Richard Alf

Passings | Richard Alf, who as a teenager fronted the money for the first three years of San Diego’s Golden State Comic-Con, the annual event that later became Comic-Con International, passed away Wednesday from pancreatic cancer. He was 59. Alf, who co-chaired the first convention in 1970 and became chairman the following year, later opened Comic Kingdom in North Slope, a business he sold by the end of the decade. [U-T San Diego, Mark Evanier]

Conventions | iFanboy, San Francisco’s Isotope Comics and Grant Morrison are teaming up for MorrisonCon, which will feature “A once in a lifetime opportunity to see Grant Morrison and 9 hand picked comic creator superstars, all together for one weekend, one time only.” They’ve released few details so far, but the website says it’ll occur next fall. [MorrisonCon]

Awards | Comic-Con International is now accepting submissions for the 2012 Eisner Awards, which will be presented in San Diego in July. The deadline for submitting materials for consideration is March 6. [CCI]

Legal | Former comics retailer Michael George, who was convicted of the 1990 murder of his first wife and given a life sentence in November, has asked the judge to acquit him or order a new trial. George’s lawyer filed documents last week that claim there was weak evidence and improper tactics during his second trial. They also plan to appeal the case. [WDIV]

Dragon Lady Comics

Retailing | Toronto’s Dragon Lady Comics will close in early February after nearly 34 years in business, a move the store’s manager attributes to rising rent and slowing sales. [The Joe Shuster Awards, blogTO]

Creators | Brandon Graham delves into his process for Prophet, the upcoming Image Comics relaunch of the old Rob Liefeld property. [Warren Ellis]

Creators | Collaborators Shane Houghton and Matt Whitlock chat briefly about BOOM! Studios’ new Peanuts series. [LA Weekly]

Comics | Chad Nevett provides a supplemental reading list for the Joe Casey-written Vengeance, for anyone “wanting to know the background on various characters and concepts Joe Casey is using in that series.” [GraphiContent]

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]

Occupy Miami

Creators | Sarah Glidden, creator of How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less, chronicles her time at Occupy Miami Nov. 15-21 in a sketchbook. [Cartoon Movement]

Creators | Corey Blake follows up on the Bill Mantlo story published by LIfeHealthPro, including some clarifications of issues raised in the story and additional details on various fundraisers over the years to help pay for Mantlo’s care. [Corey Blake]

Creators | Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society Podcast interviews Skullkickers writer Jim Zubkavich about piracy and the Stop Online Piracy Act. [Berkman Center for Internet & Society Podcast]

Creators | Christopher Irving interviews and Seth Kushner photographs creator Alex Ross. [Graphic NYC]

Creators | At the Miami Book Fair, Underwire creator Jennifer Hayden triumphed over an impressive array of novelists and poets to take top honors in the Literary Death Match, a sort of biathlon in which the two events were live readings and a spelling bee. [Knight Arts, via Comics Worth Reading]

Aquaman

Creators | Geoff Johns talks about writing the new Aquaman series, potential appearances by other “aqua” characters and the use of humor in his writing: “I mean, I wanted to make it all about the characters first. When you focus more on character interactions, a character’s humor comes out. I just wanted to make the books a little bit different. If I was just going to write the same books, then it wasn’t going to be a challenge or something new to me. I wanted to look at every book and approach it differently than I would have prior to the relaunch. I think humor is definitely something that there is a time and a place for, and I think humor really grows out of characters. Especially in Justice League when you have all these alpha personalities interacting with one another.” [IGN]

Creators | Hayley Campbell talks to Anders Nilsen about his latest opus, Big Questions, after a comics reading in London that was part of his staggeringly long book tour. [The Comics Journal]

Manga | Jason Thompson has an imaginary dialogue with Shaenon Garrity in order to explain the classic Viz title Midori Days, about a teenage boy whose right arm is mysteriously transformed into a girl who has a crush on him. [Anime News Network]

Commentary | Former Tokyopop editor Tim Beedle revisits the advice he gave aspiring global manga creators back in the day. It’s still pretty solid guidance for anyone who wants to create graphic novels in any style. [Words That Stay]

Zatanna

Comics | As the shine begins to wear off DC’s New 52, Jeff Reid is providing refresher courses on the history of various characters. This week: Zatanna. [iFanboy]

Comics | After hearing about the destruction of the People’s Library at Occupy Wall Street, Sean Kleefeld sent over some of his own books to replenish their collection. Only after he sent off the package did he realize that most of the books were by Frank Miller. [Kleefeld on Comics]

Conventions | John Hogan moderated a panel on graphic novels at the Miami Book Fair, and he came away with an impressive list of recommended reading. [Graphic Novel Reporter]

Conventions | Michael Buntag has a report and some reflections on the seventh annual Philippine Komics Convention (Komikon). [Nonsensical Words]

Humor | Dorian Wright presents the Grant Morrison Bingo Card. [(postmodernbarney.com)]

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]

Justice League #2

Comics | John Jackson Miller slices and dices the October numbers for the direct market, noting that overall dollar orders for comic books, trade paperbacks, and magazines topped $40 million for the first time since September 2009. Orders rose 6.9 percent over September, the first month of DC’s relaunch. “While that may sound counter-intuitive, it isn’t when you consider that all those first issues continued to have reorders selling through October,” Miller writes. “Retailers with an eye on the aftermarket may also have some sense that second issues are historically under-ordered — something which goes at least back to the experience of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #2 in the 1980s, which wound up being much more valuable than its first issue.” [The Comichron]

Passings | Tom Spurgeon reports that author Les Daniels has passed away. Daniels wrote horror fiction and nonfiction books on the comic industry, which include Comix: A History of the Comic Book in America, Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics and DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World’s Favorite Comic Book Heroes. [The Comics Reporter]

Action Comics #2

Creators | Grant Morrison talks about coming back to Superman after his work on the character in All-Star Superman: “After I‘d done that story, it was kind of the end of Superman’s life, and I was interested in going back to the roots of the character, and his social and political roots, and maybe doing a take that dealt with him as a young man, but I didn’t really have any plans for that until Dan [DiDio] came over and then when he gave me the opportunity, and he said that they were willing to even change the continuity, and to let some new ideas and energy into it, it seemed perfect for that.” [CNN Geek Out]

Creators | Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang discuss their work on the relaunched Wonder Woman and her recently revealed new daddy.”If you went to the average person on the street and showed them a picture of Wonder Woman they would recognize her immediately,” Chiang said. “Ask those people her origin story and some of them might know the clay story but many, many others would not know that at all. That’s not a problem you have with Superman or Batman; everyone knows their origin. By making her the daughter of Zeus, we’ve gotten a big driving force behind our story. It gives her a motivation and it’s a key to character that we now feel is very important. She’s a child of the gods who defends us from them, in the same way that Superman is from another planet trying to save humanity and Batman is the orphan who is protecting us from the criminals who killed his parents.” [Hero Complex]

Creators | The student-run Observer reports on a lecture given by Notre Dame alum and Marvel editor Bill Rosemann: “The comic books industry is many fields coming together at once. It’s never been just about art. Instead, it’s this glorious American collision of art, commerce and history.” [Observer]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 9 #3

Creators | Andrew Chambliss discusses his work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 9 and Dollhouse. [TFAW]

Creators | Ian Flynn talks about his approach to writing the New Crusaders, the Red Circle reboot due from Archie Comics due next year: “The Red Circle characters are brimming with untapped potential. We’ve seen how other super hero properties have grown and matured from their silly, sometimes zany origins into the blockbusters they are today. The Red Circle heroes are no different. They have powers, desires and stories that can be fascinating when run through today’s filter of modern sensibilities. Everything is so wild and free, it’ll be a lot of fun to make it all work in one coherent world.” [ComicsAlliance]

Conventions | Dave Roman reports in from Quai des Bulles, the second-largest comics convention in France. [The Beat]

Manga | Deb Aoki talks to Hikaru Sasahara, the CEO of Digital Manga Publishing, about his company’s acquisition of Yaoi-Con and the progress of the Digital Manga Guild, their experiment in online publication using amateur translators and editors. [About.com]

Review | Jocelyne Allen reviews Adam Hines’s Duncan the Wonder Dog: Show One, which won the Lynd Ward graphic novel prize earlier this year. [Brain Vs Book]

Awards | Irish Comics News appears to have only been around for a few months, but they have already given their first awards, which were based on a popular vote. And here’s a nice touch: The award for Best Mainstream Published Irish Writer went to Garth Ennis, who won by a single vote—and that vote was cast by another nominee, Nick Roche. [Irish Comics News]

Nate Powell at the U.N.

