Amazon

Retailing | Rumors have begun to swirl that online retail giant Amazon plans to open a brick-and-mortar store in Seattle within the next few months to help gauge the profitability of a chain. The store reportedly won’t just sell e-readers and tablets, but also books from Amazon’s newly launched publishing division. [Good E-Reader, Gawker]

Publishing | Japanese publisher Shueisha Inc. released the 65th volume of Eiichiro Oda’s pirate manga One Piece last week with a first printing of 4 million copies, tying the record set in November by the previous volume. [The Mainichi Daily News]

Retailing | Howard Ackler writes about the final days of Dragon Lady Comics, the Toronto retailer that closed last week after 33 years in business. [National Post]

Garry Trudeau

Creators | Garry Trudeau reacts to The Chicago Tribune’s refusal to run last Friday’s Doonesbury strip because it included a QR code that led readers to the charity DonorsChoose. The Trib ran a note that said it does not allow comics creators to “promote their self-interests.” Trudeau said, “I’m not sure ‘self-interest’ quite applies, since (a) DonorsChoose is a charity, and (b) I have no formal connection to it,” and he pointed out that the paper ran Thursday’s comic, which included a QR code that directed readers to Trudeau’s own website — “which actually was in my self-interest.” [Comic Riffs]

Creators | J.H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman discuss their approach to DC Comics’ Batwoman title: “We keep using this mantra of there’s no status quo in the book, and we want everything to continue moving forward and never have an issue where you read it and go, ‘Oh. Tomorrow everything can be back to normal.’ There is no normal,” Blackman said. [USA Today]

Creators | Jeff Parker has begun to post some of his comics scripts on his website, starting with several Marvel Adventures scripts. [Parkerspace]

Creators | J.M. DeMatteis shares an introduction he wrote for a Modern Masters edition focused on his Abadazad collaborator Mike Ploog. [J.M. DeMatteis's Creation Point]

Oyster War

Creators | Panel Bound talks to Ben Towle, illustrator of Amelia Earhart: This Broad Ocean and creator of the webcomic Oyster War: “I run into a lot of people who have ideas for this and ideas for that, but look: ideas are a dime a dozen. ‘A school for wizards.’ That’s a great idea. Lots of people have had that idea. Only one, though, had the perseverance to write Harry Potter while her mother died and her marriage collapsed—and then stick with it after seeing it rejected by twelve publishers.” [Panel Bound]

Commentary | Joy Kim ponders the difference between teams and team-ups. In a team story, such as the pirates of One Piece, the members work together and character development occurs in that context. “In contrast, in a team-up story, the individual characters always trump the idea of the team. While there’s a certain amount of entertainment value in watching the various members of the Justice League react to each other’s styles, that’s also often all there is to the story. The character-changing moments for the members happen, for the most part, within their own monthly titles, not in Justice League; even when they do happen outside the character’s main title (usually as part of some big crossover event), they are more about the character as an individual than about the team as a unit.” [Joy Kim]

Digital comics | Ryan Penagos, editorial director for Marvel Digital Media Group and Marvel.com, discusses Marvel’s digital strategy with host Peter Biddle in a recent episode of MashUp Radio. [MashUp Radio]

Digital comics | Sean Kleefeld sets out to review digital-first comics and finds the pickings are slim; almost all digital comics have a print version as well. So he takes a broader look at the state of digital comics and sees a market that is still in flux. [The Comic Book Bin]

Reviews | Paul Gravett posts a generously illustrated review of James Chapman’s British Comics: A Cultural History. [Paul Gravett]

One Piece, Vol. 46

Crime | An energetic thief stole all 64 volumes of One Piece from a Japanese bookstore by stuffing 10 volumes at a time in his duffel bag. As One Piece is the most popular manga in Japan, he could have gotten a good price for his booty at a used manga store, had the forces of law not intervened. [Kotaku]

Legal | Michael Cavna talks with cartoonist Susie Cagle about being taken into custody again over the weekend during Occupy Oakland protests. [Comic Riffs]

Creators | Kiss member Gene Simmons still remembers the postcard he got from Stan Lee as a kid. [Noisecreep]

Comics | Jeff Parker and Erica Moen’s webcomic Bucko has reached its last panel, but Parker says a book is on the way, and there will be “exciting news” at Emerald City Comic Con. [Parkerspace]

Creators | Patrick Smith interviews Jeremy Whitley, co-creator of Princeless, an all-ages comic that has been getting good word-of-blog lately: “I think you’ll see as story progresses that fight scenes especially get pretty comical. In fact, I think that things like the lampooning of outfits and fairy tales and princess culture are the important heavy lifting of Princeless. They make adults who have lived with this stuff go “YES! THAT!” but hopefully kids who are seeing this stuff for the first time will be conditioned to see those sorts of things as ludicrous from an early age. It’s hard to get bs past kids on stuff like that anyway.” [Spandexless]

Jill Thompson, by Seth Kushner

Creators | Jill Thompson reminisces about modeling for P. Craig Russell and talks about her work on Wonder Woman, Sandman, Finals, and the all-ages comic Scary Godmother in a wide-ranging interview with Christopher Irving. [Graphic NYC]

Creators | Mike Jasper, co-creator of In Maps and Legends, talks about his love of fantasy and his experience launching the comic on Zuda and then moving it to other digital programs when Zuda folded. Fun fact: Although they have been working together for two and a half years, Mike and his collaborator Niki Smith have never met in person. [Graphicly Blog]

