Thor: The Mighty Avenger, Vol. 1

The American Library Association’s Young Adult Library Services Association has unveiled its annual list of Great Graphic Novels for Teens. The 56 titles come from 24 publishers, led by First Second Books with nine and Marvel/Icon with seven.

Chosen by the Great Graphic Novels for Teens Committee from among 78 official nominations, the books are recommended for readers age 12 to 18 as meeting “the criteria of both good quality literature and appealing reading for teens.” In addition, the committee singled out 10 titles “that exemplify the quality and range of graphic novels appropriate for teen audiences”:

• Zahra’s Paradise, by Amir and Khalil (First Second)
• Scarlet, by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev (Marvel/Icon)
• Anya’s Ghost, by Vera Brosgal (First Second)
• The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media, by Brooke Gladstone, Josh Neufeld and others (W.W. Norton and Company)
• Thor: The Mighty Avenger, Vols. 1 and 2, by Roger Langridge, Chris Samnee and others (Marvel)
• Infinite Kung Fu, by Kagan McLeod (Top Shelf Productions)
• A Bride’s Story, Vol. 1, by Kaoru Mori (Yen Press)
• Axe Cop, Vol. 1, by Malachai Nicolle and Ethan Nicolle (Dark Horse)
• Daybreak, by Brian Ralph (Drawn and Quarterly)
• Wandering Son, Vol. 1, by Takako Shimuro (Fantagraphics Books)

The complete list of the 2012 Great Graphic Novels for Teens can be found at the YALSA website.

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

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

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

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

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

Diary of a Zombie Kid

Legal | Antarctic Press has agreed to stop selling Diary of a Zombie Kid and Diary of a Zombie Kid: Rotten Rules under the terms of a temporary restraining order issued Wednesday by a federal court. Wimpy Kid Inc. is suing Antarctic for trademark infringement, among other things, claiming that its Diary of a Wimpy Kid parodies are too close to the real thing. Antarctic CEO Joe Dunn signed the temporary restraining order, signifying that Antarctic agreed to it; the two companies are negotiating a settlement, according to court papers. One interesting tidbit: Diary of a Zombie Kid sold all of 850 copies in comics shops in August, while the first printing on the latest Wimpy Kid book was 6 million. [ICv2]

Retailing | The auction for the inventory of Arizona retail chain Atomic Comics announced last week has been moved to Jan. 10. [Sierra Auction Management]

Comics | Bayou Arcana is a new anthology of Southern Gothic horror comics with a gender twist: All the comics are written by men and illustrated by women. There are some pretty broad generalizations in this article — “There is a certain sensitivity that you find in women’s art that just does not appear in a lot of guys’ work,” says the project editor, James Pearson — but the project itself sounds interesting. [The Guardian]

Publishing | Jim Salicrup, editor-in-chief of Papercutz, discusses the publisher’s line of all-ages comics: “If the Big Two say that the audience for all-ages comics isn’t there in the comic book stores, they may be right, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be created. As I said, some stores are very interested in developing this market, and certainly there is more material (mostly graphic novels) now available than there has been in many years. Papercutz, which was started by publisher Terry Nantier and me, has now been around for seven years, and although it has been a major struggle at times, there seems to be more and more openness to comics for all ages. You may wonder why stores would be reluctant to attract new customers, but in these difficult times, trying to simply survive may distract many a store.” [Bleeding Cool]

Steve Niles

Creators | LA Weekly has a lengthy profile of 30 Days of Night creator Steve Niles: “I don’t know why I like horror. Everyone always asks me that. I think it’s a big release. We work out our fears by being scared. Horror guys, we work out a lot.” [LA Weekly]

Creators | Kurtis J. Wiebe and Riley Rossmo discuss their Image Comics horror series Green Wake. [Fangoria]

Creators | The local newspaper profiles Kennebunk, Maine, creator Sarah Searle, who incorporated real events and people into her graphic novel Under the Apple Tree, which is set in Kennebunk in 1943. [Seacoast Online]

Creators | Richard Bruton interviews mother-and-son comics team John and Patrice Aggs about their latest graphic novel The Boss. [Forbidden Planet blog]

Comics | Robot 6 contributor J. Caleb Mozzocco questions the wisdom of DC Comics developing new properties based on Alan Moore and David Gibbons’ Watchmen, given the reluctance of readers to embrace characters outside the DC Universe. [Every Day Is Like Wednesday]

Smile

Graphic novels | Librarian Robin Brenner runs the numbers to see which graphic novels circulated the most in her library over the past year; some of the results surprised her. Library circulations are an interesting contrast to sales charts, and I suspect they are a truer reflection of what children and teens are reading as kids generally don’t have a lot of money to spend on comics. [Good Comics for Kids]

Retailing | The Newark Post profiles local comic shop Captain Blue Hen, which has a “pay for A’s” incentive for school kids: Earn a dollar credit at the store for every A on your report card. [Newark Post]

Sales charts | John Jackson Miller has posted the last 20 years’ worth of Diamond end-of-year lists on his site, chronicling the best-selling comics for each year. He’s also set up a page with just the No. 1 best-selling comic and graphic novel for each of those 20 years. [Comichron]

Cosplay | HBO reality TV star and brothel owner Dennis Hof plans to open a brothel outside Las Vegas with a science fiction theme. The “alien cathouse” is expected to open early next year, and Hof has recruited Heidi Fleiss, former Hollywood madame and a reality star herself, to plan the costumes and decor, calling her his “chief alien design queen.” [Las Vegas Review-Journal]