Creators | Any Empire and Swallow Me Whole creator (and our special guest this weekend for What Are You Reading?) Nate Powell appeared at the United Nations earlier this month with several teen-fiction writers who contributed to What You Wish For, a benefit book to fund libraries in Darfuri refugee camps in Chad. Video of the event can now be found on the U.N. website. [Top Shelf]

Business | Details on the collaboration between Stan Lee’s POW! Entertainment Inc. and former Disney CEO Michael Eisner’s Vuguru have emerged: The two companies will work on a YouTube channel called “Stan Lee’s YouTube World of Heroes.” The channel is one of the 100 online video channels announced by the Google-owned video site, which seeks to add “professional, high-quality programming” to its site. [Los Angeles Times]

Business | They might move slow and eat people, but MSNBC estimates that zombies are worth about $5 billion to the economy. [MSNBC]

Creators | In answering a question about how to break into the business, Glory and Hell Yeah writer Joe Keatinge shares advice from his long road to becoming a comics writer. [Joe Keatinge's Comics & Stories]

Creators | Writer J.M. DeMatteis shares a not-entirely-true-but-still-funny essay from the Hero Squared paperback that recounts how he and Keith Giffen began working together. [Creation Point]

WildPig

Conventions | Chris Eberle, owner and organizer of next weekend’s WildPig Comic Convention in Central New Jersey, is profiled. [My Central Jersey]

Conventions | Elizabeth Keenan covers the New York Comic Con panel “It Gets Better (With Comics!),” featuring writer Ivan Velez, Jr., manga creator Rica Takashima, Zan Christiansen of Prism Comics, and Marvel editor Daniel Ketchum talking about gay and lesbian characters in comics and their own work as gay creators and editors. [MTV Geek]

Conventions | The Long Beach Press-Telegram profiles this past weekend’s Long Beach Comic and Horro Con. [Long Beach Press-Telegram]

Commentary | The anonymity and distance provided by the internet make it easy to slam creators, but Josh Flanagan asks that reader think twice before dismissing a comic with a curt phrase (as he once did): “I’m not saying you have to like everything. Lord knows I don’t. But I can never get it out of my mind that there are people who made those comic book pages, and sooner or later, I’m going to run into them at a comic book convention, and have to look them in the eye. And if I’ve criticized their work, I need to feel like it was valid and respectful.” [iFanboy]

Commentary | Jonathan Liu reviews MK Reed and Jonathan Hill’s anti-censorship graphic novel Americus. [Wired's GeekDad]

Commentary | Richard Bruton critiques Erik Skillman and Jhomar Soriano’s noir graphic novel Liar’s Kiss. [The Forbidden Planet Blog Log]

Commentary | Rachel Cook counts down her personal ten best, from Tintin to Shortcomings. [The Guardian]

Marvel

Publishing | Heidi MacDonald and Tom Spurgeon offer commentary and context regarding last week’s layoffs by Marvel. [The Beat, Comics Reporter]

Conventions | San Diego City Council President Tony Young and Comic-Con International staff are working together on a “marquee event” at Balboa Park that around the time of Comic Con. While convention organizers are interested in a Balboa Park event, they don’t support Yong’s original proposal, a nationally televised parade that would kick off or end the con, saying that the logistics, traffic and crowding would be problematic. [Sign On San Diego]

Conventions | Ohio State University’s student newspaper covers this past weekend’s Mid-Ohio Con. [The Lantern]

Conventions | Digital Manga Publishing will take over the yaoi manga fan convention Yaoi-Con beginning next year and move it from the San Francisco area to Los Angeles. This is a big change for Yaoi-Con, which has been fan-run until now. [Anime News Network]

Xenoholics #1

Creators | Writer Joshua Williamson discusses his new Image title Xenoholics. [Biff Bam Pop]

Creators | Sequential Tart profiles iZombie writer Chris Roberson. [Sequential Tart]

Creators | Graphic Eye interviews Josceline Fenton, creator of the webcomic Hemlock. Never heard of her? You will — check out her art and you’ll see why. [Graphic Eye]

Analysis | Kailyn Kent places Craig Thompson’s Habibi in the context of melodrama in the latest addition to The Hooded Utilitarian’s ongoing critique. [The Hooded Utilitarian]

Review | Bob Temuka goes on record as liking Frank Miller’s Holy Terror, and he explains why, with pictures. [The Tearoom of Despair]

Review | Kate Dacey reviews Gate 7, the latest manga by the Japanese collaborative CLAMP. Executive summary: Great art, weak story. [The Manga Critic]

Comics | Sean Kleefeld posts the Captain Marvel issue of Mighty Midget Comics, a series published by Fawcett in the early 1940s in which, for some reason, all issues were #11. [Kleefeld on Comics]

Stan Lee

Awards | The Visual Effects Society has named Stan Lee as the recipient of the VES 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award, which honors individuals whose “lifetime body of work has made a significant and lasting contribution to the art and/or science of the visual effects industry by way of artistry, invention and/or groundbreaking work.” Previous recipients include George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Ray Harryhausen and James Cameron. The award will be presented Feb. 7 at the 10th annual VES Awards. [press release]

Organizations | The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund reports it raised $12,500 last weekend at New York Comic Con. [CBLDF]

Awards | Comic-Con International has opened nominations for the The Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award, which awarded to “an individual retailer who has done an outstanding job of supporting the comics art medium both in the community and within the industry at large.” [CCI]

Publishing | Archaia founder, and now chief creative officer, Mark Smylie is profiled by a local newspaper: “I don’t know what I did in another life to wind up publishing Mouse Guard, but yeah, David [Petersen] basically brought us lightning in a bottle.” [NorthJersey.com]

Greg Rucka

Conventions | Greg Rucka talks about his experiences at New York Comic Con and GeekGirlCon in Seattle: “One of the most extraordinary things about the show, for me, was its atmosphere. A contrasted with the hungry – almost desperate – feel of the floor at NYCC this past weekend, GGC felt practically like a family gathering, and I suppose, in a way, it was just that. The fact is, women remain under-represented and poorly served in so many realms of geek culture; having a convention that speaks to that lack, that attempts to address it, is more than a worthy goal; it may well be a holy one. I was glad to attend, I was honored to be a guest, and I am sincerely proud to have attended.” [Lady Sabre & the Pirates of the Ineffable Aether]