Comics | Funky Winkerbean fans rejoice: Tom Batiuk will release the first volume of collected Funky strips earlier this year. Readers who are familiar with the current depressing storylines will be surprised by the earlier strips, which are much more light-hearted and in fact quite funny. [The Daily Cartoonist]

Lady Sabre & The Pirates of the Ineffable Aether

Comics | Greg Rucka discusses plans for the collection edition of the webcomic Lady Sabre & The Pirates of the Ineffable Aether, and with a variety of digital and print formats on the table, asks readers what they would prefer. [Lady Sabre & The Pirates of the Ineffable Aether]

Graphic novels | The American Booksellers Association has published a list of the best selling graphic novels in independent bookstores for the two months ending Jan. 22. [Bookselling This Week ,via Graphic Novel Reporter]

Graphic novels | Paul Gravett lists some tempting graphic novels due out in March. [Paul Gravett]

Webcomics | The collaborative site Act-I-Vate celebrates its sixth anniversary today. [Acti-I-Vate]

Review | Robot 6 contributor Christopher Mautner reviews Government Issue: Comics for the People, 1940s to 2000s, which he finds as dreary as its subject matter, despite a few high points: “Easily the best comic of the bunch is Walt Kelly’s “Pogo Primer for Parents”, a visual lecture on the importance of properly monitoring your child’s television habits that is so charming and funny that it only serves to underscore how drab and lifeless all the other excerpts are by comparison.” [The Comics Journal]

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]

Friends With Boys

Robot 6 has covered cartoonist Faith Erin Hicks on multiple occasions concerning her comics, but this time we’re discussing something new: what kind of living she makes as a cartoonist. Hicks recently opened up about the financial realities of her life as a working cartoonist in a blog post supplementing her current webcomic Friends With Boys, which First Second will release later this year as a graphic novel. Hicks isn’t the first to share such intimate details on the business of comics, but the picture she paints with it is surprising in many ways.

“First of all, never in a million years did I think I would be able to pay my rent by drawing comics,” Hicks wrote, “or even through doing the freelance art thing. Sometime I cringe inwardly when I tell people that I write and draw comics for a living, because sometimes it doesn’t feel like that; it’s more like I’ve taken a vacation from some real job to draw comics, and eventually I will return to the workforce when I run out of money.”

Hicks became a full-time comic artist only because she lost her job. Until 2008 she worked as an animator, but as her company’s contracts dried up she was let go until their prospects improved. While she was waiting, mainstream comics publisher First Second offered her a contract drawing Brain Camp, a comic written by someone else. That one-time opportunity eventually blossomed into an ongoing commitment between Hicks and First Second, with the artist now working on her fourth book for the publisher.

You might ask, what about Hicks’ work before Brain Camp? Although Hicks garnered acclaim with her webcomic Demonology 101 and two graphic novels for SLG Publishing, it turns out that it doesn’t pay nearly what you’d think. SLG, like most small publishing houses, doesn’t pay royalties or a page-rate for creator-owned work, with the creators only making money on the back-end. According to Hicks, her two SLG books — Zombies Calling and War at Ellsmere – sold about 2,000 copies each, with her receiving 7% (no misprint, 7%) of the cover price. Those two books were sold for $9.95 and $12.95, respectively, which works out to a total of $3,206 earned for those two books.

“Part of the reason for this pessimistic view is that currently I’m living off advances from [First Second], and supplementing that money with grants and freelance work (taking illustration jobs for clients, doing the occasional workshop, drawing commissions, etc),” Hicks went on to say in her blog post. “I do not have a hit graphic novel that I receive a steady royalty income from. Not yet, at least. I suspect I would feel more secure in my line of work if I did.”

Hicks goes into more detail about the financial life of a cartoonist, and into how she spends her limited income. Truly an insightful piece for pros and fans alike, some of whom chimed in with comments on Hick’s post.

Angoulême

Conventions | Wim Lockefeer lines up the exhibits he’s looking forward to at the 39th Angoulême International Comics Festival, which begins today in Angoulême, France. [The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log]

Legal | Cartoonist Albert Lekgaba was sketching the proceedings of the Botswana Court of Appeal when security officers asked to step out of the courtroom, confiscated his work, and told him he could not draw in court, “especially if the judges were present.” When the judges learned of this, however, they informed the court registrar that sketching is indeed allowed, and they ordered that Lekgaba be readmitted to the courtroom and his sketches returned to him. [The Botswana Gazette]

Passings | California newspaper cartoonist John Lara has died at age 56. [Coastline Pilot]

Creators | Heidi MacDonald sums up a number of recent posts on piracy and the creative life in one mega-post, and a lively discussion follows in the comments section. [The Beat]

Eisner Awards

Creators | Tom Spurgeon cast his votes for the Eisner Awards Hall of Fame, and he urges other readers who are qualified (or who think they may be qualified) to do so as well: “The way I look at it, a Hall of Fame is a cultural document that has a chance of surviving decades into the future when things like our on-line text jeremiads and late-night hotel room conversations about what’s valuable in the medium will have long faded from memory. It’s worth having whatever small input one can have on something like that, particularly as time will also drive any objections we have from relevance.” [The Comics Reporter]

