Justice League #4

Publishing | John Jackson Miller takes apart the December sales numbers and finds that while comics were up for the month, graphic novel sales fell just enough to prevent the direct market from having its first up year since 2008. In fact, trades are down 16 percent from December 2010, and Miller spends some time discussing why that might be — and why next year might be different. [The Comichron]

Publishing | Houghton Mifflin has high hopes for Are You My Mother?, the new graphic novel from Fun Home author Alison Bechdel: The publisher plans a first printing of 100,000 copies. [Publishers Weekly]

Retailing | Diamond’s Retailer Summit will be held the two days before the Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo, with attendees receiving free admission to the April 13-15 convention. [ICv2]

Saga #1

Creators | Brian K. Vaughan speaks briefly about Saga, his March-debuting collaboration with Fiona Staples that promises “a nice mixture of some bounty hunters, monsters and all sorts of lovely threats.” [USA Today]

Creators | Joe Keatinge (Hell Yeah, Glory) writes about the immutability of Big Two superhero comics and the freedom that independent publishers like Image have to throw dramatic twists into their stories—and make them stick. [Image Comics blog]

Digital | Letterer Todd Klein reads Green Lantern #1 on his iPhone and finds the experience different, but enjoyable. [Todd's Blog]

Graphicly

Digital | HTML5 is in, Windows 7 phones are out: Micah Laaker reviews the past year for digital distribution service Graphicly and hints a bit at what the future may bring. [Graphicly Blog]

Digital | Which platform will survive? Matt Alexander speculates that as tablets get better and cheaper, dedicated e-readers will become a thing of the past. Ironic, no? [The Loop]

Cosplay | Hana, a Muslim anime blogger, discusses the complications of finding characters to cosplay while observing the rules of modest dress: “Clearly, some of you might be wondering what all the fuss was about, and I’m not saying that all Muslim hijab-wearing females are anything as habitually neurotic as I am. However, think of it more as an illustration of how my faith is the filter through which I experience the fandom and everything else. For me, it’s an entire lifestyle that affects everything I do, rather than just being a set of beliefs.” [Beneath the Tangles]

Diary of a Zombie Kid

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

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

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

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

Steve Niles

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

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

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

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

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

Smile

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

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

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

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

Tom Brevoort

“DC extended the terms of their returnability Ponzi scheme for two more months. Until we get to a month in which retailers are ordering straight up, without needing to hit unrealistic numbers in order to qualify for returnability, you guys looking at the limited and skewed charts that you get to see aren’t going to be able to see what is clear to those of us who get to see the actual numbers and track the day-to-day week-to-week sales flow of the business.”

– Tom Brevoort, Marvel’s senior vice president of publishing, responding to a question on his always-interesting Formspring account about when, in his view, the Diamond charts will accurately reflect sales of DC Comics’ New 52 titles

Point One

The takeaway from November’s direct-market sales estimates seemed to be that Marvel had rebounded from its thrashing the previous month by DC Comics, whose New 52 numbers appear to be settling. With 33.3 percent of dollar shares and 37.94 percent of unit sales, the House of Ideas came within two points of its competitor.

However, in its analysis ICv2.com suggests that those numbers don’t tell the whole story, and that the sales of some of Marvel’s top titles are a bit — or, in one case, “seriously” — inflated.

The retail news and analysis site reminds us that the publisher’s top-selling comic at No. 5, the $5.99 Point One, was over-shipped, with stores receiving double their initial orders as free copies. That means retailers didn’t order an estimated 113,352 copies but rather around 56,600, placing Point One at No. 29 on the Diamond Comic Distributors chart, between The Amazing Spider-Man #673 and The Avengers #19.

Skipping past The Avenging Spider-Man #1 and Wolverine and the X-Men #2, with their variant covers — four for the former alone — brings us to Fantastic Four #600, the anniversary issue whose $7.99 price tag helped Marvel to gain ground in dollar share.

Related: John Mayo looks at November sales estimates for Comic Book Resources

X-23 #20

Sales charts | Responding to an iFanboy article that speculates on what titles Marvel might cancel next, Men of War and Viking writer Ivan Brandon makes the case against sales charts and the subsequent analysis of them each month: “There’s an ongoing debate, for a bunch of years now. There are numbers that circulate every month, inaccurate numbers, people track them, people use that flawed ‘data’ to comment on what they see as the progress or decline on the list. A lot of comics professionals are against this, for a lot of reasons. In my case, for my books, the books I personally share copyright on … my reason is, and no offense to anyone out there: My income is none of your business. Just as your income is none of mine.”

