Friends With Boys

Robot 6 has covered cartoonist Faith Erin Hicks on multiple occasions concerning her comics, but this time we’re discussing something new: what kind of living she makes as a cartoonist. Hicks recently opened up about the financial realities of her life as a working cartoonist in a blog post supplementing her current webcomic Friends With Boys, which First Second will release later this year as a graphic novel. Hicks isn’t the first to share such intimate details on the business of comics, but the picture she paints with it is surprising in many ways.

“First of all, never in a million years did I think I would be able to pay my rent by drawing comics,” Hicks wrote, “or even through doing the freelance art thing. Sometime I cringe inwardly when I tell people that I write and draw comics for a living, because sometimes it doesn’t feel like that; it’s more like I’ve taken a vacation from some real job to draw comics, and eventually I will return to the workforce when I run out of money.”

Hicks became a full-time comic artist only because she lost her job. Until 2008 she worked as an animator, but as her company’s contracts dried up she was let go until their prospects improved. While she was waiting, mainstream comics publisher First Second offered her a contract drawing Brain Camp, a comic written by someone else. That one-time opportunity eventually blossomed into an ongoing commitment between Hicks and First Second, with the artist now working on her fourth book for the publisher.

You might ask, what about Hicks’ work before Brain Camp? Although Hicks garnered acclaim with her webcomic Demonology 101 and two graphic novels for SLG Publishing, it turns out that it doesn’t pay nearly what you’d think. SLG, like most small publishing houses, doesn’t pay royalties or a page-rate for creator-owned work, with the creators only making money on the back-end. According to Hicks, her two SLG books — Zombies Calling and War at Ellsmere – sold about 2,000 copies each, with her receiving 7% (no misprint, 7%) of the cover price. Those two books were sold for $9.95 and $12.95, respectively, which works out to a total of $3,206 earned for those two books.

“Part of the reason for this pessimistic view is that currently I’m living off advances from [First Second], and supplementing that money with grants and freelance work (taking illustration jobs for clients, doing the occasional workshop, drawing commissions, etc),” Hicks went on to say in her blog post. “I do not have a hit graphic novel that I receive a steady royalty income from. Not yet, at least. I suspect I would feel more secure in my line of work if I did.”

Hicks goes into more detail about the financial life of a cartoonist, and into how she spends her limited income. Truly an insightful piece for pros and fans alike, some of whom chimed in with comments on Hick’s post.

Jennifer de Guzman

As we reported this morning, longtime editor-in-chief Jennifer de Guzman left SLG Publishing Friday after 10 years with the company. It’s now known that she began work today as Image Comics’ new PR and marketing coordinator.

Sarah deLaine, who was promoted to that position a year ago, has been named Image’s event coordinator.

“My decade [at] SLG was, I suspect, like no other decade anyone has spent working anywhere,” de Guzman wrote on her blog. “I had great co-workers and got to work with fantastic creators, all of whom I will miss very much. (Though because this is comics and a community like no other, we will always stay in contact.)

An award-winning writer who contributes graphic novel reviews and articles to Publishers Weekly Comics Week, de Guzman was named Friends of Lulu’s 2006 Woman of Distinction. She and husband Brian Belew also collaborated on a series of comics/columns for Robot 6 in 2009.

Jennifer de Guzman

Publishing | Jennifer de Guzman announced that, after 10 years, she has left her position as editor-in-chief of SLG Publishing: “My decade SLG was, I suspect, like no other decade anyone has spent working anywhere. I had great co-workers and got to work with fantastic creators, all of whom I will miss very much. (Though because this is comics and a community like no other, we will always stay in contact.)” [Possible Impossibilities]

Retailing | Chris Powell, current general manager and chief relationship officer for Texas-based comic chain Lone Star Comics, has accepted the newly created position of executive director of business development for Diamond Comic Distributors. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund board member will start his new position in March. [ICv2]

Miles Morales

Publishing | Marvel Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso answers questions about Miles Morales, the new Spider-Man of the Ultimate Universe: “When a little boy or girl looks at Spiderman, they do not see race. They do not see anything but the bright colors and the human shape. I think it is very easy for them to project themselves into that suit and to imagine themselves in that suit. Part of the thrill for me is knowing that there are little boys who will now pick up a Spiderman comic and see that after the adventure and the mask is peeled back he will look like them. As a Hispanic, it is nice to see Spiderman’s [...]  last name resemble the last name of my son.” [Fox News Latino]

Publishing | SanJose.com profiles SLG Publisher Dan Vado, who talks about why he started working in comics: “I think comics decided for me; I don’t think I really had any choice. There was never any point where I said, ‘This is what I’m gonna do.’ Comics was always something I was going to do while I’d figure out what it I was gonna do, and I guess I never really figured it out.” [SanJose.com]

Kate Beaton

Publishing | The Beat names its comics industry People of the Year. [The Beat]

Creators | Brian Wood chats about his upcoming Dark Horse series The Massive: “The world it inhabits is sort of a minefield of current events, of divisive politics (global warming, regime change, corporate bad-behavior, etc) but all that has sort of come to pass by the time the story opens. The damage has been done, and so its less about why/how things got so bad and more about, okay, what do we do now? Powerful social themes, but not political in the same way DMZ is.” [Suvudu]

Creators | Comics writer and filmmaker Kevin Smith answers questions about women and comic shops as he touts his new TV reality series Comic Book Men: “This is a show about these four dudes who work in this store. There are no women [in the store] yet…There should be a Comic Book Women, and good willing, there’ll be a spinoff Comic Book Women, and I’ll make shit ton of money.” [ThinkProgress]

Super Pro K.O., Vol. 1

Creators | Jarrett Williams discusses his work on the Oni Press graphic novel series Super Pro K.O. [Spandexless]

Creators | Writer Kyle Higgins looks at what’s ahead for DC’s Nightwing. [USA Today]

Comic art | The collaborative art blog Relaunched puts out the call for contributors to “Watchmen Too,” a Watchmen 2 theme month. [Calamity Jon, Save Us]

Commentary | Don MacPherson looks back at some of his favorites of the previous year. [Eye on Comics]

Fandom | When asked during a 60 Minutes interview whether his company was thin-skinned, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason popped his claws: “We’re like Wolverine and our skin has been melted off, and we’ve had Adamantium fused onto our bones.” [Nerd Reactor]

Back in 2009 writer Van Jensen and artist Dusty Higgins introduced three simple yet brilliant words into the comic book vocabulary–Pinocchio Vampire Slayer. Over the course of the previous two volumes, the little wooden boy and his friends won our hearts–and staked a few along the way–as each lie brought a new weapon to use against Pinocchio’s enemies.