Creators | Frank Cho is so busy these days that he has decided to postpone the release of his miniseries Guns & Dinos: “I want to apologize to all my fans out there who were eagerly waiting for this book. But with only half the book done and no time to complete it, it’s only fair to reschedule the release date when the mini-series is completely finished. Fear not, I’m planning on releasing it before the year is out.” [Apes and Babes]

Retailing | Retailer Chris Brady, owner of 4 Color Fantasies in Rancho Cucamonga, California, explains why he embraces digital comics: It brings new readers to the medium, and his comiXology storefront pays him 15 to 30 percent of cover price without much effort on his part. [The Press-Enterprise]

Daredevil #8

Comics | Colin Smith sees Mark Waid’s Spider-Man/Daredevil crossover as everything a good comic should be — smartly written, accessible to new readers and grounded in reality despite the fantasy elements: “Waid’s super-people are always individuals before they’re crime-fighters, and for all the fun of the roof-running and the holographic illusions, it’s the moments of betrayal and sadness and self-deception which stay with the reader after the comics have been put away.” [Too Busy Thinking About My Comics]

Comics | Warren Ellis gets an advance copy of Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples’ Saga #1 — yes, the one with the breastfeeding on the cover — and finds it good. However, he also worries that the market may not be mature enough for the book, both because of its length and its juxtaposition of different types of elements. [Warren Ellis]

Creators | Sean T. Collins interviews horror comic creator Julia Gfrörer: “I’m most interested in making art about feelings and experiences that are hidden or obscure, uncomfortable to talk about, frightening to even think of. It should be challenging for me to create, and for you to consume. I guess that it often comes off as overwrought and melodramatic, but like the song says, I can’t come through half-stepping.” [The Comics Journal]

Comics | Larry Cruz celebrates Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant, which he admits has a “stodgy” feel but nonetheless boasts glorious art and a gripping story in an unusual format. [The Webcomic Overlook]

Review | Matthias Wivel takes a look at the Fantagraphics edition of Carl Barks’ Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes. [The Comics Journal]

Review | Philip Shropshire reviews the second volume of Ed Piskor’s phone-hacker comic Wizzywig, which takes the protagonist on a through-the-looking-glass trip through the criminal justice system. [Comics Forge]

Megaupload

Legal | The U.S. Justice Department and the FBI on Thursday shut down the popular file-sharing site Megaupload, seized $50 million in assets and charged its founder and six others with running an international enterprise based on Internet piracy that’s cost copyright holders at least $500 million in lost revenue. The FBI has begun extradition proceedings in New Zealand to bring company founder Kim Schmitz, aka Kim DotCom, to the United States. He and three other associates are being held without bail until Monday, when they’ll receive a new hearing. Three others remain at large. They face a maximum of 20 years in prison.

News of the shutdown was met with retaliation by the hacker collective Anonymous, which attacked the websites of the Justice Department and the Motion Picture Association of America.

Founded in 2005, Megaupload allowed users to anonymously transfer files like movies and music and, certainly on a much smaller scale, comic books. The Hong Kong-based company, which reportedly employed as many as 155 people, is said to have made $175 million from ads and premium subscriptions. According to the indictment, DotCom, whose assets apparently include a fleet of cars, took in $42 million from the operation in 2010.

Before Megaupload was taken down, the company posted a statement on its website claiming that allegations it facilitated massive breaches of copyright are “vastly overblown”: “The fact is that the vast majority of Mega’s Internet traffic is legitimate, and we are here to stay. If the content industry would like to take advantage of our popularity, we are happy to enter into a dialogue. We have some good ideas. Please get in touch.” [USA Today, The New York Times, CNET]

J.M. DeMatteis

Piracy | In response to recent conversations about the Stop Online Piracy Act, comics writer J.M. DeMatteis shares his thoughts on comic book piracy: “The bottom line — my bottom line, anyway — is this: If you’re enthusiastic about a particular creator, buy his or her work and then let others know about it. If you spread the word via file-sharing, it’s not much different than loaning a friend one of your books or CDs. Just as I once became an obsessive fan after taping my friends’ vinyl albums, many of your friends will become fans who’ll spend their hard-earned money on actively supporting that creator’s work.” [Creation Point]

Creators | Lynda Barry will be the spring artist in residence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. [University of Wisconsin-Madison News]

Creators | Movie producer and former Marvel Studios President Avi Arad chats briefly about his new manga The Innocent: “I’ve been in the world of comics all my life, and specifically into Japanese comics in the early days, before manga attempted to penetrate this market. I wanted to do The Innocent a long time ago. It stayed with me quite a while. Once I got out of Marvel Comics, it was one of the things on my bucket list to do a manga. I had an idea and I followed it, and here we are.” [Graphic Novel Reporter]

Dancer #1

Creators | Nathan Edmondson discusses Dancer, his upcoming Image Comics miniseries with artist Nic Klein about a retired assassin and his ballerina companion on the run from a sniper in Milan. [USA Today]

Creators | Jennifer Anderson spotlights Oil & Water, the new Fantagraphics graphic novel by Steve Duin and Shannon Wheeler that examines the impact of the BP/Deepwater Horizon oil spill on the Gulf. [Beaverton Valley Times]

Creators | Collaborators Kurtis J. Wiebe and Tyler Jenkins talking about their upcoming Image/Shadowline series Peter Panzerfaust, which reimagines Peter Pan and the Lost Boys as Nazi resisters during World War II. [USA Today]