Tom Spurgeon offers a counterpoint: “Sales information seems to me an obvious positive, not because it reveals the bank accounts of creators, but because what sells and to what extent is basic information about a marketplace, and the shape and potency of a marketplace seems to me a primary item of interest for anyone covering that marketplace. It’s foundational to our understanding of how things work and why. Certainly this information is already manipulated to brazen effect by companies with something to put over on customers; I have to imagine this would become worse under a system of no information at all being released.” [Ivan Brandon, The Comics Reporter]

Habibi

Awards | Craig Thompson’s Habibi is one of five finalists for the French comics organization L’Association Des Critiques De Bandes Dessinées’ annual Prix De La Critique. The winner will be announced Dec. 5. [The Comics Reporter]

Creators | Mike Mignola, Bill Sienkiewicz, Walt Simonson and several other creators are selling illustrations of classic Universal Monsters on eBay to raise money for 6-year-old Aidan Reed, who was diagnosed last year with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. [Newsarama]

Creators | Laura Sneddon profiles Watchmen and V for Vendetta writer Alan Moore, who talks about creating The Ballad of Halo Jones, one of the first non-superhero women to headline her own series: “There wasn’t a single – I mean, I was annoyed – there wasn’t a single girls’ comic in Britain … I thought, well if you do more stories that are aimed at women, you’ll get more women reading the comics. It would seem fairly simple and straightforward, but there was a lot of resistance.” [The Independent]

Eduardo Risso

Creators | Artist Eduardo Risso discusses his career and craft in along interview conducted by Michal Chudolinski at the International Festival of Comics and Games in Lodz, Poland. [Comics Bulletin]

Creators | Mike Costa talks about his work on Blackhawks and G.I. Joe: Cobra. [USA Today]

Manga | Shaenon Garrity explains Chobits, the CLAMP series about a world in which humans can own robots with personalities — persocoms: “Chobits is the strangest of beasts: a difficult, complex, thought-provoking T&A manga. Ultimately it chooses to have its cheesecake and eat it too, raising a host of challenging questions only to leave them unanswered so as not to spoil the romance.” [Anime News Network]

Digital | Remember when your mom threw out all your comics? Digital comics saved the day for one reader who accidentally destroyed her cousin’s comics collection. [Teleread]

Commentary | Rich Clabaugh looks at Fantagraphics’ first Carl Barks collection, “Lost in the Andes.” [Christian Science Monitor]

Comics | Bob Temuka looks at some forgotten superhero titles from the 1980s and 1990s. [The Tearoom of Despair]

Blogosphere | The Panelists, a blog devoted to analyzing individual comics panels, is disbanding. The writers, all of them well regarded in the comics community, are simply too busy doing other things. [The Panelists]

From Uncanny X-Men #137

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

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

Bil Keane

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

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

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

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

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

Lost Trail

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

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

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

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

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

As Comic Book Resources reported on Friday, DC claimed 42.47 percent of the market in dollars and 50.97 percent in united sold in October and dominated Diamond Comic Distributors’ Top 20 with 17 spots. According to newly released estimates from ICv2, the top six DC titles broke the 100,000-copy mark, led by Geoff Johns and Jim Lee’s Justice League #2 with about 180,700.

Sales of 14 New 52 titles saw gains from their first issues, with Animal Man boasting a 14-percent jump, followed by Batman and Swamp Thing with 7 percent each. Superman and Blackhawks, however, saw 26-percent drops. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the two DC relaunches that attracted controversy, Catwoman and Red Hood and the Outlaws, saw 6-percent jumps.

Just one Marvel title sold more than 100,000 copies: Incredible Hulk #1, by Jason Aaron and Marc Silvestri, with about 106,470. Wolverine and the X-Men #1 and Fear Itself #7 each hovered above 95,000.

It’s probably also worth pointing out the sheer number of DC reorders that appear high on October’s Top 300, led by Aquaman #1 in the 88th spot with more than 28,000 copies (pushing total sales of the first issue past 100,000 copies). That’s more than the orders for new issues of Marvel’s Hulk, Deadpool, Punisher and Thunderbolts.

Related: Rood & Wayne Unpack DC’s New 52 Sales Success

SPX

Conventions | Executive director Warren Bernard said attendance at this year’s Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland, was up 10 to 15 percent, with exhibitors reporting strong sales and many sell-outs. “A great line-up of new material was partially responsible, but the region itself is also a factor — the economy around metro DC has remained relatively stable even in the recession, and a lot of people with good jobs seem to save up their money for the whole year just to spend at SPX,” reported Publishers Weekly’s Heidi MacDonald and Calvin Reid. Because of the growth, next year the show will move to a bigger room with about 50 percent more space. Daniel Clowes and Chris Ware scheduled to attend. [Publishers Weekly]

Organizations | The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, meanwhile, reports that it raised $12,500 at SPX, thanks to efforts like the Jeff Alexander Memorial Benefit auction and fundraising activities involving Craig Thompson, Roz Chast and Sara Varon. [press release]

Michael George

Legal | Instructions and opening statements are expected today in the second trial of former comics retailer Michael George, charged with first-degree murder in the 1990 shooting death of his first wife Barbara in their Clinton Township, Michigan, comic store. The five-day jury selection process wrapped up Tuesday. George, 51, was convicted in 2008, but a judge set aside the conviction, citing prosecutorial misconduct and the emergence of new evidence. [The Detroit News]

Sales charts | John Jackson Miller, who yesterday posted commentary on comic and graphic novel sales in August, has additional information about sales of Justice League #1 thus far. He notes that North American orders for the book came in at 186,000 — a figure that only includes preorders Diamond Comic Distributors actually shipped to North America for sale on Aug. 31. It does not include orders for the United Kingdom or late-placed pre-orders that couldn’t be filled until September. He also notes that many of the best-selling comics of this century continued to sell for months, not weeks, “with the best seller of the 2000s, the Obama Spider-Man issue, getting nearly half its sales in the second month with a later printing,” Miller writes. “A report on a single day’s sales should be regarded like the opening day of a film: illustrative of enthusiasm, but on its own just a portion of the picture.” [Comichron]

