Green Lantern Corps #41

Publishing | Buoyed by its Blackest Night miniseries and tie-in books, DC Comics claimed the first six slots on Diamond Comic Distributors' Top 300 list of books sold to the direct market in October.

It's a rare occurrence, to be sure, but just how rare? Charts-watcher John Jackson Miller contends we have to travel back more than 40 years, to a time well before the direct market, to find when DC last had the six best-selling comics (as sold to retailers). Yes, 1968. The closest DC came in the direct-market era, according to Miller, was in April 1993, when the publisher held the top five positions.

But back to October 2009, when DC also narrowed the market gap with Marvel to the closest margin in some time: The competitors were separated by just 2.43 percent in unit share, and 2.68 percent in dollar share. [Diamond Comic Distributors, The Comics Chronicles]

Retailing | Borders Group announced Thursday it will close about 200 of its Waldenbooks, Borders Express and Borders Outlet stores in January. The retail chain has been steadily closing mall-based stores in its Waldenbooks Specialty Retail division since 2001. About 130 mall stores will remain once the downsizing is complete. [Publishers Weekly]

Entertainment Weekly

Publishing | Comics writer Marc Bernardin (The Authority, The Highwaymen) was among at least 11 staff members let go from Entertainment Weekly this week in a round of massive cutbacks by parent company Time Inc. A senior editor, Bernardin had worked for the magazine for 15 years, playing an important role in EW's initial moves to cover comics. [Twitter]

Publishing | Mark Miliad eyes the success of Randall Munroe's XKCD: Volume 0, a collection of his popular webcomic, and marvels at the cartoonist's "nontraditional route" to publishing. [Jacket Copy]

Publishing | Scott Dunbier, special projects editor of IDW Publishing, discusses the 50th anniversary of The Family Circus and the company's hardcover library series. [USA Today]

V for Vendetta

Publishing | In honor of Guy Fawkes Night, KC Carlson recounts memories of editing the V for Vendetta collection for DC Comics in 1990. [Comics Worth Reading]

Passings | The Comic-Con International website posts a tribute to late co-founder Shel Dorf written by R.C. Harvey for the convention's 2009 souvenir book. The Los Angeles Times also has an obituary for Dorf, who passed away this week at age 76, while Mark Evanier returns with thoughts on the debt San Diego owes to Dorf. [Comic-Con]

Sales charts | R. Crumb's The Book of Genesis Illustrated holds the top hardcover spot for the third week on The New York Times' Graphic Books bestseller list, followed by Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds, which debuts at No. 2. The hardcover chart sees three other premieres: Ultimatum (No. 4); The Walking Dead, Book 1 (No. 5); and Pride and Prejudice (No. 9). Meanwhile, the 24th volume of Negima! Magister Negi Magi topples Naruto, Vol. 46, from its seat atop the manga chart. [The New York Times]

"Young Allies" art by Paolo Rivera

Creators | Artist Paolo Rivera discovers himself on Google Street View (outside of Jim Hanley's Universe in Manhattan), and details how he uses the online feature as "a fantastic resource" for research and inspiration. [The Self-Absorbing Man]

Webcomics | The Telegraph's Tom Chivers names the 10 best webcomics, including Achewood, XKCD, Cyanide and Happiness, and Dinosaur Comics. [Telegraph]

Comics | Bully compares the covers for the 1970s Mexican reprints of DC superhero comics to the 1950s originals. [Comics Oughta Be Fun!]

Comics | Ben Morse rattles off his Top Five comic-book marriages. [The Cool Kids Table]

Comic strips | This just in: The Spider-Man newspaper strip is pretty awful. [Again With the Comics]

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]

American Vampire #1

Publishing | Ben East pens the 123rd article about bestselling authors who answer the siren call of comic books. This time it's keyed to the announcement that Stephen King will co-write the first story arc of Vertigo's upcoming American Vampire. [The National]

Webcomics | Kyla Gorman, who's pursuing a degree in game design from the University of Southern California, has been awarded the $10,000 Penny Arcade Scholarship, established in 2006 to honor one student each year who demonstrates the potential to positively affect the video-game industry. [GameLife]

Comic strips | Jill Schulz, daughter of the late Charles M. Schulz, talks about her father's legacy, and why no one else will ever draw Peanuts: "Years ago, before my dad passed away, there were renewals on contracts, and there was a question -- do we someday allow anyone else to write the strip, to continue it. A lot of people [said] you've got to get someone else to draw it, to keep the product out there. They were looking at it from purely a business standpoint. ... [My dad] took great pride in the fact that he had never let anybody else letter or draw a single piece of any strip. And we said no, we don't care if it ends up being a less financially beneficial decision. Our first and foremost concern is the integrity of our dad's work, and the legend behind his work." [ParentDish]

