The digital comics scene is still developing, but the iPad was the game changer. For many people, it was the first time that they could comfortably read comics on a handheld screen. Now, it’s just a question of marketing—this year, publishers will grapple with bringing comics to a wider audience, outside the existing readership, and balancing the digital marketplace with the established brick-and-mortar retail structure.

Here, then, is a look back at our digital year.

January

Apple announces the iPad.

February

Graphic.ly

Graphic.ly, which at this point still hasn’t released their product to the public, acquires iFanboy.

Forbes.com reports that Apple’s iBookstore would have “Comics and Graphic Novels” as a top-tier category. Plans must have changed, as the current version, sadly, features no such category.

March

Jason Thompson explores iPhone apps that pick up manga from illegal scan sites. At the end of the year, many of these apps are still going, but with less content than before.

Rantz Hoseley tells Heidi MacDonald that Longbox, billed as “iTunes for comics,” would launch its public beta at Emerald City Comicon.

Tokyopop CEO Stu Levy tells ICv2 that Tokyopop would publish its own iPhone content this year and that he is very excited about the iPad, especially the iBookstore. At the end of the year, only one new Tokyopop book (Hetalia: Axis Powers) is available digitally, and Tokyopop is completely absent from the iBookstore.

iVerse, one of the pioneers of iOS comics apps, announces it will have a comics app ready to go the day the iPad launches.

April

With the launch of the iPad just days away, Marvel announces that it will have its own app, developed by comiXology.

Comic apps on the iPad at its launch include Comics by comiXology and Comics+ by iVerse.

IDW announces four iPad apps, mirroring its iPhone apps: an IDW app and branded apps for G.I. Joe, Transformers, and Star Trek. (IDW’s apps were developed by iVerse.)

The Japanese publisher Animate begins publishing yaoi manga directly to the Kindle, in both English and Japanese.

Apple rejects a proposed iPhone app from Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Mark Fiore because it “ridicules public figures”—which is pretty much what political cartooning is all about. A few days later, Apple reverses that decision.

ICv2 estimates North American digital comics sales at between half a million and a million dollars annually.

I note that all the manga apps in the iTunes store take content from illegal scan sites.

May

Masaaki Hagino, of the Japanese e-book developer Voyager Japan, says that the iTunes store rejected 30% of the Kodansha manga his company adapted for the iPhone due to relatively mild violence and nudity

IDW announces it is creating comics apps for the BlackBerry; it is the first publisher to do so.

June

Marvel announces its first comic to be released in print and digital form on the same day: Invincible Iron Man Annual. The total cost of the digital version, which was released as three separate issues, was a dollar more than the print comic. Six months after this was big news, the price of the digital version has not dropped.

Longbox launches its public beta.

Apparently unaware of the irony, Apple forces the creators of Ulysses: Seen, a graphic-novel adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses, to re-frame a number of panels to eliminate some nudity. A few days later, they reverse their decision.

Boom! Studios unveils its iPhone/iPad app and announces that it will make its entire backlist available digitally through comiXology, iVerse, Graphic.ly, and Panelfly.

DC announces its iPad app, developed by comiXology, and reveals that it will pay royalties to creators for digital downloads of their work. Joe Quesada hastens to clarify that Marvel is also paying digital royalties to its creators.

July

Fraud arrives in the digital paradise, as a rogue developer hacks into people’s accounts and uses them to buy his comics apps (poorly translated bootleg manga) and boost their ratings in the iTunes store.

Graphic.ly launches a Windows 7 version, making digital comics more accessible to non-Apple users.

As things get crowded in the digital ecosystem, webcomics entrepreneur Joey Manley says the big publishers are getting it right, for once.

August

Just in time for summer vacation: The Scott Pilgrim iPad app (developed by comiXology).

Image Comics joins the growing number of publishers who have their own iPad app.

Webcomics creators rise up in arms against a mobile app that is basically an RSS feed pre-loaded with comics—but that accessed their sites without their consent, and which they fear would steal readers.