Conventions | Fans attending the Wizard World Mid-Ohio Con this weekend will have the opportunity to see the holder of the Guinness World Record for “largest comic book” — the Huge Glass Comic Book, a 500-pound glass comic. Each of its 12 pages is four feet high and three feet wide, all laser etched on quarter inch glass. [Convention Scene]

Retailers | Vaneta Rogers rounds up reactions from retailers to the second month of DC’s New 52. [Newsarama]

The Death-Ray

Creators | Daniel Clowes continues his interview tour in support of Drawn & Quarterly’s hardcover release of The Death-Ray. [The A.V. Club, NOW Magazine]

Creators | Alex Ross discusses his work for Dynamite Entertainment, including Kirby: Genesis, Bionic Man and more. [TFAW]

Creators | Brandon Easton talks about his upcoming vampire graphic novel Shadowlaw. [Wired]

Comics | Here’s a perspective we don’t see too often: Martha Cornog interviews DC Comics Editor-in-Chief Bob Harras about how New 52 will play out in libraries — how they will collect the series, how they will tie it in to earlier books, etc. [Library Journal]

Comics | Warren Ellis recalls “the first comic I ever loved,” a science fiction anthology called Countdown. [Warren Ellis]

The Drops of God, Vol. 1

Manga | Sean Gaffney reads the first volume of Drops of God, a manga about wine tasting that has gotten a lot of press and has actually boosted sales of the featured wines in France and Japan. [A Case Suitable for Treatment]

Business | Alan Evans has a great consumer piece on print-on-demand services, in which he gets the price for a hypothetical comic and directly compares prices and services offered. [The Paper Wings Community, via Sean Kleefeld]

Reviews | Greg McElhatton reviews Any Empire, the new graphic novel from Swallow Me Whole creator Nate Powell. [Read About Comics]

Reviews | Rob McMonigal reviews Tragic Relief 12: Drag Bandits, by Betsy Swardlick and Colleen Frakes, the second release from the new indy-comics publisher Retrofit. [Panel Patter]

Batman by Rafael Grampa

I may not understand what the text says, but there’s one thing I did take away from this blog post by artist Rafael Grampa — his Batman, like his Wolverine and Madman, is truly awesome. The image appears to be something he’s created for the RioComicon 2011, coming up Oct. 20-23 in Brazil.

New York Comic Con

Conventions | The New York Post previews this week’s New York Comic Con in a pair of articles, the second of which focuses on announcements from Marvel and DC. Marvel’s “Cup O’ Joe” panel will reveal how Fear Itself, Avengers: The Children’s Crusade and X-Men: Schism tie together, while DC plans to reveal “the surprising origin of a longtime member of the Justice League” and more creators who will work on their New 52 books, in addition to Andy Kubert. Update: Presumably the Justice League member with the surprising origin is Wonder Woman. [New York Post article #1, article #2]

Comics | Not surprisingly, DC saw double-digit increases in September compared to the year before, but the overall market was down a touch as graphic novel sales, lacking this year’s equivalent of Scott Pilgrim, were down. [The Comichron]

Business | Disney CEO Robert Iger, who oversaw the company’s purchase of both Marvel Entertainment and Pixar, will step down as CEO in March 2015. [Bloomberg]

Graveyard of Empires #1

Creators | Mark Sable discusses his career, his work on Graveyard of Empires and Decoy, and his Marvel-themed bar mitzvah: “There was a caricaturist there, and I gave out shirts with a picture of me — this seems incredibly narcissistic looking back — there’s a picture of me on this shirt, a caricatured version of me in Iron Man’s Silver Centurion armor. With the helmet off. And me wearing — I no longer wear glasses, I wear contacts — me wearing these really thick, socially damning glasses [laughter] and saying, ‘I had a MARVEL’ — Marvel in all caps — ‘MARVELous time at Mark’s bar mitzvah.’” [The Comics Reporter]

Creators | Kevin and Zander Cannon of Big Time Attic, an illustration studio that specializes in educational comics, talk about their work on educational comics such as Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards and T-Minus: The Race to the Moon. [The Journal]

Creators | The Toronto Star talks to three local creators who are working on DC’s New 52 comics: Francis Manapul, Jeff Lemire and Ken Lashley [Toronto Star]

Comics | The Moscow Times interviews the creators of Forbidden Art, a nonfiction graphic novel about the trial of the organizers of a controversial art exhibit. Although censorship is nominally forbidden in Russia, the government and the Orthodox Church teamed up to prosecute the organizers, who ended up paying a fine. [The Moscow Times]

Retailing | Tom Moore, owner of Texas Comic Shop in San Angelo, Texas, offers his personal formula for success: “I didn’t get in over my head. I wasn’t borrowing money that I couldn’t pay back. When times got tough I just had to bring in enough to keep everything open. I got by not making tactical mistakes. I know my customer base, so I order what I need, and I don’t go over. When I do go over, I make an effort to lower prices or offer promotions to get rid of the items.” [The San Angelo Standard-Times]

Infinite Vacation #1

Comics | “There is no good reason for me to buy an independent comic issue any more unless it is a complete story in itself”: Johanna Draper Carlson bemoans the tendency of indy comics to start strong but never finish and concludes that print serialization is not working for small publishers. She sees online releases as the way to build an audience nowadays, although that may not solve the problem of the near-infinite wait between issues of Infinite Vacation. [Comics Worth Reading]

Manga | A member of one of the Digital Manga Guild’s fan translation/editing teams talks frankly about what the experience has been like so far, including communication with publisher Digital Manga Publishing. [Manga Bookshelf]

Review | Gavin Lees reviews Mike Dawson’s Troop 182. [Graphic Eye]

Comics | Here’s a handy reference tool: Paul Gravett has made a database of all the comics in his book 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die, with title, author, and publisher information, as well as some supplementary articles. [Paul Gravett]

Webcomics | Sean Kleefeld takes a look at webcomics that take the creator’s personal life as their subject, and why this is more common on the web than in print. [MTV Geek]

Stan Lee

Creators | Some military personnel are upset that comics legend Stan Lee received the Honorable Order of St. Barbara award in July during the week of Comic-Con International, as the award is “traditionally reserved for career cannon cockers in the Army and Marine Corps who have made their mark on the field artillery or air defense communities.” While the award credited Lee, who served stateside in the Army during World War II, with writing “several training manuals and films for the artillery and all other branches of the service,” the co-creator of the Fantastic Four and other Marvel properties said he didn’t recall ever doing so. A spokesman for Maj. Gen. David Halverson, commander of the Army Field Artillery Center at Fort Sill, Okla., who signed off on the award, said it “was given to a former soldier and WWII veteran whose contributions, both in the Army and beyond, are in keeping with and representative of all the high standards of achievement and selfless service associated with the Honorary Order of Saint Barbara.” Lee actually missed receiving the award, as at the ceremony he also received an Army Certificate of Achievement and left before the second award could be given. [Air Force Times]

Awards | Cartoonist Seth has been chosen as the latest recipient of the $10,000 Harbourfront Festival Prize, which will be presented Oct. 29 at the International Festival of Authors at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre. Seth is the first comic book creator to win the award, which is given to an individual whose work has substantially contributed to the state of literature and books in Canada. [CBC]