Joe Quesada, by Seth Kushner

Creators | Christopher Irving interviews Joe Quesada, who discusses success, Marvel Knights, becoming editor-in-chief of Marvel, breaking with the Comics Code Authority, and reader backlash: "No one at Marvel, especially the people who work with me, go in there going ‘How are we going to destroy the Marvel Universe?’ and twirling their moustaches. We go in there saying ‘How are we going to do the best possible stories? How are we going to keep our readers entertained and treat these characters in the best, most respectful way to tell great stories and keep them alive, not for tomorrow, but for ten, twenty, fifty years from now?’" [Graphic NYC]

Creators | Robot 6 contributor Sean T. Collins talks to Paul Hornschemeier and Jeffrey Brown about their stories for Marvel's Strange Tales anthology miniseries. [Marvel.com]

Creators | Nick Miller profiles several Sacramento, California-area creators, including Strangeways creator Matt Maxwell. He also checks in with city native, but now New York-based, Adrian Tomine. [Sacramento News & Review]

Comics | Mick Martin remembers, remembers the fifth of November with an in-depth look at Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V for Vendetta. [Trouble with Comics]

Comics | An auction earlier this week of more than 30,000 Silver Age comics discovered in the basement of a Missouri home brought in $1.1 million. A copy of The X-Men #1 fetched a world-record $101,000. [KMOX.com]

Shel Dorf with Warren Beatty in 1990

Passings | Sheldon "Shel" Dorf, who in 1970 co-founded the event that grew into Comic-Con International, passed away Nov. 3 in San Diego's Sharp Memorial Hospital from diabetes-related complications. He was 76.

A collector of comics and Dick Tracy memorabilia, Dorf had run Triple Fan Fest in his native Detroit. After he moved to San Diego in early 1970, he met Ken Krueger of Alert Books in Ocean Beach and the two, together with a group of teen-aged fans, organized first Golden State Comic Con, held Aug. 1-3, 1970, at the U.S. Grant Hotel. Dorf served as president, or chairman, of the convention until the mid-1980s, stepping away just as the annual event was becoming a national stage for pop culture.

Dorf reportedly struggled with diabetes for years, gradually losing mobility and vision. He entered Sharp Memorial Hospital in 2008 and never left. His brother Michael was with him when he died.

Mark Evanier, of course, has a nice tribute to Dorf peppered with memories dating back to before that first convention. There's also an extensive Shel Dorf Tribute website, and a memorial banner topping the Comic-Con International homepage. The photo above, of Dorf with Warren Beatty on the set of the 1990 Dick Tracy movie, is borrowed from Alan Light's Flickr stream. [The San Diego Union-Tribune]

Red Light Properties

Publishing | Tor.com, Macmillan's science fiction and fantasy online initiative, has acquired the web-only publishing rights to two full-length graphic novels: The Imitation Game, a biography of mathematician Alan Turing, by Jim Ottaviani and Leland Purvis; and Red Light Properties, a real-estate horror story by Dan Goldman. The two books will be serialized on Tor.com beginning in January. [PW Comics Week]

Publishing | Bestselling novelist S.E. Hinton, author of The Outsiders, has partnered with Bluewater Productions to publish comic-book adaptations of some of her books, beginning in spring 2010 with her young-adult novel Taming of the the Star Runner. [Bluewater Productions]

Publishing | Robot 6 contributor Brigid Alverson talks with BOOM! Studios Editor-in-Chief Mark Waid about the company's philosophy, its position in the marketplace, the BOOM! Kids line and newsstand distribution. [PW Comics Week]

Creators | Writer, and Image Comics partner, Robert Kirkman talks up Image United, the six-issue miniseries that brings together six of the company's seven founders. [USA Today]

Creators | Brian Heater wraps up his four-part interview with Guy Delisle. [The Daily Cross Hatch]

Hatter M

Creators | Author Frank Beddor discusses his Looking Glass Wars novels, which have spawned the Hatter M comic book tie-ins. [Hero Complex]

Conventions | The Des Moines Register previews Saturday's I-CON convention in Altoona, Iowa, with a series of articles profiling a local artist, a local writer, a cosplayer, a collector, etc. (You can find an index here under "Related Stories.") Guests include Phil Hester, Sean Galloway, Kevin Cannon, Bob Hall and Ryan Benjamin. [I-CON]

Conventions | Saturday also will see the return of Tucson Comic Con in Arizona, which will feature appearances by Max Cannon, Ryan Cody, Brian Pulido, and others.  [Daily Wildcat]

Cinderella: From Fabletown With Love #1

On the Vertigo blog, Group Editor Shelly Bond provides a glimmer of hope for any artist who views the annual DC Comics portfolio review at Comic-Con as akin to tilting at windmills: It's through that process last year that she discovered Chrissie Zullo, cover artist for the upcoming miniseries Cinderella: From Fabletown With Love.