Jack Kirby Museum

Organizations | The Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center, which has existed as a virtual organization since 2005, is looking for a temporary physical location in New York City’s Lower East Side, in addition to funding to pay for it. They plan to display original artwork and Kirby artifacts, and feature prominent guest speakers and educational programs. Ultimately organizers hope to have a permanent location. [Kirby Museum]

Organizations | The Hero Initiative reminds California residents that if they designated the organization as the beneficiary of supermarket chain Ralph’s reward-card program, which allows users to select a charity that Ralph’s will donate money to whenever the card is used, it’s time to re-register your card. Ralph’s wipes the slate clean every September. [Hero Initiative]

Retailing | CNN’s Geek Out! blog talks to Zack Overton, a clerk at Atlanta’s Oxford Comics, about DC’s “New 52″ relaunch, Marvel’s counter programming, digital comics and the store’s outlook for the rest of the year. [CNN Geek Out]

Amazing Spider-Man #666

Publishing | Sales of comic books and graphic novels in July fell 6.17 percent versus July 2010, with dollar sales of comic books sold through Diamond Comic Distributors falling 4.27 percent and graphic novels falling 10.10 percent year-over-year. Unit sales for comics were only down slightly, at .52 percent, which ICv2 points out “indicates that comic book cover prices have in fact declined. The problem is that circulation numbers have not risen enough to make up for the decline in revenue from lower cover prices.” Marvel’s Amazing Spider-Man #666, which kicked off the “Spider-Island” event, was the best-selling comic of the month, while League of Extraordinary Gentlemen III Century #2 from Top Shelf topped the graphic novel chart. John Jackson Miller has commentary.

Marvel saw a slight increase in its dollar market share for July when compared to June, while DC’s jumped from 28.03 percent in June to 30.55 percent in July. IDW, the No. 5 publisher in terms of dollar share in June, moved to the No. 3 position in July. The top seven publishers were rounded out by Image, Dark Horse, Dynamite and BOOM! [ICv2]

Darkwing Duck #18

Publishing | BOOM!’s Disney comics officially end in October with the publication of DuckTales #6 and Darkwing Duck #18, for which the solicitation says, “This is it fans, the last Disney single issue from KABOOM! has arrived. It’s the end of an era as we say goodbye to Disney at KABOOM!” [Comics Continuum, via]

Conventions | The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art in New York will hold the 10th annual MoCCA Fest on April 28-29, the same weekend the Stumptown Festival will occur in Portland, Ore. Heidi MacDonald has commentary. [Convention Scene]

Creators | Brian Heater talks to artist Joseph Remnant about illustrating Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland after Pekar passed away last year. [The Daily Cross Hatch]

Comics | Robert Stanley Martin has posted the results of the Hooded Utilitarian’s International Best Comics Poll, which were voted on by 211 editors, journalists, academics and retailers (including Robot 6 contributors Sean T. Collins, Chris Mautner and Matt Seneca). Topping the list is Peanuts, followed by Krazy Kat, Calvin and Hobbes, Watchmen and Maus. [The Hooded Utilitarian]

Organizations | Derek McCaw interviews Dr. Mauricio Heilbron, the Hero Initiative’s medical consultant. [Fanboy Planet]

FreakAngels

Webcomics | Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield’s long-running FreakAngels webcomic has reached its conclusion. [Warren Ellis]

Webcomics | Doug TenNapel has brought his webcomic Ratfist to an end after 150 episodes, and he reveals that a print version is in the works. [Ratfist]

Retailers | San Francisco-based toy and comics retailer Neon Monster will close down its brick-and-mortar shop on Aug. 7 and its online store on Aug. 14. [Neon Monster, via Twitter]

Reviews | Cartoon Brew rounds up commentary on BOOM!’s third DuckTales comic book in a post titled “Is This the Worst Disney Comic of All-Time?” Per CB poster Amid: “Panels are flipped and repeated, characters speak to other characters that aren’t even drawn into the comic, backgrounds appear to be drawn by a twelve-year-old in MS Paint, and even the cover is an uninspired swipe of an earlier Daan Jippes cover.” The comic even inspired one fan to write a song about it. [Cartoon Brew]

Manga | The four-woman manga supergroup CLAMP is resuming work on Legal Drug after an eight-year hiatus. The series was published in the U.S. by Tokyopop, and there is no word yet on whether the new volumes will be published here. [Anime News Network]

Comics | Sean Kleefeld shows off some new pieces of original comics art he just picked up. [Kleefeld on Comics]

Fandom | Chad Rouch remembers the day his brother tossed Captain America’s shield out of a moving car. [Orlando Sentinel]

Stormwatch #1

Publishing | DC Comics Co-Publisher Dan DiDio talks about the gay and lesbian characters appearing in the company’s books come September, including Batwoman and WildStorm imports Apollo, Midnighter and Voodoo: “When we looked at trying to incorporate some of the characters that inhabited the WildStorm universe Apollo and Midnighter are two characters that have always popped out. Not because of what they represent, but they’re just strong characters in their own right and [they] were able to represent a story, a style of character that wasn’t represented in the DC Universe. There’s more of an aggressive nature with those characters that will interact interestingly with other characters and allows us to tell more and better stories.” [The Advocate]