The print version of the final volume, Of Wood and Blood, isn’t due until this summer, but SLG Publishing will release it as a series of digital comics on comiXology and their own website (we managed to get an advance copy, which you can read right now). The first issue is free, while subsequent issues will cost 99 cents.

I caught up with Jensen and Higgins to talk about the third volume, what the series has meant to them and what they plan to do after it’s finished.

JK Parkin: What was going through your heads as you put the finishing touches on this volume? Was it bittersweet, relief, accomplishment … or some combination of all three? Did the fact that this is your last hurrah with these characters make it more difficult to finish?

Van Jensen: It was kind of an emotional conclusion for me, I’ll admit. I didn’t want to say goodbye to any of the characters, even the drunkards in the bar in Rome. Beyond that, this third book is in some ways a long meditation on death (don’t worry, there’s still plenty of humor!), so I think I’d been in a pretty dark mindset for the months that I was writing it. But, as usual, I was mostly excited to see Dusty take my script and bring it to life.

Dusty Higgins: What keeps popping back into my head as I finish these last pages (and I’ve still got a lot to go) is a sense of wonder that three years into this project I’m still working on it. When I first approached Van the with the idea, I wouldn’t have guessed I’d be working on a third volume. I’d actually intended to get that first book out and move on to something else, but things happen and the story took on a life of its own. It’s always a bit sad to look at a page and think, that might be the last time I draw that character and there are redshirt vampires I’ve felt that way about, but it’s also a relief knowing soon our foray into Pinocchio’s world will be complete in a way that Van and I are both satisfied with. We didn’t make concessions on the story, we told it the way we wanted to and we’re not dragging it out for the sake of dragging it out. Knowing you have that creative freedom and being able to finish a story the way you feel it should finish… that’s what makes me want to keep doing this.

Pinocchio Vampire Slayer: Of Wood and Blood #1

Parkin: What will you miss most about the process of working on PVS? And what will you be happy to leave behind?

Jensen: I’ll miss the characters, definitely. Pinocchio especially has become very real to me, and I loved writing in his smart ass tone of voice. There’s nothing I’m really eager to leave behind, but I’m happy to be walking away at what I think (and hope) is a satisfying resolution.

Higgins: Hands down the characters. When you work on characters as closely and as long as we have (I count three years as a long time) you do develop attachments. And even though I think the book ends where it should, I still kinda wonder… what happens next? But I have new stories I’d like to tell with new characters who’ve been in the back of my mind biding their time, getting impatient, so it’ll be nice to have these characters’ story finished so I can move on to other projects.

Parkin: How do you feel you’ve evolved, Van as a writer, Dusty as an artist, and then as a creative team, over the course of the three books? And what have you learned about the business of comics along the way?

Jensen: I finally feel like I know how to format and write a script, for starters. I came in as a journalist and knew nothing about writing comics. When I look at the writing in the first PVS now, I cringe. Each book I’ve definitely grown a lot, though I still have so much to learn.

As a team, I think we’ve always been pretty good. We communicate a lot through the entire process, and we’re always batting around ideas. I do think that’s become even sharper as we’ve gone along to the point that we’ll often independently come up with the same idea.

Figuring out the business of comics was really its own learning curve. We had to understand contracts, royalties, conventions and marketing. The biggest surprise is probably how hard it is to make a living in comics. If I could offer up one piece of advice, I would just say to aspiring creators that you need to take the business side seriously. Ask questions about the economics of comics. Read closely through your contracts (or have a lawyer review them). And spend as much time at marketing your book as you did creating it.

Higgins: I think it’s easy to see my art has evolved throughout the books. I went in not having a particular style for myself (I drew the first 10 pages of the first volume three times trying to narrow down a look that I was happy with) so I borrowed from artists I liked. As I became more relaxed and confident in what I was doing I think my own style emerged from this collection of other artists whose work I admired. Van and I clicked from the beginning, it’s always been easy to work with him, something I haven’t always been able to do with other writers. I think we’re both good about keeping an open mind on ideas and respect each others opinions to look at them critically. We don’t always agree but we both respect each others ideas. As for the business of comics, being able to network and market are keys to being successful in this business.

Pinocchio Vampire Slayer: Of Wood and Blood #2

Parkin: Besides the title character, which characters have become your favorites to work on?

Jensen: Punchinello is a lot of fun as the grizzled veteran of the puppets. I also really enjoy the group of drunks at the Materasso di Caligula (Caligula’s Mattress), the bar in Rome that appears in books two and three. But probably my favorite character to write was the big villain of PVS 3. He has a lot of complexity, which made him really compelling.

Higgins: I really enjoy working with the Great Puppet Theater puppets, and if I had to pick a favorite from them, it’d have to be Harlequin; he acts a little goofier than the other characters which can make for some fun poses/expressions. At the same time, drawing the banter between Flavio and Il Capitano was always fun, too.

Parkin: What’s your favorite scene in this volume?

Jensen: A little secret: Each of these books, I try to write progressively more challenging stuff for Dusty to draw. PVS 2 had a crypt made of skulls and a sea battle. Well, PVS 3 has a fight on a hot air balloon and a battle on runaway coaches barreling along a mountain road … and that’s just in the first half! I offer up that tidbit as an apology, because my favorite scene (which is way crazier than any of that) would be a pretty major spoiler.

Higgins: Well, I’m not finished yet but, although it may change as I get closer to the end of the book, I really enjoyed the beginning. There’s a scene with palm trees and drawing the stark beach and the shadows of the leaves across Pinocchio’s face, I was just really happy with the way it turned out, like you could almost hear the ocean waves crashing against the shore and seagulls overhead. There’s tons of other scenes that are fun too. After drawing a chase scene, I’m actually starting to like drawing horses.

Parkin: SLG has moved to a digital first serialization format with their publications, which you guys are doing for the final volume. What drove the decision to release it like that? And how do it work out for Knights of the Living Dead, Dusty?

Jensen: SLG has been good to us, so we wanted to support and commit to the new digital first format. And it’ll give fans a chance to read PVS 3 seven months before they could have otherwise.