"I remember commenting on how much I liked her painting style — specifically the balance of the pretty and the 'don’t think you’re going to take me home just yet' power," Bond writes. "Chrissie has a mercurial charm, evident not only in the alluring execution of her figure work but also in her choice of rich, traditional color palettes. She finds inspiration from classical painters such as Jean Honore Fragonard and Francois Boucher, and modernists alike, including comic book artists Winsor McCay, James Jean and Adam Hughes."

So she asked Zullo to put together a few "mock" Fables covers to determine how the artist handled composition and typographical elements.

"When her camera-ready samples came in a few weeks later, I couldn’t believe my eyes," Bond writes. "And strangely enough, at that very millisecond, I was looking for a cover artist for the new Cinderella: From Fabletown With Love miniseries. One of Chrissie’s images in particular happened to look like Cinderella so it seemed like there was more than a good chance that she could handle this fantastic first assignment. Upon showing Chrissie’s samples to Bill Willingham, he replied 'Hire that woman!' on the spot."

Sure, Zullo was only one out of "the hundreds/thousands" of portfolio submission, but still ... that qualifies as a glimmer. Yeah?

San Diego Convention Center

A mayor's task force has recommended a proposed $750-million expansion of the San Diego Convention Center, a move viewed as crucial to keeping Comic-Con International in the city past 2012.

In its final draft report, released yesterday afternoon, the Mayor's Citizen Task Force on the San Diego Convention Center Project found the expansion "would provide a significant positive economic impact" to the region, and would generate new jobs. The task force also laid out several options for financing the project, including an increase in city or county sales tax and the creation of a special taxing district around the convention center.

As Liam Dillon notes in his overview of the expansion debate, Mayor Jerry Sanders has called the convention center "the goose that lays the golden eggs"; it's contributed an estimated $18.3 billion to the city's economy since it opened in 1989.

Officials have feared that without the expansion, which would allow the convention center to better compete with those in cities like Anaheim, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, San Diego could stand to lose some $2.7 billion as organizations moved there events elsewhere. Among those groups is Comic-Con International, whose contract with the San Diego Convention Center expires in 2012.

On his Livejournal, series creator Jackson Publick reveals that Bill Hader (Saturday Night Live, Superbad) will be the new voice of Professor Impossible, the Reed Richards parody originally played by Stephen Colbert.

Tony and Johnny

Last month I spoke with Johnny Zito and Tony Trov, writers of the Zuda strip Black Cherry Bombshells, before they embarked on a road trip from Philadelphia to the San Diego Comic-Con. They made it to the con, and back home, safely, so I spoke with them again to see what they saw and what they learned on America's highways. I've also included some of their video travel journals they made along the way.

JK: Let's start with the first leg of the road trip. What were some of the highlights, in terms of places you stop and stuff you saw along the way?

Tony Trov: We took a leisurely 15 day trip and tried to take in as many cities we could.

Johnny Zito: Somewhere around Ohio our GPS went dead, and we were navigating into Chicago via stars and magnets.

Tony Trov: Things went pretty smoothly after that. We bed down in Colorado the next night. Boulder’s great because the altitude makes every beer count twice.

Johnny Zito: Ended up in Vegas after that. Killed a buffet, doubled our money and checked out some Black Cherry Bombshells’ landmarks.

Tony Trov: It was a mad dash to LA where we couch surfed and bbq-ed.

Johnny Zito: We overestimated the distance to San Diego, bolted from LA super early and got to Comic Con on Thursday with time to spare.

Tony Trov: It was a pretty smooth journey. Kept waiting for that disaster to strike but it never did. Instead we were treated to an endless string of highway diners and open roads.

JK: Did you learn anything about Vegas you plan to use in the strip?

Tony Trov: Season III of Black Cherry Bombshells features Fremont Street and the secrets of Old Vegas. So we spent some time down there looking for cool landmarks.

Johnny Zito: It's interesting how far removed Fremont Street is from The Strip. It is a classy, little fortress protecting the way things used to be.

