CLiNT magazine has unveiled a jittery, Se7en-esque trailer teasing a prelude to Supercrooks, the upcoming supervillain-heist project from Mark Millar, Leinil Francis Yu and Nacho Vigalondo. CLiNT #15, which includes the exclusive lead-in story, goes on sale March 28.

Archie #631

Creators | Dan Parent discusses an upcoming Archie storyline that will bring Valerie Brown from Josie and the Pussycats to Riverdale, causing sparks to once again fly: “The fans can expect the next step in what I think is the most romantic story in Archie history. The chemistry between Archie and Valerie was hot the first time they got together, and now you’ve really got to see it simmer, all the way from the rekindling of their romance to getting much more serious than we’ve seen before.” [USA Today]

Editorial cartoons | Cartoonist Jeff Stahler has resigned from The Columbus Dispatch following accusations that he lifted ideas from other cartoons, including one that ran in The New Yorker. [Poynter]

Creators | Former Marvel Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter responds to a video that highlights the strange and disturbing events of Avengers #200, in which Ms. Marvel was raped and then gave birth to her rapist: “I take full responsibility. I screwed up. My judgment failed, or maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention. Sorry. Avengers #200 is a travesty.” [Jim Shooter]

Batman: Noel

Sales | ICv2 and John Jackson Miller offer additional analysis on the November and year-to-date sales charts. [ICv2, Comichron]

Retailing | Patrick Rosenkranz checks in with retailers in Chicago, Hollywood, Brooklyn and Portland, Oregon, for a “seasonal snapshot” of the current comics retail climate. [The Comics Journal]

Publishing | AnnaMaria White, director of marketing and public relations for IDW Publishing, is leaving to start her own marketing company. [The Beat]

Creators | Paul Gravett interviews Shaun Tan, the award-winning creator of the wordless graphic novel The Arrival. [Paul Gravett]

Creators | Atomic Robo creator Scott Wegener guests on the latest Comic Book Diner podcast. [Comic Book Diner]

Creators | Archie Comics writer and PR guy Alex Segura talks about the Archie Meets Kiss arc in the latest War Rocket Ajax podcast. [Comics Alliance]

Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Promise, Part 1

Manga | Deb Aoki picks 25 manga she’s really looking forward to in 2012. [About.com]

Exhibits | A new show at the Kyoto Manga Museum in Japan showcases the art of three Americans who work in the manga style: Takeshi Miyazawa, Felipe Smith and Svetlana Chmakova. [Anime News Network]

Publishing | Mark Millar’s hint that some sort of big change is about to rock the industry has Rich Johnston speculating on five possible big events, aside from the domination of digital, that could change comics forever in 2012. Here’s a fun idea: Set a reminder on your calendar for December 31, 2012, to go back and check how he did. [Bleeding Cool]

Design | French designers Thomas Blanc and Florian Amoneau have kicked off the Comic Sans Project, which “tries to re-imagine the much-maligned font by posing a simple aesthetic question: What if the world’s most recognizable logos used Comic Sans?” I don’t think the redesigned logos, which include Star Wars, Microsoft, Playstation and McDonald’s, really make their case. [Mashable]

Reviews | Rob McMonigal reviews Zahra’s Paradise, First Second’s webcomic-turned-graphic-novel about a protester who disappears during the Iranian elections. [Panel Patter]

Comics | When historians, academics and other nobs gather at NATO headquarters in Brussels to celebrate the 30th anniversary of martial law in Poland, comics will be there, too: Marzena Sowa and Sylvain Savoia will do a presentation and signing of their graphic novel Marzi, the story of a girl living in Poland at the end of the Communist era. The comic was published in the U.S. by Vertigo. [Forbidden Planet Blog]

History | Mike Lynch presents a gallery of old photos and caricatures of the late Jerry Robinson from National Cartoonists Society events of years gone by. [Mike Lynch Cartoons]

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns

Frank Miller, whose tirade against the Occupy movement was met with a largely negative, and frequently heated, response, has found an unlikely defender: left-leaning writer Mark Millar.

In a post on his Millarworld forum, the writer of Kick-Ass and The Ultimates says, “It’s strange to watch your favourite writer getting strips torn off him for a couple of days.”

“Politically, I disagree with his analysis, but that’s besides the point,” Millar continues. “I wasn’t shocked by his comments because they’re no different from a lot of commentators I’ve seen discussing the subject. What shocked me was the vitriol against him, the big bucket of shit poured over the head by even fellow comic-book creators for saying what was on his mind.”

As one commenter points out, it probably shouldn’t be shocking that Miller’s no-holds-barred screed, which characterizes Occupy protesters as “a pack of louts, thieves, and rapists” who “can do nothing but harm America,” was answered with a degree of vitriol. Or, in the commenter’s words, “if you throw the first bucket of shit [...] then you should be prepared for some splashback.” Perhaps if Miller’s commentary had been more reasoned and less inflammatory — “decorous,” as Miller himself would say — the reaction might’ve reflected that.

Instead, the writer of Daredevil: Born Again, Batman: Year One and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns delivered an unfocused, angry rant sprinkled with name-calling, weird putdowns — “Go back to your mommas’ basements and play with your Lords Of Warcraft“? — and an incongruous reference to al-Qaeda and “Islamicism” (it’s difficult not to be reminded of then-Sen. Biden’s criticism of Rudy Giuliani, that “there’s only three things he mentions in a sentence — a noun and a verb and 9/11″). There’s a strange, impotent fury to Miller’s words that makes him an inviting target for derision and dismissal as a paranoid crank, and leaves many readers wondering when precisely the disconnect occurred … and what he has against iPhones.