Higgins: We were able to get the first two volumes out within a year of each other, but the third volume is so much bigger even before I decided to do Knights of the Living Dead, I wasn’t going to finish it in the same time frame. The third book is almost twice as long as the first one, and I have a 1-year-old in the house now, which means I don’t have as much time to work as I did when I was working on the first two volumes. For the sake of fans who’ve been waiting to see what happens after the cliffhanger at the end of book 2, we thought this would be a good way to let them see the story before the print version is released. Knights of the Living Dead has been pretty successful with the digital release so far and considering the popularity PVS has had, I expect it’ll do well in the digital market.

Parkin: What else are you guys working on right now? And do you have plans to work on something else together in the future?

Jensen: We actually just decided to do a new comics project together. It’ll be an all-ages superhero story, very lighthearted and fun. But that’s a ways off.

I have the Snow White: Through a Glass, Darkly series coming out soon from SLG. That’s with artist Robin Holstein. Beyond that, I’m prepping a webcomic to launch this year, and artist Jose Pimienta is currently illustrating my graphic novel The Leg, which is the story of Santa Anna’s disembodied leg adventuring across 1930s Mexico.

Higgins: Van talked me into working on a new project with him after PVS 3 (okay all he had to do was ask, I think it’s an awesome concept). I’m also hoping to finally work on a project I’ve had in mind since before the first Pinocchio Vampire Slayer book. I’d originally intended to work on it after PVS was finished, but then ideas for PVS 2 and PVS 3 got in the way. Still, drawing takes time, so you’ll probably see the project I work on with Van long before that project is finished, unless I win the lotto and can draw/create full-time.

Be sure to check out the entire first issue of the final Pinocchio Vampire Slayer volume right here on Robot 6.

Drunk Hulk

Crime | A drunken Coventry, England, man was arrested for selling drugs outside a nightclub while dressed as the Incredible Hulk. According to the article, “Police were alerted by his costume which was based on the TV and film character who becomes green and superhuman when angry.” [Coventry Telegraph]

Creators | Dinosaur Comics creator Ryan North discusses his work on BOOM!’s upcoming Adventure Time comic. [ComicsAlliance]

Creators | Colleen Doran posts some character designs she worked up years ago for a never-completed animation project written by Warren Ellis; she admits to using Star Trek actor George Takei as the model for the main character. [A Distant Soil]

Creators | Chad Michael Murray chats with his hometown paper about his debut graphic novel, Everlast, which had its genesis in a visit from a missionary who said that the end times are coming, and only 144,000 people will be saved: “In that, I thought, what if our world was to end and only a number of people would be left to reign, to give mankind a second chance? How would they be chosen? Out of that just stemmed this really cool story of people who are soldiers who need to find the chosen, the people who are destined to survive the end of days.” [The Buffalo News]

Publishing | Tom Spurgeon continues his year-end interview series by talking to Fantagraphics’ Kim Thompson. [The Comics Reporter]

Green River Killer

Graphic novels | Duane Swierczynski recommends three true-crime graphic novels. [NPR]

Publishing | Publisher Dan Vado recounts “five things we survived at SLG Publishing,” including rodents and bees. [Living Well, Beyond My Means]

Commentary | In their regular “The Catch-Up” feature, Noel Murray and Oliver Sava “kick around” the Vertigo series Y: The Last Man. Murray had only read the first volume previously, while Sava bought every issue when they were released. [The A.V. Club]

Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer: Of Wood and Blood #1

The third and final volume of Van Jensen and Dusty Higgins’ Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer trilogy will debut next month as a serialized digital comic, available through the SLG Publishing website and comiXology.

Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer: Of Wood and Blood picks up where the cliffhanger ending of the second volume left off, with Pinocchio and his friends shipwrecked and Carlotta in the clutches of the vampires. The first issue will be available for free, and each subsequent issue will be 99 cents. Jensen said they decided to serialize the book digitally to support SLG publisher Dan Vado’s digital first initiative, in which SLG comics debut electronically. A print edition of Of Wood and Blood is planned for summer 2012.

You can check out the cover for the second issue, which also comes out in January, after the jump.

*****

Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer: Of Wood and Blood #2

]]> http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2011/12/third-pinocchio-vampire-slayer-coming-digitally-in-january/feed/ 0 http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2011/12/previews-what-looks-good-for-february/ http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2011/12/previews-what-looks-good-for-february/#comments Thu, 08 Dec 2011 22:02:03 +0000 Michael May http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/?p=99535

Judge Bao and the Jade Phoenix

It’s time once again for our monthly trip through Previews looking for cool, new comics. As usual, we’re focusing on graphic novels, collected volumes and first issues so that I don’t have to come up with a new way to say, “ Wonder Woman is still awesome!” every month. And I’ll continue letting Tom and Carla do the heavy lifting in regards to DC and Marvel’s solicitations.

Also, please feel free to play along in the comments. Tell me what I missed that you’re looking forward to or – if you’re a comics creator – mention your own stuff.

Archaia

Judge Bao and the Jade Phoenix - A detective story set in ancient China. Plus: cool name.

Avatar

Dicks #1 – Garth Ennis and John McCrea’s humor makes my top hat explode and my monocle fly off my face, but I remember this being pretty popular back in the day and I imagine that it’s new presentation in color and leading into a new storyline could make it popular again.

Bongo

Ralph Wiggum Comics #1 – This, on the other hand, is exactly my kind of funny. Kind of like 30 Days of Night, I’m astonished no one’s thought of it before. Too bad it’s just a one-shot, but hearing that Sergio Aragones is one of the contributors makes me want to poke myself with my Viking helmet to see if I’m dreaming.

Terror on the Planet of the Apes #1

Boom!

Terror on the Planet of the Apes #1 – Boom continues its domination of the Planet of the Apes by reprinting classic stories from Marvel’s time with the concept. Between Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Boom’s other PotA comics, I’ve been itching to read these stories.

Adventure Time #1 – As much a welcome no-brainer as Ralph Wiggums Comics. Oh, man. Now I want a crossover!

Dark Horse

Conan the Barbarian #1 – Not only does this have Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan; it also features one of my favorite Conan characters, Bêlit the pirate queen.

BPRD Hell on Earth: The Long Death #1 – The Mignola-verse is managing to come out with some kind of first issue or collected volume just about every month now. That’s amazing. In this mini-series, the team returns to the spooky woods from New World.

Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi #1 – If this had come out fifteen years ago when I was still voraciously devouring all the Star Wars EU history I could get my hands on, I would’ve been dancing like a Twi’lek slave girl over finally getting the story of how the Jedi came to be. It’s one of the few events in Star Wars history that haven’t yet been explored.

Dark Horse Presents #9 – Featuring Tarzan, Lobster Johnson, and the world’s largest pirate ship. Not in the same story, unfortunately, but still pretty cool.

DC Universe Presents #6

DC

DC Universe Presents #6 – The Challengers of the Unknown take over the title with a beautiful, fantastic cover by Ryan Sook.

Legends of the Dark Knight: Jim Aparo - This isn’t even out yet and I’m already impatient for Volume 2.

Northlanders, Volume 6: Thor’s Daughter - I’ve been looking forward to finally trying out Northlanders with this volume. Telling the story of the Siege of Paris through the eyes of a Viking woman is a great hook.

Dynamite

Warriors of Mars #1 – Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter stories couldn’t be more different in tone from Edwin Lester Arnold’s goofy Lieutenant Gullivar Jones: His Vacation, but the similarities in concepts (Southern soldiers transported to Mars where they fall in love with princesses) has had fans and writers making connections between them for decades, including Alan Moore in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Now Dynamite’s taking a turn with Carter’s princess (or her people, anyway) kidnapping Gullivar’s.

First Second

Friends With Boys - I’m all for three things: First Second publications, Faith Erin Hicks comics, and stories about people learning to communicate with people unlike themselves. No, wait: four things. Ghost stories.

The Big Town

Fantagraphics

The Big Town - Charles Schulz’ son wrote this novel (the last in his jazz-age trilogy) about the end of the Roaring Twenties and “the role of business, crime, morality, and love in our lives.” It’s not comics, but it sounds ambitious and transporting.

Humanoids

Celestial Bibendum – New York is now on the Seine and there’s a lonely seal named Diego living in it. That’s weird enough that I’d like to know more.

IDW

Road Rage #1 – You might think that the short story “Trucks” was Stephen King’s ultimate homage to the Richard Matheson novella Duel. After all, “Trucks” was collected in Night Shift and King himself directed the movie adaptation of it, Maximum Overdrive featuring Emilio Estevez, AC/DC, and a giant Green Goblin mask. What you might not know is that King also collaborated with his son Joe Hill on a biker-gang novella called Throttle that’s more directly inspired by Duel (which you probably remember was also adapted to film as Stephen Spielberg’s first feature-length project). IDW is now adapting both Duel and Throttle to comics with this four-issue mini-series.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Volume 1: Change is Constant – The first issues of the new, ongoing series are collected.

Jack Avarice is the Courier - I love the way IDW released this mini-series: weekly over the course of a single month, then the entire collection the month after that. I’d love to know how it sold for them, but for me as a consumer, that’s a perfect system.

Thief of Thieves

Image

Thief of Thieves #1 – Some new guys named Robert Kirkman and Nick Spencer team up to write one of those crime comics the kids love these days.

Glory #23 – Rob Liefeld’s Extreme relaunch continues to impress me with the talent it’s choosing. In this case, Joe Keatinge (Popgun) and Ross Campbell (Shadoweyes) offer a very different take on the Wonder Woman archetype.

King City - Brandon Graham’s masterwork is finally collected.

Marvel

Winter Soldier #1 – The closest thing we’re going to get to a Black Widow comic right now.

Ka-Zar by Mark Waid and Andy Kubert, Volume 2 - Ka-Zar vs. Thanos. ‘Nuff said.

Metropolitan

Journalism - A collection of short comics by cartoonist/war-reporter Joe Sacco.

Moonstone

The Lone Ranger: Vendetta - The concealed cowpoke and Tonto investigate a serial killer with possible connections to the Ranger’s dead nemesis, Butch Cavendish.

Rohan at the Louvre (French edition)

NBM

Rohan at the Louvre - A newly famous mangaka meddles with a cursed painting deep in the bowels of the famous museum. This will not end well.

Oni

Sixth Gun, Volume 3 – Trade-waiters have reason to whoop it up now that the next installment of the awesome Weird Western is on its way.

Courtney Crumrin, Volume 1: The Night Things Special Edition – The comic that put Ted Naifeh on so many radars gets color and a hardcover.

SLG

Malleus Maleficarum: A Guide to Catching Witches - Everyone’s favorite Inquisitorial treatise on How to Hunt and Torture Pagans, the Homeless, and Other People You Don’t Like is adapted to comics.

Top Shelf

Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland – One of the last projects Pekar worked on before his death is also – according to Alan Moore’s intro – “one of [his] very greatest works.”

That’s it for me. What are you looking forward to?

Explorer: The Mystery Boxes

It’s time once again for our monthly trip through Previews looking for cool, new comics. As usual, we’re focusing on graphic novels, collected volumes and first issues so that I don’t have to come up with a new way to say, “ Mouse Guard is still awesome!” every month. And I’ll continue letting Tom and Carla do the heavy lifting in regards to DC and Marvel’s solicitations.

Also, please feel free to play along in the comments. Tell me what I missed that you’re looking forward to or – if you’re a comics creator – mention your own stuff.

Amulet

Explorer: The Mystery Boxes - With the Flight anthologies done, the all-ages version, Flight Explorer has morphed into this. I expect it to be as lovely as its predecessors and especially like the Mystery Box theme.

Archie

Jinx – J Torres and Rick Burchett’s graphic novel aimed at tween girls.

Kevin Keller, Volume 1 and Kevin Keller #1 – Archie collects the first appearances and mini-series of their major, gay character and also launches his ongoing series.

Ardden

Flash Gordon: Vengeance of Ming – The third volume in Ardden’s Flash Gordon series.

Ferals

Avatar

Ferals #1 – David Lapham writes werewolves.

Atmospherics, Color Edition – Warren Ellis and Ken Meyer’s re-mastered and newly painted story about a woman who’s either a disturbed witness to a UFO attack or a heroin-using serial killer.

Bongo

Simpsons Illustrated #1 – Bongo launches a Best Of series collecting material from various Simpsons titles.

Boom!

Steed and Mrs. Peel #1 – Reprinting Grant Morrison and Ian Gibson’s 1990 Eclipse Comics story of the other Avengers.

Peanuts #1 – Kicking off the regular, monthly series with new stories as well as reprints of Schulz’s Sunday strips.

