Comic Book Resources

Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes

Flight Explorer, Vol. 1

Publishing | Retailer Christopher Butcher catches word that Flight Explorer, the younger-readers spinoff of the long-running Flight anthology, is without a publishing home. Although the first volume, published in March 2008 by Villard, reportedly sold through its 20,000-copy first printing, editor Kazu Kibuishi tweeted last week that "the project remains orphaned." Butcher provides commentary on his blog. [Comics212]

Legal | Google and groups representing publishers and authors on Friday filed a revised settlement they hope will resolve a dispute over the Internet giant's controversial plans to make millions of out-of-print books available online.

The original agreement, created to resolve a 2005 lawsuit, was opposed by parties ranging from DC Comics to the U.S. Justice Department to the governments of France and Germany, who argued that its terms could violate copyright law. The revisions address the handling of orphan works, restrict the Google database to books published in the United States, Britain, Canada or Australia, and allow other companies to license the digital catalog.

U.S. District Judge Denny Chin is expected this week to set a date for a "fairness hearing" in which arguments about the settlements will be presented by b0th sides. [The New York Times]

Continue Reading »

Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes

Wolverine: Old Man Logan

Publishing | Comic sales to the direct market fell 14 percent in October, versus the same month a year ago, resulting in the biggest decline since May. Sales of the Top 100 graphic novels plummeted 30 percent -- again due to the brisk sales of Watchmen last fall -- combining for an overall decline of 17 percent.

As we reported last week, DC Comics had the top six bestselling comics for the first time in four decades, with the fourth issue of its event miniseries Blackest Night coming in at No. 1 with an estimated 137,169 copies. Marvel's Wolverine: Old Man Logan hardcover collection topped the graphic novel chart with an estimated 7,347 copies.

The retailer-focused news and analysis site ICv2.com notes that Marvel's $3.99 titles continue to slip, with the third issues of Ultimate Comics Avengers and Ultimate Comics Spider-Man each shedding about 5,000 copies from the previous issue. Of course, they weren't the only ones to slide: 19 of the top 25 comics saw drop-offs in what the website describes as "a bearish month." [ICv2.com]

Continue Reading »

Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes

The Book of Genesis Illustrated

Sales charts | R. Crumb's The Book of Genesis Illustrated climbs seven spots to No. 2 in its second month on BookScan's list of top-selling adult graphic novels in bookstores. It's bested, as most are, by the latest volume of Masashi Kishimoto's Naruto. But it's another story on USA Today's bestseller chart, where Crumb's book drops 49 places in its second week to No. 129. [ICv2.com, USA Today]

Passings | Tom Spurgeon, NPR's Mark Memmott and Ina Jaffe, and Michael Cieply of The New York Times have obituaries for Comic-Con co-founder Shel Dorf, who passed away on Nov. 3 at the age of 76.

Libraries | The Yoshihiro Yonezawa Memorial Library of Manga and Subculture opened over the weekend at Meiji University's Surugadai campus in Tokyo. Users can become one-day members of the library, where they can have access to about half of the 140,000 manga for about $1.10 per copy. The books can't be removed from the library. [The Japan Times]

Internet | Tom Spurgeon points out that the review blog Guttergeek will move to the expanded TCJ.com, joining a stable of hosted blogs that will include The Hooded Utilitarian. [Guttergeek]

Continue Reading »

Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes [Updated]

Stitches: A Memoir

Publishing | Publishers Weekly teases its forthcoming lists of the best books of the year with a Top 10 that includes David Small's National Book Award-nominated memoir Stitches. [Publishers Weekly]

Publishing | UK newspaper The Times rolls out a package marking the 70th anniversary of Marvel Comics with profiles of Chris Claremont and John Romita Jr., 70 facts "you didn't know" about the company, and a gallery. [Times Online]