Millar (with an “a”), who faced criticism himself for comments made before the invasion of Iraq, bristles at what he sees as a “distasteful” “cyber-mob mentality” that’s rallied in response to Miller’s remarks.

“It’s not just that I like the guy, that his body of work is among the best the industry has ever seen,” Millar writes. “It’s the GLEE I’m seeing from some people and, worse, the calls I’ve seen to boycott his work because his perspective on a point differs from yours and mine. [...] Liberalism doesn’t mean throwing guys in jail who DISAGREE with your liberalism. It means accepting that society is richer when everybody has a voice. Starting economic sanctions against a writer until they shut up and agree with you is horrific.”

Although I’ve not seen the calls for boycotts, I’m sure they’re out there; the Internet is a greenhouse for boycotts and petitions. However, like so many other online protests, a movement against Miller’s body of work will fizzle, if it even gets off the ground. Readers outraged by the writer’s views about the Occupy movement likely weren’t ordering Holy Terror, tracking down 300 or counting the days until Xerxes. And few, if any, are going to stop reading or buying such seminal works as Batman: Year One or The Dark Knight Returns because, after a quarter-century, they conclude Miller is a crackpot whose views differ radically from their own. Odds are, both collections are already on their shelves anyway.

Comics by comiXology

Digital | Comics by ComiXology has topped Apple’s charts as the top-grossing iPad application for the last six Wednesdays. ComiXology cited the launch of DC’s New 52 initiative, as well as many other comic companies moving to a same-day digital release schedule, as reasons for its success. “When have comic books, not comic book movies, not comic book merchandise, but the actual comic books been #1 in anything, much less high tech?” comiXology CEO David Steinberger said in a statement. “Being the number one grossing iPad application six Wednesdays in a row isn’t just a huge milestone for comiXology, but a huge milestone for comics as a medium … and we could not be prouder.” [press release]

Creators | An auction for the naming rights to a character in Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons’ The Secret Service raised $5,100 for St. Bartholomew’s Primary School, where Millar attended. The money will be used to pay for field trips for the school’s students. “I’m a former pupil at St. Bartholomew’s and have so many great memories of the place,” Millar said. “I know there’s not a lot of money in local government at the moment and I was sad to hear that the annual school trip for the children had been cancelled. By establishing this fund, I hope to have a pot the head-teacher can dip into every Christmas and take the entire school to a pantomime every year.” [Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser]

Brian Azzarello (by Seth Kushner)

Creators | Christopher Irving profiles Wonder Woman and Spaceman writer Brian Azzarello. [NYC Graphic]

Creators | Werewolves of Montpellier creator Jason discusses his career and influences, including Tintin creator Herge: “I borrowed his albums at the library as a kid. I started drawing my own cartoons. And I think you can have a much worse teacher than Hergé. It’s not really the clear line that is the most important thing, even if that is part of what I like with him, it’s more the very clear storytelling that you find in his books. On page three you’re hooked. I think you can read his books in a foreign language, in Russian, and still understand the story and enjoy it. I don’t re-read the books that often, but I often take them out, my favourite albums like The Broken Ear and The Shooting Star, and just look at the drawings.” [The Casual Optimist]

Manga | Deb Aoki interviews the editors of Viz Media’s new yaoi manga line SuBLime, which will offer boys-love stories in both print and download-to-own digital form—with many digital offerings being available worldwide. [About.com]

Manga | Shaenon Garrity turns her sights on the classic, criminally overlooked series Basara: “Almost alone among long-running manga, Basara reads not like a serial, but like a single 28-volume graphic novel.” [Anime News Network]

Digital | Mashable profiles Graphicly founder Micah Baldwin, who also started the “Follow Friday (#FF)” meme on Twitter. [Mashable]

Kobo Vox

Digital | While it’s not getting as much attention as the Amazon Kindle Fire, the Kobo Vox color e-reader shows some good potential as a comics reader, and it comes pre-loaded with an Archie comic. [The Beat]

Review | Greg McElhatton reviews Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick’s graphic biography of physicist, raconteur, and “major horndog” Richard Feynman: “Reading Feynman did what few other books about scientists have done for me; it made me think, ‘I wish I’d met this guy.’” [Read About Comics]

Accessories | The New York Times takes its readers inside the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company, where the trendy New York superhero can buy particle guns, thunder inducers, grappling hooks and, of course, capes. [The New York Times]

Events | Isotope Comics in San Francisco will host Lark Pien, Thien Pham, Alex Puvilland, Jordan Mechner and Mark Siegel this Saturday for a Halloween-themed party. [Isotope Comics]

Conferences | Peggy Burns recounts, with many photos, her trip to the University of Iowa for the Comics, Creativity, and Culture Conference. Guests included Jeet Heer, James Sturm, Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez, and a host of other comics luminaries. [Drawn and Quarterly]

Officially unveiled Tuesday on Comic Book Resources, The Secret Service is the duo’s long-simmering first-time collaboration, based on an idea by Millar, Gibbons and Kick-Ass and X-Men: First Class director Matthew Vaughn (who holds the film rights to the project). More details will be revealed next month in CLiNT #12.

As he did with Kick-Ass, Nemesis and Superior, Millar is auctioning off the opportunity to name a character in The Secret Service — specifically, the villain — with the proceeds going to charity. This time the beneficiary is St. Bartholomew’s Primary School Pantomime Fund, established by Millar (a former student there) and Head Teacher Christine Boyle. The current bid on the eBay auction is $3,100, with mere hours to go.

The six-issue miniseries is set to debut in February.