Art by Alexis Frederick-Frost

Libraries | The Center for Cartoon Studies has found a new home for the Schulz Library, whose previous location was damaged in a flood in August: the old post office in downtown White River Junction, Vermont. The school was able to purchase the building with the help of Bayle Drubel, a real estate developer and founding CCS board member who bought the post office in 2004. Renovations are set to begin this winter to create room for instruction space, faculty offices and the Schulz Library cartoon collection. [The Center for Cartoon Studies, via The Daily Cartoonist]

Creators | The Atlantic profiles Zippy the Pinhead creator Bill Griffith. [The Atlantic]

Creators | Artist Fabio Moon talks about teaming with Zack Whedon on the new Serenity comic that makes up one-half of one of their Free Comic Book Day offerings. [ComicsAlliance]

Creators | Paige Braddock discusses working with Charles Schulz, and her lesbian webcomic Jane’s World: “Ten years ago, I didn’t think it was important to let gender and sexual orientation show, but now I wish I’d been braver. I think it’s important for people to see lesbians of all kinds represented in every medium. So, my answer now is different than it would’ve been 10 years ago. It’s important to embody who you are, whether you’re writing gay stories or not. But the best thing that can happen to me is if a kid in Idaho says, ‘I read your comic online and I feel less alone.’ That’s better than any paycheck. I got an email once from a mother whose daughter had come out and she was really upset. But then she started reading Jane’s World and said she was much less worried about her. That’s the kind of thing I love.” [AfterEllen]

Habibi

Creators | A Milwaukee magazine interviews local-boy-made-good Craig Thompson (who moved away years ago, but, whatever) about his graphic novel, Habibi: “I see it as a fairy tale that’s drawn from all different time periods and places. People want to say the book takes place in the Middle East, because of the desert, but it is as much rooted in America as Persia as Vietnam or anywhere.” [OnMilwaukee.com]

Creators | Tom Spurgeon continues his holiday interview series with a conversation with Pope Hats creator Ethan Rilly. [The Comics Reporter]

Process | Usagi Yojimbo creator Stan Sakai shows off two stages of one of his pages for the Mouse Guard Legends anthology, inks and the colored page. [Stan Sakai]

Review | Greg McElhatton reviews Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’s Criminal: The Last of the Innocent. [Read About Comics]

Review | Philip Shropshire takes a hard look at the latest Graphic Classics anthology, African American Classics, and notes a glaring omission as well as some high and low points of the selection. [Comics Forge]

Comics | Chris Marshall pokes around on the internet and finds 14 collected editions to look forward to in the coming year. [DGTL Comics]

Opportunity | IDW is looking for a marketing/PR person. [The Beat]

Stuck in the Middle

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

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

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

Art by Sharon Moody

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

Alex de Campi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stuck in the Middle

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

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

From "Foul Play"

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

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

Brilliant! Tragic!

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

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

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

CBLDF

Organizations | The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund has named Alex Cox as its deputy director, responsible for oversight of the organization’s home office and fundraising program. Cox, who came to the CBLDF in 2010, previously served as development manager. [CBLDF]

Publishing | Marvel Talent Coordinator Bon Alimagno is leaving the publisher for a position at San Francisco-based software company The Apollo Group. Previously editor of Harris Comics, Alimagno handled freelance scheduling at Marvel, working with David Bogart, the publisher’s senior vice president of business affairs and talent management. [The Beat]

Graphic novels | The Texas Library Association posts its 2012 Maverick Graphic Novel Reading List of recommendations for tweens and teens. [Texas Library Association]

Conventions | Michael Dooley styles his article about Long Beach Comic Con as a look at The Other Comic Con — the one that caters to, you know, comics readers. [Salon]

Festival International de la Bande Dessinée

Conventions | The 2012 Festival International de la Bande Dessinée in Angouleme, France, will include an Art Spiegelman retrospective, a star-studded list of spotlight panels, and a composer-in-residence who will create a symphony to be performed at the festival. [The Comics Reporter]

Conventions | Kevin Czap has the lowdown on last weekend’s Genghis Con in Cleveland, which featured underground and indy comics. [Comix Cube]

Creators | Eastyn Cazin talks to Elephantmen and Northlanders artist Marian Churchland. [Panel Bound]

Manga | NBM Publishing notes that its first manga, Stargazing Dog, has gone back to press, and the publisher has fixed some of the typos that reviewers (ahem) complained about in the first edition. [NBM Blog]

Cartoons | A 1927 Disney cartoon, previously thought to be lost, has turned up in the U.K. and will go on the auction block in LA later this month. The star of this cartoon is Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a precursor to Mickey Mouse. [Reuters]

Americus

Reviews | Johanna Draper Carlson looks at Americus, M.K. Reed and Jonathan Hill’s story of a book controversy in a small town, and finds an uncomfortable tang of reality: “Throughout, there’s an undercurrent of suspicion of the educated. Those who read books are perceived to be thinking themselves superior to those who don’t. The only book they need is the Bible, they claim (not realizing that being able to read the Bible themselves in a translation for the common people required the kind of fight Neil and his friends are waging). Throughout, they’re arguing against something they aren’t even familiar with, and when their ignorance is pointed out to them, it just makes them meaner.” [Comics Worth Reading]

Reviews | Robin Brenner and Esther Keller discuss Barry Deutsch’s Hereville, a graphic novel about an Orthodox Jewish girl, and the larger question of whether a creator can depict a lifestyle outside his own experience. [Good Comics for Kids]