Publishing | Back issues of Cerebus Archives, Dave Sim's bimonthly DVD extras-style collection of letters, stories and artwork, are now available through print-on-demand publisher ComiXpress. [ComiXpress]

Blogosphere | Mike Nebeker, co-host of the Geek Tragedy Podcast, passed away Oct. 27 from an apparent stroke. He was 41. According to this blog entry, his co-hosts plan on Tuesday to post a new episode that will contain their farewells and Nebeker's unaired interviews from the Alternative Press Expo. After that, they'll take some time off from the podcast. [Geek Tragedy Podnotes]

Comic strips | Amazon has announced the 10 finalists for its Comic Strip Superstar contest. [Digital Strips]

Continue Reading »

Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes

The Pirate Bay

Legal | A new study claim the shutdown two months ago of file-trading site The Pirate Bay by Swedish authorities "significantly, if temporarily, disrupted" the illegal trafficking of digital files worldwide. The emphasis is on temporarily. The white paper, released by anti-piracy company DtecNet, found the closing forced traffic to flood other BitTorrent trackers, "causing temporary secondary outages" for several days.

The study finds that BitTorrent traffic is soon expected to return to levels seen before the shutdown, with relatively new website OpenBitTorrent emerging as the successor to The Pirate Bay. [The Live Feed]

Sales charts | R. Crumb's much-publicized adaptation of The Book of Genesis debuts at No. 8 on USA Today's bestseller list. Meanwhile, the 46th volume of Masashi Kishimoto's popular shonen series Naruto inches up three spaces to No. 136. [USA Today]

Continue Reading »

Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Libraries | Two library employees in Nicholasville, Kentucky, were fired last month after they refused to allow an 11-year-old girl to check out The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which they dubbed pornographic. However, the policy of the Jessamine County Library states it's the responsibility of parents to decide what's appropriate for their child to read.

The fired employees, Beth Bovaire and Sharon Cook, stand behind their decision, asserting that the award-winning comic by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill contains lewd pictures that are inappropriate for children.

"If you give children pornography, a child, a 12 year old, can not understand and process the same way a 30 year old can," Cook told a local television news station. [WTVQ, WTVQ]

Tokyo International Manga Library

Libraries | A private university in Tokyo hopes to promote the serious study of manga by opening a library stocked with 2 million comics, anime drawings, video games and other artifacts. If everything goes as planned, the Tokyo International Manga Library would open on the campus of Meiji University in 2015. [AFP]

Publishing | Even after the closing last year of Virgin Comics, upbeat profiles of the Indian comics industry continue to appear regularly. But here Gaurav Jain, head of the Mumbai-based Illusion Interactive Animation, offers a more dismal assessment of the scene in India: "While competition has arrived, the local industry continues to live in its shell, churning out visually unappealing and terribly written local content with little or no film and television possibilities. One of the most widely read labels offers sanitized, vanilla retellings of Indian mythology and historical figures with visuals inspired from the works of Raja Ravi Verma. Derivative art work and bland writing, leads to visual fatigue." [The Wall Street Journal]

Continue Reading »

Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes

Legal

Legal | Twin brothers in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, have been sentenced to three months in jail for possessing anime- and manga-style images depicting children in sexual situations.

David Scott Hammond and James Cory Hammond, 20, pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography after police discovered the images downloaded on their home computer last November. Although David Hammond's attorney said his client didn't realize it was illegal to download cartoon pornographic images of children, the prosecutor asserted that, "Every one of these images involves the victimization of children. The victimization wouldn’t happen in the first place if there weren’t people there to look at this material."