Stan Lee

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

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

Kick-Ass

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

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

Science Tales

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

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

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

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

Grant Morrison

I really, really enjoy Grant Morrison interviews, even if they tend to arrive in bunches, with one entertaining Q&A sometimes indistinguishable from the next. He’s immensely quotable, peppering his comments with humor, observations of the holy-cow-I’ve-never-thought-of-it-that-way variety and occasionally surprising honesty.

This new interview with Rolling Stone is little different, with the writer discussing Supergods, the Action Comics relaunch, Alan Moore, Brad Meltzer’s Identity Crisis, and his strained relationship with former protege Mark Millar. While it may feel like we’ve read some of Morrison’s remarks before, others feel fresh, and even a bit brutal. Some highlights:

On his chances of encountering Millar in Glasgow: “There’s a very good chance of running into him, and I hope I’m going 100 miles an hour when it happens.”

On Meltzer’s divisive Identity Crisis: “He’s a nice guy. I have a lot of interesting conversations with him so I tried to focus on what I thought was good about it and there was actually quite a lot when I read it again. The first time I read it I was kind of outraged. I thought this was just … why? What the fuck is this, really? It wasn’t even normal. It was outrageous. It was preposterous because of the Elongated Man with his arms wrapped several times around the corpse of his wife. I thought something is broken. Something has gone so wrong in this image. [...] It’s hard for me to believe that a shy bespectacled college graduate like Brad Meltzer who’s a novelist and a father is a really setting out to be weirdly misogynistic. But unfortunately when you’re looking at this beloved character who’s obviously been ass-raped on the Justice League satellite, even saying it kind of takes you to that dot dot dot where you don’t know what else to say.”

On sexism in DC Comics: “There’s been lots of things, the sexism in DC because it’s mostly men who work in these places. Nobody should be trying to say we’re taking up a specifically anti-woman stance. I think it would be ignorance or stupidity or some God knows what. I was reading some Alan Moore Marvelman for some reason today. I found one in the back there and I couldn’t believe. I pick it up and there are fucking two rapes in it and I suddenly think how many times has somebody been raped in an Alan Moore story? And I couldn’t find a single one where someone wasn’t raped except for Tom Strong, which I believe was a pastiche. We know Alan Moore isn’t a misogynist but fuck, he’s obsessed with rape. I managed to do thirty years in comics without any rape!”

Needless to say, the entire interview is worth reading. There’s also a more involved profile.

The geek shall inherit the earth: Mark Millar and Grant Morrison in happier times

[Mark Millar and J.G. Jones’s] Wanted articulated a new myth for the hordes of suddenly cool under-achievers who’d been lionized by the rise of “nerd culture.” Big business, media and fashion were, it seemed, so starved of inspiration, they’d reached down to the very bottom of the social barrel in an attempt to commodify even the most stubborn nonparticipants, the suicide Goths and fiercely antiestablishment nerds. The geeks were in the spotlight now, proudly accepting a derogatory label that directly compared them to degraded freak-show acts. Bullied young men with asthma and shy, bitter virgins with adult-onset diabetes could now gang up like the playground toughs they secretly wanted to be and anonymously abuse and threaten professional writers and actors with family commitments and bills to pay.

Soon film studios were afraid to move without the approval of the raging Internet masses. They represented only the most miniscule fraction of a percentage of the popular audience that gave a shit, but they were very remarkably, superhumanly angry, like the great head of Oz, and so very persistent that they could easily appear in the imagination as an all-conquering army of mean-spirited, judgmental fogies.

In the shadow of The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell’s immensely influential book on social networks and marketing, nobody wanted to risk bad word of mouth, little realizing that they were reacting, in many cases, to the opinions of a few troublemakers who knew nothing but contempt for the universe and all its contents and could hardly be relied upon to put a positive spin on anything that wasn’t the misery and misfortune of others. Too many businesspeople who should have known better began to take seriously the ravings of misinformed, often barely literate malcontents who took revenge on the cruel world by dismissing everything that came their way with the same jaded, geriatric “Meh.”

– Action Comics and Batman Inc. writer Grant Morrison on the nastiness of “nerd culture” in Supergods, his new prose non-fiction book about superheroes. Morrison uses the protagonist of his former friend and protégé Mark Millar’s Wanted, a downtrodden office drone who launches a rape-murder spree when he discovers he’s part of a secret supervillain society, as a symbol of how nerds, a group of people bullied and marginalized by society, have frequently used the newfound power conferred upon them as pop-culture trailblazers to bully and marginalize others. Or as another writer of science fiction once put it, “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” (He likes Wanted, fwiw.)

It’s a bit surprising to see Morrison resorting to the fat-virgin stereotype, but in the context of the book it becomes clear that he was burned pretty badly by over-the-top fanboy rampages, up to and including threats against him, following such works as New X-Men and Final Crisis — hence the obvious and perhaps forgivable rancor in response. Food for thought during the San Diego Comic-Con, nerd culture’s annual Woodstock?