Publishing | Todd Allen, Tom Foss and Graeme McMillan react to the list of changes to the “younger, brasher and more brooding” Superman who will inhabit the DC Universe following the September relaunch. [Indignant Online, Fortress of Soliloquy, Blog@Newsarama]

Publishing | David Brothers takes a sharp-eyed look at the DC relaunch: “The fact that Vertigo isn’t included in the digital releases highlights a glaring problem with DC’s big relaunch. They’re playing it safe, essentially, by catering to the same audience that they’ve always served, while offering a few brief nods in the direction of new readers.” He also sees their digital strategy as falling short because it lacks a mechanism for pre-orders and subscriptions. [Publishers Weekly]

Comics | Todd Allen responds to a recent list by Marvel of “required reading” Captain America stories by providing one of his own. [Indignant Online]

Art by Rian Hughes

Creators | Rob Harrigan kicks off a series of Comics & Design Interviews with a discussion with U.K. artist Rian Hughes. [The Offset Past]

Creators | Robot 6 contributor Brigid Alverson interviews novelist Anne Rice about Yen Press’ planned graphic-novel adaptation of her Interview with the Vampire. [Publishers Weekly]

Comics | Forbes interviews Jordanian comics publisher Suleiman Bakhit, who views comics, games, and social media as paths to greater hope and tolerance in the region: “I go to a lot of poor areas and ask the kids, ‘Who are your role models?’ Sometimes they say Zarqawi and Bin Laden. But in one neighborhood I gave them comics and when I went back a few months later; the superheroes were now their role models.” [Forbes]

Vintage manga | The Comics Journal has a preview of Tank Tankuro, a 1934 manga featuring a superhero robot that’s worlds away from Astro Boy. [The Comics Journal]

Awards | Sean Kleefeld reflects on last week’s announced changes for the Xeric Foundation, which will no longer provide grants to self-publishing comic book creators, and instead devote funds to charitable organizations: “Clay Shirkey has noted that, culturally, we tend to bemoan the over-abundance of information when, in fact, the problem is more that we simply don’t have the proper filters in place to remove what’s irrelevant to us as individuals. The Xerics have been, for me at least, one of those filters. If I was looking for good books, I knew that simply choosing something off a list of Xeric-winners was a sure bet.” [Kleefeld on Comics]

Previews | Critic Paul Gravett pulls out the graphic novels you should be looking forward to in the latest Previews. [Paul Gravett]

Sales | John Jackson Miller detects a slight uptick in June sales. [The Comics Chronicles]

Fear Itself #1

Publishing | The drop in year-over-year sales in the direct market slowed in April, with periodicals slipping 1.75 percent and graphic novels just .84 percent. Overall sales were down 1.46 percent for April and 6.5 percent for the first four months of the year. Marvel topped Diamond’s comics chart with Fear Itself #1, while DC led the graphic novel category with the 15th volume of Fables. [ICv2.com]

Crime | Police evacuated the bus terminal in downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan, Friday afternoon after a suspicious package was discovered across the street. The Michigan State Police bomb squad was called in, and it was determined the mysterious package was merely a briefcase-shaped media kit promoting Acura’s involvement with Marvel’s Thor. A writer for Automobile, whose offices are next to the terminal, had discarded the “S.H.I.E.L.D. Assessment Test” kit in the recycling bin, but it wasn’t picked up — apparently because it isn’t recyclable. [WXYZ, Jalopnik]

San Diego Convention Center

Comic-Con | Mark Evanier discusses a new hotel tax proposed by San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders to pay for the planned expansion of the city’s convention center. There would be a 3 percent tax on rooms closest to the convention center, the location of Comic-Con International, with others being taxed between 1 and 2 percent, depending on their proximity. [News from ME]

Awards | Nominations are being accepted through May 31 for the 28th annual Russ Manning Promising Newcomer Award, which will be presented July 22 during the Eisner Awards ceremony at Comic-Con International. [Comic-Con International]

Retailing | In its first-quarter filings, U.S. retail chain Hastings reports a 3 percent increase in its “trends” merchandise category, driven in part by the sales of new and used comics. The retailer recently expanded its comics space in 126 stores. [press release]

Conventions | Tim Janson wraps up this weekend’s Motor City Comic Con in Nov, Michigan. [Mania.com]

Creators | David Lloyd chats about his career, V for Vendetta and a possible shift to online comics: “I’m interested in online storytelling, not just putting a comic online though. I think that’s kid of crazy. There should be something more than just putting a comic page on a computer screen, and there are different ways of doing that. I’m looking for the best way to do that, to tell a story, produce a graphic novel week by week, month by month. Now obviously you can do that just as a showcase and then sell the book afterwards. There have been some examples of that working well. But if I do something like that, I would like to earn money. I kinda regret that a lot of ideas I get, I can’t do. I have some nice ideas but if I did all of them, every one of them taking two years, I’d be fixed for the next ten, so I’m not sure if I want to do that. If I invest time in something, I’ve got to get results and it has to be seen.” [Philippine Daily Inquirer]