Publishing | Dave Ferraro and Patrick Markfort discuss the small publisher Sparkplug in their latest podcast. [Comics-and-More]

From "The Little Tales of Otto & Olive," by Stephanie Buscema

J. Torres brings to our attention the premiere of Saturday Morning Webtoons, a new web “channel” linking readers to a lineup of all-ages webcomics from some familiar names: Boo Bear & Flo, by Jack Briglio (Digger & Friends, Scooby Doo) and Agnes Garbowska (Marvel’s Girl Comics, You, Me and Zombie); Gobukan, by J. Bone (Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Owl Magazine), The Little Tales of Otto & Olive, by Stephanie Buscema (Rocketeer Adventures, Pugs in a Bug); Orchard of Laughs, by Eric Orchard (Maddy Kettle, Yo Gabba Gabba: Comic Book Time); and Princess at Midnight, by Andi Watson (Glister, Skeleton Key).

In addition to the stable of weekly and biweekly comics, the site also offers each month a free downloadable comic; first up is Lopopo’s Lost Sock, by Alex Serra (Handy Manny, Teen Titans Go). Next will be Funnies Farm, by J. Torres (Archie & Friends, Disney/Pixar’s WALL-E) and Tracie Mauk (Comic Book Crossfire, Fight).

Aquaman #1

Digital comics | Geoff Johns explains how digital presentation made him re-evaluate his approach to writing Aquaman #1, as digital readers focus on stories panel by panel rather than page by page. He notes that they also spend more time on individual panels, taking in all the details before moving on: “It’s weird to go back and look at some of the old comics now. If you read something in this fashion you will notice stuff that you skipped over so quickly because your eye takes in the whole page instead of the panel individually. I think that’s probably one of the biggest advantages of digital.” Johns also reveals digital considerations have also led him to scale back on internal dialogue to “let the art and characters expressions speak for themselves.” [Variety]

Digital comics | On a related note, Shaun Huston ponders the challenges of making “comics as we know them” work on digital devices: “While there’s some latitude to read full pages on the iPad, and the Fire at 4.7” x 7.5” (or the Nooks) affords that option more realistically than the iPhone or similarly-sized devices, in all of these cases there will be situations where most readers will shift to Guided View in order to effectively see some particular detail on a page. For many, Guided View will be the primary choice, which is a qualitatively different experience than reading page-by-page. In fact, while in that mode, ‘the page’ arguably becomes irrelevant as panels are strung together into one linear sequence, rather than into a series of page-specific sequences.” [PopMatters]

Washington City Paper

Comic strips | Only nine months after returning syndicated comics to its pages, Washington City Paper has again eliminated them amid budget cuts. The alternative newspaper initially dropped comics in February 2009 in a bid to save money following the bankruptcy of parent company Creating Loafing. [DCist]

Publishing | Todd Allen catalogs retailer complaints about Marvel’s apparent long-running inability to keep its collection backlist available. “They’re a publisher that publishes their trade books like they’re periodicals” says says Eric Kirsammer, owner of Chicago Comics. “They don’t really have a backstock. I’ve been told by Marvel they don’t.” [Publishers Weekly]

Best of the year | Steve Higgins counts down the Top 10 graphic novels of 2011, and the best of DC’s New 52 titles. [Playback: STL]

Creators | Alan Corbett discusses his new graphic novel The Ghost of Shandon, set in 18th-century Cork, Ireland. [Cork Independent]

Comics | Houston news outlets make note of the debut of Marvel’s Scarlet Spider, which is set in the city. [Your Houston News, My Fox Houston]

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.

The Sun Journal reports the board of Regional School Unit #10 in Dixfield agreed with a recommendation made last month by a special committee that the book be made available only with parental permission. Superintendent Tom Ward said this is the first time in his eight years as head of the district that a book has been challenged.

Edited by Ariel Schrag, the 2007 anthology features contributions by such cartoonists as Gabrielle Bell, Daniel Clowes, Joe Matt, Dash Shaw and Lauren Weinstein. As the title suggests, the frank stories focus on the highs and lows of life in seventh and eighth grade, from first loves to first zits. It was selected by the New York Public Library as one of its 2008 Books for the Teen Age.

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom sent a letter to Ward last month saying that Stuck in the Middle “may not be right for every student at Buckfield Junior-Senior High School.  But the library has a responsibility to represent a broad range of views in its collection and to meet the needs of everyone in the community – not just the most vocal, the most powerful, or even the majority.  While parents and community members may – and should – voice their concerns and select different materials for themselves and their children, those objecting to particular books should not be given the power to restrict the rights of other students and families to access the material.”

Board member Cynthia Bissell disagreed with that notion, arguing the anthology does nothing to fulfill the function of schools. ““I read it cover to cover,” she said. “I was appalled. This book does nothing to elevate students. It implies that everyone speaks and acts that way.”

This isn’t the first time Stuck in the Middle has been challenged: In November 2009, a South Dakota school board voted to remove the book from middle-school libraries while making it available to teachers to use in class.

A few months ago, I picked up Braden Lamb and Shelli Paroline’s minicomic The Potter’s Pet and was really impressed — it’s a cleverly written, beautifully drawn, handsomely produced little comic. I have been a fan of Lamb’s work since I discovered his (unfortunately incomplete) webcomic Kitty Hawk years ago; Paroline’s work was new to me, but her lively lines quickly made me a convert.