(via Matthew Perpetua)

Holy Terror

Comics | Frank Miller says he has finished his upcoming graphic novel, Holy Terror, which is due from Legendary Comics in September. The book, which once was set to feature Batman fighting terrorism, now stars a character called The Fixer: “I took Batman as far as anyone, and this guy is just not him. He’s been playing the crime fighter to stay in shape. What he really wants to do is fight terrorism. He knew the day would come. The story is essentially New York under attack by suicide bombers and our hero is out to find out their greater scheme. He’s much more a man of action than a detective. He’s a two-fisted Dirty Harry type, really.”[Hero Complex]

Comics | Calling it a “sick magazine comic strip depicting shootings in schools,” The Daily Mail reports on “Beat My Score,” written by UK comedian Jimmy Carr with art by Ryusuke Hamamoto. The reporter says the comic, which appears in the latest issue of Mark Millar’s CLiNT magazine, “will horrify the families of school shooting tragedies such as Dunblane and Columbine with his ultra-violent story.” CLiNT responded by saying the strip is “a nihilistic satirical sideswipe at the glamourisation of violence, tackling the difficult and disturbing effects as seen in school shootings around the world.” The comments are fun. [Daily Mail]

Organizations | Johanna Draper Carlson checks in with one of the interim group directors of the nonprofit Friends of Lulu and learns the organization is “pretty much dead.” [Comics Worth Reading]

The Gutters

Organizations | Gary Tyrell responds to a comic strip by Ryan Sohmer and Ryan Lee on The Gutters, which parodied the recent advertising campaign for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. The comic strip says the CBLDF fights “for your right to view graphic depictions of naked children” and features silhouettes of adults approaching children. “The very straightforward, declarative nature of that sentence gives the impression that that is all that the CBLDF does, which isn’t true,” Tyrell says. The original strip has more than 300 comments. [Fleen]

Digital | Following his comments earlier this week on the digital strategy inherent in DC’s line-wide reboot, Warren Ellis looks at Marvel’s digital strategy—or lack thereof: “Their digital store, then, is a big back-issue bin, with the occasional experiment in day-and-date simultaneous release in print and digital. They’re unlikely to go line-wide day-and-date like DC unless DC’s numbers are explosively successful and stay that way for six months — in digital AND print. Right now, Marvel own the comics stores in terms of dollar sales and market share, and probably see no compelling reason to risk a dilution of those figures.” But he would like to see them do more original material for digital release anyway. [Warren Ellis]

Creators | Justin Giampaoli interviews Brian Wood about the third volume of DMZ, Public Works: “At the time, I remember getting some of the first negative feedback over some of the choices I made in this story, specifically making the bad guys, the terrorist cell, Muslim. This decision came out of a back-and-forth with my editor (Will Dennis) because I had originally made them white guys. He called me on it, essentially, for making ALL bad guys in the book up to that point white, and perhaps I was playing it safe, or avoiding some potentially tricky decisions. His logic, which I agreed with, was that all these various ethnic groups who live in NYC didn’t just vanish once the war started. They’re still there, and just as apt to be up to no good as anyone else. And since Trustwell was using them as a front, that was another reason. They are obvious scapegoats because of their religion and skin color.” [Live from the DMZ]

Green Wake

Creators | Artist Riley Rossmo discusses his work on Proof, Cowboy Ninja Viking and Green Wake, as well as his career and schedule: “I have to be super disciplined — I don’t really have an immediate boss, so if I don’t work nothing gets done, and I don’t get paid. I work every day [except] Sunday, [from about] 7 am to 4 pm or so, then email the day’s work to the writer [or] editor. With the little bit I’ve done for Marvel, I send thumbnails before doing the final pages just to be sure they know what they’re getting.” [Planet S]

Fandom | Laura Hornack, organizer of the protest against DC’s upcoming relaunch of their superhero line, says she decided to organize a “peaceful walk” when she saw the redesign of Harley Quinn. “We don’t expect an open ear from -everybody-, neither do we demand some weird sort of respect for what we do. We just do it, because we’re fans. And we love being fans.” [ComicBookMovie.com]

Criticism | Sean Michael Robinson reviews Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths, Shigeru Mizuki’s tale of doomed Japanese soldiers in World War II. [The Comics Journal]

Digital | 2000AD creator Pat Mills and critic Paul Gravett discuss the potential of digital media to expand comics beyond the supehero fanbase—yes, even to girls. Says Gravett: “Superheroes are a very niche thing but they seem big because everyone’s heard about the movies. In actual fact, sales are pretty pitiful. There are more comics readers who don’t read superheroes than do.” [Metro]

Awards | Bakuman, Maid Sama!, Drops of God, and A Distant Neighborhood all won Japan Expo awards for manga. Japan Expo is a French convention that takes place in Paris each year. [Anime News Network]

Conventions | The Associated Press profiles the this weekend’s L.A. Anime Expo. [Associated Press]

Conventions | GeekWire profiles Jim Demonakos, director of Emerald City Comicon, comics retailer and member of the rock band Kirby Krackle. He also has a graphic novel coming out in February. [GeekWire]

Conventions | Erica Friedman offers some networking tips for con newbies. [Okazu]

CLiNT #6

The British Fantasy Society has announced the finalists for the 2011 British Fantasy Awards, which will be presented during FantasyCon 2011, held Sept. 30 to Oct. 2 in Brighton, England.

This year’s Best Comic/Graphic Novel category includes a bit of an oddity, in that CLiNT, from Mark Millar and Titan Publishing, isn’t actually a comic or graphic novel but rather an entertainment magazine that serializes such works as Kick-Ass 2, Superior, The Pro and Turf.

The nominees for Best Comic/Graphic Novel are:

• CLiNT, edited by Mark Millar (Titan)
• Grandville Mon Amour, by Bryan Talbot (Jonathan Cape)
• Neonomicon, by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows (Avatar)
• The Mountains of Madness, by Ian Culbard (Self Made Hero)
• The Unwritten, Vols 1 & 2, by Mike Carey and Peter Gross (Titan Books)

Members of the British Fantasy Society and attendees of FantasyCon 2010 and 2011 are eligible to vote.

Gene Colan at WonderCon 2007 (photo by Chip Mosher)

As CBR reported last night, comics creator and Eisner winner Gene Colan passed away at the age of 84 last night.