September

Chip Mosher of Boom! Studios says that making their backlist available digitally has grown their audience rather than cannibalizing print sales.

Comics come to the digital library service Overdrive.

Marvel comics become available on the Graphic.ly platform.

The Walking Dead goes day-and-date in the comiXology app with a cover price of $2.99 (higher than the previous delayed issues but the same as the print comic).

October

At New York Comic-Con, Dark Horse announces its digital initiative (a stand-alone app that will debut this month) and Boom! Studios reveals that its titles will be available on MyDigitalComics.com. Yen Press becomes the first manga publisher to announce its own app, which is also a stand-alone app (and which has not yet launched).

ComiXology launches a Walking Dead comics app.

Barnes & Noble unveils a color version of their Nook e-reader.

November

The manga publisher Viz announces its iPad app.

Due to a glitch in the system, comiXology releases Ultimate Thor #2, which Marvel is publishing simultaneously in digital and in print, a week early. Benjamin Simpson buys it, reads it, and wakes up the next morning to find that Marvel has locked the comic on his device, making it unreadable until the official release date. This raises the question of whether digital comics readers are buying the comics or just a license to read them, a question later explored in depth by David Brothers.

ComiXology announces it will make their developer tools available to a select group of publishers to help speed up the process of getting their comics onto the platform.

December

Apple posts its lists of top apps of the year, and comics do very well: ComiXology’s Comics app and the Marvel and DC apps (both developed by comiXology) are among the top-grossing apps.

Digital Manga Publishing makes its Vampire Hunter D manga available on the Nook.

ComiXology launches a version of its app for Android devices.

IDW begins releasing graphic novels as stand-alone apps.

Someone figures out how to put bootleg manga on the Kindle.

Marvel announces that the Death of Spider-Man arc in its Ultimates line will be released simultaneously in print and digital.

Dark Horse announces the initial lineup for its comics app, which will launch with full story arcs of Hellboy, Conan, The Guild, Umbrella Academy, and other comics, both bundled and as single issues.

Finally, just as Time Magazine has its Person of the Year, I think it’s appropriate to designate a Digital Creator of the Year. It’s a tie, actually, between Alex De Campi, creator of Valentine, and Mike Jasper and Niki Smith, the co-creators of In Maps and Legends. Alex, Mike, and Niki published their comics on every imaginable platform this year—iPhone, iPad, Android, Kindle, Nook—and that sort of versatility is what creators will need to have in the coming year, as digital comics expand and develop in, hopefully, a variety of niches.

Brigid: First of all, the most important question in an interview like this is: What is the comic about?

Mike: In Maps & Legends is about a young woman caught between this world and another, and her attempts to save them both. It starts off as a contemporary fantasy, as our hero Kaitlin Grayson and her friends get caught in the web of a mysterious man named Bartamus who shows up at Kait’s place one night. Bartamus tells Kait she’s the only one who can save his dying world. As you can guess from the title, cartography, history, and stories play a key role in the unfolding mystery of our comic.

Brigid: How long do you plan it to be?

Mike: This first story arc is ten issues. I can see a lot more stories in this series, but we’re starting with this arc to see if it sparks interest in readers who’d like to read more.
 
Brigid: Why did you choose to enter it in the Zuda competition?
 
Mike: It’s all Niki’s fault! She put out a call for writers via Twitter, and I sent her half a dozen ideas, and this is the one that stuck. I’d never heard of Zuda before, but when I found out it was an imprint of DC, I sat down and started reading all the comics available at the site. All of it great stuff, and while I felt a bit daunted by the quality of the other contest winners at the site, I thought ours added a new take, a strong female protagonist, and a great cape-and-tights-free story.

Niki: As Mike said, I’d been musing “aloud” on Twitter about entering the Zuda competition last fall—a few writers tossed out ideas, but I really liked Mike’s—it had the most potential *visually*, I thought. A map carved into the walls of a room? There was definitely potential to show something Zuda readers hadn’t seen.