So I was delighted to see that they will be handling the art for BOOM! Studios’ Adventure Time comics, which are based on the animated Cartoon Network series.

Everyone else seems to be excited about the concept here, but we don’t watch a lot of Cartoon Network in our house and, to be honest, I have never seen the show. It’s the creators who have me interested in this series, which is the opposite of how things used to work with licensed comics. When I was a kid, the Disney comics I read all looked alike, and they weren’t signed because the Disney folks wanted me to think that they all flowed from Walt Disney’s magic pen. More and more, though, creators are putting their own stamp on licensed comics and becoming an important part of the package. Think of Roger Langridge’s run on The Muppet Show comics, or Dan Hipp’s reinvention of Ben 10. What’s more, licensed projects give artists a chance to work on their skills and bring in a regular paycheck without the risks of creator-owned work. If you want to see the up-and-coming artists of the next decade, check out BOOM!’s Pixar and Muppets comics or Archaia’s Fraggle Rock anthologies.

Lamb and Paroline have honed their craft working on BOOM!’s Muppet comics: Paroline was the artist and Lamb the colorist for Muppet Snow White, which is apparently out of print, and Paroline actually drew the Muppet Show #0 comic. From what I have seen, Adventure Time will be worth picking up for their art alone.

Drunk Hulk

Crime | A drunken Coventry, England, man was arrested for selling drugs outside a nightclub while dressed as the Incredible Hulk. According to the article, “Police were alerted by his costume which was based on the TV and film character who becomes green and superhuman when angry.” [Coventry Telegraph]

Creators | Dinosaur Comics creator Ryan North discusses his work on BOOM!’s upcoming Adventure Time comic. [ComicsAlliance]

Creators | Colleen Doran posts some character designs she worked up years ago for a never-completed animation project written by Warren Ellis; she admits to using Star Trek actor George Takei as the model for the main character. [A Distant Soil]

Creators | Chad Michael Murray chats with his hometown paper about his debut graphic novel, Everlast, which had its genesis in a visit from a missionary who said that the end times are coming, and only 144,000 people will be saved: “In that, I thought, what if our world was to end and only a number of people would be left to reign, to give mankind a second chance? How would they be chosen? Out of that just stemmed this really cool story of people who are soldiers who need to find the chosen, the people who are destined to survive the end of days.” [The Buffalo News]

Publishing | Tom Spurgeon continues his year-end interview series by talking to Fantagraphics’ Kim Thompson. [The Comics Reporter]

Green River Killer

Graphic novels | Duane Swierczynski recommends three true-crime graphic novels. [NPR]

Publishing | Publisher Dan Vado recounts “five things we survived at SLG Publishing,” including rodents and bees. [Living Well, Beyond My Means]

Commentary | In their regular “The Catch-Up” feature, Noel Murray and Oliver Sava “kick around” the Vertigo series Y: The Last Man. Murray had only read the first volume previously, while Sava bought every issue when they were released. [The A.V. Club]

Life with Archie #16

Comics | CNN covers the upcoming wedding of Archie Comics’ Kevin Keller, who will get married to another man in Life with Archie #16. Keller was injured while serving in the military in Iraq and Clay Walker, his groom-to-be, was his physical therapist. “Riverdale is this picturesque vision of American life, and when you see yourself reflected in that, you have a role in even the most idealized version of the reality you live in,” said Matt Kane, associate director of entertainment media for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. “That’s the difference between feeling like a rejected outsider and feeling like you’re a part of something.” [CNN]

Comics | Jim Caple worries that viewers of the Tintin movie won’t appreciate it the way he does, comparing old-school Tintin fans to old-school Boston Red Sox or Seattle Mariners fans: “That’s what I worry about. I worry there will be all these Tintin wannabes who only know the character from the movie, who don’t appreciate Herge’s genius, who don’t know what it was like to wait a month for the next 10-page installment or when you had to special order the few books made available in America. Fans who didn’t earn this movie.” [ESPN]

Creators | Kurt Busiek discusses his work on Dracula: The Company of Monsters, which returned from cancellation as a webcomic, as well as digital comics in general: “I’ve been interested in the possibilities of online distribution for a long time, and even pitched an idea for an online strip a decade or more ago, but my collaborators and I couldn’t afford to do it on our own back then, and we didn’t find any takers who wanted to back it. And there are stories I’d love to do online, and ways I’d like to try taking advantage of the online interface, instead of print, that I’m eager to try — but between deadlines on existing projects and my health issues, I haven’t been able to launch an online series yet.” [Biff Bam Pop!]

"Saga," from Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

Creators | Fiona Staples talks with her local newspaper about her upcoming project with Brian K. Vaughan, the eagerly anticipated Image Comics series Saga. [Calgary Herald]

Creators | Sweets creator Kody Chamberlain gets the spotlight ahead of a book signing with Chew artist Rob Guillory. [The Times]

Creators | Here’s a heartwarming story for the holidays: A historian found some old comics about Saginaw, Michigan, in the local library and tracked down the artist, Vincent Faletti, whose work was published in The New Yorker and other magazines. It turns out that Faletti is alive and still cracking jokes at 95. [MLive.com]

Comics | The first issue of IDW’s Magic: The Gathering comic, originally scheduled to be released next week, has been pushed back to Feb. 1 due to “unforeseen printing challenges.” [ICv2]

Crime | Victoria, British Columbia, police have recovered a cache of stolen goods worth more than $10,000 — $8,500 of which was a comic book collection taken from an apartment storage locker. Police are returning the collection to its owner. [Victoria Times Colonist]