“The legacy of his artistic storytelling and abilities played a key role in cementing the enduring popularity of characters like Daredevil, Iron Man, Howard the Duck, Blade and Dr. Strange, and garnered him praise and fans the world over,” columnist George Khoury said in an obituary on Comic Book Resources this morning.

In lieu of flowers, Colan’s friend Clifford Meth is asking folks to contribute to a scholarship being set up in Colan’s name for The Kubert School. Details on how to donate can be found on Meth’s blog.

Fellow creators, fans and friends of Gene Colan are sharing memories. Here are a few; as always, click through to see the entirety of what they have to say about one of comics’ legendary artists:

Clifford Meth: “I knew this day would come but it came too quickly. It’s been a rare pleasure working with Gene. He knew who he was—how valuable his contributions to the world of comic art have been—how prized it remains by so many. Yet he never felt less than grateful to anyone who’d even read a single panel that he’d drawn. Until he was too weak to hold a pencil, he put his whole kishkes into everything he drew—whether it was a $5000 commission or a small drawing for someone’s child. And he was never satisfied with his artwork but always eager to learn a little more, do a little better, try something new. At 84.”

Mark Evanier: “Gene was so much a part of comics as long as I’ve read comics. He was the kind of artist who rarely drew less than two comics a month (sometimes, three) and I think a lot of people took him for granted. If he had drawn a handful of comics as fine as what he did in the sixties and seventies and then gotten out, readers would still be haunting their comic shops, praying for his return. I also enjoyed his friendship…and I have to tell you that the one time he drew a script of mine was one of those moments when I would have paid the company for the honor. I received Xeroxes of his pencilled pages — so much more wonderful, of course, than the printed product — and I just grinned for days…because I’d just written a comic drawn by Gene Colan. He always made everything look so damned good.”

Gene Colan Hero Initiative lithograph

Bob Greenberger: “He is a talented, enthusiastic fan of the form. Among his peers, he had one of the most distinctive art styles that was surprisingly adaptable from war to romance to horror to heroic adventure. Gene the Dean remains a titan of the field and deserves not only our accolades while he can still hear them, but our support.”

Steve Epting: “…at a dinner Marvel hosted one night his wife Adrienne came to my table and told me that Gene wanted to meet me. It turns out he had been referencing issues of Captain America that I had drawn while he was working on issue #601 and wanted to tell me how much he admired my work. Needless to say I was (and still am) floored by this. I sat and talked with him about art and sequential storytelling for longer than I probably should have, but he was still so enthusiastic about what he was doing and saw something of a kindred spirit in me I suppose, particularly in the way we both approached shadows and spotting blacks. I could never hope to be in Gene’s class as an illustrator or storyteller, but I can try to live up to the praise he gave my work, even if he was being overly generous in giving it.”

Scott Allie: “Gene hated the way his pencils looked after being inked by someone else, although I’d say it was no better to see the result of early computer coloring over his beautiful, un-inked pencil drawings. By 1998, he had tried to avoid inks for a long time. Colorists had started experimenting with coloring directly over pencils, and there had been reasonably good results. But not many. Gene knew what he wanted his work to look like, but had yet to achieve it, and it was in working with Gene that Dave nailed down the techniques that would later make it possible for him to do his award-winning work with Cary Nord on Conan, and on his recent Solomon Kane covers, where he convinced the celebrated oil painter Greg Manchess to let him color over his grey washes.”

Mark Millar: “I first discovered Gene Colan in the Dracula pocket-books, reprinted here in Scotland when I was ten. When I think of his art it’s always in black and white because Marvel UK is where I was most exposed to it, but I also feel it’s where it looked best. Dick Giordano is a massive Batman fan and when he became editor of the books in 1980 he nabbed Gerry Conway, Gene and Don Newton who were all at the top of their game, producing I think the most underrated run on Batman ever. I loved seeing Gene drawing superheroes because he brought a realistic, painterly quality, a European brush-line to the characters that made them look like people in unusual clothes as opposed to the cardboard cut-out figures icons we’re generally used to. His Superman looked like a brooding Brando, never moreso than the beautiful, spooky Phantom Zone mini-series he did with Steve Gerber. Bryan Hitch and I would reference his stuff regularly when we were on Ultimates, that quiet naturalism John Buscema (and Hitchy himself) was so good at very evident in every page of his work.”

Scott McCloud: “The first full run of a comic book series that I read was Daredevil (lent to me by Kurt Busiek in middle school), including many issues drawn by Gene. The first drawing I made of an established comic book character may well have been based on images he created for that series.”

Heidi MacDonald: “Colan was part of the glorious ’60s Bullpen era with work on Iron Man, Dr. Strange, and especially Daredevil — it was great, pioneering work, dynamic with an unusual style that was a whole different school from the angular Kirby, more fluid, and observed. As great as his superhero work was, he found an even better fit for his style in the ’70s with a 70-issue run on TOMB OF DRACULA — despite the lurid title, Colan’s artwork, always sensitive to small nuances of characters, perfectly mirrored the horror soap opera that Marv Wolfman crafted.”

Brian Fies: “I first saw Gene’s work in the pages of Marvel’s ‘Avengers’ series. He wasn’t best known for doing that book–in that period he was much more closely associated with ‘Daredevil’ and ‘Iron Man’–but I read and collected the ‘Avengers’ so that’s where I found him. He had an instantly recognizable style unlike anyone else’s in the business. His compositions and figures were fluid, like they were poured onto the page with liquid mercury. Arms and eyelids and staircases and cityscapes thrust back and forth between shadow and light. His art was energetic and peerlessly graceful. It was also unique. In a business in which success is quickly imitated–where originals like Neal Adams and Frank Miller and Alex Toth have dozens of clones–no one ever copied Gene Colan. No one could.”