Brigid: What was that experience like? Are you glad you did it?

Mike: The month of the competition, November 2009, was pretty heinous. Lots of checking and double-checking of our numbers, and the twice-weekly ranking updates were particularly nerve-wracking. And spamming everyone we knew to get them to vote! Though we led all month, I was convinced by the last day of November that we’d lost. But we didn’t, and I’m really glad we did it, in spite of all the chaos of the year since. It was a crash course in marketing, what to do to get the word out and what not to do. Plus, getting contracts and checks with the DC logo on it? Priceless!

Niki: Stress. My wife made me promise I would never submit again. It was a tight race start to finish. You can’t just sit back and hope people like you—you have to get the word out and bring in new readers. Comics are always in need of new readers!

Brigid: How did working for Zuda shape the way you made the concept—the format, the storytelling, the pacing? Is there anything you would do differently?
 
Mike: I think Niki would agree with me that we’d adjust the size and orientation of the page—Zuda used a horizontal format, which is great for reading online, but not so great for reading on a Kindle or Nook or iPad. And so many comic distributors are set up for vertical, not horizontal, that we’ve had to do some jury-rigging to make our comic fit at certain sites. But I’m not sure I’d change anything else, and I actually like the horizontal aspect.

Niki: I don’t know if I would go standard comic vertical, actually. Horizontal works perfectly for screens; you just have to rotate how you hold it. We may have tried to squeeze less action onto each page, though, if we had originally intended it for the smaller screens of phones and ereaders. Pacing-wise, Zuda’s deal is always for a “season” of 60 pages—and conveniently enough, that’s exactly where we are now! One year to the day from winning Zuda, we’ve released the third issue, and those who have read it will know just how much of a cliffhanger our Zuda season would have ended on—with no definite say on whether or not it would continue! Releasing In Maps & Legends independently means we can tell the full 10-issue story without our readers having to worry they’ll never get to see the end.

Brigid: How did you find out that Zuda was shutting down, and what was your immediate reaction?
 
Mike: I got an email from Zuda, and then sat back in shock for a while. Then I watched the twittersphere blow up as other creators reacted to the end of Zuda. I wasn’t completely blindsided, as there were rumors flying already, and I had a bad feeling about it in my trick knee, but still… it stung. I got on IM immediately to chat with Niki and commiserate.

Niki: All Zuda creators got the same form email, with not a lot of information. We had no way of knowing who was cut free and who they’d decided to continue—or where and how they would survive. So far at least one other ex-Zuda series (War of the Woods) has released independently on Comixology, and I hear a few others have plans, but by now I think many have simply moved on to their next projects. It’s a shame, because I’d enjoyed following their series on Zuda.

Brigid: Why did you decide to present your story on so many platforms?
 
Mike: It didn’t make sense to limit ourselves to just one distributor (though it would’ve been a lot easier on us!).  There still isn’t one distributor that hits ALL the various platforms and devices (some are getting closer and closer, however). Also, people are going to start choosing their favorite app for getting their comics—I know I don’t want to go through five or six different comic apps on my iPhone or computer to get to the comics I want to read. So we figured the best route was to do some research and find the big players as well as the smaller players that we felt had lots of potential and reach, and get on board with all of them.

Niki: Digital reading devices are growing so fast it’s hard to keep up. The iPad was released something like 6 months ago, and a wave of tablets are soon to come—all running on different operating systems and needing different programming. There’s no single distributor available on all of the platforms we’re on. We have a different partnership for Kindle, for Nook, for Android phones, iPhones, Windows phones… the list goes on. By limiting ourselves to one distributor exclusively, we would have cut out a huge percentage of our readers. EReader sales actually make up the majority!
 
Brigid: How do you handle the nuts and bolts of formatting it for all these different apps?
 
Mike: Niki does a lot of the behind-the-scenes work, and I’ve got notes and spreadsheets for the different issues and all the distributors. We’re still fine-tuning the process, but it’s getting better with each issue. Thank goodness for the wonders of Dropbox, which helps Niki and keep our files synced up between North Carolina and Ohio.

