Blackest Night #7

Siege #2

They say nice guys finish last, but when event comics will finish is anybody's guess. The demands of a high-profile series around which entire shared universes revolve can play havoc with scheduling. Naturally, editors and publishers love to maintain the artistic quality and consistency (and sales levels) provided by the big-name writer-artist teams that tend to lend such books a sense of "this is a big deal." On the other hand, they need to get books out on time so that other series whose storylines depend upon what happens in the event can proceed as planned -- and so that they don't end up alienating retailers and readers. But these same readers and retailers can end up just as irritated if they get the sense that the creators are being rushed, or if fill-in artists aren't up to snuff. It's a tough row to hoe.

With his front-row seat for a variety of events this decade, including Avengers Disassembled, House of M, Civil War, and Secret Invasion, Marvel Executive Editor Tom Brevoort knows this better than anyone. So it was with an obvious mix of boldness and trepidation that he made the following prediction on his Twitter account:

It's height of hubris time: I'm willing to bet that SIEGE will wrap up before BLACKEST NIGHT does.

Siege, of course, is the apparent capstone in Marvel's years-long series of mega-events, reuniting Avengers mainstays Thor, Iron Man and Captain America as (I assume) they attempt to thwart HAMMER Director Norman Osborn's advances on Asgard. Launching in January for a four-issue run, it's written by Brian Michael Bendis and drawn by Olivier Coipel, and its second issue is due out on Feb. 3.

Blackest Night is another years-in-the-making project, this one stemming from Geoff Johns's long-running "War of Light" storyline in Green Lantern and pitting the heroes of the DCU against power ring-resurrected versions of their allies and enemies who seek to wipe out all life. Written by Johns and drawn by Ivan Reis, this eight-issue series launched in July (with an additional #0 issue arriving on Free Comic Book Day a couple months earlier), and its seventh issue is slated for release on Feb. 24.

So can Siege sneak its final two issues in between Blackest Night #7 and 8? Seems tight, but anything can happen. Heck, just ask Brevoort himself, who's far from cocky about the prospects for his proposed wager. In that very same tweet, he says, "You'd think I'd've learned from REBORN," the Ed Brubaker/Bryan Hitch Captain America miniseries that's been transmogrified from five issues to a delay-plagued six. Still, Brevoort jokes that its final issue, due out Jan. 13, will still see the light of day before that of Flash: Rebirth, the similarly expanded and delay-prone series by Johns and Ethan Van Sciver whose sixth and final issue is currently scheduled for a Dec. 23 release. "I know their pain. And yet, I mock them anyway. Hubris," he later self-diagnoses.

Speaking of mockery, Brevoort responds to a pair of reader tweets with some good-natured jibes in at Marvel's own infamously unfinished Daredevil/Bullseye: The Target ("That already finished. You may be confused because the title was changed to Zack and Miri Make A Porno.") and The Twelve ("Hey, there are many issues of Brave & The Bold that have to be written."). Of course, as that last tweet indicates, the writers of those titles -- Kevin Smith and J. Michael Straczynski respectively -- have since largely decamped to DC, so the gags go both ways.

So which of the big events will end up finishing first -- the Green Lantern's or the Green Goblin's? Swing by in March to find out!

Usagi Yojimbo T-shirt

Dark Horse Comics has teamed up with clothing label The Hundreds to release two limited edition T-shirts featuring new Usagi Yojimbo art from Stan Sakai. The shirts are limited to 200 of each design and will be released this Saturday at the Hundreds locations in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

In addition, Sakai will be at the Hundreds location in L.A. from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. to sign copies of Usagi. The first 25 people will receive a signed copy of the recently released Usagi Yojimbo graphic novel, Yokai.

“I am always excited to hear stories of the impact of Usagi on other creative individuals, especially those working outside of comics,” Sakai said in a press release. “I hope that this collaboration exposes a whole new group of people to Usagi, and comics in general. I'm grateful to have had the chance to work on this project with Bobby and everyone at The Hundreds.”

