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Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes

Green Lantern Corps #41

Publishing | Buoyed by its Blackest Night miniseries and tie-in books, DC Comics claimed the first six slots on Diamond Comic Distributors' Top 300 list of books sold to the direct market in October.

It's a rare occurrence, to be sure, but just how rare? Charts-watcher John Jackson Miller contends we have to travel back more than 40 years, to a time well before the direct market, to find when DC last had the six best-selling comics (as sold to retailers). Yes, 1968. The closest DC came in the direct-market era, according to Miller, was in April 1993, when the publisher held the top five positions.

But back to October 2009, when DC also narrowed the market gap with Marvel to the closest margin in some time: The competitors were separated by just 2.43 percent in unit share, and 2.68 percent in dollar share. [Diamond Comic Distributors, The Comics Chronicles]

Retailing | Borders Group announced Thursday it will close about 200 of its Waldenbooks, Borders Express and Borders Outlet stores in January. The retail chain has been steadily closing mall-based stores in its Waldenbooks Specialty Retail division since 2001. About 130 mall stores will remain once the downsizing is complete. [Publishers Weekly]

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The (boring?) business of The Brave and the Bold

Grumpy Old Fan

In a fractured, niche-oriented environment, it can be hard to justify one's existence, let alone one's relevance. When the tastes of your audience have changed, you are naturally prompted to change as well. Thus, MTV cultivates youth-oriented reality shows, VH-1 spotlights fading celebrities (and their desperate hangers-on), and The Weather Channel now plays meteorologically-minded movies like The Perfect Storm and The Wizard Of Oz.

To be sure, there must be scads of people who think AMC's shift towards showing Catwoman edited-for-TV is a step up from those all-weekend marathons of uncut Hitchcock films. Why shouldn't a channel try to keep as many eyes glued to it as possible? If you don't care what kind of elements Jim Cantore is braving, you can get your local radar instantly from the Internet. (And then you can watch Cantore highlights on YouTube.) Only those who remember how these channels began now lament what they have become -- and may envy their successes.

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Milestone Forever brings much-needed closure, finally ... maybe?

Milestone Forever

According to this post over at DC's The Source blog, original Milestone Comics editor-in-chief Dwayne McDuffie is teaming with several artists who worked on the original Milestone Comics line back in the 1990s to wrap up the stories that were being told in those books before the line was canceled. It also sounds like it'll somehow transition the characters from their separate Milestone-verse to the DCU proper, where we've already seen them show up in the pages Justice League and Teen Titans.

McDuffie will team with John Paul Leon, Mark Bright, Chris Cross and Denys Cowan to wrap up the stories from Hardware, Icon, Shadow Cabinet, Blood Syndicate and Static. I figured we were well past ever seeing these characters again in their original environment, so this is welcome news, even if it is "a bittersweet tale that chronicles the literal end of a universe."

This weekend, it's King Con Brooklyn

King Con Brooklyn

Here's an event that makes me wish I lived close to New York City again: King Con Brooklyn, a comics and animation convention being held Saturday and Sunday at the Brooklyn Lyceum.

It has a great name, and boasts an impressive lineup of largely local guests, including Harvey Pekar, Al Jaffee, Denny O'Neil, Neal Adams, Brian Wood, Alex Robinson, Molly Crabapple, Dave Roman, Raina Telgemeier, Kevin Colden, David Gallaher, Steve Ellis and Matt Loux.

In addition, there's a programming schedule that includes workshops, a DC Comics/Zuda portfolio review, creator spotlights, and panels devoted to kids' comics, European comics, digital comics, animation and Marvel's publishing plans.

The convention will be held from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on both days at the Brooklyn Lyceum, 227 Fourth Ave., Brooklyn.

Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes

The Book of Genesis Illustrated

Sales charts | R. Crumb's The Book of Genesis Illustrated climbs seven spots to No. 2 in its second month on BookScan's list of top-selling adult graphic novels in bookstores. It's bested, as most are, by the latest volume of Masashi Kishimoto's Naruto. But it's another story on USA Today's bestseller chart, where Crumb's book drops 49 places in its second week to No. 129. [ICv2.com, USA Today]

Passings | Tom Spurgeon, NPR's Mark Memmott and Ina Jaffe, and Michael Cieply of The New York Times have obituaries for Comic-Con co-founder Shel Dorf, who passed away on Nov. 3 at the age of 76.

Libraries | The Yoshihiro Yonezawa Memorial Library of Manga and Subculture opened over the weekend at Meiji University's Surugadai campus in Tokyo. Users can become one-day members of the library, where they can have access to about half of the 140,000 manga for about $1.10 per copy. The books can't be removed from the library. [The Japan Times]

Internet | Tom Spurgeon points out that the review blog Guttergeek will move to the expanded TCJ.com, joining a stable of hosted blogs that will include The Hooded Utilitarian. [Guttergeek]

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Fall of the Hulks Alpha preview

from Fall of the Hulks Alpha

Marvel sent over some pages from their upcoming Fall of the Hulks storyline, which kicks off with an "Alpha" issue in December. You can see additional pages from it here (where you can also see the ad/homage to the original Fall of the Mutants ad that ran in various Marvel comics back in the 1980s).