Fandom | Ology spotlights the marriage proposal of David Salomon, who proposed with a homemade take on an issue of Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane. “What is it about the gamers, the comic book Ologists, the sci-fi fans and the zombie slayers that makes them the kings and queens of romance?” [Ology]

Stuck in the Middle

Libraries | An editorial in the Lewiston, Maine, newspaper praises a local school board’s decision last week to leave the 2007 comics anthology Stuck in the Middle: 17 Comics from an Unpleasant Age in the Buckfield Junior-Senior High School library following a parent’s complaints about “objectionable sexual and language references”: “American culture can be graphically sexual and explicitly foul and it’s important that young people learn how to navigate that world in a responsible way. The best possible way, of course, is for parents to steer their children through that process, but not every parent does and many children are left adrift. So, the next-better place to learn is the school library, where a responsible adult can help educate children about their hormone-charged emerging feelings in a confusingly sensual culture.” [Sun Journal]

Business | Wizard magazine founder Gareb Shamus, who resigned earlier this month as president and chief executive officer of Wizard World Inc., will sell most of his shares in the company to his successor, who’s expected to be named next month. [Bleeding Cool]

Creators | The Korean American Experience asks, “Why Are There So Many Good Asian American Cartoonists?” and highlights the work of Jason Shiga, Gene Yang, Derek Kirk Kim, Hellen Jo and more. [Korean American Experience]

Art by Sharon Moody

Creators | Author and comics writer Scott Edelman takes issue with paintings by Sharon Moody that depict photo-realistic images of comic books. (Honestly, when I first saw the images, I thought someone was just tacking a comic to the wall and calling it art). The paintings don’t credit the creators of the comics. “You might ask, but what’s wrong with this? Aren’t these just still-life paintings like any other? Aren’t there many trompe l’oeil paintings that can pass for photographs? Why should an artist be allowed to paint a bowl of fruit but not a comic book? My issue is this—an apple, once you set aside either a Higher Power or human hybridization (depending on your belief system), has no creator, but the pages of art apparently reproduced here line for line do. What’s going on here is at the very least a collaboration with Kirby, Buscema, Novick, and others without those artists’ permission, and at the very most … well … I’ll let others decide whether they want to go there.” [Bleeding Cool]

Alex de Campi

Creators | Laura Sneddon chats with Alex de Campi about her Kickstarter-funded project Ashes, and women in comics: “The only reason the majors don’t have more women creators is they expect the creators to be in their face begging for jobs. Most women creators just don’t care that much (and also the female way of working socially is different), so they’re all sitting on their piles Eisner nominations and critically-acclaimed indie books waiting to be asked to dance by DC and Marvel … but DC and Marvel are too busy doing keg stands with the freshmen boys.” [comicbookGRRRL]

Creators | Paul Gravett translates a paper he presented for a conference on war and totalitarianism in comics, contrasting Joe Sacco’s Palestine with his Footnotes in Gaza, completed 16 years later and under very different circumstances. [Paul Gravett]

Creators | John Allison discusses the event that sparked his webcomic Bad Machinery, his frustrations about the strip’s progress, and more. [12 Books in 12 Months]

Creators | Sean Kleefeld interviews Frank Page, creator of the long-running webcomic Bob the Squirrel. Page recently announced in the comic, which is based on his life, that he is considering ending the strip. “I think it was a combination of everything… the early mornings, the volume of work, my looking back on 3000+ strips and wondering what the next 3000+ would look like… I’ve made it very clear that I haven’t decided one way or another if the strip will end. Bob has become my best friend, he’s very real to me. And, after reading the considerable amount of emails I’ve received, he’s real to a lot of other people as well. How do you say goodbye to your best friend? Would you be any better off doing something else?” He still hasn’t made up his mind, though. [MTV Geek]

Digital comics | Margaret O’Connell gives the online manga site JManga a thorough test drive and finds it promising but a bit clunky. [Sequential Tart]

Commentary | Bill Kartalopoulos writes a lengthy, thoughtful essay on Daniel Clowes’ The Death-Ray. [Brooklyn Rail]

Awards | Clay Bennett, the editorial cartoonist for the Chattanooga Times Free Press, has won the 2011 Lurie UN Award, which is given by the UN Correspondents Association and the UN Society of Writers to promote excellence in political cartooning. Hit the link to see the winning cartoon, an M.C. Escher-like take on the Mideast peace talks, read how Bennett came up with the idea. [The Daily Cartoonist]

Stuck in the Middle

Libraries | A committee recommended Monday that Stuck in the Middle: 17 Comics from an Unpleasant Age, an anthology of comics about middle school edited by Ariel Schrag, should remain in the Buckfield Junior-Senior High School library in Dixfield, Maine, after the mother of a student challenged its appropriateness because of “objectionable sexual and language references.” The local school board will make a final ruling in January. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom sent a letter of support for the book prior to the hearing. A school board in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, pulled the graphic novel from middle-school libraries in November 2009, but allowed teachers to continue to use it in class. [Sun Journal]

Digital | Charlie Sorrel looks at the iPad comic reader called, appropriately enough, Comic Reader. [Wired]

From "Foul Play"

