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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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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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Send Us Your Shelf Porn!

Is it time for Shelf Porn once again? You bet your sweet bippy it is! And we've got a heck of a collection to share with you this week, from Caren Pilgrim, who runs the Peanuts Collectibles Web site. As you might imagine, she has quite the Peanuts-inspired collection herself.

Upon coming across her Web site, I emailed Caren and asked if she would be willing to share some photos of her collection with Robot 6 readers. Here's what she sent in ...

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The best reason to visit Nappanee, IN

Smokey Stover's automobile

... is to see Smokey Stover's car, apparently built by creator Bill Homan hisself.

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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Ryan Dunlavey & ToyFare's comic-strip mash-ups

Kraven and Hobbes

They're better known these days for Con Wars and layoffs, but the magazines of Wizard Entertainment have long been capable of producing some pretty funny stuff. Exhibit A: the comic-strip mash-ups artist Ryan Dunlavey has posted on his blog--here and here. Generally written by the ToyFare magazine editorial staff and illustrated by Dunlavey in impeccable approximations of the original styles, the comics take classic strips and mix 'em up with superheroes, science fiction, and general nerdery, resulting in such mash-up masterpieces as The Thunderkatzenjammer Kids, Spy vs. Spy vs. Alien vs. Predator, Orlando Bloom County, X-Nuts (will Phoenix ever let Good Ol' Charlie Xavier kick that football?) and much more. Alas, my all-time favorite of the ToyFare/Dunlavey efforts, Ellen Ripley's Believe It or Not, has yet to be posted, but the rest are still well worth checking out.

Tony Millionaire does Achewood

Tony Millionaire's Achewood

Pretty self-explanatory, no? Maakies and Sock Monkey caroonist Tony Millionaire has done a guest strip for Chris Onstad's Achewood One of today's greatest humor cartoonists does one of today's greatest humor strips. There's even a cameo by Uncle Gabby and Drinky Crow. Click the link already!

(Via Brian Warmoth.)

Halloween Reading | Paul Maybury's Aliens strip

Aliens by Paul Maybury

Artist Paul Maybury posted a short "fan" comic set in the Aliens universe, along with a bunch of other cool random art, over on his LiveJournal.

Via

Straight for the art | Kelley Jones' Great Pumpkin

Great Pumpkin by Kelley Jones

Zack Smith, who writes for Newsarama and Independent Weekly, sent over this awesome Great Pumpkin art that Kelley Jones drew for him in 2001. Marc McKenzie colored it.

"It was for a humor piece I wrote featuring the by-now-old gag of the Pumpkin being a demon and wreaking havoc," Smith said in an email. "The only gags I recall as semi-entertaining were Linus getting sucked through a time vortex and winding up in 'Army of Linus,' and a bit where the Pumpkin caused horrible things to happen in other comic strips (Dolly in THE FAMILY CIRCUS needs an exorcist to get rid of 'Not Me,' FUNKY WINKERBEAN is...the exact same depressing strip it always is). I was 21. It seemed funny at the time."

Thanks for sending it over, Zack!

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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These Googlers are crazy!

Google's Asterix doodle

Google today celebrates the 50th anniversary of Asterix with a nice spotlight -- otherwise known as a Google Doodle, I guess -- on its homepage in a reported 40 countries.

René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo's diminutive warrior, who debuted in the French magazine Pilote on this day in 1959, has appeared in 34 volumes that have sold more than 352 million copies worldwide.

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

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Libraries | In the wake of the recent firings of two Kentucky library employees -- circulation desk attendants, not librarians -- who refused to allow an 11-year-old to check out a copy of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the crew of Good Comics for Kids discusses who should decide what children may read. [Good Comics for Kids]

Publishing | Simon Jones questions why Japanese publisher launched its long-anticipated U.S. division with a reprint of the first volume of Ghost in the Shell that's flipped and missing pages that Dark Horse had restored: "What’s your master plan, Kodansha? Why was it necessary to take this license away from Dark Horse, if you’re not doing a different treatment of the book? It couldn’t have been because you felt Dark Horse wasn’t promoting the property, because I haven’t seen any marketing efforts from you.  I can’t even find your URL in this book." [Icarus Publishing]

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Chris Ware 'Unmasked' in the New Yorker

Unmasked

The New Yorker has posted a new strip by Chris Ware that has a bit of a Halloween theme. And an iPhone.

Via Drawn & Quarterly

What Are You Reading?

Preventative Maintenance

Welcome to What Are You Reading. Our guest this week is none other than the highly esteemed Eddie Campbell, author of the autobiographical Alec series, as well as the mythological Bacchus and co-conspirator with Alan Moore on the acclaimed From Hell.

I had originally interviewed Mr. Campbell about a month ago in anticipation of the release of his whopping big Alec omnibus collection, The Years Have Pants, so this is more of a What Were You Reading than a What Are You Reading, but I nevertheless think you'll be intrigued by his selection. Look for the rest of my interview with Campbell to show up here at Robot 6 either later this week or next.

Click on the link below to continue reading.

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

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Libraries | Two library employees in Nicholasville, Kentucky, were fired last month after they refused to allow an 11-year-old girl to check out The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which they dubbed pornographic. However, the policy of the Jessamine County Library states it's the responsibility of parents to decide what's appropriate for their child to read.

The fired employees, Beth Bovaire and Sharon Cook, stand behind their decision, asserting that the award-winning comic by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill contains lewd pictures that are inappropriate for children.

"If you give children pornography, a child, a 12 year old, can not understand and process the same way a 30 year old can," Cook told a local television news station. [WTVQ, WTVQ]

Tokyo International Manga Library

Libraries | A private university in Tokyo hopes to promote the serious study of manga by opening a library stocked with 2 million comics, anime drawings, video games and other artifacts. If everything goes as planned, the Tokyo International Manga Library would open on the campus of Meiji University in 2015. [AFP]

Publishing | Even after the closing last year of Virgin Comics, upbeat profiles of the Indian comics industry continue to appear regularly. But here Gaurav Jain, head of the Mumbai-based Illusion Interactive Animation, offers a more dismal assessment of the scene in India: "While competition has arrived, the local industry continues to live in its shell, churning out visually unappealing and terribly written local content with little or no film and television possibilities. One of the most widely read labels offers sanitized, vanilla retellings of Indian mythology and historical figures with visuals inspired from the works of Raja Ravi Verma. Derivative art work and bland writing, leads to visual fatigue." [The Wall Street Journal]

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