate, independent, self-published–as well as online comic creators and cartoonists for newspapers and other periodicals, can submit black-themed material released between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2011 for consideration for award recognition. The Committee defines black-themed work as any comic with any combination of the following: a black protagonist(s), or at least a black character(s) pivotal to the direction of the story; a setting(s) or a theme(s) that explores the black experience within the United States and/or abroad, past, present, and/or future; and/or a comic of any kind written and/or illustrated by a black creator(s).

The panel of judges for the 2012 competition is:

• Omar Bilal from BlackSuperhero.com
• Robin Brenner from NoFlyingNoTights.com
• David Brothers from 4thLetter.com and ComicsAlliance
• Tim Callahan from Comic Book Resources
• Karen Green, librarian at Columbia University

Anyone wishing to submit their comic book or comic strip for consideration in the 2012 competition should e-mail GCA Committee Chair Rich Watson at rich.watson@gmail.com for further information. Hard copies are preferred, though submissions of e-files will also be accepted. Online comics creators and newspaper/periodical cartoonists with websites should send a direct URL link to their site or page. Daily cartoonists must have a minimum of one month’s work archived and available for viewing; weekly cartoonists a minimum of two months. The deadline for submissions is Jan. 31.

The 2012 Glyph Comics Awards ceremony will be held at the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention in May 2012.

X-23 #20

Sales charts | Responding to an iFanboy article that speculates on what titles Marvel might cancel next, Men of War and Viking writer Ivan Brandon makes the case against sales charts and the subsequent analysis of them each month: “There’s an ongoing debate, for a bunch of years now. There are numbers that circulate every month, inaccurate numbers, people track them, people use that flawed ‘data’ to comment on what they see as the progress or decline on the list. A lot of comics professionals are against this, for a lot of reasons. In my case, for my books, the books I personally share copyright on … my reason is, and no offense to anyone out there: My income is none of your business. Just as your income is none of mine.”

Tom Spurgeon offers a counterpoint: “Sales information seems to me an obvious positive, not because it reveals the bank accounts of creators, but because what sells and to what extent is basic information about a marketplace, and the shape and potency of a marketplace seems to me a primary item of interest for anyone covering that marketplace. It’s foundational to our understanding of how things work and why. Certainly this information is already manipulated to brazen effect by companies with something to put over on customers; I have to imagine this would become worse under a system of no information at all being released.” [Ivan Brandon, The Comics Reporter]

Habibi

Awards | Craig Thompson’s Habibi is one of five finalists for the French comics organization L’Association Des Critiques De Bandes Dessinées’ annual Prix De La Critique. The winner will be announced Dec. 5. [The Comics Reporter]

Creators | Mike Mignola, Bill Sienkiewicz, Walt Simonson and several other creators are selling illustrations of classic Universal Monsters on eBay to raise money for 6-year-old Aidan Reed, who was diagnosed last year with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. [Newsarama]

Creators | Laura Sneddon profiles Watchmen and V for Vendetta writer Alan Moore, who talks about creating The Ballad of Halo Jones, one of the first non-superhero women to headline her own series: “There wasn’t a single – I mean, I was annoyed – there wasn’t a single girls’ comic in Britain … I thought, well if you do more stories that are aimed at women, you’ll get more women reading the comics. It would seem fairly simple and straightforward, but there was a lot of resistance.” [The Independent]

Eduardo Risso

Creators | Artist Eduardo Risso discusses his career and craft in along interview conducted by Michal Chudolinski at the International Festival of Comics and Games in Lodz, Poland. [Comics Bulletin]

Creators | Mike Costa talks about his work on Blackhawks and G.I. Joe: Cobra. [USA Today]

Manga | Shaenon Garrity explains Chobits, the CLAMP series about a world in which humans can own robots with personalities — persocoms: “Chobits is the strangest of beasts: a difficult, complex, thought-provoking T&A manga. Ultimately it chooses to have its cheesecake and eat it too, raising a host of challenging questions only to leave them unanswered so as not to spoil the romance.” [Anime News Network]

Digital | Remember when your mom threw out all your comics? Digital comics saved the day for one reader who accidentally destroyed her cousin’s comics collection. [Teleread]

Commentary | Rich Clabaugh looks at Fantagraphics’ first Carl Barks collection, “Lost in the Andes.” [Christian Science Monitor]

Comics | Bob Temuka looks at some forgotten superhero titles from the 1980s and 1990s. [The Tearoom of Despair]

Blogosphere | The Panelists, a blog devoted to analyzing individual comics panels, is disbanding. The writers, all of them well regarded in the comics community, are simply too busy doing other things. [The Panelists]