Creators | Chester Brown talks about his new graphic novel Paying for it: A Comic-Strip Memoir About Being a John. [The Gazette]

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark

Broadway | Michael Cohl and Jeremiah Harris, producers of the troubled Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, talk candidly about the $70-million musical — or “$65 plus plus,” as Cohl says — as it shuts down for more than three weeks for a sweeping overhaul. Will the production, plagued by delays, technical mishaps, injuries and negative reviews, hurt their reputation? “It might,” Cohl concedes. “It’s a matter of the respect of those whose opinions I care about. Most will recognize that Jere and I stepped in dog poo and are trying to clean it up and pull off a miracle. We might not.”

In related news, Christopher Tierney, the actor who was seriously injured on Dec. 20 after plummeting 30 feet during a performance, will rejoin rehearsals on Monday. [Bloomberg, The Hollywood Reporter]

Naruto, Vol. 50

Publishing | The 50th volume of Masashi Kissimoto’s insanely popular Naruto remained atop the bestseller list of graphic novels in bookstores for a second month, according to Nielsen BookScan. It’s also worth noting that the Top 20 for March included all six volumes of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim series, and the return of return of perennial bestseller Watchmen. [ICv2.com]

Publishing | Gary Groth responds at length to Jim Shooter’s recent recollections of the dispute between Marvel and Jack Kirby in the 1980s over the company’s refusal to return his original art: “Shooter’s two blog entries purporting to accurately describe Kirby’s dispute with Marvel are such falsified claptrap that they reminded me of Mary McCarthy’s infamous quip about Lillian Hellman’s writing, made in an eerily similar context — that every word is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.’” [The Comics Journal]

Creators | Sam Adams interviews cartoonist Ben Katchor about The Cardboard Valise, his early comic-strip experiences and influences, and much more. [The A.V. Club]

27: First Set

Creators | Collaborators Charles Soule, Renzo Podesta and W. Scott Forbes discuss their Image series 27. [USA Today]

Creators | Periscope Studio members Steve Lieber, David Hahn and Dylan Meconis talk about using the Wacom Cintiq for their work. [Computer Graphics World]

Creators | Writer Jai Nitz chats about writing some of Dynamite Entertainment’s Green Hornet titles. [The Oklahoman]

Comics | Cyriaque Lamar previews 18 sci-fi comics debuting over the summer. [io9.com]

FF #1 -- Marko Djurdjevic variant

Publishing | On the heels of Monday’s direct-market overview for March, ICv2 has released its sales estimates for the month, placing the top-selling FF #1 at 114,472 copies — more than 37,500 ahead of the No. 2 title, Green Lantern #64. The retail news and analysis site notes that the relaunched FF #1, aided by variant covers, joins the Human Torch-killing Fantastic Four #587 as the only titles to sell more than 100,000 copies in the past six months.

While 11 of the Top 25 comics saw sales increases, if only slight, the graphic novel category looked decidedly more grim, with just the third volume of The Unwritten and Batman and Robin: Batman Reborn breaking the 4,000-copy mark. [ICv2.com]

Crime | Los Angeles police have recovered a copy of Action Comics #1 stolen from the home of actor Nicolas Cage in 2000. The 1938 comic, worth as much as $1.5 million, was discovered last month by an unidentified man who claims to have bought the contents of an abandoned San Fernando Valley storage locker. It’s now in an LAPD evidence safe while the department’s art details detectives try to track down the thieves, but Cage says he can’t wait to get the comic back. “It is divine providence that the comic was found and I am hopeful that the heirloom will be returned to my family,” he said in a statement. [Ventura County Star, Los Angeles Times]

Crime | Artwork stolen from Ethan Van Sciver at WonderCon turned up on eBay, but has since been returned to the artist. [Bleeding Cool]

Stan Lee

Legal | Eriq Gardner examines potential evidence in the drawn-out legal battle between Stan Lee and failed dot-com Stan Lee Media, which sprang back to life in February. [Hollywood, Esq.]

Legal | Local charges have been withdrawn against four men under federal indictment in connection with the murder last summer of a 77-year-old comic collector in Medina, N.Y. The move clears the way for the federal case to proceed. [The Daily News]

Publishing | Viz Media is expanding its Viz Kids imprint with the acquisition of five licenses: Hero 108, Mameshiba, Pokemon: Black and White, Mr. Men and Little Miss, and Voltron Force. [press release]

Retailing | If you can get past the headline — “Crunch! Thump! Zap! Bam! Pow! — Wow!” — this is a decent profile of Las Vegas retailers Jim Brocius and Brian Fudge, whose Cosmic Comics has experienced a rise in sales just as it moved to a new, larger location. “This was our best January, and I think this will be our best February,” Brocius said.  [Las Vegas Business Press]

Webcomics | Whitney Matheson recommends three webcomics. [Pop Candy]

Comics | David Brothers looks at a sequence from Osborn #3, by Kelly Sue DeConnick, Emma Rios and José Villarubia. [4thletter!]