Campfire

Jungle Book - Campfire’s artwork can often be perfunctory, but I like the whimsy of Amit Tayal’s cover for this one.

Cartoon Books

Bone: Quest for the Spark, Book 2 – The second installment in Tom Sniegoski’s series of novels set in Jeff Smith’s world (with illustrations by Smith himself).

Lobster Johnson: The Burning Hand

Dark Horse

Lobster Johnson: The Burning Hand #1 – Mike Mignola’s pulp hero returns for a five-issue mini-series.

The Monstermen and Other Scary Stories - I love Gary Gianni’s linework anyway, but I especially dug his Corpus Monstrum/Monstermen stories that appeared for a while as back-up features in Hellboy comics. This volume features Gianni’s tuxedo-wearing, medieval knight fighting zombie cowboys, squid pirates, abominable snowmen, and mustachioed skulls.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – War #1 – I’m pretty much done with the Star Wars Expanded Universe, but if you’re not or are curious about it, Dark Horse is billing this as a major jump-on point to the part that covers the ancient period of the Star Wars galaxy.

Compleat Terminal City - All fourteen issues of Dean Motter and Michael Lark’s retro-scifi/noir series.

Mighty Samson: Judgment - Probably as close as we’re going to get to a Thundarr the Barbarian comic.

King Conan: The Phoenix on the Sword #1 – This four-issue mini-series adapts Robert E Howard’s first Conan story.

Dark Horse Presents #8 – Features a BPRD eulogy for Hellboy and a new Tarzan story.

DC

Justice League #5 – Looks like the team’s finally together.

Frankenstein vs. OMAC

Frankenstein: Agent of SHADE #5 and OMAC #5 – As a faithful reader of Jeff Lemire’s Frankenstein, I”m actually kind of excited that this will give me some motivation to check out OMAC, which I’m hearing good things about.

Xombi - The biggest casualty (for me, anyway) of the New 52 gets its collection.

Drawn and Quarterly

Goliath - The David and Goliath story told from Goliath’s viewpoint through the filter of corporate bureaucracy and presented in a lovely, minimalist style.

Dynamite

The Lone Ranger #1 – I tried Dynamite’s first Lone Ranger series, was disappointed that it wanted to stretch the familiar origin story into a multi-issue arc, and immediately dropped it. Assuming that won’t be the case this time – and noticing that it’s written by Ande Parks, whose writing I’ve enjoyed very much on other things – I’m up for another try.

First Second

Olympians, Volume 4: Hades, Lord of the Dead – The latest in George O’Connor’s wonderfully exciting and insightful review of the the most important characters from Greek mythology. Hades has always been a favorite of mine, so I’m especially looking forward to this one.

Silence of Our Friends - “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Edmund Burke is supposed to have originated that quote, but it was driven home for me by Vicente Amorim’s 2008 film, Good about good Germans who were too afraid of the Nazis to assist their Jewish neighbors in WWII. But even that gave me some comfortable, historical and geographical distance from the people and events it was talking about. I expect that Silence of Our Friends, about the civil rights movement in the ’60s, will hit even closer to home.

The Sincerest Form of Parody

Fantagraphics

The Sincerest Form of Parody: The Best 1950s MAD-Inspired Satirical Comics - I can’t decided if I’m more interested in the historical context of what folks were parodying in the ’50s or just looking at some cool Jack Davis and Kirby art that I’ve never seen before.

Hermes

The Phantom: The Complete Sundays, Volume 1: 1939-1943 – I like daily strips too, but Sunday comics are the best.

Humanoids

Whispers in the Walls – Guillermo del Toro’s co-writer from The Devil’s Backbone goes solo on this tale of horror at a Czechoslovakian children’s hospital in the late ’40s.

IDW

Infestation 2 #1 – Since I’m not a zombie fan, I passed up the first Infestation even while I was loving the idea of connecting all those weird, incongruous universes. This time around it’s Lovecraftian demons, which is not only a more appealing concept to me personally; it also makes a lot of sense from a dimension-crossing standpoint. That something exists tying 30 Days of Night and Dungeons and Dragons together with Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles gives me all the joy I’ll ever need.

Danger Girl: The Danger-Sized Treasury Edition - I’ve been wanting to check out Danger Girl for a while now. This collects the first three stories to get me started.

Danger Girl: Revolver

Danger Girl: Revolver #1 – And here’s the new story.

Womanthology: Heroic - The controversial Kickstarter sensation comes to life.

Doctor Who #13 – Occasionally I have to break my rule about only mentioning new series. Josh Fialkov’s taking over Doctor Who for four issues to put the Doctor in 1941 Casablanca is one of those occasions. It starts here.

Steve Canyon, Volume 1: 1947-1948 - I read these stories when Checker published them and was eager for more. Unfortunately, Checker quit, but now Milton Caniff’s globe-trotting pilot is at IDW in a great-looking hardcover.

Image

Fatale #1 – Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ supernatural noir comic has everyone’s mouths watering, including mine. I’d buy it for the “Beauty” cover alone, though the “Beast” one looks cool too.

Prophet #21 – Two of my favorite artists, Brandon Graham and Simon Roy are collaborating on this, with a cover by Marian Churchland. That’s the exact opposite team of whatever I expected from a continuation of a Rob Liefeld book. Seriously: good on Liefeld. I’m also impressed that he’s not just starting the numbering over again with #1. Seems like that would be the obvious thing, especially with the book going in such a new direction, creatively, but it’s because it’s surprising and counter-intuitive that I like it. And it’s not even like he’s cashing in on a milestone issue-number. If my calculations are correct, he’s counting two mini-series (one, ten-issues; the other, nine), a one-shot, and an annual to get to 21. If this is what we can expect from the new Extreme, and apparently it is, my interest is piqued.

Whispers #1 – I find the Luna Brothers interesting enough that a new, supernatural thriller by one of them gets a check-out.

The Intrepids

The Intrepids, Volume 1 - Teens vs mad scientists (and a cyborg bear).

Marvel

Scarlet Spider #1 – The latest spin-off for the Spider-Man franchise.

Amazing Spider-Man #677 and Daredevil #8 – I like a couple of things about this crossover. First, like DC’s Frankenstein/OMAC one, it’s pretty unobtrusive. Second, Mark Waid’s writing both parts of it.

Alpha Flight #8 – SOB! I’ll miss you, Alpha Flight!