Kick-Ass

Creators | Mark Millar discusses Kick-Ass 2, both the film and comic versions, as well as the DC relaunch: “I’m delighted to see DC getting back in the game with their reboot. Making characters who are as old as Donald Duck relevant to a modern audience isn’t easy. I joked about how they were Botoxing these old dudes and squeezing them back into their tights, but in all seriousness it’s been good for retailers and after a long time of soft sales on the bulk of their characters they’ve really got people’s attention again. I love a lot of the guys over there and grew up with these characters. Creatively, it’s not where my head’s at, because I think we need to do what Stan Lee and Jack Kirby did in the ’60s and move forward, creating a new generation of characters and concepts for a 21st century readership. But I like the fact they’ve done something ballsy like this and it’s put money in the pockets of retailers. I don’t know how long it’s going to last in the medium term, but a nice little boost in the meantime.” [Hero Complex]

Creators | Jen Van Meter talks about writing Hawkeye in Avengers: Solo: “It’s a funny thing — I think that Clint sees himself as kind of a rebel within the Avengers, in the sense that no matter how much he may admire or respect a colleague, he’s always going to be willing to challenge any of them if he disagrees. It feels, to me, like an assertion of his belonging–his right to talk back–and also one of his important roles in that group– the guy will speak truth to power, any power. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about different presentations I’ve read of his joining the Avengers– did he want it with all his heart or was it a more calculated desire to get himself where the spotlight was? I tend to feel more swayed by that first notion, that even when he might say, “I don’t need this,” he does. This is the family he chose for himself, you know? And given his painful personal history, that chosen family’s safety and soundness are enormously important to him.” [iFanboy]

Science Tales

Comics | Darryl Cunningham posts a draft of the last chapter of Science Tales, in which he discusses why people choose not to believe scientific facts and how science really works. [Darryl Cunningham Investigates]

Comics | Larry Cruz looks back through the mists of time at a character that DC has chosen not to include in its relaunch, the garishly dressed crimefighter The Red Bee. [The Webcomic Overlook]

Comics | Hayley Campbell reviews Nate Powell’s new book, Any Empire, and winds up not quite getting it: “So at the end of Any Empire I felt like I had missed a point, that it was an embarrassing personal failure on my part that this book made me feel nothing at all. Over four weeks the cogs in my head have been deconstructing and reconstructing the whole thing, much like staring out the nightbus window, piecing together a badly told joke told in a pub and rewiring the punchline. But in the end we’re still left with a beautiful book with great ambitious ideas, and I just don’t know what to make of it.” [The Comics Journal]

Conventions | The Baltimore Sun previews this weekend’s Annapolis Comic-Con. [Baltimore Sun]

Ed Kramer

Legal | Edward Kramer, co-founder of the 25-year-old Dragon*Con held each Labor Day in Atlanta, was arrested Tuesday and charged with misdemeanor reckless endangerment of a child after police allegedly found him in a Connecticut motel room with a 14-year-old boy. Kramer, who was first charged 11 years ago with child molestation and aggravated child molestation, never went to court after his lawyers argued that Kramer was physically incompetent to stand trial, due to a degenerative spinal condition and chronic pain. Kramer was under house arrest until 2008, when a judge ruled that he could travel, although conditions of his bond stipulated that he report his whereabouts on a weekly basis to the district attorney’s office and that he have no unsupervised contact with anyone under the age of 16. On Wednesday a judge signed an order revoking Kramer’s bond, and the district attorney said Kramer will be extradited back to Georgia.

Pat Henry, current chairman of Dragon*Con, posted a statement on the convention’s website: “Edward Kramer resigned from the Dragon Con Convention in the year 2000 after being indicted on felony charges in Gwinnett County. He has not had any role in Dragon Con planning or activities since that time. Since 2000 the convention has been managed by three of the other founders. These men have been involved with the convention since the beginning. They are chairman Pat Henry, and board members Dave Cody and Robert Dennis. In these eleven years the convention attendance has grown from less than 10,000 to over 46,000 this past Labor Day.” [Atlanta Journal Constitution]

Legal | Attorneys presented their opening arguments in Michael George’s murder trial, as the prosecution claimed the former comic store owner “wanted to get rid of his overweight wife and get something better.” They also said he “dreamed of a ‘McDonalds-like’ comic store empire while he kept a secret apartment and engaged in salacious affairs behind his wife’s back,” according to The Detroit News. The defense claims George was at his mother’s house in 1990 when his first wife Barbara was shot and killed in their comic store in Clinton Township, Michigan. [The Detroit News]

Conventions | Heidi MacDonald takes a look at the SEC filings for Wizard World Inc., noting that revenue from conventions was up almost $1 million in 2010, when the company put on eight conventions, from 2009, when it only ran three. [The Beat]

Casanova

Creators | Matt Fraction discusses his work on Casanova, which he calls his “difficult child”: “It’s the one that requires the most thought and work. It made my bones in some places. I wanted it to be as good as I thought I was, if that doesn’t sound too egomaniacal. I went back and reread all of [Casanova] to date and was humbled by the experience, because I didn’t think it was that good. [laughs] So there’s the added pressure of putting your money where your mouth is, trying to live up to whatever reputation I and the book had. I’d start over, constantly trying to push up my game and push up the book’s game. I don’t know that it was successful, but it reached a point where I felt like, today, this is what I am able to love.” [Suicide Girls]

Creators | Stan Lee has canceled an appearance at ExactTarget’s online marketer convention in Indianapolis today due to illness. [Indystar]

Creators | Charles Soule discusses his music-inspired Image series 27. [Biff Bam Pop]

Comics | Christian Sager notes that while superheroes might dominate Diamond’s sales charts, non-superhero books dominate awards like the Harveys and Eisners. He talks to Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon, Adam P. Knave and D.J. Kirkbride about their Harvey-winning books. [CNN Geek Out]

Kevin Keller

Comics | Fox News looks at the upcoming same-sex marriage of Archie Comics’ character Kevin Keller. [Fox News]

Comics | In light of DC’s New 52 relaunch, Sabotage Times looks back at Alan Moore’s Twilight of the Superheroes proposal, which featured “darker future versions” of DC characters. [Sabotage Times]

Science | Researchers are working on what they call an “Iron Man suit” that would allow people with spinal-cord injuries to walk. The spinal-cord research center ICORD is working on computerized robotic pants that help rehabilitate patients with damaged spinal cords by mimicking the natural motion of the legs. The article notes it could be 20 to 40 years before an Iron Man suit becomes reality — and that it’s unlikely it would allow users to fly, at least not at first. [Vancouver Sun]

SPX

Conventions | Executive director Warren Bernard said attendance at this year’s Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland, was up 10 to 15 percent, with exhibitors reporting strong sales and many sell-outs. “A great line-up of new material was partially responsible, but the region itself is also a factor — the economy around metro DC has remained relatively stable even in the recession, and a lot of people with good jobs seem to save up their money for the whole year just to spend at SPX,” reported Publishers Weekly’s Heidi MacDonald and Calvin Reid. Because of the growth, next year the show will move to a bigger room with about 50 percent more space. Daniel Clowes and Chris Ware scheduled to attend. [Publishers Weekly]

Organizations | The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, meanwhile, reports that it raised $12,500 at SPX, thanks to efforts like the Jeff Alexander Memorial Benefit auction and fundraising activities involving Craig Thompson, Roz Chast and Sara Varon. [press release]

Michael George

Legal | Instructions and opening statements are expected today in the second trial of former comics retailer Michael George, charged with first-degree murder in the 1990 shooting death of his first wife Barbara in their Clinton Township, Michigan, comic store. The five-day jury selection process wrapped up Tuesday. George, 51, was convicted in 2008, but a judge set aside the conviction, citing prosecutorial misconduct and the emergence of new evidence. [The Detroit News]