Jim Lee: “Gene Colan was like no other artist of his generation. His ability to create dramatic, multi-valued tonal illustrations using straight india ink and board was unparalleled. The comics industry has lost one of its true visionaries.”

Dan DiDio: “Gene Colan was one of the great draftsmen in the industry and his work is a fond part of some of my best comic book memories.”

Vaneta Rogers has rounded up some others over at Newsarama, while The Hero Initiative’s Jim McLauchlin has collected quotes from their volunteers.

Green Lantern

“I hereby declare Green Lantern the worst superhero movie ever made. And yes I count The Phantom and The Shadow as superhero movies. Green Lantern was the cheapest-looking 300 million dollar movie I’ve ever seen. Why didn’t they give that money (to) Africa? It had a couple of good moments, all coming from Mark Strong. But oh man. It was just such an ODD movie. Like it travelled here from a parallel universe where they made a Green Lantern movie in 1995. But it was only eight quid and thus worth it. And I know I’ll go and see it again ”

–Comics writer Mark Millar, reviewing in a few quick tweets this weekend’s big movie release, Green Lantern. Millar’s not the only one who found the movie lacking, as witnessed on review aggregation sites Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. The less-than-stellar reviews, combined with what looks to be a very nice weekend in my neck of the woods, will likely keep me out of the movie theater, but I believe our own Tom Bondurant will have a review.

Superior #1

If the growing guest list isn’t enough to draw fans and media to the inaugural Kapow! Comic Con, Mark Millar & Co. are raising the stakes by setting their sights on two Guinness World Records that most probably didn’t know existed.

Millar and collaborator Leinil Yu have given permission for their Superior character to be used at the convention to help secure the records for Fastest Production of a Comic Book and Most Contributors to a Comic Book.

To do so, such attending creators as Paul Cornell, Andy Diggle, Dave Gibbons, Jock, Frank Quitely and John Romita Jr. will lend their time on April 9 to create a 20-page standalone comic. For the Fastest Production record, the entire issue — from concept to script to art to lettering — must be completed between 11 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. A Guinness World Records official will be on-hand to certify the requirements have been met.

The finished product will be printed and distributed through Marvel’s Icon imprint, with all royalties going to Yorkhill Children’s Foundation, which provides enhanced medical equipment and resources for sick children and babies treated by Yorkhill Hospital in Glasgow.

After bouncing around the UK comics scene and later DC, Mark Millar made a name for himself for his big-picture epics on The Authority and The Ultimates. Working with artists like Frank Quitely and Bryan Hitch, Millar borrowed some of the wide-screen cinema techniques of film to display comic stories in a new light. From very early on, movie-makers have been cribbing notes from his comics; X-Men: The Last Stand screenwriter Zak Penn said Millar’s work was influencing his own. He was even brought in to act as an informal brain trust to give advice to Jon Favreau during the production of the first Iron Man film.

After seeing glimpses and glimmers of Millar’s influence on company-owned comics-turned-films, it was when Hollywood took notice of his creator-owned work that his bibliography became catnip for movie producers. After back-to-back successes with feature film adaptations of his comics Wanted and Kick-Ass, virtually every creator-owned comic from Mark Millar comes with the question, “How soon will there be a movie announcement?” This attention from movie producers has even led Millar to begin filming his own original movie, which is currently underway.

The question today is this: Of the creator-owned work Mark Millar’s done that haven’t become films yet, which should, and how should they look?

Nemesis: The recently completed four-issue series with Civil War collaborator Steve McNiven saw a look into the dichotomy the Batman/Joker relationship if looking through a funhouse mirror: what if Batman were bad, and acted like the Joker? Hollywood was quick to take notice of this series, snapping up the rights after only a couple issues had been released. Veteran filmmaker Tony Scott snapped up the rights through his film company Scott Free, optioning to direct it as well. Scott’s style would be perfectly suited for Nemesis – if Tony Scott were to ever want to make a superhero movie, this would be a perfect fit.

Savior: The second comic of Jesus Christ, and he’s coming back as a superhero who looks like British TV host Jonathan Ross.  As Millar’s debut comic work, it is woefully under-the-radar but presages his later creator-owned work, specifically Chosen.  This six-issue series from UK publisher Trident is hard to find but worth the looking. As for its big screen potential, it might have some issues due to the subject matter; if you thought Kevin Smith’s Dogma raised some ire in religious circles, this could easily outpace that.

War Heroes: Promoted by Millar as what he originally intended a third volume of The Ultimates would have looked like, War Heroes pits the real-life War on Terror with the idea of drugs administered to U.S. soldiers to give them superpowers. This is put on its head when a group of con artists infiltrate the military, steal the pills and sell them on the black market — unbeknownst to them, Al-Qaeda. Launched in August 2008, only three issues of the expected five have been released — but the rights were bought up a month after it’s debut by Sony & producer Mike De Luca (Fright Night, Ghost Rider). This idea has real cinematic potential — combining modern war movies with super-heroic action and power, it could be Three Kings meets Kick-Ass.

Chosen: Described by Millar as his sequel to The Bible, its concerns a twelve-year-old boy who discovers he’s the resurrected Jesus Christ. In some ways is a de-horrorfied version of The Omen, but Millar is very true to the biblical aspects and makes this a special kind of drama. Published as part of Millar’s initial “Millarworld” line of books with Dark Horse, it is the first in a planned trilogy going under the moniker “American Jesus”. It’s a spiritual book for Millar — in the same way that his first work, Savior, is — but through his own unique lens.  Taking this to Hollywood would need some careful hands, but Sony Pictures has already optioned it. Someone like Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, Near Dark) would be an ideal candidate to bring this story to life.