“Much of what I do today, as creative director for the Hundreds, stems from poring over Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo art as a youth,” said The Hundreds co-founder Bobby Kim. “To this day, it was one of the most influential comic books in my life, and so it was an honor to work with Stan on two exclusive pieces of art for The Hundreds. To any fan of The Hundreds, it is important to acknowledge and appreciate Usagi Yojimbo’s inspiration to the brand.” You can read more of this thoughts on Usagi on the Hundreds' blog.

More T-shirt images and a flyer for the events can be found after the jump ...

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The Hero Initiative is putting together an art exhibit featuring the work of Ed Hannigan, whose work was featured in and on comics like Green Arrow, The Defenders, Superman, Batman and Spectacular Spider-Man, among others. They're looking to borrow any original art for the exhibit from Dec. 15 through April 30; if you own any, contact Jim McLauchlin at jmclauch@aol.com.

Bill Kartalopoulos emailed me to let everyone know about a panel he'll be moderating tomorrow, Nov. 3, at the The New York Center for Independent Publishing, 20 W. 44th St., New York.

The panel will discuss the history and current challenges facing political cartoonists in The Big Apple and features Eric Drooker, Tom Hart, Tim Kreider and Peter Kuper.The full press release is below the jump.

The New York Center for Independent Publishing presents: Comics History/ New York History

Political Cartooning in New York City
Tuesday, November 3rd, 6:30 p.m.

Boss Tweed may have been the most powerful man in the city, but he was still tormented by Thomas Nast's biting parodies of him as a cartoon. Decades later, Jules Feiffer took on Presidents from Eisenhower to Clinton in the pages of The Village Voice. Parsons faculty member Bill Kartalopoulos will lead a panel exploring the historical - and ongoing
- interaction between political cartoons, New York City, and the public. Panel members will include: graphic novelist and illustrator Eric Drooker, whose work regularly appears on the cover of The New Yorker; cartoonist and SVA faculty member Tom Hart, whose Hutch Owen has appeared in two book collections and a daily comic strip in the Metro; New York Times contributor and cartoonist Tim Kreider, whose cartoon, The Pain - When Will It End?, has been collected in two books; and World War 3 Illustrated co-founder, graphic novelist, and Spy vs. Spy artist Peter Kuper, whose "Eye of the Beholder" was the first comic strip to regularly appear in The New York Times.

Join us at our historic building at 20 West 44th Street as we explore New York City through comics. Visit our website at www.nycip.org for more information!

Admission is $15 for adults, $10 for members, and $5 for students, and can be paid in advance online or at the door on the day of the event.

This program is supported, in part, by NYSCA (New York States Council on the Arts) and public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

NYCIP is an educational program of the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen.

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]

Stitches

Publishing | Robert Weil, executive editor and vice president of W.W. Norton, discusses graphic novels and working on David Small's Stitches and R. Crumb's The Book of Genesis Illustrated: "I edit graphic artists the same way I edit language. My biggest encouragement to David was — he kept sending two or three pages to friends and his agent and to me, and finally I said, 'David, I want you to be a cormorant. I want you to be a bird and go underwater and disappear for several months and just do it one last time. Just commune with yourself. Find the deepest possible images and stirrings in you and when you come up, you’ll be filled with fish in your beak. Which is what a cormorant does. I order you not to call anyone. Go in your studio and just resonate with your work.' And he did." [Graphic Novel Reporter]

Business | It's looking more and more as if the financially troubled Spider-Man musical won't open for previews on Feb. 25, as producers initially planned. [ArtsBeat]

Legal | Not comics, but Harlan Ellison has settled his lawsuit against Paramount over the studio's alleged failure to pay him for merchandising, publishing and other exploitations of "City on the Edge of Forever," an episode the author wrote for the original Star Trek TV series. [Variety]

The Book of Genesis Illustrated

Sales charts | Given the buzz surrounding R. Crumb's The Book of Genesis Illustrated, it's no surprise the graphic novel debuts as the No. 1 hardcover on The New York Times' Graphic Books Best Seller List, bumping the first volume of Bloom County: The Complete Library to No. 2. [The New York Times]

Creators | Your R. Crumb profile of the day, focusing on "The Bible Illuminated: R. Crumb's Book of Genesis," which opens Saturday at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. [Orange County Register]

Creators | The Eastern Edge translates a discussion by Naoki Urasawa about drawing. [The Eastern Edge]