Analysis | Noah Berlatsky reviews Ben Saunders’s book Do the Gods Wear Capes? Spirituality, Fantasy, and Superheroes: “People often argue that superheroes are dumb because they’re simplistic; because they create a bone-headed binary between good and evil. Ben’s argument is that, in fact, Superman stories have traditionally not so much asserted as investigated this binary. In the light of late modernity, as religion has faded, Superman asks ‘how can human beings be good?’” [The Hooded Utilitarian]

Fandom | Heidi MacDonald does her annual purge and reorganization and has some practical tips and deeper thoughts about managing the physical presence of comics in our lives. [The Beat]

From Uncanny X-Men #137

Comics | An original page by John Byrne and Terry Austin from Uncanny X-Men #137, the 1980 issue that featured the death of Phoenix, sold at auction Wednesday for $65,725. As ICv2 notes, the sale continues the trend of 1980s comic art going for high prices; a page of Frank Miller art from Batman: The Dark Knight Returns #3 sold for $448,125 in May. [ICv2.com]

Digital | ICv2′s Milton Griepp makes the case for publishers to provide sales information on digital comics. “Why would this information be useful? There are a number of reasons. One is that it would help distributors (most importantly, Diamond Comic Distributors) and retailers selling physical comics and graphic novels identify which titles have the largest audiences in digital form. They could then make sure that they’re merchandising the top digital titles appropriately, so they can take advantage of demand for physical titles that results from digital exposure (we’ve been hearing that there’s a significant phenomenon of digital purchasers looking for collections of comics they’ve purchased online). Digital demand can also indicate potential demand for physical books from consumers that aren’t purchasing digitally; a good book, after all, is a good book, and if digital purchasers are finding a title that’s not as popular in physical form, it may indicate that there’s an untapped market of consumers of physical books as well.” [ICv2.com]

Bil Keane

Creators | R.C. Harvey writes the definitive obituary of Bil Keane, with samples of his humor and a very complete history of his work. [The Comics Journal]

Creators| Max Allan Collins discusses his work on Return to Perdition. [USA Today]

Creators | Scott Tuft, co-writer with Scott Snyder of the Image comic Severed, talks about writing the book with his longtime friend. [Biff Bam Pop]

Creators | Joanne Huang looks at Steven Seagle’s use of Superman as a character to explore issues in his own life, including dealing with Huntington’s Disease, in his graphic novel It’s a Bird … [Swarthmore College Daily Gazette]

Creators | Eva Volin interviews Jason T. Kruse, creator of the graphic novel World of Quest and the artist for Scratch 9. [Good Comics for Kids]

Lost Trail

Creators | The local paper interviews Donn Fendler, whose story of spending nine days lost in the wilderness on Mount Katahdin is the basis for the new graphic novel Lost Trail. [The Bangor Daily News]

Comics | The family of Gilbert Bouchard, an Edmonton, Alberta, Canada arts writer who passed away in 2009, has donated his more than 3,700 single-issue comics and related materials to the University of Alberta. [Edmonton Journal]

Comics | Chris Sims looks at the fashion history of Darkseid. [ComicsAlliance]

Comics | The New York Times presents its gift guide for comics fans. Despite the headline “A Superhero for Your Stocking,” the suggestions are mostly other types of graphic novels. [The New York Times]

Organizations | Charles Brownstein, executive director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, spoke at the 20th annual Conference on Libraries and the Future about the history of comics censorship and the challenges comics will face in the future. Audio of his speech and his presentation are available on the conference’s website. [CBLDF]

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]

Neil Gaiman

Politics | The controversy in Minnesota continues over Neil Gaiman’s speaking fee, with a state House Republican committee chairman now recommending a $45,000 cut to the Twin Cites’ regional library system budget to make up for the Legacy Fund money paid to the author and comics writer in May 2010. “I simply subtracted out $45,000 — just making a point,” Rep. Dean Urdahl said. Gaiman responded that the move “seems like a sad way to make a point.” He talks at length with CityPages about the controversy. [Star-Tribune]

Passings | Prolific Argentine comics writer Carlos Trillo, co-creator of CyberSix, passed away over the weekend while on vacation in London. He was 68. Trillo, whose career spanned five decades, collaborated with such artists as Eduardo Risso, Jordi Bernet, Juan Bobillo, Carlos Meglia and Domingo Roberto Mandrafina. [TN.com, via The Beat]

Retailing | Peter Panepinto turns a Free Comic Book Day preview into one of those perennial articles about the potential effects of superhero movies on comic-book sales. [Carroll County Times]

Conventions | Deb Aoki wraps up the first day of last weekend’s Toronto Comic Arts Festival. [About.com]

Flashpoint #1

Publishing | Brian Truitt continues his preview of DC Comics’ Flashpoint event, which puts The Flash in the spotlight. “He’s not about a hundred guys who run fast,” Geoff Johns says. “He’s not Green Lantern where Green Lantern is about this intergalactic space corps. The Flash’s huge canvas is time. I’ve always said when I was redoing both these characters, it’s time and space. Batman’s the ultimate crime vigilante superhero. You will never ever top Batman, and for time travel and crossing all these different planes of reality, you’ll never top the Flash. The Flash owns time.” [USA Today]

Creators | Mike Huddleston chats, not entirely seriously, about Butcher Baker, Righteous Maker, his new Image Comics collaboration with Joe Casey: “Joe and I had both been on the professional arm wrestling circuit for several years and kind of knew each other from competitions. It just happened that we were both sidelined last year with injuries, so being out of competition for a season we had time to kill and started talking about other jobs we could have. I had heard you could get really rich making independent comics, so I convinced Joe to give writing a shot and the rest is history. Joe has had these characters in his head since he was like 6 years old, so I’m not sure how many issues he has planned. We’ll see if he can keep his schedule once he’s back in competition.” [Bloody Disgusting]