Wolverine and X-Men Alpha and Omega #1 – I’d usually feel ungenerous towards a mini-series spin-off of a comic that’s only four issues old, but Brian Wood is writing it and that bears looking into.

X-Men Legacy #260.1 – Christos Gage takes over from Mike Carey. I’m sad to see Carey go, but intrigued to see what Gage has planned. I hear good things about his Avengers Academy.

Daredevil by Mark Waid, Volume 1 - Waid and Paolo Rivera’s critically acclaimed run for trade-waiters.

Moonstone

The Big Book of Kolchak: The Night Stalker – Collects the first seven, long-out-of-print Moonstone Kolchak stories.

Oni

Possessions, Volume 3: Better House Trap - Sadly, it’s only recently that Ray Fawkes’ name has been on my radar. Now that it is, I want to check out his slapstick series about a possessed little girl trying to escape the loving, nurturing environment of the haunted house that traps her.

Wasteland

Wasteland #33 – Oni is celebrating Antony Johnston’s post-apocalyptic series’ going monthly with a $1 kick-off issue. I’ve fallen extremely behind in reading it, but it was one of my favorite comics at the time I decided to trade-wait it.

The Avalon Chronicles, Volume 1: Once in a Blue Moon – I’m a sucker for stories about young people who get transported to magical worlds where they discover things about themselves. Especially ones as nicely drawn as this one.

Papercutz

Monster Mess - Lewis Trondheim’s story of two kids who discover their ability to bring monsters to life (and have them fight each other) just by drawing them.

Putnam

Fangbone! Third-Grade Barbarian, Volumes 1 and 2 - It’s a cute enough concept, but Michael Rex’s art and Fangbone’s deadly serious expression on the covers are what sells it.

Russ Cochran

Sunday Funnies #1 – This is kind of brilliant. I’ll just let the publisher describe it:  ” A monthly, 32-page, full-size comic section containing historic Sunday pages from as far back as 1895, and including favorites such as Gasoline Alley, Little Nemo, Krazy Kat, and many other classic Sunday pages that you’ve probably never seen before. Each issue … will be a full-size 22″x16″ comic section, containing full page Sunday comics in full color. These pages are coming from the archives of Ohio State University, which, thanks to Bill Blackbeard, has the largest and most comprehensive collection of Sunday comics in existence. The retail price will be $10 and I will be selling subscriptions, 12 monthly issues for $100.” Should go well next to Wednesday Comics collections.

Bettie Page in Danger

SHH

Bettie Page in Danger #1 – Even more brilliant. A fumetti using real Bettie Page photos to tell a story about the pin-up queen’s career fighting zombies, mad scientists, and other naked ladies.

SLG

Sparko – This sounds a little like Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere with the Thames replacing London’s Underground. I don’t mean to make that sound like a bad thing. Coming from SLG and including a murder mystery, goth goblins, and a pickpocket named Belle, I trust that it’s not.

Tor

Girl Genius Omnibus, Volume 1: Agatha Awakens – The Hugo-winning, steampunk webcomic gets the deluxe hardcover treatment.

And that’s it for me. What did I miss?

Knights of the Living Dead

Artist Dusty Higgins has a knack for getting involved with projects with titles that make you scream, “Hey, why didn’t I think of that?” Over the last couple years, he’s worked with Van Jensen on the Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer series of graphic novels, the third of which is due next year from SLG Publishing. It of course pits the little wooden boy against monsters whose weaknesses include wooden stakes through the heart.

Now he’s teamed with writer Ron Wolfe for Knights of the Living Dead, a story that brings zombies to Camelot. The first issue is now available for free from SLG Publishing’s website, where you can also buy the second issue for 99 cents.

Wolfe says not to let the title fool you – the book is no spoof.

“I love the title, but don’t let it mislead you. The book is no spoof on zombies. It’s as dark as anything I’ve ever written,” Wolfe told Robot 6. His previous work includes Death’s Door and Old Fears, both horror novels co-written with John Wooley, as well as Hellraiser comics for Marvel. “That said, the premise allows for some playing around. But I really think, if I just happened to pick it up, this thing would trouble me for some time.”

Wolfe originally wrote it as a prose short story that he showed to Higgins, who was still at work on Pinocchio’s earlier adventures.

“I remember not being able to put the story down, and after I finished it, I just walked over and said, ‘Can I draw this as a graphic novel?’ Ron was kind enough to let me,” Higgins said. “I’m a big creature geek, but zombies are easily the top of the list. I liked zombies before they were cool! Just saying, if Pinocchio Zombie Slayer made sense, it would’ve been Pinocchio Zombie Slayer.”

from Knights of the Living Dead

From there, Wolfe and Higgins worked to expand the premise into what ultimately became three different stories.

“The first story based on Ron’s original prose came out to a little over 50 pages, which is set when Guinevere has been judged to burn at the stake for infidelity, but you know, with zombies, or ‘the walking starvation’ as Ron calls it, which I think is a really cool way to say zombies,” Higgins said. “To sell it as a graphic novel, we wanted something more in the 100+ page range. Ron had written such a complete and strong story, I was afraid it would have ruined the essence of the story to try to drag it out. I talked Ron into the idea of writing several stories within the Arthurian legend that didn’t necessarily follow the same characters and plots. I’m a big fan of the method of storytelling in Northlanders, and thought this would be the perfect way to continue telling Arthurian zombie legends without ruining the first story.”

Wolfe said the second and third story are set in the aftermath of the zombie plague.

“The last one, called ‘The Deep, Deep Shallows,’ is something of a reaction on my part to sparkly vampires and zombies that behave by the rules,” Wolfe said. “We all know what to do in case of a zombie attack, but what if worse things are waiting? What if we don’t know how to respond? What if the worst of all turn out to be beautiful things in the sunlight?”

With zombies popping up everywhere in pop culture nowadays, Wolfe said he tried to ignore them beyond his own story.

“Once I started writing about brain-crunchers, I shut off reading about them, trying not to think of them in any terms outside my own story,” he said. “Basically, when it comes to zombies, I’m a Romero man. George Romero told me decisively for a newspaper interview that zombies lurch and shamble, they don’t run, and I believe him. Dusty illustrated the interview with a wonderfully green caricature of Romero as a zombie himself, complete with those big glasses he wears. Even so, this zombie-Romero looked every bit the director, the man in charge. He appeared to have lost nothing to zombification, and might even have gained. And now that I think of it, the idea of the confident, capable zombie might have lingered in my head, and eventually worked its way into Knights of the Living Dead. You’ll see what I mean.”