Air, Vol. 1

Creators | Writer G. Willow Wilson discusses her Vertigo series Air: "I have ideological boundary issues. Air is one of the very rare opportunities I get as a writer to ignore them. Air is what the world looks like: An inconvenient mashup of human politics and divine geography. We leave bits and pieces of ourselves and our history in every place we encounter. In Air, all that is externalized; the symbols we use to represent what we believe, and the lenses we use to look at our past, are all made physically real." [Underwire]

Creators | Brett Williams talks with co-writers Tony Trov and Johnny Zito about their Zuda Comics series Black Cherry Bombshells and LaMorte Sisters. [Surfing the Bleed]

Manga | Robert Ring offers a brief history of Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy. [The Sci-Fi Block]

Comic strips | Jill Schulz, daughter of the late Charles Schulz, briefly discusses the enduring popularity of Peanuts and plans for the 60th anniversary of the comic strip. [Nerdage]

Comic strips | Adam Kepler spotlights Nevin Martell's Looking For Calvin and Hobbes. [The Moment]

Comics | A TV station in Greensboro, North Carolina, is excited that a local landmark appears on the variant cover for G-Man #2. [Digtriad.com]

Wonder Woman Day IV

On Sunday DC Comics' Amazon princess will be celebrated in a pair of Wonder Woman Day all-ages events in Portland, Oregon, and Flemington, New Jersey, that will benefit domestic-violence prevention and intervention agencies in both states.

Portland Mayor Sam Adams has even officially declared Oct. 25 to be "Wonder Woman Day."

The Portland event, which will be held from noon to 6 p.m. at Excalibur Comics, 2444 SE Hawthorne Blvd., will benefit Raphael House of Portland, Bradley Angle and Portland Women's Crisis Line. Guests include Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez, Gail Simone, Aaron Lopresti, Ron Randall and Paul Gulacy.

The Fleminton event, which will be held from noon to 5 p.m. at Comic Fusion, 42 Main St., will benefit Safe in Hunterdon. Guests include Joe Sinnott, Chris Muller, Ken Haeser, Rob Kramer and Buzz Hasson.

Both events are free, and will feature silent auctions of work by such artists as Alex Ross, Adam Hughes, Gary Frank, Nicola Scott, Jeff Smith and many more.

For more information, visit the Wonder Woman Day IV website.

Covered in Confusion

Will Dinski's Covered in Confusion took home the Isotope Award for Excellence in Minicomics last night. The award was presented during Isotope's annual APE Aftermath party. If you'd like to see the book, Dinski has a video of it up on his website, where you can also purchase it.

Iron Man #18

Creators | Tom Spurgeon has word from a former George Tuska spokesman that the longtime Iron Man artist has passed away. He was 93.

Tuska began his career in 1939 as an assistant on Scorchy Smith, and worked for the comic "packaging" studio owned by Will Eisner and Jerry Iger. He later drew for Fawcett and Quality, and then moved to Marvel in the 1960s, where he penciled such titles as Daredevil, Ghost Rider and The X-Men before beginning a decade-long run on Iron Man. Tuska left Marvel in the late 1970s for DC Comics and in 1978 helped launch a new Superman daily comic strip, on which he worked until 1993.

Tuska is survived by his wife of 61 years Dorothy, their three children and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. [The Comics Reporter, Tony Isabella]

Big Apple Comic Con

Conventions | As Big Apple Comic Con -- "the New York area's largest pop culture festival" -- opens, Variety and the Los Angeles Times spotlight the official launch today of GeekChicDaily, the new e-newsletter founded by Wizard Entertainment CEO Gareb Shamus, movie producer Peter Guber and digital entertainment entrepreneur Peter Levin.

Meanwhile, comics and TV writer Paul Cornell explains why he won't be attending the convention: "The guy who originally invited me was made redundant the day after he did so. Which doesn't fill one with confidence. But, sure enough, his boss was kind enough to honour the commitment. And there was some communication on that score. However, by the start of this week, I'd noticed that days were ticking by without any actual arrangements being made. So I finally said that if they'd already bought the air ticket, then of course I'd come, because I didn't want them to lose out financially because of me, but if they hadn't, then not to worry about it. Which resulted in... absolute silence. So when I say I'm not going to New York... well, that's my best guess as we speak."