Chris Claremont

Creators | Longtime Uncanny X-Men writer Chris Claremont is donating his archives to Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The collection includes materials for all of his major writing projects over the past 40 years, notebooks with story ideas, drafts of short stories, plays, novels and comic books, and materials from his early training in the theater and his career as an actor. “We hope this is the first of more comics papers to come to the University,” said Karen Green, Columbia University’s ancient/medieval studies librarian and graphic novel librarian. “We want it to be a magnet for these kinds of archives in New York City, where the comics medium was born.” [Publishers Weekly]

Awards | USA Network and DC Comics’ Burn Notice webcomic has won a Media Vanguard Award from Advertising Age. [Advertising Age]

Creators | Michael Cavna talks to two comics creators with very different takes on Occupy Wall Street, sequential journalist Susie Cagle, who was arrested as part of the Occupy Oakland protests, and conservative editorial cartoonist Nate Beeler, who walks past the Occupy D.C. site every day and regards it as “quaint,” smelly, and out of step with the rest of the country.” [Comic Riffs]

Bleach, Vol. 49

Publishing | Viz Media prepares for its digital relaunch of Shonen Jump, which will feature near-simultaneous releases of Naruto, Bleach and four other series with their Japanese counterparts, by speeding up its digital releases of Bleach — and skipping ahead to the next story arc. [About.com]

Creators | Eight veteran MAD Magazine creators, including Al Jaffee, Sergio Aragones and Jack Davis (whose work appeared in the very first issue) got together in Georgia recently to talk over old times. Jaffee and Aragones are still going strong, but Davis quit the magazine 20 years ago. He explained, “I like all the guys up there a lot, but I felt like it kind of got a little raunchy.” [The Associated Press]
Retailers | Ralph Gardner Jr., revisits St. Marks Comics after 20 years away and finds it still going strong. [The Wall Street Journal]

Habibi

Commentary | Jonathan Liu looks at Craig Thompson’s Habibi. [GeekDad]

Commentary | Just call them comics, says Dave Scheidt, who decries the blurring of the distinction between comics and graphic novels: “A graphic novel in the purest definition is a front to back story in which told in a single volume most usually self-contained, and not a collected edition of numerous single issues, even if they are apart of an ongoing story. If it were just released as volumes and never single issues, ding ding! Graphic novel.” [The Huffington Post]

I ran across Isabel Greenberg’s short story this week Love in a Very Cold Climate thanks to the Graphic Ladies?! Tumblr, and I was enchanted by it. It’s a lovely, folkloric story about a couple united by love but repelled by physical forces, and it appears to be part of a larger story world that Greenberg has just begun to create.

As it happens, Greenberg’s story won the 2011 Graphic Short Story Prize sponsored by The Observer, Comica, and Vintage Books. The runner-up and previous winners are also posted at the award website, and all are well worth a look.

Archie Comics

Digital | Archie Comics announced that its comics will be available on the recently announced Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet. [Archie Comics]

Awards | Stan Lee will receive the Producers Guild of America’s 2012 Vanguard Award recognizing achievement in new media and technology. “Stan Lee’s creative vision and imagination has produced some of the most beloved and visually stunning characters and adventures in history,” Producers Guild Awards co-chairs Paula Wagner and Michael Manheim said in a joint statement. “He not only has created content that will forever be in our culture but continues to make strides in the digital and new media realms, keeping the comic book industry fresh and exciting. Stan’s accomplishments truly encompass the spirit of the Vanguard Award and we are proud to honor him.” George Lucas and John Lasseter are among the award’s previous recipients. [press release]

Creators | Laura Hudson interviews cartoonist Susie Cagle about her teargassing and arrest during Occupy Oakland. [ComicsAlliance]

Heart #1

Creators | The Pitch profiles Heart artist Kevin Mellon. [The Pitch]

Creators | Eva Volin interviews Owly creator Andy Runton. [Good Comics for Kids]

Creators | Todd Battis of CTV News spotlights Kate Beaton ahead of a broadcast profile. [CTV News]

Creators | Cully Hamner chats briefly DC’s New 52, The Shade miniseries and the planned big-screen sequel to RED. [ComicBookMovie]

Creators | The Bowling Green State University student newspaper previews a campus appearance by alum Marc Sumerak. [The BG News]

Conventions | Kevin Czap and Chris Pitzer report on last weekend’s Minneapolis Indie Expo, or MIX. [MIX]

Commentary | Charles Hatfield is writing a new column for The Comics Journal, KinderComics, which will focus on “visual narratives aimed at and/or depicting children, most especially comics.” In the first installment, Hatfield looks at First Second’s Nursery Rhyme Comics. [The Comics Journal]