One Piece, Vol. 61

Publishing | The 61st volume of Eiichiro Oda’s insanely popular pirate manga One Piece sold more than 2 million copies in its first three days of release, according to the Japanese market-survey firm Oricon. It’s the fastest-selling book in the Oricon chart’s nearly three-year history, breaking the previous record set by the 60th volume of One Piece, which sold more than 2 million copies in four days. [Anime News Network]

Retailing | Heidi MacDonald talks to Dave Bowen, Diamond’s director of digital distribution, about the newly announced deal with iVerse Media that will allow retailers to sell digital comics in their stores: “The retailer will login using their Diamond retailer login and be presented with the opportunity to create store-specific, item-specific codes in whatever quantities they need. Then we’ll use some approved cryptographically secure method to generate random codes for the retailer to use. And we’ll format those in a PDF which they can then print out. Likely what will happen is, it’ll print easily on Avery 30-up laser labels. So what you have is a sheet of Avery laser labels with a bunch of different books and codes on individual labels. In that case the retailer takes that material and secures it and then when someone wants Transformers #16 they simply ring the sale and give the label or sticker or cut-out to the consumer. [...] It’s really very simple. Then the consumer that has that code, which is live, they could literally step out of the line, pull out their iphone or ipad or whatever other device and redeem the code and begin reading the material.” Meanwhile, Todd Allen dissects what he describes as “a particularly silly digital download scheme.” [The Beat, Indignant Online]

ComicsPRO

Retailing | Matt Price sets the scene for ComicsPRO’s annual meeting, which begins today in Dallas, and reveals the exclusive cover for The Walking Dead #81 given to attendees. [Nerdage]

Legal | Hiroko Tabuchi looks at the tightening restrictions in Tokyo on the depictions of sexual acts involving minors in manga, anime and video games. [The New York Times]

Legal | Eriq Gardner delves into the recent dismissal of Stan Lee Media’s $1-billion lawsuit against Stan Lee and Marvel: “We’d say that the long saga involving Stan Lee Media may be finally over, except we probably said the exact same thing at least a half dozen times in the past few years.” [THR, Esq.]

Creators | Writer Jim McCann talks about Hawkeye: Blindspot, a four-issue miniseries debuting next week from Marvel. Warning: The article contains spoilers for the conclusion of Widowmaker. [USA Today]

Creators | EmiTown creator Emi Lenox is interviewed on the Hideous Energy podcast. [Hideous Energy]

Grant Morrison, Geoff Johns (via Bleeding Cool)

“The 26 best-selling DC single issues were all written or co-written by either Geoff Johns or Grant Morrison.”

–Techland’s Douglas Wolk makes a startling observation about Diamond’s 2010 sales charts. I mean, I knew Johns and Morrison were DC’s two bestselling authors by a long shot, and since I enjoy their work a great deal I’m pretty happy about that, but that level of dominance is really stunning to me. Moreover, Wolk goes on to note that “The best-selling DC single issue that was neither a Batman comic nor a tie-in to Blackest Night/Brightest Day was Superman #700, at position #109.” In other words, DC’s dominant writers have made the properties on which they work — predominantly Batman and Green Lantern — DC’s dominant franchises as well. Even superstar writer J. Michael Straczynski’s much-ballyhooed Superman debut failed to gain much traction relative to the Johns/Morrison juggernaut.

I think it’s safe to assume that Johns is being pulled in more and more directions by his Chief Creative Officer duties — the same position, keep in mind, that Joe Quesada recently relinquished his Editor-in-Chief gig to focus on over at Marvel. Meanwhile, Morrison is a writer whose work meets with frequent delays at the best of times, and who has a full slate of creator-owned work and various media projects (Hollywood screenplays and adaptations, the indie flick Sinatoro, My Chemical Romance videos, etc). Finally, there’s no way to tell how the Green Lantern movie will affect fan interest in the franchise. That’s a lot of eggs to have in relatively few baskets.

“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.

The Walking Dead: Compendium One

The Walking Dead and Scott Pilgrim dominated graphic novel sales in bookstores in December, claiming nine of the Top 10 spots on the Nielsen BookScan chart.

Buoyed by the record-setting first season of the AMC television adaptation, zombie comic landed the top spot with The Walking Dead: Compendium One, the $60, 1,088-page collection of the first 48 issues of the Robert Kirkman-Tony Moore-Charlie Adlard series. Three volumes of The Walking Dead, including new editions of the first two collections, appeared in the Top 10, and five in the Top 15.

All six volumes of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim made the Top 10, which could be attributed to the November release of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World on DVD and Blu-ray — or a sign that the series is on its way to becoming a perennial bestseller.

Meanwhile, Superman: Earth One, the hardcover graphic novel whose blockbuster sales led J. Michael Straczynski to abandon the Superman and Wonder Woman monthly series so DC Comics could fast-track a sequel, plummeted from No. 1 on the chart to No. 15. The retail news and analysis site ICv2.com suggests the book may be a victim of availability — there may not be enough additional copies to replenish what’s been sold — rather than a decrease in interest. Indeed, Superman: Earth One is No. 5 after nine weeks on The New York Times hardcover graphic books list.