One Piece, Vol. 27

Crime | Police in Fukuoka City, Japan, arrested three 17-year-old males on charges of shoplifting the first 57 volumes of One Piece, the insanely popular manga series by Eiichiro Oda. [Anime News Network]

Comics | J. Caleb Mozzocco writes at length about the 2010 Marvel miniseries Doomwar. [Every Day Is Like Wednesday]

Comics | Jeffery Klaehn posts a gallery of Thor art, and posts his list of the Top 10 Thor covers by Jack Kirby and Walter Simonson. [Pop]

Amazon Kindle

E-books | Amazon announced it will allow Kindle users to read e-books from more than 11,000 libraries, marking a reversal of the company’s policy. Previously library users who borrowed e-books could read them on Barnes & Noble’s Nook, the Sony Reader and other devices, but not the Kindle. “We’re excited that millions of Kindle customers will be able to borrow Kindle books from their local libraries,” Jay Marine, Amazon’s director of Kindle, said in a statement. The Kindle Library Lending will debut later this year. [The New York Times, press release]

Publishing | Several DC Comics staff members laid off as part of the sweeping corporate restructuring — among them, editors Mike Carlin and Pornsak Pichetshote — have been hired by DC Entertainment’s newly formed Burbank-based Creative Affairs division, which operates alongside Creative Services. [Bleeding Cool]

Legal | Japanese police have arrested a 25-year-old man suspected of using Share file-sharing software to upload about 28,000 manga and anime files without the copyright holders’ permission. [Anime News Network]

Tokyopop

Publishing | Sam Humphries and J. Caleb Mozzocco join in the reflection on the closing of Tokyopop’s U.S. publishing operations. [Comics Alliance, Every Day Is Like Wednesday]

Publishing | IDW Publishing is auctioning all 83 variants of Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters #1, with the proceeds going to AmeriCares to benefit the victims of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. [IDW Publishing]

Retailing | Borders Group, which is closing 226 superstores, is paying a dozen consultants more than $500 an hour to guide the company through the bankruptcy process. [AnnArbor.com]

Retailing | Kevin Czap tours Cleveland’s comic stores. [Comix Cube]

Far Arden

Creators | Far Arden creator Kevin Cannon has been dubbed the best cartoonist in Minneapolis. [City Pages, via Top Shelf]

Creators | Matt Fraction talks about the new Mighty Thor series: “Is he a superhero, is he a god? Is it a little g or a big G and what does that mean? Is my god better than your god, and does Jesus live somewhere? It’s also fun to refer to big Gs and then cut to Galactus.” [USA Today]

Creators | Jonathan Valelly spotlights Chester Brown and the official book launch for Paying For It. [Xtra]

Creators | Cowboys & Aliens co-writer Andrew Foley discusses the upcoming movie adaptation. [Edmonton Sun]

Isotope's "FailFrog" button

Comic-Con | Badges for Comic-Con International sold out Saturday during a marathon online-registration session that taxed the servers of convention sales partner TicketLeap and frustrated ticket buyers. Four-day passes were gone by about 2 p.m. PT; the event sold out by 6 p.m. (Additional passes may become available as cancellations are processed.) As we noted earlier, San Francisco comics retailer Isotope is memorializing Saturday’s experience with a “San Diego Comic Con 2011 Registration Disaster Commemorative Fail Frog button,” featuring a modified version of the TicketLeap logo that frustrated users saw every time they refreshed their web browser.

On the TicketLeap company blog, CEO Chris Stanchak acknowledged that “our platform experienced capacity issues for a 4 hour period” on Saturday: “While we knew the event was going to put significant demand on our system, we did not expect the traffic we received. [...] The traffic we received yesterday was several orders of magnitude higher than our high end estimate. Due to the heavy strain on the system, users for all events across our system received ‘Over Capacity’ errors. This prevented ticket buyers from buying tickets and it prevented event organizers from managing their events.” Tom Spurgeon offers commentary. [Comic-Con International]

Rep. John Lewis (D-GA)

Publishing | Georgia Congressman John Lewis, a leader in the American civil-rights movement, will co-author the autobiographical graphic novel March for Top Shelf Productions: “A meditation in the modern age on the distance traveled, both as a nation and as a people, since the days of Jim Crow and segregation, March tells the first hand account of John Lewis’ lifelong struggle for civil and human rights.” It’s tentatively set for release in 2012. [press release]

Business | AOL Inc. struck a deal Sunday to by The Huffington Post for $315 million as part of an ongoing effort transform the former Internet service giant into a “new American media company.” Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, will become president and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group, which will integrate both company’s content, including the AOL-owned comic-book blog Comics Alliance. [Advertising Age, The Hollywood Reporter]

Crime | Dan Herbeck updates the investigation of the case of Homer Marciniak, a 77-year-old man from Medina, N.Y., who died in of a heart attack on July 5, several hours after he was beaten by burglars who broke into his home to steal his comic-book collection. Rochester businessman Rico Vendetti was charged with hiring the alleged burglars, including 17-year-old Juan C. Javier — both deny any involvement — but community members want prosecutors to pursue homicide charges. [The Buffalo News]

Alan Moore

Creators | Nicole Le Marie reports on the “read-in” led by Alan Moore to protest the planned closing of the St. James Library in his hometown of Northampton. [Northampton Chronicle]