Sales charts | John Jackson Miller, who yesterday posted commentary on comic and graphic novel sales in August, has additional information about sales of Justice League #1 thus far. He notes that North American orders for the book came in at 186,000 — a figure that only includes preorders Diamond Comic Distributors actually shipped to North America for sale on Aug. 31. It does not include orders for the United Kingdom or late-placed pre-orders that couldn’t be filled until September. He also notes that many of the best-selling comics of this century continued to sell for months, not weeks, “with the best seller of the 2000s, the Obama Spider-Man issue, getting nearly half its sales in the second month with a later printing,” Miller writes. “A report on a single day’s sales should be regarded like the opening day of a film: illustrative of enthusiasm, but on its own just a portion of the picture.” [Comichron]

Jack Kirby Museum

Organizations | The Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center, which has existed as a virtual organization since 2005, is looking for a temporary physical location in New York City’s Lower East Side, in addition to funding to pay for it. They plan to display original artwork and Kirby artifacts, and feature prominent guest speakers and educational programs. Ultimately organizers hope to have a permanent location. [Kirby Museum]

Organizations | The Hero Initiative reminds California residents that if they designated the organization as the beneficiary of supermarket chain Ralph’s reward-card program, which allows users to select a charity that Ralph’s will donate money to whenever the card is used, it’s time to re-register your card. Ralph’s wipes the slate clean every September. [Hero Initiative]

Retailing | CNN’s Geek Out! blog talks to Zack Overton, a clerk at Atlanta’s Oxford Comics, about DC’s “New 52″ relaunch, Marvel’s counter programming, digital comics and the store’s outlook for the rest of the year. [CNN Geek Out]

SPX, or the Small Press Expo, returns to the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel and Conference Center in Bethesda, Md. this weekend.

The show’s special guests include Roz Chast, Jim Woodring, Diane Noomin, Jim Rugg, Ann Telnaes, Chester Brown, Johnny Ryan, Craig Thompson and Matthew Thurber, and fans who attend will also have the opportunity to meet and/or hear from Kevin Huizenga, Anders Nilsen, Jessica Abel, Sarah Glidden, Alex Robinson, Brian Ralph, Mike Dawson, Meredith Gran, Roger Langridge and Julia Wertz, just to name a few. I would also be remiss if I didn’t point out that our own Chris Mautner will be attending and conducting a Q&A with Johnny Ryan on Saturday, so be sure to tell him hi for us.

In addition to a lot of great talent, SPX also offers a full schedule of programming and the yearly Ignatz Awards. And a whole lot of new books and cool things will be available at the show:

• Drawn + Quarterly will have a ton of new books at the show, as detailed here, like Brain Ralph’s Daybreak collection, the Death-Ray hardcover and Big Questions, among many others.

• As we noted yesterday, AdHouse and Tom Scioli will have an American Barbarian print at the show. They’ll also have guests like Jim Rugg, Lamar Abrams, Ethan Rilly and Sterling Hundley at their table.

• Jennifer Hayden’s Underwire, from Top Shelf, makes its debut:

Underwire

• Roger Langridge’s The Show Must Go On! collection from BOOM! Town will debut there, and Langridge will also have a Snarked! print:

Snarked!

• Kevin Huizenga will have some new stuff at the show, not the least of which is a new Ganges book from Fantagraphics.

• NBM will debut Stargazing Dog and Ernie Colon’s Inner Sanctum at the show.

• The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund will host the first Jeff Alexander Memorial Benefit Auction, named for a cartoonist and an organizer of SPX and the Ignatz Awards. He passed away earlier this year. The auction includes pieces from Alexander ’s collection that he donated to the CBLDF, including original art by Charles Vess and Jeff Smith, Tony Millionaire, and Roger Langridge. The auction also includes contributions from Keith Knight, Raina Telgemeier, Jeffrey Brown and many more.

• A signed and numbered edition of Craig Thompson’s Habibi will be available from the CBLDF during the show. And Sara Varon will be at their table on Saturday signing Bake Sale.

• The SPX has a whole bunch more listed on their site, including Mike Dawson’s Troop 142, Pope Hats #2 by Ethan Rilly, Old-Time Hockey Tales by Robert Ullman and Jeffrey Brown, Monster Isle: Big Monster Stuff by Joey Weiser and more.

Little Island Comics

Retailers | Little Island Comics — “the first kids comic book store in North America–maybe even the world” — opens its doors today in Toronto. The store is owned and operated by The Beguiling, and is located around the corner from the flagship store. The store will hold an official grand opening in a few weeks. [The Comics Reporter]

Publishing | DC Comics co-publisher and Justice League artist Jim Lee discusses his work on DC’s flagship title, which came out in digital form last Wednesday, the same day it hit comic shops. “It’s also setting records digitally. I can’t give numbers, but on the first day it set a record for us,” Lee tells Heidi MacDonald.

That leads Tom Spurgeon to throw a flag on the play: “… it looks like DC won’t be releasing its New 52 digital numbers but will feel confident in making claims on their behalf. It also looks like comics sites will then repeat this claim as news, perhaps qualified by source or as a claim but still putting that information out there. This should stop. I think DC has a really dubious history with using the hidden portions of their numbers to PR advantage — call it the ‘I have a girlfriend in Canada’ of sales analysis. My take is that this practice has intensified slightly ever since the numbers have become smaller and therefore more crucial. When in the 1990s sales on mainstream comics dipped to the point where people questioned the profitability of certain issues of certain titles, perhaps leading to a line of analysis about mainstream publishers making books at a loss for market share advantages or to knock other comics from the limited stand space, we were sometimes assured that there were sales elsewhere we didn’t know about that pushed certain comics over this projected threshold.” [Salon, The Comics Reporter]

Justice League

Comics | Glen Weldon explains DC’s New 52 relaunch to the rest of the world. [NPR's Monkey See blog]

Comics | Not interested in this New 52 thing, even after reading Weldon’s explanation? Relax, there’s plenty more out there: The writers at Sequential Tart recommend 52 non-DC comics coming out in September. Looks like it will be a good month! [Sequential Tart]

Comics | KC Carlson discusses the guidelines for first issues, including the need for a good issue #1 to be self-contained: “A first issue that is Part 1 of 6 is, by definition, no longer a first issue. It’s a first chapter of a potentially great collection/graphic novel. Your first issue should be both widely accessible and a satisfactory read. A complete story is the best way of achieving that.” [Comics Worth Reading]

Comics | In his latest What’s Wrong With You? column, Josh Flanagan delivers beatings all round — to creators, for not doing a professional-quality job on creator-owned comics, and to readers, for sticking to the Big Two and not wandering further afield. Good discussion, with suggestions for good creator-owned comics, in the comments. [iFanboy]

Casanova

Creators | Martyn Pedler delivers a great Matt Fraction interview for fans of Casanova, in which Fraction discusses process, the autobiographical nature of the book and his dislike of “the addicted and tortured artist cliché”: “I loathe it. It is monstrous. It has killed my friends. I knew people who are dead now because they believed that without being fucked up they couldn’t create, couldn’t express themselves, couldn’t live. This cult of bullshit that surrounds these dead kids — and make no mistake, Kurt Cobain, Jimmy Hendrix, they were children. I think about what I knew at twenty-seven and I didn’t know fucking anything. I’ve gained the wisdom to realize I know nothing about wisdom. We just went through all this stuff again with Amy Winehouse. It’s one of the worst fictions of pop culture. It’s worse than Kangaroo Jack. It’s monstrous bullshit and it kills people.” [Bookslut]