Niki: I do a lot of Photoshop work. Kindle and Nook take longest because their smaller screens means all the lettering needs to be made larger and more legible. For the “guided view” panel-to-panel stuff for iPhone and Android, the distributors handle that.

Brigid: Do you plan a print edition?

Mike: A print edition is definitely in the plans. We’re considering a couple different publishers, but haven’t settled on anyone just yet. I’m looking forward to it.

Niki: We plan on querying a few publishers soon, but the hard-core print thinking may come closer to the end of the 10-issue run.
 
Brigid: What have you learned since leaving Zuda?
 
Mike: I think I have a pretty good feeling of what it’s like to own your own business! I went from scripting 3 issues a year (with Zuda) and doing some minor marketing for each new page (Zuda did 1 page a week, while we’re doing 22 pages every six weeks) to running what’s essentially a small digital publisher. I’ve gotten really good at reading contracts. I think I’m getting better at writing press releases. And I’ve learned that you get exactly out of creating a comic what you put into it. It’s been a rush.

Niki: Agreed. Time management is huge. I’m drawing, inking, coloring, lettering, formatting 22 pages in 6 weeks… it’s exhausting but I’m actually getting the hang of it!

Brigid: Do you like being independent comics producers, or would you prefer to be working for a publisher?
 
Mike: As I said above, it’s a lot of work, and the marketing side of it can be really draining, especially when I’m trying to get an issue scripted and keep in touch with our distributors and discuss the art with Niki. Ideally, I’d love to have it both ways—work on indie comics as well as work with a publisher.

Niki: I’m still actively trying to find a publisher for a few graphic novel projects of my own, so in the end I would say I’m probably inclined to lean that way. There’s no safety net when you go independent—no advance, no page rate, just your own meager skills as an artist and marketer. I would also love to work with a good editor, particularly on the comics I write.

Brigid: What’s next once this comic is done?
 
Mike: With seven issues to go, it’s hard to see that far ahead at times, but I’d love to do another graphic novel or maybe a shorter one-shot kind of comic, and then do another story arc for Maps. I also have some non-graphic novels out there to publishers, and if those get picked up I’d love to get a series going there for one of my novels. My five-year-old son and I just finished the most recent Wimpy Kid novel, and I think there are a ton of stories waiting to be told for that audience, especially for boys ages 5-12—we loved the mix of stories and line art in those books, and as my wife would attest, I haven’t completely left behind my junior-high-school mentality…

Niki: I actually just won a grant to work on a graphic novel I’ve been writing for the past few years, so I’m hoping something comes out of that! It’s a story I would love to get out there, and it’s MUCH different from IM&L in both style and tone.

Longbox

Digital comics | Technology columnist Andy Ihnatko spotlights LongBox Digital, the much-anticipated “iTunes for comics,” and claims he’s “pretty sure” the company is entering into a “formal alliance” with Apple: “Comic-industry cluelessness and their inability to unite towards a common, mutual good are the two main reasons why we haven’t seen anything like LongBox before. But they probably haven’t been as serious a roadblock as the simple lack of any portable device that’s perfectly-suited to reading digital comics. This is a form of storytelling that needs a tablet. A big, page-sized color screen with lots of resolution and a touch interface for turning pages and navigating from panel to panel. Apple is rumored to be making one of those things. And they’re also rumored to be speaking with a great many high-profile print publishers about bringing their content to this new device.” LongBox CEO Rantz Hoseley wouldn’t confirm Ihnatko’s Apple assertion. [Chicago Sun-Times]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Business | Nickelodeon has purchased the global rights to the 25-year-old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise from The Mirage Group and 4Kids Entertainment for a reported $60 million. [Variety, press release]

Publishing | Dark Horse’s Aaron Colter, Fantagraphics’ Eric Reynolds and Top Shelf’s Brett Warnock tackle questions about digital piracy. [Graphic Novel Reporter]