The book is written by Jeff Parker with pencils by Paul Pelletier. The story revolves around the Leader, Mad Thinker, Egghead, M.O.D.O.K., Red Ghost and Doctor Doom putting their heads together to create some sort of battle plan that leads into the World War Hulks event. More details on that can be found here.

Check out additional pages after the jump ...

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The Variants, Ep. 4: Can they survive the night of the living 'Passholes'?

I've meant to link to this a few times -- three, to be exact -- but haven't, for one reason or another: It's The Variants, the web comedy series created by Richard Neal, owner of Zeus Comics in Dallas, and produced by Neal, Joe Cucinotti and Ken Lowery.

If you haven't caught any of the three monthly previous episodes, The Variants is set, unsurprisingly, in a comic-book store, and focuses on the frequently dysfunctional staff and customers. What's pleasantly surprising perhaps, given the sheer number of people with access to a video-recording device and access to YouTube (but who shouldn't be allowed near either), the writing, acting and production are pretty good. (I'm a fan of the smoking, snippy, customer-unfriendly Barry.)

The fourth episode ("Passholes"), which features a zombie-like horde of customers lining up for free movie passes, just went live. You can get caught up on the previous episodes here.

Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes

Shel Dorf with Warren Beatty in 1990

Passings | Sheldon "Shel" Dorf, who in 1970 co-founded the event that grew into Comic-Con International, passed away Nov. 3 in San Diego's Sharp Memorial Hospital from diabetes-related complications. He was 76.

A collector of comics and Dick Tracy memorabilia, Dorf had run Triple Fan Fest in his native Detroit. After he moved to San Diego in early 1970, he met Ken Krueger of Alert Books in Ocean Beach and the two, together with a group of teen-aged fans, organized first Golden State Comic Con, held Aug. 1-3, 1970, at the U.S. Grant Hotel. Dorf served as president, or chairman, of the convention until the mid-1980s, stepping away just as the annual event was becoming a national stage for pop culture.

Dorf reportedly struggled with diabetes for years, gradually losing mobility and vision. He entered Sharp Memorial Hospital in 2008 and never left. His brother Michael was with him when he died.

Mark Evanier, of course, has a nice tribute to Dorf peppered with memories dating back to before that first convention. There's also an extensive Shel Dorf Tribute website, and a memorial banner topping the Comic-Con International homepage. The photo above, of Dorf with Warren Beatty on the set of the 1990 Dick Tracy movie, is borrowed from Alan Light's Flickr stream. [The San Diego Union-Tribune]

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This Wednesday, the spies and rockers come in from the cold

This week is a good one for fans of espionage and spies, as Marvel releases a new Black Widow miniseries; Vertigo gives us the further adventures of Fabletown's resident spy, Cinderella; and Titan collects the old James Bond newspaper strip into a giant omnibus. If danger is your business, business is good.

Rock stars, meanwhile, are kind of like super spies, only with guitars and groupies instead of guns and Bond girls. And this week sees several rockers releasing books, as Anthrax's Scott Ian tackles a new Lobo miniseries, Zak Sally of the band Low does Like a Dog and the second issue of Kill Audio by Claudio Sanchez of the band Coheed and Cambria hits shelves.

Several new series kick off this week; in addition to what I listed above, there's also a new Age of Reptiles series, a Great Ten miniseries, Charlie Huston's Deathlok, another Oz series from Marvel, Psylocke and Iceman minis, and the long-awaited Stumptown. And wrapping up this week are Marvel's Strange Tales anthology, Dark Horse's End League and Witchfinder, Tyrese Gibson's Mayhem, Iron Man Armor Wars and Boys Herogasm.

These only scratch the surface of what you'll find in stores this week. To see what Kevin, Chris and I are keeping an eye out for, read on ...

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Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes

Marvel

Business | Marvel Entertainment's third-quarter profits plunged 60 percent because of a steep decline in film revenue and licensing sales for the period. The publishing division declined 6 percent, or $2 million, compared to the third quarter of 2008, which the company attributes to a drop in custom publishing offset by an increase in book-market revenue. [Bloomberg, Marvel.com]

Publishing | The list of nominees for the Young Adult Library Services Association's annual Great Graphic Novels for Teens is, as usual, diverse, with titles ranging from R. Crumb's The Book of Genesis Illustrated and Jamaica Dyer's Weird Fishes to Naoki Urasawa's Pluto and Mark Millar and Tommy Lee Edwards' 1985.

The nominations, divided into categories for fiction and nonfiction, are led by Marvel with 15 titles, DC Comics and its imprints with 13, Viz Media with 12 (but for 18 volumes), Dark Horse with eight and Del Rey and Yen Press with six each.