Earlier this month, lawmakers in Alaska began considering a bill that would expand the state's child-pornography laws to include cartoons. And in June a U.S. appeals court upheld the conviction of a Virginia man who was prosecuted, in part, under a 2003 federal statute outlawing possession of cartoon images depicting the sexual abuse of children. [The Chronicle Herald]

Viz Media

Publishing | The San Francisco headquarters of Viz Media was closed for two days this week after an unexpected downpour on Monday caused storm drains to overflow, flooding parts of the city. [Anime News Network]

Publishing | Just last week we were reporting that Villard had acquired the rights to Fated, a graphic novel written by Michael Jackson and Gotham Chopra. Now comes word that the Random House imprint paid $800,000 for it. Illustrated by Mukesh Singh, artist of Virgin Comics titles Gamekeeper, Devi and Jenna Jameson's Shadow Hunter, the black-and-white book is due out in June. [Crain's New York Business]

Continue Reading »

Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes

Blackest Night #3

Publishing | Sales of comics to the direct market increased 12 percent in September over the same month last year, lifting the third quarter by 7 percent. Graphic novels, meanwhile, slipped 2 percent in September and 10 percent for the quarter, largely because of the strong performance of Watchmen in 2008.

DC's Blackest Night #3 topped Diamond's comics chart, with sales estimated at 140,786, followed by Marvel's Captain America: Reborn #3 with 108,331. The "Blackest Night" event performed well for DC, with five related titles placing in the Top 10. ICv2.com notes in its analysis that the $3.99 price tag on some of Marvel's comics appears to be having an impact on sales, with the second issues of Ultimate Comics Avengers and Ultimate Comics Spider-Man falling about 15,000 copies each, and Hulk #15 dropping about 18,700 from the previous issue.

The graphic novels list was led by the fifth volume of Dark Horse's Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8, with an estimated 7,225 copies. However, the most interesting entry is probably R. Crumb's The Book of Genesis Illustrated, which charted at No. 28 with some 2,178 copies. [ICv2.com]

Continue Reading »

Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes

Iron Man #18

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

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

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

Big Apple Comic Con

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

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

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

Continue Reading »

Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes

Dragon Ball, Vol. 3

Manga | Wicomico County Public Library in Maryland is conducting an "internal reconsideration" of Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball after the popular series was removed from a combined elementary/middle school library last week due to depictions of nudity and sexual situations. The public library has pulled the manga while it decides in what section the T-rated series should be shelved. [The Daily Times]

Publishing | Deb Aoki gets more details from Viz Media Senior Editor Eric Searleman about the publisher's relaunched original comics initiative, which began accepting submissions last week: "We're hoping to publish a wide range of comics by a diverse group of creators. A lot of people are expecting Viz Media to publish manga (or comics that look like manga) but we don't plan on limiting ourselves, in any way. It doesn't matter to us if you draw like Tite Kubo or Darwyn Cooke. If you've got an awesome idea for a comic book, we want to see it." Simon Jones provides commentary. [About.com, Icarus Publishing]

Continue Reading »

Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes

Dragon Ball

Manga | Wicomico County schools in Maryland removed all copies of Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball from library shelves Wednesday after the mother of a fourth-grader complained about the nudity and sexual situations depicted in the first volume of the hit series. The manga, which sports an "All Ages" a T+ rating, is published in North America by Viz Media.

A committee of administrators and "people from outside the school system" will review books, but the schools superintendent will make the final decision on the fate of the series. At a Tuesday meeting of the County Council, one councilman distributed photocopies of scenes from Dragon Ball, describing some of the illustrations as "disgusting." [The Daily Times, The Daily Times]

Legal | An amended agreement between Google and the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers is expected to be filed by Friday to address concerns raised by the Google Book Search settlement. DC Comics is among the parties that object to the terms of the original deal, designed to resolve a 2005 lawsuit accusing the Internet giant of infringing on copyrights by digitizing out-of-print books without permission. [Publishers Weekly]

Continue Reading »

Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes

Disney and Marvel

Retailing | Could Disney's planned $4-billion purchase of Marvel signal the return comic books to the mass market? "I see the Marvel acquisition by Disney helping to expand the genre of comic books and remove it from the dusty basement of the world," says direct-market retailer Creswell. "I do see Disney stepping in and offering retailers outside of the direct comic book market incentives for selling Marvel products," Creswell said. [Reuters]