Creators | Cartoonist Jack Davis looks back on his lengthy career, the influence of Harvey Kurtzman, and the dislike for his own Tales From the Crypt stories, like “Foul Play,” which became one of Frederic Werthem’s targets in Seduction of the Innocent: “I have a hang-up. I love horror. I love ghost stories, but when it comes to illustrating it for thousands and thousands of young people to see it, I don’t go along with it. I think that happened, and I didn’t know it was happening at the time. I just knew that I would go in and I’d get a check and pick up a script and go home and do it. I sat in a little room and did this horrible baseball story, and it made the Senate [hearings] and everywhere. People liked it but I didn’t. I said, ‘I can’t do that.’ To this day I love all the people at Mad, but Mad had changed. It’s not like it used to be. It has some very good artists but their philosophy is not mine.” [The A.V. Club]

Creators | Larry Gonick talks about his long career creating nonfiction comics and his latest magnum opus The Cartoon Guide to Calculus. [Graphic Novel Reporter]

Brilliant! Tragic!

Creators | Jamie McKelvie’s illustration for Art Brut’s album Brilliant! Tragic! is among Paste Magazine‘s 50 Best Album Covers of 2011. [Paste]

Creators | Health Care Reform artist Nathan Schreiber is profiled by his hometown newspaper. [The Milford Daily News]

Craft | Kevin Huizenga shares one of the templates he uses for drawing a comics page: “I draw most of my comics — the Ganges stories, especially — with 4 rows. When I’m starting a new story I usually print a few of these out on copy paper and sketch on them. Sometimes I figure out a page pretty much exactly right the first time, but often it takes a few tries. Or I’ll just sketch scenes and characters in the boxes and not worry about where each panel is going to go until later. For a few years now I’ve worked this way and it’s become second nature.” [New Construction]

Susie Cagle

Legal | Cartoonist Susie Cagle, who was arrested last month while covering Occupy Oakland, says she has been cleared of all charges by the Oakland Police Department. The Society of Professional Journalists sent a letter to the Oakland police condemning the arrest, which ultimately assisted in getting the charges dropped. The letter called out the department’s crowd management policy, which says, “Even after a dispersal order has been given, clearly identified media shall be permitted to carry out their professional duties in any area where arrests are being made, unless their presence would unduly interfere with the enforcement action.” [Fishbowl LA]

Conventions | San Diego City Council approved a plan to have San Diego hotels pay for a $520 million convention center expansion. The plan moves to a second hearing in January and requires a vote of two-thirds of the hotels that cast ballots for approval. [NBC San Diego]

Retailing | Mesa, Arizona, comic store Evermore Nevermore has closed after a little more than two years. Co-owner Bob Leeper blames the recession and light evening traffic downtown. [The Arizona Republic]

Retailing | Duff Franco, owner of Earth 383 Comics & Games in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, has launched a campaign to save the store following a break-in that resulted in the loss of most of his gaming stock. He plans a gathering on Dec. 17 to solicit ideas from customers on how to keep the shop open. [The Daily Advance]

Marvel

Creators | Marvel Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso and Editor Jeanine Schaefer discuss female characters and creators at Marvel, with Alonso noting why it’s important for the publisher to hire creators from a variety of backgrounds: “In following the discourse about women and minorities in comics, the one thing I see brought up so often is the idea that people don’t see gender. ‘Oh, I don’t see gender,’ they say, ‘I just want good stories.’ There’s an idea that actively looking to hire women is counter-intuitive to good stories; the simplified version of this is ‘hire good writers, regardless of gender.’ Of course, I agree that the people we hire need to be good at this, first and foremost. But what this argument misses, in implying (and sometimes outright stating) that actively hiring people with different life-experiences is somehow creatively bereft, is that having a variety of viewpoints is the best way to not only tell better stories, but to grow your market, so that you can continue to tell those stories.” [ComicsAlliance]

Creators | The Comics Journal posts an interview with comics legend Jerry Robinson from 1994 about his life and career. The creator of the Joker, who passed away this week, is also remembered by Ty Templeton, Peter David and the Hero Initiative’s Jim McLauchlin. [The Comics Journal]

Organizations | Diamond Comic Distributors helped the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund raise almost $30,000 through a retailer membership drive. [CBLDF]

Conventions | WonderCon, scheduled for March 16-18 in Anaheim, California, has announced several additional special guests, including Jim Lee, Mark Waid, Art Adams and Joe Hill. [Comic-Con International]

Angoulême International Comics Festival

Conventions | The Angoulême International Comics Festival has announced the Official Selections for the 2012 festival, which will be held Jan. 26-29 in Angoulême, France. Eddie Campbell’s Alec, Craig Thompson’s Habibi and Daniel Clowes’ Mister Wonderful are among the almost 60 graphic novels on the list. [Angoulême]

Editorial cartoons | The Columbus Dispatch suspended political cartoonist Jeff Stahler after finding that his Monday cartoon was too similar to a New Yorker cartoon published in 2009. At The Daily Cartoonist, Alan Gardner posts several of Stahler’s cartoons alongside earlier pieces with similar punchlines. While one can debate whether Stahler lifted his ideas from the older cartoons, it’s obvious that he drew them in his own style, unlike David Simpson, who was recently accused of copying Jeff McNally’s cartoons. [Comic Riffs]

Crime | Several pieces of original artwork, among other items, were stolen from the car of AdHouse Publisher Chris Pitzer while he was in New York City last weekend for the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival. Pitzer is offering a reward for any information leading to the recovery of the artwork. [AdHouse]