JK: How did you guys fill the time on the road?

Johnny Zito: 80 gigs worth of music and podcasts... and it wasn’t enough to cover 3000 miles let alone the trip back.

Tony Trov: Shooting and editing the road blogs kept the cabin fever at bay.

Johnny Zito: To break it up along the way we stopped to investigate no less than 3 haunted amusement parks and an abandoned resort owned by Phyllis Diller.

Tony Trov: It was really cool to meet The Harlem Globetrotters.

JK: How were you guys feeling once you hit San Diego? Did it re-energize you, or were you already worn out from your trip?

Tony Trov: The road trip was the vacation. San Diego was supposed to be work.

Johnny Zito: Work is fun.

Tony Trov: The sight of strangers in spandex always reinvigorates me.

Johnny Zito: Call me old-fashioned but a little cosplay dance party is my idea of a good time.

JK: What was the highlight of the con for you guys?

Tony Trov: I bought some original Sergio Aragones art. He drew a new cartoon in the margins when he signed it.

Johnny Zito: Meeting Andy B. Everyone should be reading Bottle of Awesome. It’s mind blowing.

JK: And finally, how was the trip back?

Johnny Zito: Nashville was amazing!

Tony Trov: And Graceland is eternal.

Johnny Zito: But the South is scary.

Tony Trov: Not as scary as the Creation Museum.

JK: I've been wondering about this since the first interview. What's the Creationist Museum like?

Tony Trov: Lots of money went into the place. The animatronics, dioramas and multimedia presentations are on the level of Disney.

Johnny Zito: We were there on a Wednesday afternoon, and the place was packed with children. They put dinosaurs on everything because it makes it look like science.

Tony Trov: Spoiler Alert - At the end of the tour it's revealed that dinosaurs and dragons are the same thing. The museum opens up into a medieval-themed gift shop.

Johnny Zito: I don't want to attack anyone or their beliefs, but that place was full of gross inaccuracies based on causality and supported with fallacious arguments.

BOOM!'s booth, before the con started

I spoke with Neil Loughrie a few weeks back right before the San Diego Comic-Con. At the time, Loughrie was getting ready for his first San Diego show, where he would be responsible for all of BOOM! Studios' booth logistics.

I spoke with him again after the show to see how everything went.

JK: Overall, how did things go at the BOOM! booth during SDCC?

Neil: Things went great! Even better than we expected. We met a lot of great fans and a lot of great creators. Roger Langridge from The Muppet Show Comic Book was at the booth for the entire week, and we had such a great time with him there, and I think the fans really responded well. All in all, it was BOOM!’s best San Diego yet.

JK: What was the most memorable moment for you at the booth this year?

Neil: I don’t think that I could pick out one moment that was more memorable than any of the others. The highlights of the show for me were meeting the fans. There was one fan in particular who came to the booth completely unaware that BOOM! was continuing the Farscape story with a comic book series. The look on his face when I showed him the table full of comics was priceless.

JK: Were there any major challenges or hiccups that occurred during the show?

Neil: If there was one thing that I was not prepared for, it was the popularity and success of our signings. There was a time on Friday when we had a line for a signing that was so long that it wrapped around our booth twice, and nobody could get up to the tables. Wrangling that many people with just our booth staff was a bit tricky, but everyone helped out and by Saturday we had a great formula working on how to control our crowds.

Mark Waid, Roger Langridge and Alan Porter. Photo by Michael A. Solof

JK: Did you get a chance to get out from behind the booth and see anything else at the show?

Neil: To be honest, not really. I was able to take some time here and there, but I really wasn't able to stray very far from our booth. We had a great location, though, so I got to see all the big exhibits. On Sunday afternoon, I was able to head over to the retailer section and check that out, but that was about it.

JK: Is there anything you learned this year that'll help you out next year, or at your next convention?

Neil: One thing that I am taking away from this show is that a convention will never go according to your expectations. You can plan months in advance, and you are still going to have to improvise on the show floor and change things around. The important thing for me was to step back from it all and come up with a plan. Conventions can be overwhelming if you let them.

Congratulations to SLG Publishing's editor-in-chief and Robot 6 contributor Jennifer de Guzman and to her husband and artist Brian Belew -- Jennifer announced on her blog that she is pregnant.

"Yes, I have my own little parasite," she writes. "Thus, my Comic-Con sketchbook theme this year. Tommy Kovac's sketch for me is a perfect image of what I've felt like for the last 14 weeks. (Making a person is hard. Who knew?) Working the convention while three months pregnant was challenging, to say the least."