Publishing | Long-struggling e-book site Wowio reportedly has informed publishers that payments for the second quarter of 2008 will be made by Nov. 15. Wowio, which was purchased last year by Platinum Studios, was sold in July to a holding company formed by Platinum President and COO Brian Altounian. [Bleeding Cool]

Long Beach Comic Con

Conventions | The inaugural Long Beach Comic Con kicks off today at the Long Beach Convention Center in California. Guests include Berkeley Breathed, Stan Lee, Tim Bradstreet, J. Scott Campbell, Amanda Conner, Geoff Johns, Dave Johnson, Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Scott Lobdell, Dustin Nguyen, Darick Robertson and Mark Waid. The Long Beach Post and Gazettes Town-News have previews. [Long Beach Comic Con]

Events | 24-Hour Comics Day will be held Saturday at locations around the world. [24-Hour Comics Day]

Conventions | Heidi MacDonald posts her Small Press Expo round-up/wrap-up/photo parade. [The Beat]

Continue Reading »

Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes

Disney Digital Books

Publishing | Disney is taking its children's storybooks digital with a subscription-based website that features electronic versions of more than 500 of the company's titles, from Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree to High School Musical. Online-exclusive content will be added by the end of the year.

The move by Disney, which sells 250 million children's books each year, seems to signal a belief that online subscriptions, and not devices like Kindle, is the direction in which this corner of the industry is heading. [The New York Times]

Conventions | Paid admissions to last weekend's Small Press Expo were 1,772, up 19 percent over the previous year. Heidi MacDonald and Sean T. Collins file their reports from the show. [SPX]

Conventions | Brigid Alverson, Erin Finnegan and Ada Price reports on the announcements and upbeat mood at New York Anime Festival. [PW Comics Week]

Continue Reading »

Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes

Ohio State University

Education | Ohio State University's cartoon library has been renamed the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum in recognition of a $7-million donation from the Elizabeth Ireland Graves Foundation to help renovate its new space. Billy Ireland was a cartoonist for The Columbus Dispatch from 1898 until his death in 1935.

The $21-million renovation of historic Sullivant Hall, expected to be completed in 2013, will house the cartoon library and museum and the university's dance department. The library contains the world's largest collection of cartoon art. [The Columbus Dispatch]

Legal | Japanese publisher Kodansha reportedly has sent cease-and-desist letters to a popular scanlation site. [AstroNerdBoy, via MangaBlog]

Publishing | Speculation has begun as to whether another manga publisher has closed. [The Manga Critic]

Continue Reading »

Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes

Blackest Night #2

Publishing | Direct-market comics sales grew in August for the third consecutive month, thanks to price increases. According to ICv2.com estimates, piece sales actually declined 1 percent from August 2008. Sales of the Top 100 graphic novels fell 16 percent, largely due to the performance of Watchmen, whose numbers sky-rocketed around this time last year.

Events and crossovers again dominated the top of the comics chart, led by DC's Blackest Night #2 with about 146,000 copies -- slipping just 18 percent from the miniseries' debut. Marvel's relaunched Ultimate Comics imprint premiered fairly strong, with Ultimate Comics Avengers #1 charting at No. 5 (95,000), followed by Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #1 at No. 11 (86,000).

The 10th volume of Image Comics' The Walking Dead led the graphic-novel chart with more than 15,000 copies, followed by Vertigo's Fables, Vol. 12, with more than 12,000. [ICv2.com]

Business | Tom Spurgeon presents his lengthy, and well-worth-reading, thoughts on Disney's proposed purchase of Marvel and the restructuring of Warner Bros./DC Entertainment, how we process and report those two major industry events, and even who might be offered the job of publisher of DC Comics. Rich Johnston, meanwhile, lays out odds on that last part. [The Comics Reporter, Bleeding Cool]

Continue Reading »