Publishing | Deb Aoki interviews Garrett Boast, publisher of ShojoBerry, the planned shojo manga magazine. [About.com]

Publishing | Your “Asterix turns 50″ story of the day. [Time]

Publishing | John Jackson Miller crunches the direct-market sales figures for September, and spotlights bestsellers from Septembers past. [The Comichron]

Stitches

Awards | NPR’s Glen Weldon takes a look at the nomination of David Small’s Stitches for the National Book Award. [Monkey See]

Retailing | Tony Grove, owner of Kingdom Comics in Keizer, Oregon, has had to cash in an IRA and refinance the mortgage on his house to maintain his store, which he uses for community outreach. [Statesman Journal]

Creators | Emmanuel Guibert discusses The Photographer. [Graphic Novel Reporter]

Creators | Brendan Wright chats with Steve Lieber about Periscope Studio, his new series Underground, Whiteout, and more. [The Wright Opinion]

Creators | Berkeley Breathed will be interviewed from 11 a.m. to noon Pacific today on KPCC 89.3 FM. [KPCC]

Creators | Brian Heater continues his interviews with Ken Dahl and Guy Delisle. [The Daily Cross Hatch]

Creators | Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon discuss their collaborations on The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation and the new Vlad the Impaler. [Graphic Novel Reporter]

Creators | Abby Denson talks about her new graphic novel Dolltopia. [Rutland Herald]

Comic-Con

Comic-Con International has released the programming schedule for Thursday, July 23, as well as some special programming for preview night. You can check out the entire day’s worth of activities right here for yourself. Here are some of the highlights …

• During preview night on Wednesday, Warner Bross Television will show some of their pilots for upcoming TV series — Human Target, Vampire Diaries and the remake of V.
• The first panel that jumped out on me on Thursday is the 10 a.m. LongBox Digital Comics panel with Rantz Hoseley, Jeff Katz and other special guests as they demonstrate the product. They’ll also discuss, and no doubt announce, some of the partnerships they’ve formed with various comic companies.
• Interestingly enough, before the LongBox panel even ends, there’s a Motion Comics panel featuring folks from Warner Bros. and DC, including Paul Levitz, Dave Gibbons and Paul Dini. It starts at 10:30 a.m.
• Also at 10:30 a.m., Douglas Wolk and the folks from io9.com will talk about science fiction. I mention this because it may be your only opportunity to heckle our old friend Graeme McMillan.
• Several comic companies have panels on Thursday: IDW, Bongo Comics, Archaia, Devil’s Due, Top Shelf, Mondo Marvel, Vertigo, DC’s Superman books, DC’s Justice Society books, Archie Comics and Oni Press. There’s also a joint Cartoon Books and Abstract Studios panel, as Jeff Smith and Terry Moore are sharing booth space at the con this year. It says to expect a special announcement from Smith.
• There are also several spotlight panels on the con’s special guests, including Geoff Johns, Leinil Francis Yu, Bryan Lee O’Malley, Gene Yang, Richard Thompson, Gail Simone, Kevin Eastman, Jimmy Gownley and Bill Sienkiewicz, among others.
• As this is the con’s big 40th anniversary, they’ll have several panels that look back at the con’s origins and past … including a reunion panel for most of the members of the band Seduction of the Innocent.
• Movie panels on Thursday include Kick-Ass, Astro Boy and The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus, among others.
• There are several “how to” panels featuring creators like Zander Cannon, Andrew Pepoy (who will teach you how to network at the show), J. Michael Straczynski and several creators from Marvel in a panel led by C. B. Cebulski.
• Thursday night brings the debut of the Green Lantern: First Flight animated DVD movie.

Per the site, they’ll be rolling out the schedules for each day over the next four days … so check back often.

Digital comics | Last week Rich Johnston did another “Twinterview,” or interview over Twitter, this time with Longbox inventor Rantz Hoseley. The entire thing is collected over at BleedingCool.com. Rich asks about how Longbox will affect comic shops, mobile devices, funding and more. You can also watch Hoseley’s panel from HeroesCon over at iFanboy.