Creators | Blankets creator Craig Thompson is all over the place these days; in this story, he talks about his newest graphic novel, Habibi, and how writing and drawing it over the past seven years intertwined with events in his real life: “I started working on Habibi after a devastating breakup; at the point of the reunion of the characters in the book, I felt I was starting to make progress in the relationships in my life. I went from a little “emo boy” to much more of an adult in a relationship over the course of working on Habibi.” [Library Journal]

Detective Comics #1

Creators | Tony Daniel discusses his run on DC’s relaunched Detective Comics. [USA Today]

Creators | Ian Brill announced that after three years as an editor at BOOM! Studios, he’s left the company to pursue a career as a writer. [Brill Building]

Conventions | Ferret Press publisher Dara Naraghi explains why he won’t be attending Mid-Ohio-Con, which is now owned by Wizard World. [PANEL, Via]

History | Noel Murray traces the history of the newspaper comic strip, its precipitous rise in popularity, and the reasons why the medium is in trouble today, with plenty of examples. [AV Club]

Webcomics | Delos reviews Sarab, a webcomic by Arien Artemis in which the readers are allowed to vote on which of two paths the protagonist will follow. It’s like choose-your-own-adventure but with shared decision-making. [Art Patient]

Reviews | Tucker Stone looks back at Darko Macan’s Cable work. [Factual Opinion]

Reviews | Charles Hatfield reviews The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century: 1969. [The Comics Journal]

Brutal

Publishing| Joe Keatinge and Frank Cho have signed a three-book deal with Delcourt, a comics publisher in France. The first book of theirs Delcourt will publish will be the first volume of Brutal, which will debut at the Festival International de la Bande Dessinée d’Angouleme 2013. Delcourt publishes many American comics in France, including Walking Dead, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Invincible, Rocketeer, Hellboy, The Goon, Haunt and many more, as well as many manga titles.

“On a personal level, French comics have had a huge influence on me. Working within that industry is something I’ve wanted to do for as long as I wanted a career in comics at all. Being an author with a book debuting at Angouleme is a goal I thought was many a year away, so this has taken things to a whole new level much sooner than anticipated. While I do plan on going back in 2012, this still gives me a year to work on my awful command of the language before I have to do a signing. Being in the good hands of Delcourt makes me think it’s a good start,” Keatinge said. [Joe Keatinge]

Comics by comiXology

Digital | comiXology rolled out 100 online storefronts as a part of their affiliate program for online comics shops. Heidi MacDonald has commentary on the contract between retailers and comiXology, while retailer Brian Hibbs shows up in the comments section on her site: “…speaking only for myself, I could not possibly sign the offered contract. It is, in my personal opinion, a shit sandwich, embarrassingly one-sided and unreasonable in virtually every particular.” [press release]

Pricing | Von Allan looks at the costs of comics over the years as compared to minimum wage. John Jackson Miller offers commentary. [Von Allan Studios, The Comichron]

Publishing | James Sturm recounts his quest to get a cartoon published in The New Yorker and posts a number of his cartoons, along with the editor’s critiques. At least he had a nice lunch. [Slate]

Digital | Robot 6 contributor Graeme McMillan questions Marvel’s statement that it is the No. 1 digital publisher: Given that sales information is not shared widely within the industry, how would they know? [Blog@Newsarama]

Comics | David Brothers looks at how Frank Miller “built a better Batman” by, among other things, focusing on his mom: “Frank Miller and Jim Lee’s All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder is a shining spot in the catalog of Batman comics because Martha gets all the attention, barring a mention of The Mark of Zorro being Thomas’s favorite movie. For once, Thomas is on the sidelines. This a notable and surprising shift in focus in the discussion of Batman’s origins, and one that I missed on the first read. Thomas Wayne is the steel in Bruce Wayne’s spine, the will that lets him stand up tall when battling the Joker. Martha, however, is the hope inside the Batman, the little voice that elevates him above the Punisher (driven by anger) or Spider-Man (driven by guilt). Yes, his quest is one of revenge against the nebulous idea of crime, but at the same time, he’s genuinely trying to protect others from his bogeyman. He doesn’t want other children or people to go through what he went through. There’s an altruistic element there, wrapped in a seriously personal, and possibly even selfish, crusade.” [ComicsAlliance]

Conventions | Heidi MacDonald and Ed Sizemore report on their experiences at last weekend’s Baltimore Comic-Con. Heidi also shares pictures from the con. [The Beat, Comics Worth Reading]

Creators | Joshua Hale Fialkov discusses how he got involved in DC’s New 52, as well as his work on I, Vampire and Echoes. [TFAW]

Forming

Creators | Cartoonist and animator Jesse Moynihan discusses his webcomic Forming. [The Daily Texan]

Creators | Webcomics creator Kevin Church about the process of writing: “I hate plotting longer form things. With most projects that are finite, I just know how they end and I try to get to that point by any means necessary, winging it a bit, but I’ve found that I lose a bit of an edge if I’m not being panicky and trying to connect the dots. I recently came across the first plot synopsis of She Died In Terrebonne and it’s not nearly as engaging on any kind of emotional level. This thing I’m working on now with the new artist (who I won’t name until we’ve actually got something in the can) is more ambitious than anything I’ve done, so I’ve worked out a lot of character beats and motivations in advance.” [eat the funny pages]

Comics | Carol Burrell, editor of Lerner’s Graphic Universe series and creator of the SPQR Blues webcomic, discusses page composition, panel flow, and thumbnails, using examples from Jaime Hernandez’s “Flies on the Ceiling” and James Sturm and Rich Tommaso’s Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow. [Graphic Universe Blog]

DC Comics

Retailers | Web Behrens talks to several Chicago-area retailers about DC’s upcoming relaunch: “DC sales have been dwindling for years. There are enough new, potentially good books coming out that a lot of customers, angry or not, are still going to buy more DC titles than they do presently,” said Eric Thornton, manager of Chicago Comics. [Time Out Chicago]

Manga | Deb Aoki reviews five manga she found on the new JManga.com digital manga portal, including Star Protector Dog (out soon in print from NBM) and Ekiben Hitoritabi, a manga about a man who travels around the country in order to experience the bento lunches sold in train stations. [About.com]

Manga | Jason Thompson looks at a classic gender-bender series, After School Nightmare (which was nominated for an Eisner award). [Anime News Network]

Comics | Scholar Qiana Whitted looks at comics about blues singers. [The Hooded Utilitarian]

Comics | Sean recently posted the news that Sparkplug Comics publisher Dylan Williams is in poor health, and he and others are urging people to buy some Sparkplug books to help Williams out financially. To help you choose, Brian Heater polls some prominent editors and creators on their favorite Sparkplug comics and Craig Fischer links to some reviews. [The Daily Cross Hatch, The Panelists]

Pogo

Publishing | Mark Evanier, who is providing editorial assistance on Fantagraphics’ long-awaited Walt Kelly Pogo collections, notes that the first volume has gone to print. “My friend, the lovely Carolyn Kelly, lovingly supervised the loving restoration of her lovely father’s lovely strip and she also did the lovely design of this lovely book and its lovely dust jacket and the lovely imprints under that lovely dust jacket. Sure sounds like a labor of love to me. Not that the contents need any help but the strips are supplemented by a foreword from writer (and friend o’ Walt’s) Jimmy Breslin and essays/annotations by Steve Thompson, R.C. Harvey and myself. If I were you, I’d read all that text stuff after I read the strips themselves about eleven times.” [News from Me]