Creators | Cartoonist Faith Erin Hicks discusses her busy schedule, including an upcoming third graphic novel for First Second, collaboration, her webcomic The Adventures of Superhero Girl, and more. [Sequential Tart]

Creators | Grace Bello interviews bestselling author, television host and comics writer Brad Meltzer. [Bookslut]

Comic strips | An editor at the Yuma Sun asks readers if, 11 years after the death of cartoonist Charles Schulz and the final new installment of Peanuts, it’s time for the newspaper to let go of the comic strip. [Yuma Sun]

Anyway, the new GGNFT list is up at the ALA website, and the librarians have chosen their Top Ten of the year as well. Here they are:

1. The Zabime Sisters, by Aristophane
2. Green Monk, by Brandon Dayton
3. Saturn Apartments, vol. 1, by Hisae Iwaoka
4. Brain Camp, by Susan Kim, Laurence Klavan, and Faith Erin Hicks
5. Chew, vol. 1: Taster’s Choice, by John Layman and Rob Guillory
6. Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty, by G. Neri and Randy Duburke
7. Meanwhile, by Jason Shiga
8. Smile, by Raina Telgemeier
9. Ghostopolis, by Doug TenNapel
10. Set to Sea, by Drew Weing

Borders

Retailing | Troubles continue for Borders Group as the retailer filed notice Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission that Executive Vice President Thomas D. Carney and Chief Information Officer D. Scott Laverty have resigned. Just last week Borders, the country’s second-largest bookstore chain, announced it’s delaying payments to some publishers as it attempts to restructure its credit lines. [GalleyCat]

Passings | Longtime retailer Carl Tupper, who owned BSI Comics in Metairie, Louisiana, for 30 years, passed away on Dec. 29. He was 70 years old. [BSI Comics, ICv2.com]

Libraries | Four of the top five young-adult titles checked out from the New York Public Library in 2010 were manga: Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto, Tite Kubo’s Bleach, Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece, and Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball Z. Jennifer Holm’s graphic novel Babymouse and Jeff Kinney’s comics-prose hybrid Diary of a Wimpy Kid were the top two children’s titles. [NYPL Wire]

Organizations | Child’s Play, the charity founded in 2003 by Penny Arcade creators Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins, raised $2,294,317.53 in donations in 2010, setting a record for the organization, which provides toys and video games to hospitals worldwide. [Gamasutra]

Death Note Black Edition, Vol. 1

Publishing | Deb Aoki looks ahead to 82 new manga series and one-shots set to debut this year. [About.com]

Conventions | Jessica Testa previews the first Amazing Arizona Comic Convention, which will be held Saturday and Sunday at the Mesa Convention Center in Mesa, Arizona. Guests include Robert Kirkman, Rob Liefeld, Jeph Loeb, Joe Benitez, John Layman, Ryan Ottley, Cory Walker, and cast members from The Walking Dead. [The Arizona Republic]

Creators | Tom Spurgeon continues his holiday interview series with writer Kelly Sue DeConnick: “Every story is absolutely perfect when it only lives in my head. I’m confident, I have all kinds of ideas, snippets of dialogue, etc. — it’s like a high almost. And then… I have to start writing it down. And once those ideas meet the real world and I can examine them from even the distance of my eyes to the page… well, that’s when it becomes clear that I’m not a genius after all.” [The Comics Reporter]

Creators | Writer Ruthie Kott relates a humorous story told to her by Paul Hornschemeier. [Gapers Block]

Webcomics | Todd Allen and Scott Beaderstadt’s comic Division and Rush has moved from the ChicagoNow website to its own domain. [Division and Rush]

DC Comics

Publishing | DC Comics will roll out a marketing campaign next month in support of its new $2.99 price initiative. The campaign, apparently revealed in a communique to retailers, will include online banners, ads in January issues of Comics Buyer’s Guide, Comic Shop News and Wizard, in-book ads, and in-store posters, shelf talkers and cards. [Crimson Monkey]

Libraries | The Will and Ann Eisner Family Foundation has pledged $250,000 over five years to the new Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum facility, part of the Sullivant Hall renovation at The Ohio State University. [The Daily Cartoonist]

Broadway | The father of Christopher Tierney, the 31-year-old aerialist who fell a week ago during a performance of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, offers a full account of his son’s injuries: a hairline fracture in his skull, a broken scapula, a broken bone close to his elbow, four broken ribs, a bruised lung and three fractured vertebrae. Timothy Tierney said his son underwent back surgery on Wednesday, and took his first steps on Friday with the aid of a brace and walker. Doctors are “cautiously optimistic” that Christopher Tierney will eventually resume his performing career. [Arts Beat]

Captain America #602

Politics | Salon includes last February’s Captain America-tea party controversy in its rundown of “the year in trumped-up pseudo-scandals.” [Salon.com]

Best of the year | Dave Ferraro selects the 10 best manga of 2010. [Comics and More]

Best of the year | Lore Sjöberg names the best new webcomics of 2010, from Axe Cop to Bad Machinery to Scenes From a Multiverse. [Underwire]

Best of the year | Chantaal and Dee at Girls Read Comics Too choose the best comics of the year, divided into categories. [Girls Read Comics Too]

Retailing | Kris Turner briefly spotlights Comic Relief in Flint, Mich. [The Flint Journal]

Brenda Starr

Comic strips | R.C. Harvey begins a two-part essay on Brenda Starr, which ends its 70-year run on Sunday. [TCJ.com]