Digital comics | Van Jensen, who helped Top Shelf with getting Owly on the Kindle, shares his thoughts on digital distribution, Longbox, iPhones and more.

from Scary Go Round

Webcomics | The webcomic Scary Go Round ran into a bit of unfortunate timing, as recent strips featured a one-gloved character “who is a kind of grotesque version of a world superstar,” creator John Allison posted on the strip’s site.

“As much as some of the comics of the next few weeks may seem a kind of unpleasant cash-in, I drew them weeks ago,” he said. “I had written and thumbnailed my comics up to July 22nd when the King of Pop turned his toes up.” (Via)

Webcomics | I enjoyed this blog post by Jorge F. Muñoz, artist of Yon Kuma. The webcomic is about bear wrestlers, and Muñoz talks about his appreciation for the masks worn by various luchadores. And it ends with a bear wearing one of those masks, which is a nice bonus.

Social media | Matt Price interviews Rob Vollmar about tweeting the script from his most recent work, The Twin Cities.

Longbox

Digital Comics | Rantz Hoseley posted some additional information and answered questions on the Longbox digital comics in the comments section of the iFanboy article Kevin linked to yesterday.

Those updates include:

• Although only BOOM! and Top Cow have been announced so far, Hoseley said seven publishers have signed on for the launch, and the other five will be announced in the next few weeks leading up to the San Diego Comic Con.
• The software will include a “Manga Mode” that flips the left-to-right reading order. That’s pretty damn clever.
• The software will also allow for “age-restricted sub-accounts,” so your kids can read the Muppets but can’t get to your Black Kiss comics.
• Hoseley says that “while we certainly welcome DC and Marvel’s participation, the entire system was designed to have a business model that would be successful and profitable for all involved if they chose not to participate.”

There’s more at the link, so click over and read. This gets more interesting by the day …

e-Devices | Uclick, which has brought titles like Bone and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to the iPhone, announced today that they’ve released an Eisner Award iPhone application, available now for free on iTunes. The app will update with icons indicating the winners in each category shortly after the voting results are announced on Friday, July 24 at the San Diego Comic Con.

I actually downloaded it last night; it only works in landscape, but it includes information on the awards and Will Eisner, as well as covers of all the nominees. It’s pretty slick and well worth the asking price.

Social media | The Castaways and Bluesman writer Rob Vollmar is tweeting a comic script at the rate of one page per day. No doubt that’s one way to ensure that every word — heck, every character — counts. (Via)

e-Devices | Publishers Weekly’s Calvin Reid reviews the Kindle DX, which started shipping June 10. “Comics displayed on the improved Kindle 2 looked dim and small and were hard to read and the device’s zoom feature didn’t really help much,” he wrote. “Comics are now much easier to read on the DX but they still seem dim and veiled by the screen’s grey cast.” He also notes that Amazon was meeting with comic publishers at the BookExpo America to discuss enhancing the device for comic viewing.

Webcomics | Wired.com’s GeekDad interviews Dr. McNinja creator Chris Hastings.

Social media | MySpace announced they are cutting another 300 jobs overseas.

Social media | Coming soon to a theater near you — Facebook, the movie.

Longbox

This past weekend Philadelphia welcomed Wizard World, while Charlotte hosted HeroesCon. Two East Coast conventions, separated by more than 500 miles and a couple of states. If you were away from your computer, then you may have missed some of the announcements that sprang from both venues:

• For years people have been asking for an “iTunes for comics.” Well, it looks like we might actually get one. Rantz Hoseley’s Longbox will be a free download available later this year for PC, Macs and Linux. Comics can be download for a suggested price point of $.99 per issue, with the potential for block and subscription pricing. BOOM! and Top Cow have already signed on.