Silo: Another rarity from Millar’s ouvre, Silo was serialized in UK comics mag 2000 AD and followed to American soldiers stationed in a nuclear missile silo that is haunted by the ghost of a 19th century British writer prone to hyperbole and ending the world. Taking place in a very confined and volatile place, the added enhancement of being haunted gives it a unique vibe — think Dr. Strangelove meets The Haunted Tank. All-in-all its a short work, but an able-bodied screenwriter & director could spin this into a full-fledged movie that would be a great suspense story.

Cannon Fodder:  After the End of Times has come and gone and the dead are rising from their grave, the Catholic Church partners with what’s left of law enforcement to create ‘The Priest Patrol’.  Created with artist Chris Weston for 2000AD, this would be ideal for more attention — if not a movie, at least an American comic collection. Rumor has it that the rights are in dispute with the publisher and Millar, going back to a sequel story that was unapproved appearing after the original.

Superior: As Mark Millar’s latest ICON book, Superior is in many ways Mark Millar’s take on what Superman would be like in the real world. Illustrated by Leinil Francis Yu, the book owes much to the original Superman mythos but the creators aren’t afraid to take the story in places Clark Kent would never go. If DC somehow let Superman — or closer yet, Captain Marvel — be Ultimate-ized, this would be it. Back in September Millar said he was discussing a feature film adaptation with Kick-Ass helmer Matthew Vaughn, and he’s been quoted as saying that Mad Men‘s Jon Hamm would be ideal for the titular role.

Big Dave:  This is probably the closest thing we’ve seen from Millar when it comes to straight-up comedy. Created with Grant Morrison, Big Dave is an over-the-top affair with the so-called “hardest man in Manchester” taking on Saddam Hussein, a robot version of the British Royalty and a German football team managed by Hitler. Big Dave even ends one story by bedding a very drunk Princess Di and Sarah Ferguson. This strip in 2000AD stirred up considerable controversy in its time and many of its jokes are so comic-centric that filming this might prove impossible. Might.

Mark Millar

Okay, I’m loving the fact that Millarworld books account for 8 of the top 10 downloads in 2010. That’s cool, but what superficially looks like a great deal for creators is less so under a little scrutiny. Yes, you’re eliminating paper, printing, comic store and distributor costs, but there’s hidden costs here I haven’t seen highlighted anywhere.

1/ Apple take 30% right off the bat.
2/ In the case of Wanted, Comixology then splits 50/50 with the publisher.
3/ Then the publisher pays the agent and creative team out of the remaining cash depending on their deal.

In hard numbers, the digital comic is normally half the price of the paper comic, but you have just as many percentages to pay out as a creative team to an electronic distributor and publisher. So effectively the creative team is getting half as much money. For creators, this isn’t great and for comic stores this is awful. I don’t mind paying thirty percent to a local store where my friends work and the guys care about the product. But do I want this money going to Apple?

–Kick-Ass and Wanted co-creator Mark Millar, commenting on the fact that issues of both titles made up the bulk of the top ten paid comics list for the Comics by comiXology application. Perhaps more disturbing, though, was something else he noted — “… I checked several sources last night and nobody could tell me what my download numbers were for these supposed record-breaking numbers of mine.”

Also, someone should send him the link to The Not .99 Method that Warren Ellis highlighted yesterday.

“Fun fact! NINE of the TOP TEN graphic novels in 2010 were creator-owned books! Walking Dead, Kick-Ass and Scott Pilgrim among them.”

–Savage Dragon cartoonist Erik Larsen, speaking the truth. Of course, the flip side of this is that NINE of the TOP TEN graphic novels in 2010 had major Hollywood properties to thank for much of their notoriety, Walking Dead, Kick-Ass, and Scott Pilgrim among them. (The tenth was a Superman book that got over with mass audiences largely on the strength of a fortuitous press comparison to Twilight.) I don’t mean to short-change the success of Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, Charlie Adlard, Mark Millar, John Romita Jr., and Bryan Lee O’Malley, but proponents of creator ownership and creators’ rights probably ought not break out the MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner just yet.

Comic Relief

Retailing | Berkeley, Calif., institution Comic Relief, opened in 1987 by the late Rory Root, “faces imminent closure” as it reportedly hemorrhages customers and grapples with cash-flow problems that led to the temporary loss of its account with Diamond Comic Distributors. According to an article in the East Bay Express, the store could be purchased by one of Root’s relatives, who would revive the name and retain the staff. Or it could be closed and reopen in another location in January.

However, Image Comics Publisher Eric Stephenson argues that rescue by Root’s family is unlikely, as they already own Comic Relief: “A seemingly never-ending series of colossal blunders by Rory’s family have put the store on life support, and now the store is a shell of what it once was. Comic Relief hasn’t received new product in weeks. For anyone even the least bit familiar with the business of selling comics, it should be vodka clear: No new books means no business. No business means no store. And far from being some sort of solution to the store’s troubles, the Roots are actually the cause. They took the store over against Rory’s wishes and have run it into the ground with such force, you’d think they were blasting for oil.” [East Bay Express]

Legal | A Japanese publishing group has vowed to fight Tokyo’s newly passed ordinance further restricting the sale of manga and anime containing “extreme” depictions of sexual acts. [The Hollywood Reporter]