Batman: The Return

Publishing | Following its grim snapshot of year-to-date dollar sales in the direct market, ICv2.com has released a dreary analysis of the November charts: For the third time in 2010, the top-selling title failed to crack the 100,000-copy mark. Batman: The Return, priced at $4.99, sold about 99,500 copies, compared to the 144,000 sold by November 2009′s top title, Blackest Night #5. According to the retail news and analysis site, 20 of the Top 25 titles experienced a drop last month. As ICv2 noted last week in its initial report, dollar sales of comics were down 10.2 percent when compared with November 2009, while graphic novels jumped 14.84 percent, tied to the release of the 13th volume of The Walking Dead (it sold more than 19,000 copies). [ICv2.com]

Digital publishing | Google on Monday unveiled Google eBooks, a web-based e-book platform/digital storefront that boasts “the world’s largest selection of ebooks.” Dan Vado offers brief commentary. [TechCrunch]

Barnes & Noble

Retailing | Activist investor William Ackman has offered to finance a $960 million bid by Border Groups to buy its smaller larger rival Barnes & Noble. Both chains have been struggling amid competition from online stores like Amazon.com and the increasing popularity of e-book readers. [The Detroit News]

Passings | Steve Bates, longtime manager of Ohio’s Bookery Fantasy and later a writer in the marketing department of Diamond Comic Distributors, passed away Dec. 3 from cancer. He was 48. [ICv2.com]

Best of the year | Katherine Dacey selects the best manga of 2010, including AX: A Collection of Alternative Manga, Black Blizzard, and A Drunken Dream and Other Stories. [The Manga Critic]

Comics | S.I. Rosenbaum rolls out a graphic novel gift guide. [The Boston Phoenix]

Frank Miller

Creators | Christopher Irving continues his profile of Frank Miller, this time focusing on The Dark Knight Strikes Again, All-Star Batman and Robin, The Spirit movie and more. [Graphic NYC]

Creators | Nathan Wilson continues his discussion with Paul Levitz about 75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking. [TCJ.com]

Creators | Sarah Glidden discusses her memoir/travelogue How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less: “I don’t even think I believe in objectivity anymore. No matter how hard you try to gather facts, there’s always a motivation behind the reasons we choose one source over another, and our sources have prejudices and biases too. That stuff can really drive you crazy if you start thinking about it. As soon as I started doing research into the history of the Levant region and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict I realized this. I was suspicious of pretty much everything I read. This book is kind of about my search for objective truths in a situation where that’s nearly impossible to find, so I knew that if I wanted to write about that I would have to go the route of extreme subjectivity.” [Bookslut]

Creators | Paul Tobin talks about Spider-Girl, Marvel Adventures and what he likes best about writing kids’ comics: “The freedom of being able to completely world-build. The all-ages material isn’t as bound by the Code of Continuity, so if I feel like bringing in some disparate elements, it’s all up to me.” [TFAW]

Doctor Strange: From the Marvel Vault

Creators | Tom Mason chats with Neil Vokes about his upcoming collaboration with Roger Stern Doctor Strange: From the Marvel Vault, which tells the story of the Sorcerer Supreme’s first night at at 177-A Bleecker Street. [Comix 411]

Comics | Tucker Stone offers tips for jump-starting a career in comics: “Don’t be that guy. You know which guy I’m talking about, the guy who is a walking PR kit. He never talks with you, he talks at you. This one dimensional persona pollutes the comics industry. If you have an idea for a project and you’re pretty excited about it, congratulations, but here’s a little secret: no one cares. If you insist on giving us lip service then please, I urge you to take a step outside yourself and imagine listening to your spiel about your ‘secret project’ or how ‘people would kill to work on the deal’ you just ‘scored’.” [comiXology]

Wolverine #1, the top seller in September

Publishing | John Jackson Miller delves into September’s grim direct-market sales figures and discovers a (relative) bright spot: Sales of lower-tier titles — those that don’t crack Diamond’s Top 300 — appear to be increasing, to record levels. “How do we know?” Miller writes. “Believe it or not, a record for high sales was actually set in September. The 300th place comic book, Boom’s Farscape #11, sold more copies to retailers in September than in any month since November 1996: 4,702 copies. That’s a record for the period following Marvel’s return to Diamond. This bellwether tells us about the shape of the market, and how prolific the major and middle-tier publishers are; when many of their titles are being released and reordered, higher-volume titles tend to push farther into the list.”

However, the higher you go on the list, the worse things look: “The average comic book in the Top 25 is selling more poorly in 2010 than in 2003. At the very top of the chart, 2010′s average top-sellers are about 25% off what the best-sellers of 2003 were doing.” [The Comichron]

Comic-Con International

Comic-Con | A last-minute reminder: Four-day and single-day passes for Comic-Con International go on sale today at 9 a.m. PT. [Comic-Con International]

Creators | AdHouse Books Publisher Chris Pitzer puts out the call to help cartoonist Joshua Cotter, whose apartment was damaged last week by fire. The publisher is donating all money from sales of Skyscrapers of the Midwest, Driven by Lemons and AdHouse Sticker Pack #2 over the next three weeks to Cotter. [AdHouse Books]

Conventions | Greg Mellen reports on this weekend’s Long Beach Comic Con. [Contra Costa Times]