• Marvel had a lot of announcements at the show. Spinning out of the Uncanny X-Men/Dark Avengers crossover that kicks off any day now will be a series of one-shots that fall under the heading of Dark Reign: The List. Basically Norman Osbourn starts making a list of everyone standing in his way who he needs to do dirty, nasty things to.

The eight one shots and the creators working on them are:

Dark Reign: The List – Daredevil by Andy Diggle and Billy Tan
Dark Reign: The List – Wolverine by Jason Aaron and Esad Ribic
Dark Reign: The List – Hulk by Greg Pak and Ben Oliver
Dark Reign: The List – Amazing Spider-Man by Dan Slott and Adam Kubert
Dark Reign: The List – Avengers by Brian Bendis and Marko Djurdjevic
Dark Reign: The List – Uncanny X-Men by Matt Fraction and Alan Davis
Dark Reign: The List – Secret Warriors by Jonathan Hickman and Ed McGuiness
Dark Reign: The List – Punisher by Rick Remender and John Romita Jr.

The project was announced at around the same time both in Philadelphia and in Charlotte. For more info, check out CBR’s interviews with Bendis, Fraction and Remender, as well as Pak, Hickman and Aaron. Also, Aaron talks a little bit about his Wolverine one-shot on his blog; it will feature both Marvel Boy and Fantomex, as well as a new Weapon XVI.

• Several of Spider-Man’s classic villains, like Electro, Rhino and Mysterio, are returning in a storyline called “The Gauntlet.” It also looks like the Black Cat is back for some Spidey lovin’.

Astonishing X-Men

• Creative team shuffles … Andy Diggle and Roberto De La Torre are the new creative team on Daredevil with issue #501. Rick Remender and Mahmud S. Asrar are doing a guest issue of Thunderbolts, which will feature Luke Cage and Iron Fist. Phil Jimenez is the new artist on Astonishing X-Men, joining Warren Ellis as of issue #31. And apparently Sean McKeever’s exclusive contract with DC is up, as he’s working on a new series for Marvel called Nomad: Girl Without a World, starring the Bucky from the Heroes Reborn comics.

• The new Sorcerer Supreme, Doctor Voodoo, gets his own series in October written by Rick Remender, while the old Sorcerer Supreme gets a mini-series by Mark Waid.

• Marvel is launching another Moon Knight ongoing series by crime novelist and Punisher writer Gregg Hurwitz, with art by Jerome Opeña.

• Daniel Way and Richard Corben are working on a Starr the Slayer mini-series for Marvel MAX.

• Psylocke will star in a mini-series written by Christopher Yost. “The mandate on this series was ‘Tell us a story that reminds everyone of why she’s so kick ass,’” Yost told Kiel Phegley.

• Kieron Gillen and Cary Nord are working on an Ares mini-series.

• Gregg Schigiel and Jacob Chabot are doing an X-Babies mini-series that will feature the return of several Star Comics characters.

• There’s more Marvel Zombies coming.

• DC Comics used both conventions to show off their new Wednesday Comics title. Check out this picture from HeroesCon:

Wednesday Comics

That’s editor Ian Sattler, showing off a copy.

• In Philadelphia, Dan DiDio announced a new Jonah Hex hardcover by Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray and Tony DeZuniga. He also announced a new Doc Savage series by Brian Azarello and Rags Morales set in an alternate universe where he’ll interact with the Spirit and the Blackhawks.

• Andy Runton’s Owly, published by Top Shelf, is now available on the Kindle.

• Jeff Katz revealed the first four titles for his American Original company.

• Former Wizard employee Steven Hoveke, who now runs Square 1 Press and has published convention sketchbooks by both Walt Simonson and Howard Chaykin, was barred from re-entering Wizard World Philadelphia on Saturday. He tells the story of what happened on his company’s blog and posted on Twitter that he was barred because of his affiliation with the Long Beach Comic Con. (Via Bleeding Cool)

• Artist Michael Cho was upset to find out someone was walking around HeroesCon wearing a shirt featuring his art. (Via the Comics Reporter)