Heidi MacDonald reported earlier this week that "several announced guests" hadn't received their travel arrangements, "and several others who were invited pulled out when such arrangements were not forthcoming." [Big Apple Comic Con]

Canandaigua Comic Con

Conventions | Pulp Nouveau Comix in Canandaigua, New York, on Sunday is sponsoring the first Canandaigua Comic Con. Guests will include Nicholas Gurewitch and Chris Yambar. [Daily Messenger]

Events | An exhibit will debut Saturday at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art that highlights the connection between ancient Indian paintings and modern Indian comics. "Heroes and Villains: The Battle for Good in India's Comics" will run through Feb. 7. [The Wall Street Journal]

Publishing | Here's another look at 50 years of Asterix, which has sold 325 million books worldwide. [AFP]

Retailing | Amazon has introduced same-day delivery in seven U.S. cities: New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, Baltimore, Las Vegas and Seattle. Chicago, Indianapolis and Phoenix will be added soon. [Bits]

Sales charts | The New York Times Graphic Books Best Seller List is filled with debuts this week, led by the first volume of Bloom County: The Complete Library as the No. 1 hardcover, The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks at the top paperback, and the ninth volume of Rosario Vampire as the No. 2 manga. [The New York Times]

Comics | Christopher Allen, Michael Paciocco and Marc Sobel discuss Planetary. [Trouble with Comics]

Marvelfest

This morning's New York Post reveals some of the details for the Oct. 28 premiere of Marvel's Astonishing X-Men motion comic in New York City's Union Square Park.

The company will transform the former Virgin Megastore into a three-story outdoor screen to show the adaptation of the bestselling comic by Joss Whedon and John Cassaday.

Astonishing X-Men is Marvel's second motion comic. Spider-Woman, by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev, debuted in August.

The premiere will serve as the centerpiece for the first "Marvelfest" in Union Square Park, which will feature appearances by creators, a costume contest and giveaways. The event begins at 6 p.m.

The Alternative Press Expo, or APE, is coming up this weekend at The Concourse in San Francisco. The show runs from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday. Special guests include Jamaica Dyer, Phoebe Gloeckner, Dean Haspiel, Batton Lash, Lark Pien, Dash Shaw and Jeff Smith. I'll be there covering the show, while Matt Maxwell will have a table to sell copies of Strangeways.

And over the next couple days, I'll be posting what various companies and creators have planned for the show. If you'd like to be included, drop me the details on where you'll be, what you'll be selling and all that good stuff.

Exhibit A Press | Jackie Estrada dropped us a note about what Exhibit A Press (table 312) will have at the show, where special guest Batton Lash will be celebrating 30 years of Wolff & Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre.

"He’ll be signing the limited-edition Supernatural Law Tales from the Vault Anniversary Special as well as comics and trades," she writes. "We’ll also have Batton’s 'monster cameos,' one-of-a-kind hand-painted miniatures of everyone’s favorite monsters. Plus: new Graphitti Designs Supernatural Law T-shirt!"

More info at www.exhibitapress.com/pages/index.php

SLG Publishing | Jennifer de Guzman sent over an update on SLG's plans for the show. "Jamaica Dyer will be a special guest, so we will have plenty of copies of her new book Weird Fishes," she writes. "Jamaica will also be on the panel Personal Stories on Saturday at 5 p.m. with Dean Haspiel, Phoebe Glockner, and Dash Shaw. I'll be moderating her spotlight panel on Sunday at 12 p.m."

Things Undone

NBM | Ted Rall and Shane White will be at APE; Rall will have a few copies of The Year of Loving Dangerously, while White will sign copies of the recent release Things Undone (which is sitting on my dresser in my "to read" pile; I should read it before this weekend).

Top Shelf | Brett Warnock posts on his blog that Nate Powell, Grant Reynolds and Jeremy Tinder will be at their booth, along with himself and Leigh Walton. And as always, he'll be at the Isotope party Saturday night.

Creators | Scott Morse will be on hand doing commissions and selling the last few remaining copies he has of The Ancient Book of Sex and Science.

Manga | Deb Aoki rounds up what various manga publishers are doing at the show.