Higgins, meanwhile, said his inspiration came from comics. “I’ve seen a lot of zombie comics, but haven’t seen anyone draw a zombie better than Tony Moore. That’s what I want my zombies to look like… except, you know, medieval.”

Zombies, of course, are just one element of the story. Readers can also expect to see King Arthur, Lancelot and the Lady of the Lake, in addition to Guinevere, who is at the center of the first story.

“I had a hard time settling on the look of the knights in the book, whether they should be historically accurate or not,” Higgins said. “The thing about it is, Arthurian knights wore kind of boring armor. Plate wasn’t invented then, and even chain mail wasn’t that prevalent. Still, artists throughout history have drawn Arthurian knights with varying degrees of armor and chain mail, and let’s face it, the story has zombies in it, how historical do you need to be? I ended up going with plate, since it allowed me to create very individualized armor that made it easier to differentiate between each knight.”

Higgins and Wolfe both heavily researched the project, and Wolfe credits Higgins in drawing everything from the gruesome to “images of delicacy.”

“Fans of his Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer books will see a resemblance, but his drawing shifts through several other styles in this book, from gruesome and splattery to images of delicacy and, I would say, elegance,” Wolfe said. “I’m a newspaper cartoonist also, and Dusty assigned me a couple pages to draw where the story calls for the appearance of a children’s picture book, just so I could jump in a little. But I couldn’t have drawn anything close to this — couldn’t have asked for a better illustrator. He pulls a lot of surprises.”

Susie Cagle

Legal | Susie Cagle, the cartoonist covering Occupy Oakland who was tear-gassed last month, was arrested early Thursday morning during the protests in Oakland. According to her father, cartoonist Daryl Cagle, Susie was being held at Santa Rita Jail in Alameda County, Calif. and was charged with unlawful assembly, even though she was there covering the event and had a press badge. Update: According to her Twitter account, Susie Cagle is out of jail and was charged with a misdemeanor, “present at raid.” [Fishbowl LA]

Legal | Tom Spurgeon offers more details on comic artist Steve Rude’s Halloween altercation, which led to the Nexus creator’s arrest that same night. According to Rude’s wife by way of Spurgeon, Rude was in costume handing out Halloween candy to kids trick-or-treating when his neighbors’ dogs began barking. Rude threw rocks at the neighbors’ fence, which led to a confrontation with them. Rude tore the neighbor’s shirt and pushed him, leading to the assault charges. Rude suffered physical abuse during the arrest and in jail before posting bail. [The Comics Reporter]

Rex Ogle

Publishing | DC Comics Assistant Editor Rex Ogle has reportedly left the publisher for a position at Scholastic. Ogle, who joined DC in 2008, worked on such titles as Blue Beetle, Justice League International and Justice League Dark, and wrote the recent Flashpoint: The World of Flashpoint miniseries. His departure follows that of Associate Editor Janelle Asselin, who left DC in late September for a job at Disney’s magazine division. [Bleeding Cool]

Digital | Jhonen Vasquez is preparing Johnny the Homicidal Maniac for its debut in digital form in January and notes that some fans have complained he’s making minor corrections to his original work: “I get what they’re saying, but it seems too weird to me to think that fixing typos, mistakes that were made not creatively, but simply on a grammatical level, changes the overall vibe or message of the book (be kind to others or stab them). Like I said, I get it, but I think the reaction is a bit…reactionary. I even made a joke about it in the announcement in the form of a George Lucas joke, but it went over some heads and those heads be upset about me adding Yodas into scenes where there weren’t Yodas before.” [Mindspill]

Uncanny X-Men #1

Creators | Kieron Gillen discusses working on the recently relaunched Uncanny X-Men, as well as his career as a video game journalist: “As a working creator there’s a limitation… You don’t want to pick fights, but there’s stuff where if you start doing critical theory, it becomes picking fights. So that’s what I kind of miss. I still do bits of games criticism. I do little bits of music journalism. Give me another 12 hours in the day and I’d still be doing it. I’m very into to the contextualization of culture. I talk to my own critics not to say, “You’ve got my view wrong!” but to generally say thank you. I’m always very pleased when I see someone hammer out 10,000 words on something I wrote… Being a journalist for as long as I was — you write a review, post it, and within hours you have 800 people calling you a c*nt just for having an opinion and giving something an 8/10 rather than a 9/10. And that makes you tough.” [ComicsAlliance]

Creators | Writer Joe Keatinge talks abut his other comic series announced at the New York Comic Con, Hell Yeah “I know where it will eventually end, but my hope is to not get there for a very, very long time. The way I look at is I know where the series will begin and where it will end. I have this all mapped out, but I’m giving Andre and I the freedom to go where we want. Maybe we’ll take short detours. Maybe we’ll go on entirely different path. That said, Hell Yeah is the direct result of almost thirty years of comics passion put into one book. I could write it for just about forever. A big goal of the book was to start something in the superhero genre, a genre in which I believe all others can exist, and go as far away from that as possible as well as exploring what other potential it has.” [iFanboy]

Johnny the Homicidal Maniac

“In January, we will start re-releasing Johnny the Homicidal Maniac as digital comics. When that one comes out, issue #1 (my prediction) will become the top selling digital comic, outselling even Marvel and DC titles. We are going to take our time with that one, as I want to make sure we have all of our outlets selling it at exactly the same time.”

– SLG Publisher Dan Vado, discussing the company’s recent decision to release comics digitally first

Legal

Legal | Authorities in Clinton Township, Michigan, tracked down two men mentioned in police reports by comics retailer Michael George after his wife’s 1990 murder who were never questioned. The judge gave police 48 hours to locate and question them. One of the men passed away, while the other, John Fox, will be questioned Friday about a family car that is similar to one seen near the comic book store where Barbara George was killed. [Detroit Free Press]

Digital comics | Heidi MacDonald talks to SLG Publisher Dan Vado about plans to release the company’s serialized comics digitally rather than in print. Vado reveals SLG’s popular Johnny the Homicidal Maniac by Jhonen Vasquez will be released in digital format. [The Beat]