Conventions | Wizard Entertainment will add Miami to its expanding convention stable, debuting with an event scheduled for Feb. 26-27 at the Miami Airport Convention Center. [press release]

Publishing | Viz Media announced in the December issue of Shonen Jump that it’s launching a digital manga supplement for magazine subscribers. Andre Paploo has the sparse details and speculation. [Kuriosity, via MangaBlog]

Publishing | Deb Aoki rounds up recent title acquisitions by Digital Manga Publishing. [About.com]

Publishing | DC Comics is hiring an editorial scheduling coordinator for the New York City office. [Comix411]

Jerry Robinson

Creators | Robot 6 contributor Chris Maunter interviews legendary artist Jerry Robinson who discusses, among other things, the creation and legacy of the Joker: “… Every great hero had a counterpart as a protagonist. That’s what I wanted to give [Batman]. At the time in the ’30s, he fought all these gangsters and embezzlers, bank robbers, occasionally there was a mad scientist. But mostly they were prohibition-era villains. That’s who Batman was fighting. There was no mind behind the opposition. Strangely enough there was a feeling at the time that a stronger villain would detract from the hero. Now from our standpoint, that’s not true. The great villains provided a platform for the hero. So what if he was stronger, the hero had to win in the end. On the other hand the heroes had to be heroic. Villains could be bastards and they’re always more interesting to write about. More provocative. I think that was part of it.” [TCJ.com]

Charlie Adlard, in zombie form

Creators | The Walking Dead artist Charlie Adlard is profiled by his local newspaper, and talks about the comic and playing a zombie in the AMC adaptation. [Shropshire Star]

Creators | Cartoonist Garry Trudeau is the subject of a brief article about the 40th anniversary of Doonesbury. [Vanity Fair]

Creators | Tom Horgen spotlights Death-Day, by Sam Hiti, describing the cartoonist as “like H.R. Giger with a softer brush stroke and a sense of humor.” [Star-Tribune]

Creators | Faith Erin Hicks answers questions about her work process. [Livejournal]

Creators | Stumptown Trade Review posts an audio interview with Drinking at the Movies cartoonist Julia Wertz. [Stumptown Trade Review]

Brightest Day #7 (August's top-selling comic)

Retailing | Laura Hudson surveys a handful of retailers about what part higher cover prices may have played in August’s plummeting comics sales. “This summer has underperformed, and I think [the $3.99 price point] is a big part of it,” says Chris Rosa of Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles, “but also I think the lack of an event and the fact that the big books at both [companies] are extended denouements to events. There’s nothing really inspiring people to run out to the stores. People are tired of buying four Avengers titles at $3.99 a pop.” [Comics Alliance]

Publishing | Tom Mason looks at the return of Atlas Comics: “If you were 13 years-old in 1975 when the original books were out, you’d be 48 today. In other words, the age of the average direct market fanboy. But in order for these new books to succeed, they’d have to appeal beyond nostalgia because with most Marvel and DC comics at $4.00 a pop, you’ve got to have something special and excellent to lure some of those buyers into your own circus tent.” [Comix 411]

Retailing | Johanna Draper Carlson offers advice for aspiring comics retailers. [Comics Worth Reading]

Detective Comics #871

Creators | Scott Snyder discusses American Vampire and his upcoming run on Detective Comics in an interview from Comic-Con International: “… I want it to be back to basics and have it be anchored in Gotham. Batman solving mysteries as the greatest detective in the world. I wanted it to be street level crime, a couple new villains that are a little bit above the sidewalk level, but at the same time, it’s going to focus on Batman solving crime in Gotham using new tech. It will be old fashioned in terms of its format, but high tech in terms of his gadgets for a new twist.” [AICN]

Creators | Alex Deuben interviews Dame Darcy and Dan Goldman. [Suicide Girls]

Creators | Gerard Way talks briefly about The Umbrella Academy. [The Star]

Tintin

Comics | Claudia Massie details why she loves Hergé: “The visual style of the Tintin books is one that looks enormously simple: it is rather muted in colour; the black lines are neat and constant. The predominant tones are those of the up-market paint company Farrow & Ball and dominated by gentle browns, yellows, blues and greens. Most frames restrict their colour spectrum to just two or three different tones and. unlike some other comic styles, much importance is given to empty space, meaning Hergé is happy to offer a blank sky or wall as a backdrop to a small detail of action or expression. Not for Tintin the graphic pyrotechnics of Marvel Comics; our Belgian boy hero operates against a tranquil canvas of meticulous order.” [The Spectator]

Comics | Author David Lipsky sings the praises of Runaways, Vol. 1, by Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona: “… I bear the books a grudge. Marvel collected them — because their biggest fans were female teenagers — in tiny digests with girlish covers that were intensely embarrassing to read on the subway. I kept locking eyes with people I could swear had just shaken their heads. And, alright, I fell a little in love with one of the female leads: the great flying beauty Karolina Dean. Who turned out to be gay. A hardship I’d steered clear of in real life, and there I was stumbling into it in a damned graphic novel (OK, comic book). Runaways — while a consistently brilliant reading experience — has been an embarrassment festival. Way beyond a guilty pleasure. It has been a fount of guilt, awkwardness and grave personal doubts. Which is to say, it turned me teenaged again.” [NPR]