Comics | Todd Allen runs through some of the “actual changes” to the DC titles come September, noting the eight new (or fairly new, or returning after being absent) writers, plus four who have been “poached” from Vertigo. [Indignant Online]

Comics | Martin Wisse takes The Atlantic to task for publishing an “utterly dull and middlebrow” list of 10 nonfiction graphic novels they called “masterpieces.” He notes that when commenters call out the author for not listing any works by Joe Sacco, she responds that she “chickened out” on including Footnotes in Gaza because “the topic is so polarizing.” Tom Spurgeon has commentary as well, noting, “It’s galling that an author can admit to not including something for publication because they were afraid of Internet reprisals and not be automatically fired and/or laughed out of town.” [Wis[s]e Words, The Comics Reporter]

Manga | Former manga editor and adapter Lianne Sentar casts a critical eye on Tired of Waiting for Love, the first manga localized by an amateur translator for the Digital Manga Guild. [Sleep Is For the Weak]

Passings | French cartoonist Jean Tabary, co-creator of the Iznogoud series, passed away late last week at the age of 81. [The Comics Reporter]

Rebus

Art | Dana Jennings looks at five recent comic art books, including James Jean’s Rebus and IDW’s Walter Simonson’s The Mighty Thor. [The New York Times]

Manga | Alvin Lu, senior vice president and general manager of Viz Media, sits down with ICv2 for a two-part interview about the state of the manga market, the effect of the Border’s bankruptcy, and the future of digital manga. [ICv2: Part 1,http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/20861.html Part 2]

Creators | Eva Volin continues her series of video interviews with comics creators with a talk with Ryan Sias, who contributed to the Flight anthology and creator of the new kids’ comic Zoe and Robot: Let’s Pretend. [Good Comics for Kids]

Creators | Francoise Mouly’s commencement address to students at the Center for Cartoon Studies traces her own odyssey from her first night in New York City (spent locked in a room at the YMCA) to her current career as publisher of TOON Books and art editor of the New Yorker, ending with the command “Here, now, is your diploma. Think of it as a map and go get lost.” [CCS Visiting Artist Blog]

Review | The market is flooded with vintage Archie anthologies, but Sean Gaffney checks out the recession-friendly (400+ pages for $9.99) The Best of Archie Comics, and finds it very satisfying. [A Case Suitable for Treatment]

Webcomics | Johanna Draper Carlson lists the webcomics she discovered at last weekend’s Baltimore Comic Con. [Comics Worth Reading]

Conventions | Caleb Goellner calls out the panels that may be of interest to comic fans at this weekend’s gaming convention PAX. [ComicsAlliance]

Comic strips | Jon Carroll pens an appreciation of Walt Kelly’s Pogo, a newspaper strip that has fallen into undeserved obscurity. [SFGate]

Incredibles by Bill Morrison

Day two of D23 kicked off early for us, as the big movie presentation kicked off at 10:30 a.m. and we knew there would be a line. We just didn’t realize how long of a line …

*****

(Before I get into that, though, I should mention the above artwork has nothing to do with the movie panel; it’s Bill Morrison’s homage to New Teen Titans #1 and the Incredibles, and was being sold at the Disney Fine Arts booth. I just thought it was really cool).

So yeah, we got there early and there was already a line snaking back behind the convention center. D23 had two lines each morning, one for D23 members and one for non-members. Members could start entering the show at 9 a.m., while everyone else came in at 10. We got in line around 8, I believe, and it was around 9 by the time we got into the convention center. We went directly to the Disney Arena line, where the big presentation was being held, and waited … and waited … then we’d move a little bit and wait some more. Eventually we made it really close to the door, and someone popped up to tell us we might not make it in because they were running out of seats. We almost bailed at that point, but luckily we didn’t because we were in the very last group of people they let into the arena.

They confiscated our cell phones before we went in, gave us the wand to make sure we weren’t sneaking in a camera, and sent us to the very top row about two minutes before the presentation began. The presentation itself went from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., I believe, and was a star-studded, clip and news-filled production. Let me see if I can remember everything they covered … the first part of the presentation focused on their upcoming animated films, as Pixar’s John Lasseter walked through several upcoming projects for both Pixar and Walt Disney Studios. These included:

–Planes, a direct-to-DVD spinoff from Cars that features, um, planes. It features a cropduster named Dusty, who will be voiced by Jon Cryer … the first of many special guests to come out on stage. They introduced him as “The star of the CBS comedy Two and a Half Men …” and at that point I was thinking how awesome it would be for Charlie Sheen to come out and talk about Tiger Blood. The clip they showed had White Zombie’s More Human Than Human playing behind it, which was an interesting choice.

–Wreck-it Ralph, which I mentioned yesterday … it’s about the bad guy from a video game who wants to be a good guy. So he spends his days in a 1980s video game destroying buildings so that the game’s hero, Fix-it Felix Jr., can use his magical hammer to fix it and of course take down Ralph. They had the game set up at one of their booths:

Fix It Felix Jr.

Wreck It Ralph

They showed the first four-and-a-half minutes of the film, which features John C. Reilly as Ralph, Jack McBrayer as Felix, Jane Lynch as Sergeant Calhoun (a character from a Halo-like game) and Sarah Silverman as Vanellope von Schweetz. The footage was incomplete; in some parts it was black-and-white line art, but the voice over by Reilly was really funny. At one point Ralph attends “Bad-Anon,” a support group for video game bad guys. I didn’t know anything about this film until this weekend, but what we saw was great … it comes out in fall 2012. Oh, and both Silverman and McBrayer came out on stage to say a few words about it.

–Brave is next year’s Pixar film, set in Scotland and featuring a princess who has to choose one of three idiotic suitors for political reasons. She rides a horse, she shoots a bow, and she ends up meeting a witch who casts a spell … they showed clips from this as well, and brought out Kelly Macdonald and Kevin McKidd, who voice characters in the movie. It’s an action-adventure fantasy thing from Pixar, so it ought to be good.

–Monsters University, a prequel to Monsters Inc. Before they were buddies, Mike and Scully were rivals back in college, and this will detail those college days. Billy Crystal, who voices Mike, showed up to huge cheers from the crowd. It comes out in 2013.

–They also announced two new Pixar movies, which would come out after Monsters University … both of which are currently untitled. The first one is kind of a “What if the meteor that killed off the dinosaurs never hit the Earth?” and the promotional image showed a kid riding on the head of a brontosaurus. The other will take you into how your mind really works. They had mock logos made up for both of them, i.e. “Pixar’s Untitled Movie about Dinosaurs,” which was pretty funny.

–The animation part of the presentation ended with Buzz and Woody from Toy Story bringing out a cake in honor of Pixar’s 25th anniversary, and everyone in the arena receiving a cupcake. This was pretty awesome, and the cupcake was really good.

Next up was the live-action stuff, which included:

–John Carter, for which they brought out director Andrew Stanton, and stars Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins and Willem Dafoe. Stanton said he was first introduced to John Carter through the 1970s Marvel series, then went back and read the books. They showed the trailer and several clips, including one that featured Dafoe’s character, one of the nine-foot-tall four-armed martians, meeting Kitsch’s character. Both Dafoe and Samantha Morton’s characters will be done with CGI, but both of them walked aorund on stilts when filming their scenes so they could interact with the other characters. It sounds kinda insane. I like dthe clips they showed; Collins’ Deja Thoris should be one of the highlights.

–Frankenweenie, which is actually a stop motion animated film by Tim Burton. Burton is working on the film in London, but sent over two of the producers and a model of Frankenweenie for them to play with on stage.