The final selections, chosen by an 11-person committee, will be presented in mid-January at the American Library Association's Midwinter Meeting in Boston. [YALSA]

Publishing | Marvel has hired Bon Alimagno, editorial director of Harris Publications, as its editorial talent coordinator, replacing Chris Allo, who left the company in September. [Bleeding Cool]

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Amazon unleashes its best of 2009 lists, too

Stitches: A Memoir

Not to be outdone by Publishers Weekly, Amazon.com has released its own expansive Best Books of 2009, with an Editors' Picks list that, perhaps unsurprisingly at this point, features David Small's memoir Stitches at No. 9.

The editors' Top 100 books include David Mazzucchelli's Asterios Polyp at No. 67 and Seth's George Sprott: 1894-1975 at No. 75.

Those three works also lead the editors' choices for the Top 10 Comics & Graphic Novels of the year:

1. Stitches: A Memoir, by David Small (WW Norton)

2. George Sprott: 1894-1975, by Seth (Drawn & Quarterly)

3. Asterios Polyp, by David Mazzucchelli (Pantheon)

4. All-Star Superman, Vol. 2, by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely (DC Comics)

5. The Umbrella Academy: Dallas, by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba (Dark Horse)

6. Locas II: Maggie, Hope & Ray, by Jaime Hernandez (Fantagraphics Books)

7. The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders, by Emmanuel Guibert and Didier Lefèvre (First Second)

8. A Drifting Life, by Yoshihiro Tatsumi (Drawn & Quarterly)

9. The Book of Genesis Illustrated, by R. Crumb (WW Norton)

10. Masterpiece Comics, by R. Sikoryak (Drawn & Quarterly)

The Customer Favorites list, ranked according to Amazon.com orders through October, naturally looks much different (only books published for the first time in 2009 are eligible):

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Six by 6 by 6 | Six comics that scared the $#!@% out of us

Horror can be a tricky genre for comics. They can't engage in the same sort of "Boo!" surprises that, say, movies like Halloween can, mainly because the pictures are all laid out for you as you're reading. It's too easy for your eye to jump ahead and see that the big, bad monster is going to pop out of the casket three panels from now.

But if comics can't service that sort of immediate shock to the system (at least not very well) then where the medium does excel is in connoting dread, in prolonging tension, and in completely unnerving you. When done right, a good scary comic book can linger with you for a lot longer than your average Saw or Friday the 13th sequel.

With that in mind, JK Parkin and I came up with are six comics that at various points in our lives, had us checking under the bed or otherwise kept us awake all night. Be sure to add your own traumatic experiences in the comments section.

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Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes [Updated]

Stitches: A Memoir

Publishing | Publishers Weekly teases its forthcoming lists of the best books of the year with a Top 10 that includes David Small's National Book Award-nominated memoir Stitches. [Publishers Weekly]

Publishing | UK newspaper The Times rolls out a package marking the 70th anniversary of Marvel Comics with profiles of Chris Claremont and John Romita Jr., 70 facts "you didn't know" about the company, and a gallery. [Times Online]

Publishing | Back issues of Cerebus Archives, Dave Sim's bimonthly DVD extras-style collection of letters, stories and artwork, are now available through print-on-demand publisher ComiXpress. [ComiXpress]

Blogosphere | Mike Nebeker, co-host of the Geek Tragedy Podcast, passed away Oct. 27 from an apparent stroke. He was 41. According to this blog entry, his co-hosts plan on Tuesday to post a new episode that will contain their farewells and Nebeker's unaired interviews from the Alternative Press Expo. After that, they'll take some time off from the podcast. [Geek Tragedy Podnotes]

Comic strips | Amazon has announced the 10 finalists for its Comic Strip Superstar contest. [Digital Strips]

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Millar teases next project with McNiven: Nemesis

Nemesis teaser poster

Comics writer Mark Millar shared a teaser poster on his message board this morning about his next project with artist Steve McNiven, a project called Nemesis. The duo previously worked on Marvel's "Old Man Logan" story in Wolverine, as well as the Civil War mini-series.

"Obviously, things are going to change forever after you see what we have in store," he wrote in the post. Nemesis is due in March.

Trilogy of typing: scary thoughts about superheroes

Grumpy Old Fan

It shouldn't surprise you that I like Halloween.* I like it a lot. I'd like the whole month of October to be nothing but brisk, stark days and clear, blue-black nights, with gentle breezes herding dead leaves through the stillness, and the overall sense that something unseen can still see you.

(Actually, my idea of the perfect Halloween is probably best expressed -- minus the revenge-killing, of course -- in the classic "Night of the Reaper!" story from Batman #234 … but I talked about that last year.)**

Accordingly, every year I try to get as much out of the Halloween season as possible: horror-movie marathons, a jack-o'-lantern, candy, costumes, etc. However, when the time comes to tie that into a DC Comics-centered column, I tend to come up short.

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