Creators | Steve Niles talks about his collaborations with horror legend Bernie Wrightson: “Every Friday night Bernie and I have a Scrabble night at my house with his wife Liz and my girlfriend Monica. Really, these books came out of those nights with us talking plot points between Scrabble turns and pizza and beer. If we laughed, it went in the book. I know this sounds a little to simple, but the friendship plays so much into the collaboration now it’s almost too fun to call work.” [Hero Complex]

Creators | Robert Kirkman chats briefly about the success of The Walking Dead television series, and his plans for 2011. [The Courier-Journal]

Gerard Way

Creators | My Chemical Romance frontman and comics writer Gerard Way talks about his favorite music, comics, prose and more. [The New York Times]

Comics | Douglas Wolk recounts what he’s grateful for in comics: “The general shift toward the rights of individual creators is a very good long-term sign. The most talked-about comics-inspired projects in other media this year were Kick-Ass, Scott Pilgrim and The Walking Dead–all of which are properties owned by the particular people who created them. That’s a huge change.” [Techland]

Comics | Ben Morse assembles a Jewish Justice League. [The Cool Kids Table]

Uncanny X-Force #1

Publishing | No comic cracked the 100,000-copy mark in the direct market in October, with the top title, Marvel’s Uncanny X-Force #1, selling an estimated 96,500 copies. Diamond’s graphic novel chart was led by DC Comics’ Superman: Earth One hardcover, which sold more than 16,000 copies. Retail news and analysis site ICv2.com notes that was the best number for a graphic novel since new volumes of Scott Pilgrim and The Walking Dead shipped in July. The website also pursues John Jackson Miller’s recent analysis of comics that don’t make it into Diamond’s Top 300, concluding: “Sales below the Top 300 may be growing in importance, but when we look at a fairly long period (10 months) either they aren’t big enough in the aggregate to make much difference, or their sales are changing at about the same rate as the Top 300’s. If anything, looking at year to date numbers, sales on titles below the Top 300 are shrinking faster than sales in the Top 300, at least in periodical comics.”

Meanwhile, Miller sifts through data made available by Diamond to determine that comics sales are 69.6 percent of the total market. [ICv2.com, The Comichron]

Conventions | Wizard Entertainment has announced its acquisition of Central Canada Comic Con in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Johanna Draper Carlson also picks up on rumors that the company is adding Mid-Ohio-Con to its growing stable. [press release, Comics Worth Reading]

My Friend Dahmer

Legal | John Backderf, aka cartoonist Derf, was excused from jury duty after he mentioned that he was close friends in high school with serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. (Derf’s Eisner-nominated comic My Friend Dahmer is being reworked and expanded into a full-length graphic novel.) [Cleveland.com]

Organizations | Retailer organization ComicsPRO has appointed Amanda Emmert to the new position of executive director and reduced the size of its board. [ICv2.com]

Publishing | Deb Aoki talks with Hikaru Sasahara, president of Digital Manga Publishing, about the Digital Manga Guild, a new program that will utilize fan translators, editors and letterers for no upfront pay. [About.com]

Conventions | Gary Tyrrell begins his wrap-up of New England Webcomics Weekend. [Fleen]

Conventions | PJ Hruschak reports on last weekend’s Mid-Ohio-Con. [Gamer Tell]

Libraries | Karen Green looks at how academic libraries classify graphic novels. [Publishers Weekly]

Incognito: Bad Influences

Creators | Frequent collaborators Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips discuss their series Incognito. “My thought behind it was what would superhero comics be like if during the early ’30s or early ’40s when they were starting, they stuck to the pulp roots and never went back to aiming them at children?” Brubaker says. “Initially, comics were much more like the pulps and then they realized, ‘Oh, these are being read by 4-year-olds.’ Suddenly, Batman didn’t have a gun. The pulps were read by older kids and teenagers and adults, so there was that darker edge to it.” [USA Today]

Creators | Tom Spurgeon conducts a longish Q&A with Sarah Glidden, creator of How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less. [The Comics Reporter]

H Day

Creators | Whitney Matheson chats with Renee French about H Day and migraine headaches. [Pop Candy]

Creators | Brian Heater continues his four-part interview with Jaime Hernandez. [The Daily Cross Hatch]

Creators | Bryan Lee O’Malley talks briefly about the end of the Scott Pilgrim series, the movie, and what comes next: “I’m definitely going to do more comics, that’s always been my calling. So that’s the plan for at least the next few years. When you’re doing comics, they take so long that when I think about what I’m doing next it’s like, ‘Oh and then I’ll be 40.’ So that’s tough. When you really schedule out your life its kind of terrifying, but that’s what I do.” [Metro News]

Creators | Russell Leadbetter delivers a profile of Mark Millar in which we learn, among other things, that the writer’s favorite meal is pizza and chips, “washed down with Irn-Bru,” and his favorite director is Richard Donner. [Herald Scotland]

Creators | Jeff Lemire talks with a Superman fan site about his run on Superboy. [Superman Homepage]

Americus, by MK Reed and Jonathan Hill, looks at the human side of that equation, telling the story of two 14-year-olds who are huge fans of a fantasy series, The Chronicles of Apathea Ravenchilde, and the chain of events that is set in motion when the mother of one boy takes away his library copy and tears it up. It’s not a challenge, per se, as the library promptly gets a replacement copy; it’s really about the futility of trying to control another person’s thought process by restricting their reading. Americus is running as a webcomic (with a very interesting side blog) right now, and it will be published next year as a graphic novel by First Second Books. I e-mailed MK Reed and Jonathan Hill to discuss their story and their feelings about challenging books.

Robot 6: What was the book that carried you away as a child, the way Apathea does for the characters in this story?