–Oz the Great and Powerful, which tells the story of how the Wizard came to Oz. It stars James Franco, Mila Kunis, Michelle Williams and Rachel Weisz, and it’s currently filming in Detroit. None of the stars were there, but they sent a video.

–The Odd Life of Timothy Green, for which star Jennifer Garner came out to promote. This is a Peter Hedges film, who wrote What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and Pieces of April. It’s about a couple who find out they can’t have kids, so they write down everything they’d want in a kid and bury the scraps of paper in the back yard. A kid, Timothy Green, grows out of the ground.

–Jason Segel, Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy came out to promote this fall’s Muppet film. They showed a couple of clips, which look funny and awesome and really made me excited to finally see this.

–The they promoted an upcoming DisneyNature film about chimpanzees. It looks like a propaganda film to make us think these things are cute and cuddly, but we all know better, right? Like I never saw Planet of the Apes …

–Last and certainly not least, Marvel’s Kevin Feige came out after they played a “sizzle reel” that recapped all the Marvel Studios films that have come out since 2008 (i.e. the Iron Man films, Hulk, Thor and Captain America). The clips they pulled all kind of tied together, so you had General Thunderbolt Ross talking about the super soldier program, Nick Fury visiting Iron Man, etc. In other words, it was all about the continuity they’ve been building. Interestingly enough, the Hulk clips didn’t feature Ed Norton Jr. at all.

Feige then introduced a scene from the Avengers that he said the rest of the world wouldn’t be able to see for awhile. Let me see if I can remember all the details …

It opened with Loki trapped in some sort of cell in the helicarrier, talking with Nick Fury. Fury says if Loki so much as tries to scratch the glass, the cell will fall 30,000 feet to the ground below. Loki says the cell wasn’t really built to hold him, but a mindless beast … they then flash to Black Widow, who glances up at Mark Ruffalo/Bruce Banner. So apparently SHIELD has captured Loki and has him imprisoned. They also flashed to Thor at one point in their conversation, and to a glove that was either Iron Man or Cap (I think it was Cap), as well as Cobie Smulders/Maria Hill. Loki says something about how powerful he is, and Fury offers him a magazine to read. It cuts to Banner, who says something like, “He really grows on you, doesn’t he?”

Next a plane is shown flying over a city — I’m assuming this was a Quinjet. I mean, it’s gotta be a Quinjet, right? It was quick, so I’m not 100 percent on that. Anyway, the next scene has Tony Stark talking to Loki, and he gives the God of Mischief a “roll call” of the Avengers, noting they have two super assassins, Hawkeye and Black Widow, who we get to see in action; a demigod — hey, there’s Thor being Thor-like; a living legend “who kinda lives up to the legend” — hey, there’s Cap! — and then says they all have a reason to hate Loki.

Loki says, “I have an army.”

Stark replies, “We’ve got a Hulk.”

Flash in a quick shot of the Hulk roaring, and cut to the logo …

There were other flashes in there … I’m pretty sure there was another shot of Hawkeye, plus Clark Gregg/Agent Coulson at some point. It was pretty loaded and looked really cool.

Next Feige said that Joss Whedon and the cast were wrapping up shooting, for which they had about two weeks left, and said that unfortunately Whedon, Samuel L. Jackson and Chris Evans couldn’t make it, but sent their best … then he introduced the cast members who were at the show — Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Cobie Smulders and Tom Hiddleston. Downey took the microphone and made a comment about how they felt like kids visiting their parents on the weekend, then told them to roll the footage one more time. Here’s the group out on stage, courtesy of Marvel.com:

So, wow … it was pretty cool to see all of them assembled like that. We did some other stuff today, but it’s hard to top all that.

D23 2011

We’re back in our hotel room after a day at Disney’s big D23 event in Anaheim, and what a day it was … you can check out some pictures from it after the jump.

*****

D23, Disney’s fan convention, came back to Anaheim after its debut in 2009. It was noticeably busier this time around than it was two years ago, and by the time we made it to the convention center, there were already massive lines for the big arena presentation and, of course, for the “dream store” where you could spend money on all sorts of Disney stuff. This is a very well-run show, as the Disney staff was always on point, pleasant and helpful as they moved mass quantities of folks in and out of auditoriums and other areas, and everything, for the most part, is set up to give you room to move. There were a couple of times today when I got that about-to-be-crushed, floor-of-Comic-Con feeling (particularly in the shops), but they were few and far between — for the most part the crowds never felt overwhelming.

I guess the biggest disappointment of the day was the fact that Marvel doesn’t have a booth at the show. They’ll be represented Saturday at the movie presentation and Sunday at the Marvel-specific presentation featuring Joe Quesada, but I was hoping maybe they’d show up full force and set up something on the floor. Ah well; maybe they’re still dipping their toes into being part of the bigger Disney family, and the next D23 will feature a bigger presence.

Anyway, onto the pics …

Pirates of the Caribbean was well represented at the show, both in the form of a giant version of the Black Pearl and an area where they showcased props from the film (and of course pushed the upcoming Blu-Ray/DVD release):

The Black Pearl

Pirates wheel

One of the highlights on the show floor was the Parks and Resorts area, where they showed off some of the upcoming additions to their theme parks. For instance, next summer brings an expansion to Fantasyland at the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World. It’ll include new rides, like a mine train featuring Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. They had a miniature set up showing the additions:

… as well as one of the prototypes of the mine train cars:

There’s also a new Cars Land that’s opening at Disney’s California Adventure, and they had some of the Cars that’ll live there:

We also went to the Disney Parks arena presentation, where they showed additional details and a lot of CGI demonstrations of the new rides and attractions. Unfortunately they didn’t announce anything major there, like a new ride or park, like they did in 2009. Instead they mainly gave updates on the progress of all the stuff they announced last time, sharing more details now that a lot of this stuff is close to being finished.

Walt Disney Animation Studios had a booth, where they were promoting a new Prep and Landing Christmas special and a new film due in 2012 called Wreck-it Ralph, about a video game bad guy who wants to be good.

Wreck It Ralph

The Collectors Forum area most resembled the dealer’s room at a comic convention, where various vendors set up to sell collectibles, artwork, T-shirts and a whole lot more. Several of the artists who worked on BOOM!’s Disney books, including Allen Gladfelter and Amy Mebberson, had a booth where they were quite busy doing sketches. Most of the dealers in the area were Disney-centric, but a few of them had Marvel merchandise, including the very cool T-shirt sellers Mighty Fine:

Mighty Fine booth

Probably my favorite T-shirt purchase of the day — and there were many — was this 20th anniversary Rocketeer shirt:

Rocketeer shirt

… celebrating the film that featured Dave Stevens’ famous creation. These are branded with D23 on the back, but I think they were probably made for the 20th anniversary event they held earlier this summer. This is one of two Rocketeer shirts I bought; the other one featured a Bull Dog Cafe logo.

D23 2011

Disney’s D23 Expo takes place this weekend in Anaheim, as all things Disney converge at the Anaheim Convention Center for three days. This is the second D23 event; the first one took place a few short weeks after Disney bought Marvel, so they weren’t at the event, but what a difference two years makes.

Marvel CCO Joe Quesada will host a session on Marvel on Sunday, and Kevin Feige, president of production for Marvel Studios, will join the movie presentation on Saturday. Does that mean we’ll get to see all the Avengers come out on stage in their costumes? One can only hope. The LA Times takes a look at how Marvel is going to fit into the mix, and since I’m in Anaheim right now, watch for reports on Robot 6!