Creators | Congratulations to Any Empire creator Nate Powell and his wife Rachel on the new addition to their family, Harper Powell. [See My Brother Dance]

Creators | Writer Neil Gaiman talks to illustrator and filmmaker Shaun Tan. [The Guardian]

Batwing #4

Creators | Writer Judd Winick discusses his work on DC’s Batwing comic: “Bruce and Batman are these emotionless beasts who are driven by rage and seek justice and do everything they can to just stay focused on the mission: fighting crime, stopping the bad guy, finding the clues, putting the pieces together. But as we’ll learn, David Zavimbe’s a very emotional character. He’s much more self-aware in that way: He knows what he is, where he’s come from, and what he has to overcome.” [USA Today]

Creators | Artist Ben Bates talks about working on the upcoming New Crusaders digital series. [ComicsAlliance]

Creators | Felicia Day discusses The Guild comics, including the 2012 Free Comic Book Day offering from Dark Horse, as well as her work on Dragon Age: Redemption. [TFAW]

Creators | Sean Kleefeld interviews Rina Piccolo, creator of the comic strip Tina’s Groove and the webcomic Velia, Dear. [MTV Geek]

Analysis | J.L. Bell introduces the concept of a “plumber’s review,” a review that looks at the work through one narrow field of expertise: “Say, a review of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island focused entirely on details of south Pacific navigation, or an analysis of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover for its remarks on coal mining. In the academic world, it’s the comments from the professor miffed that you haven’t said more about the particular event or compound or poetic form that he or she happens to study.” This can be good or bad, he notes, and he points out a roundtable discussion where it proved useful. [Oz and Ends]

Reviews | Kristy Valenti reviews Richard Marschall’s The Sunday Funnies: 1896-1950. [comiXology]

Fashion | Don MacPherson notes the latest in robotic-insectoid couture. [Eye on Comics]

Cartoon Movement has been knocking it out of the park lately with short comic about topical issues — it’s the home of the Occupy Sketchbooks and a number of other thought-provoking pieces of journalism done in the comics medium. Now Josh Neufeld has a new comic up there, Bahrain: Lines in Ink, Lines in the Sand, that tells the story of the recent unrest in Bahrain from the point of view of two cartoonists.

Neufeld starts out with his own visit to Bahrain, which struck him as a peaceful and progressive country. “I didn’t sense any underlying tensions,” he says, but the very next page shows how much he missed. What began as peaceful demonstrations against the government quickly turned ugly as long-buried resentments came to the surface. There had been rifts, chiefly between the Sunni and Shia, that Neufeld had not seen on his trip (which was sponsored by the U.S. Department of State).

Neufeld resists the temptation to boil this down to a simple tale. The two cartoonists he met on his trip have very different perspectives on the unrest, and he allows both to tell their stories, even including their cartoons in his comic. The result is a sad tale of how a country that seemed stable and peaceful could fracture along political and religious lines — and of the consequences that has for its people.

Alan Moore

Creators | Watchmen writer Alan Moore responds to recent comments made by The Dark Knight Returns creator Frank Miller: “I think that the Occupy movement is, in one sense, the public saying that they should be the ones to decide who’s too big to fail. It’s a completely justified howl of moral outrage and it seems to be handled in a very intelligent, non-violent way, which is probably another reason why Frank Miller would be less than pleased with it. I’m sure if it had been a bunch of young, sociopathic vigilantes with Batman make-up on their faces, he’d be more in favour of it. We would definitely have to agree to differ on that one.”  [Honest Publishing]

Conventions | Tom Spurgeon files a lengthy report from the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival, held Saturday in New York City. [The Comics Reporter]

Ashes

Creators | Uncanny X-Men writer Kieron Gillen comments on the use of sites like Kickstarter to fund comics projects through the lens of Alex de Campi and Jimmy Broxton’s Ashes: “I think that Kickstarter or – if you’re not a yank – Indie Go Go is the single biggest new thing to be considered by a working creative this year. And not just comic creatives. Digital is something people have been chewing over for years now – and I suspect it’s going to be next year when we see some more movement there – but this has surprised a lot of people, and lead to a cheerily wild-west vibe to it all. People running Kickstarters are still trying to work out how to do this thing, and balance all sorts of questions of personal moral integrity. And this is important to do, just because when you don’t, things go bad quickly and you’re risking tarring the very concept of kickstarter-esque funded projects.” [Kieron Gillen]

Creators | CNN profiles legendary MAD cartoonist Al Jaffee. [CNN]

Creators | Gerry Alanguilan talks about his graphic novel Elmer. [Philippine Daily Inquirer]

The Last Dragon

Creators | Rebecca Guay discusses her Dark Horse adaptation of Jane Yolen’s short story “The Last Dragon.” [Sequential Tart]

Creators | Box Brown discusses his career and approach to making comics, among other topics. [The Comics Reporter]

Comics | Deb Aoki previews some of the manga we can expect to see in the coming year. [About.com]

Marketing | Johanna Draper Carlson, always quick to call out bad marketing tactics, takes a Kickstarter creator to task for not responding well to criticism. The creator responds in the comments; you be the judge. [Comics Worth Reading]

Commentary | Chris Murphy looks back at “four incredible years” with Marvel’s Hercules. [ComicsAlliance]

Commentary | David Anderson looks at the first issue of John Byrne’s Cold War. [Spandexless]