MK Reed: There were a few, a lot of Roald Dahl books, but I mainly remember Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain. My dad read all those books to me and my brother right after my parents separated, and they were very effective at helping us mentally escape what we were all going through.

Jonathan Hill: For me it was The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I had an uncle that spent a lot of time with my brothers and I when we were growing up, and he would recite the stories from those books to us. We spent a summer with him when we were older and he bought all the books and we made it a family event and would read a chapter or two together before bed every night. I think we only got through The Fellowship of the Ring that summer, but I was pretty hooked and finished the other books shortly afterwards. A lot of it has slipped from me the last couple of years, but I used to be one of those walking Tolkien encyclopedias that could recite lineage, poems, songs and what not from the books.

Robot 6: Have you had any personal experience with having a beloved book challenged or questioned, or had your own work challenged?

MK: Only in high school when I began writing for the school paper and literary magazine, when teachers had to explain why we couldn’t have swears and nudes people drew for their (outside-of-school) art classes.

Jonathan: I spent most of high school growing up in the Middle East, and even though I went to a private American school there were still some rules that the government imposed on the school. One year in history class new textbooks had arrived to be used the following year and our teacher had instructions to give us all Sharpies and we had to go through and black out certain sections and names of the history book that the government didn’t want them teaching. I remember thinking that the whole thing was pretty messed up, but also realizing that this was history in action in a sense — how it’s not necessarily what happened, but what the people in charge want people to think happened, etc. I do also remember thinking it was kind of hilarious in the fact that they were making high school students do it and that we would have to read the stuff to find out what to black out. I remember my friend and I purposely didn’t black out the right stuff just to stick it to the man.

Robot 6: Have you ever read a book that challenged your own beliefs or changed your thinking in some significant way?

MK: I read a lot of literary theory in my major at college, like Foucault and Derrida and Marx, and by the time I finished the program, I was unable to see things without looking at the context and motivations for everything. It left me with a slightly paranoid worldview, but much better able to call people on BS.

Jonathan: Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud really, really opened my mind to things that are possible within comics that I had never thought of — even just the simple idea of using comics to explain comics. It was brilliant I had never seen anything like it. At the time I was studying illustration and was pretty unhappy with it, and it was one of the things that inspired me to leave that and to pursue making comics.

Robot 6: What was the inspiration for this story?

MK: I kept reading about challenges to Harry Potter in schools and libraries and finding the whole notion ridiculous. I see a clear link between kids who are intellectually curious and kids who read, and I can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t encourage that in their kids.

Robot 6: Your story deals with a fairly extreme example, a rigid, fundamentalist Christian objecting to an innocuous fantasy novel. Her objection is to the supernatural aspect, but most challenges seem to be about sex, nudity, and language. What struck you as interesting about this particular angle?

MK: It seems like the dumbest reason to me to ban something, especially since in government institutions there’s supposed to be the separation of church and state. It’s ridiculous for someone to say that a book that doesn’t reflect their particular brand of faith is in some way religious persecution sheerly by existing, or that having this book available in their town will damage their lives.

Robot 6: Do you think your story reflects the reality that teenagers experience in the U.S. today? And is it more true to life in a place like Oklahoma than other parts of the country?

MK: I hope so, I’m almost thirty though, and I don’t really know any teens that well. But teenagers are always going to feel like they’re being unfairly condescended to, and that parents don’t understand what they’re going through. My friends who’ve grown up in the Midwest tend to be folks who have left there for a reason, and my one friend from Tulsa described it as a deeply religious place afraid of anything new.

Jonathan: After working on this project and doing some reading, I was surprised at how often stuff like this actually occurs and over such seemingly trivial content in books. I remember reading about a preacher wanting to ban or burn Pokemon a couple of years ago. POKEMON?!! I think that it’s easy living in liberal, well-read cities New York and Portland to be a little sheltered and forget that books and ideas are being challenged and banned all the time.

Robot 6: Are you concerned that Americus will itself be challenged somewhere?

MK: That would be kind of awesome and totally meta. Also, usually when someone tries to ban a book, it ends up selling better, since it gets more attention because of the controversy.

Jonathan: I’m not really concerned, but I don’t think it would be surprising if someone out there challenged it. More mild things seem to have been challenged.

Robot 6: Were there story elements you considered and rejected because they would not be appropriate for a teen audience? Or, to put it another way, would this be a different story if you were writing for adults?

MK: No, it’s written for both teens and adults, though I might have used a few more swears if it were just supposed to be for adults.

Robot 6: How do you envision the finished book — when will it be out, how long will it be, and what will be the format? Is there a lot of story left?

MK: The book will be out next fall as a graphic novel from First Second, it’ll be about 200 pages. Right now we’re only up to chapter 3, and it’s only just getting started.

Jonathan: We actually have the book 98-percent complete. I’m working on the last drawing revisions now. I don’t have the pages in front of me, but I think it clocks in at around 196 or so pages. There’s plenty of story left, so stay tuned!

• Absolute Sandman, by Neil Gaiman and others
• Blankets, by Craig Thompson
• Bone, by Jeff Smith
• Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel
• Maus, by Art Spiegelman
• Pride of Baghdad, by Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon
• Tank Girl, by Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin
• The Dark Knight Strikes Again, by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier, by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill
• Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

Notably absent from the list is any mention of manga, which has been challenged in several libraries recently.

The most shocking book in America?