Panelfly's app on iPhone and iPad

Digital comics | Xaviar Xerexes plays host to a 2010 digital comics roundtable with Brigid Alverson, Lary Cruz, Lauren Davis, Brian Heater, Heidi MacDonald, Rick Marshall and Gary Tyrrell. “What’s important for digital is, I think, for comics publishers to actually glimpse the future, something not a lot of them are able to do,” MacDonald says. “I don’t mean that entirely as a slam — comics is traditionally a chronically underfunded industry, and it sometimes takes money to ride into the future. Unfortunately, in the Bronze/Chromium/Platinum ages of comics, few publishers have really thought about getting the next generation of readers. Digital comics are going to be the primary exposure for future generations of comics readers — that is until we run out of energy and go back to an agrarian pantheistic society living with torches. One thing publishers need to do is just stop hemming and hawing and go for it, making their catalogs available and so on. The marketplace is going to change – and people are going to HAVE TO CHANGE WITH IT. That’s something I face in my business every day. The idea of a secure business model is gone.” [ComixTalk]

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark

Broadway | Director Julie Taymor says she’s “happy” that the opening of the musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark has been delayed again until sometime in February: “The creator of The Lion King on Broadway and the Oscar-nominated movie Frida says that with the holidays and cast absences, there were only ’17 hours left to work until January 11th. It wasn’t enough time’.” [Showbiz411]

Conventions | Last weekend’s Singapore Toy, Games & Comic Convention drew nearly 30,000 people. [The Star]

Creators | Mark Millar landed the top spot on The List’s “Hot 100,” a rundown of “Scots who’ve made a sizeable creative splash in 2010.” Grant Morrison was No. 33. [The List]

Lynda Barry

Creators | Lynda Barry talks at length about What Is This: The Near-Sighted Monkey Book, the end of her comic strip Ernie Pook’s Comeek and much more. [The A.V. Club]

Creators | While at last weekend’s Singapore Toy, Games & Comic Convention, David Lloyd chats briefly about V for Vendetta. [The Star]

Comics | Tucker Stone looks back at “the year in stank”: “You know the titles. Cry For Justice. Rise of Arsenal. Batman Odyssey. That X-Men comic where Nightcrawler got his chest split open in full computer tracing glory. The comics that you weren’t supposed to read, that by purchasing you were pretty much saying ‘as many more of these as you perverts can come up with.’ Comics about the most degrading ridiculousness you can imagine (my kid is dead! I can’t get an erection!) laced in the sort of earnestness you usually have to buy DMZ to get ahold of, drawn by people whose eyes must have been locked to the clock when they weren’t vomiting in wastebaskets. This was the year where the worm turned, and those of us who bought crap by design — because it made us laugh — sobered up and realized that we’d actually become a target demographic. [comiXology]

Mark Millar, from the Kapow trailer

Pledging to bring “San Diego Comic-Con to these shores,” Mark Millar this morning announced he’ll launch Kapow Comic Con on April 9-10 in London.

“The idea behind Kapow! is to bring the San Diego experience to Central London,” Millar tells Empire. “All the studios have a massive presence here in the UK, dozens of the world’s biggest comic creators are here and most of the comic-book movie adaptations are being filmed just up the road.”

Held at the London Business Design Centre, the premiere event will feature such creators as Brian Bolland, Olivier Coipel, Paul Cornell, Andy Diggle, Steve Dillon, Dave Gibbons, Bryan Hitch, Jock, Brendan McCarthy, John McCrea, Kevin O’Neill, Frank Quitely, John Romita Jr. and Leinil Francis Yu. The schedule is expected to be announced in February.

The convention also will feature the debut of the Stan Lee Awards, honoring “the cream of comic book talent for all their creativity and imagination.” Categories include best writer, best artist, best publisher, best TV show, best game or toy, and man or woman of the year.

Tickets can be purchased now through the convention website. You can watch the trailer, featuring Millar, Gibbons, Quitely and Yu, after the break.

For those of you who don’t recall those heady days, Trouble was part of the short-lived, Bill Jemas-shepherded revival of Marvel’s Epic imprint and an attempt to create the first hit romance comic in god knows how long. (I know, nothing says “romance comic” like Wanted, Kick-Ass, Nemesis, and Superior writer Mark Millar, but this was the same Nu-Marvel era that gave us Bendis/Maleev Daredevil, Milligan/Allred X-Statix, Millar/Hitch Ultimates, Morrison/Quitely New X-Men and so on, so cut ‘em some slack.)

Quite aside from whether the book was or wasn’t a good read, Trouble caused trouble for two reasons. First, it was basically a mildly randy sex dramedy about the teen years of Aunt May, Uncle Ben, and Peter Parker’s parents Mary and Richard…and it revealed that Peter was secretly May’s son through a hushed-up teen pregnancy. (I think — I’ve never been able to figure out how the very elderly May Parker made sense as the aunt for teenage Peter Parker, and having her be a teen herself at the time of his conception only confused me further.) At the time, Millar stated that this would be Spider-Man’s new origin if the book went over well. It didn’t, so the book never made it into official continuity.

Second, it ran with photo covers like the one you see above. The idea was to mimic the photo covers you’d see on young adult novels geared toward teen girls. But between the first issue cover’s bikini-clad models, the series’ presentational context in the somewhat gender-relationally skeevy world of mainstream comics versus shelves full of similarly designed YA books, and the interior art by good girl artists extraordinaire Terry and Rachel Dodson, the cover choice confused the issue, to say the least.

Basically, it was one of the last Marvel books from that era I ever expected to see collected. But with Millar’s Hollywood heat, it seems Trouble is bubbling up again — at least if the notoriously unreliable Amazon listings can be believed. Is it a mistake for me to let this get my hopes up for Macan/Kordey’s Soldier X run?

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]