This week is Banned Books Week, an annual event sponsored by the American Library Association and a host of other organizations to bring attention to books that have been challenged or removed from libraries, schools and reading lists over the past year. You can find the full list of challenged books from 2009-2010 here, and it contains plenty of good reading, from Sherman Alexie’s Diary of a Part-Time Indian (often challenged but beloved by readers) to the anthology Paint Me Like I Am: Teen Poems. The list tilts strongly toward young-adult novels and sex manuals, but there are a surprising number of classics, including To Kill a Mockingbird (a parent objected to the word “nigger,” which seems to miss the point), Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, Ernest Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants, Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (a perennial on this list) and the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, which, shockingly, contains the term “oral sex” and has therefore been (no joke) removed from classrooms in the Menifee, California, Union School District and may be banned permanently there. The most often-challenged book in 2009, according to the ALA’s top ten list, is ttyl and its companion volumes ttfn, l8r, and g8r, which, as you might guess, are YA novels.

The list contains a handful of comics, as well:

• The Cartoons that Shook the World, by Jytte Clausen: The Yale University Press removed twelve cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed from this anthology of political cartoons.

• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier, by Alan Moore: Two workers at the Jessamine County Library in Kentucky were fired after they kept this book checked out for a year, to keep it out of circulation, then looked up information on a library patron who had requested it and, upon finding that the patron was an 11-year-old girl, canceled the request themselves. They had already challenged the book, but the library opted to keep it on the shelves.

• Stuck in the Middle: Seventeen Comics from an Unpleasant Age, by Ariel Schrag: This anthology was removed from school libraries in two Sioux Falls, South Dakota, middle schools because of some of the themes of the comics, which included bullying and masturbation.

• Dragon Ball: The Monkey King, by Akira Toriyama: Someone found the pages with the boobs and overreacted. The first volume of the manga is rated T+, but after an earlier dust-up, Viz Media removed the nudity from subsequent volumes to keep it suitable for U.S. kids. While one could possibly make an argument for not shelving that first volume in an elementary school library, the district’s decision to pull every volume from every school (including their middle and high school) reeks of overkill.

Not on the list, probably because it occurred after the deadline, was Margaret Barbaree’s attempt to have all manga removed from the public library in her hometown of Crestview, Florida. Barbaree circulated a petition (somewhat misleadingly labeled an attempt to remove pornography from the library) and addressed the Crestview City Council, claiming that her son had been driven insane by unnamed manga (detective work indicated the titles in question were Gantz and Psychic Academy). While the books remain in the library, it has reorganized the shelves and created a separate teen section to keep the kiddies away from the hard stuff.

Brightest Day #7

Publishing | Chart-watcher John Jackson Miller wades into the grim direct-market sales figures for August, and notes that they mirror the state of the market in 2000: “Like 2010, 2000 was a year with a successful super-hero movie release — the first X-Men film. In that year, however, it had little impact on the market partially due to the cash-poor position of retailers at the time — and we might expect retailers were in the same position this year. [...]  In 2000, by contrast, the reason wasn’t the general economy, but rather the seven-year industry recession that preceded it. Another similar element: price increases. From 1999 to 2000, Marvel went from benchmarks of $1.99 and $2.50 to $2.50 and $2.99. Other titles increased as well; $2.95 first became the industry’s median price in late 1999.  The 2000 jumps are one of the more drastic previous increases by percentage — eclipsed, of course, by the current $2.99-to-$3.99 move.” [The Comichron]

Legal | India’s Delhi High Court has refused to hear a complaint by Archie Comics challenging the use of the name “Archies” by Mumbai-based Purple Creations. The court said it had no jurisdiction in the matter because Archie doesn’t have an office in India. [Deccan Herald]

Bone One-Volume Edition

Publishing | Jeff Smith’s Cartoon Books is moving its bookstore distribution from Diamond Book Distributors to Publishers Group West, effective Oct. 1. [ICv2.com]

Publishing | Sarah E. Needleman spotlights Dark Horse President Mike Richardson. [The Wall Street Journal]

Retailing | Diamond Comic Distributors will release more details of its “Day Early Delivery” program on Oct. 8 during a Retailer Appreciation Breakfast at New York Comic Con. [ICv2.com]

Retailing | Comics Cubed is set to open today in Kokomo, Indiana, thanks in part to a $15,000 loan from the city designed to encourage businesses to locate downtown. [Kokomo Perspective]

Organizations | Valerie D’Orazio has announced that as of Jan. 1 she’ll no longer be president of Friends of Lulu, the troubled comics-advocacy group that’s in danger of losing its tax-exempt status. She was elected president in September 2007. [Occasional Superheroine]

SPX

Conventions | Heidi MacDonald reports on last weekend’s Small Press Expo, which drew slightly more than 2,000 paid attendees, up 18 percent from 2009 and 30 percent from 2008. [Publishers Weekly]

Conventions | Cincinnati Comic Expo will be held Saturday at Xavier University’s Cintas Center. Guests include Murphy Anderson, Russ Heath, Lora Innes, Tony Moore and Michael Uslan. [FOX19.com]

Creators | Brian Heater kicks off a three-part interview with Lisa Hanawalt. [The Daily Cross Hatch]

Comics | The Yale Law School library’s exhibit “Superheroes in Court! Lawyers, Law and Comic Books,” which runs through December, showcases comics ranging from Action Comics #359 (“The Case of the People vs. Superman”) to Wolff & Byrd: Counselors of the Macabre, as well as documents like the 1955 report to the U.S. Senate called “Comic Books and Juvenile Delinquency.” [The New York Times]

Comics | Jesse Schedeen counts down the 10 most dangerous places in comics, from Marvel’s Eastern Europe to DC’s Middle East to Bludhaven. [IGN.com]

Comics | Eight superheroes that turned evil but got better. [Topless Robot]