Comics | Lisa Fortuner notes that this week’s Green Lantern Corps #1 story shares a title with a Nazi propaganda film: “That’s a beheading, followed by cutting a woman in half, followed by the loss of a finger, followed by a reference to an infamous Leni Riefenstahl film. For those of you who are new to the Internet and it’s population of history snobs, Leni Riefenstahl was an early 20th Century pioneer who made inroads for women in the field of Evil. She did a Nazi propaganda film called ‘Triumph of the Will’ which to this day is still inspiring horror of authoritarian power in film classes and museums. It is probably not the best choice of titles for a book where the main heroes are fueled by willpower.” [Written World]

Green Lantern #1

Comics | David Uzumeri highlights the continuity changes made to DC’s relaunched comics in their second week of release, from the total reboot of Deathstroke to Green Lantern #1: “This is Green Lantern #68,” he writes. [ComicsAlliance]

Publishing | Jim Shooter shares the complete contract he received from Marvel circa 2001for a story that was never published. [Jim Shooter]

Digital comics | King City creator Brandon Graham comments on comics piracy and the reaction of creators to it: “It always gets my ire up when I see creators and publishers saying shit like ‘If you’re illegally downloading our comics, you’re stealing from us’ –I don’t think it’s a good idea to try to shame readers into paying for books. Someone yelling at me for being a crook doesn’t make me want to give them money. I feel like part of this job is to get people excited about what you’re putting out and making something for them to read that’s worth being excited about. Granted I do think that ideally the people putting the stuff out should have a say in how it’s presented but The harsh cold reality is that downloading comics is free, easy and without consequences. I feel like the trick is to make a book that is something worth owning in print. I think about Head shops carrying underground comix next to weed pipes or EC comics being accused of corrupting the youth or Mad magazine or Heavy metal full of nudity from the future. Selling cool to the kids– don’t let your mom see these comics! I have faith in my own work,and the comics that I’m excited about I feel like if enough people saw them they would want to own them on paper. When I find some amazing comic online one of my first reactions is always –Where can I find a copy of this.? for me I can only understand how comics sell by thinking about what I would buy. I think one of the strengths of comics on this internet is that we can show comics to such a huge audience outside of just who goes into comic shops. You can be their dealer instead of some scolding school principal.” [Royal Boiler (NSFW)]

Daredevil #1

Creators | Mark Waid is interviewed for the blog of Gallivan, White & Boyd, P.A., “one of the Southeast’s leading litigation and business law firms,” about his work on Daredevil, Matt Murdock’s law career and the problems he’s facing now that folks know he’s a masked vigilante: “The real problem for Matt gets back to the idea that a good attorney needs to be fairly invisible when it comes to the facts of the case. The moment the attorney becomes more of the focus of the trials and the evidence or the clients, you’ve got a problem. So then, it’s all about personality, and as we saw in issue one, it doesn’t always do the client any favors. So Matt’s now in a position where he loves trial law. It’s the thing he’s best at. He’s really good at it – [but] what can he do to use that knowledge to help others?” [Abnormal Use]

Creators | Allan Heinberg discusses Marvel’s Avengers: The Children’s Crusade, and the family dramas at the core of The Avengers and the X-Men: “”The emotional appeal of these teams for me has always been that they’re essentially large, dysfunctional families of outsiders who are desperately trying to find a place where they belong in a violent and terrifying world.” [USA Today]

Creators | Tom Batiuk talks about his work on Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft, and whether he’d ever consider doing a graphic novel: “Yeah, I think about that. It’s just that the time constraints are just too much to deal with. Between doing the two strips, and then this year I also was working on a big book collection — and between trying to juggle all those projects, there’s really no time to get involved with something like that. I think it’s an intriguing idea, and it would certainly allow you to just finally make that last break and go totally cinematic with it. I liken it to… I started out doing stand-up, just telling jokes, and then I evolved to sort of a sitcom where situations would kind of carry the narrative for a while. And now I’m kind of making movies.” [The Trades]

Evelyn Evelyn

Creators | Singer-songwriter Amanda Palmer chats about her comic debut with Evelyn Evelyn, a new Dark Horse graphic novel about conjoined twin sisters Eva and Lynn Neville. [USA Today]

Creators | Gene Luen Yang talks about his work on the new Avatar: The Last Airbender graphic novel and working in a collaborative situation for the first time: “A comic can express a single, unified vision a lot better than any other visual storytelling medium. When you’re working on a franchise, however, things just aren’t like that. You don’t have nearly as much control. But the flip side is that you get to mix your ideas with other people’s. You get to an up-close look at other people’s creative processes. And often, the results are bigger, and better, than what you could’ve pulled off on your own.” [Racebending.com]

Creators | Angelica Brenner is conducting a survey “for women who create, publish, sell, report on, or otherwise produce and promote comics.” [Hey, Women! Comics!]

Conventions | This weekend’s Detroit Fanfare, “the first comic book convention to be held in Detroit proper since 1975,” is profiled. [Press & Guide]

Comics | Ben Morse looks at several Hulk stories set in space. [Cool Kids Table]

Creativity | Sam Carbaugh sits in on a class by Rhymes With Orange cartoonist Hilary Price, who shares her secrets for coming up with ideas and making sure they are funny. [CCS Visiting Artist Blog]

Craft | Cartoonist Tom Pappalardo complains that Steve Jobs has made his job a lot harder by transforming all of technology into sleek rectangles—and robbing telephones, televisions, even newspapers. of their visual signatures. [tompappalardo.com]

SLG got into the digital game early, offering downloads of its comics from its website, and their strategy now seems to be to make the comics available in as many channels as possible: By direct download from their site as well as through iTunes (for the iBooks app), Nook, and the comiXology and iVerse services.

While this is an unusual step, there is a certain logic to it. Phil and Kaja Foglio did it years ago, switching Girl Genius from serialized comics to a free webcomic, and they found that sales of their graphic novels increased, while they were able to avoid the cost of laying out and printing the monthly comics. The Foglios already had a large fan base when they made the move, however. SLG has a diverse set of offerings, so it’s less of a slam dunk, but it’s worth watching to see if they can make digital-first distribution work.

Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer writer Van Jensen sends word that Dusty Higgins’ cover to the second volume of their undead-slaying trilogy is being turned into a limited edition state, which is available for pre-order on the SLG Publishing website. Check out the swell animated gif, which gives you a 360-degree look at it in all its glory.

This just over six-inch figure will be cast in high density polystone and will be nearly made to order in terms of its production run. It was designed by Figurebang Toys. Available exclusively from SLG, they will stop taking orders for this piece on Oct. 31. The statue will cost $189 for pre-orders, and those who place orders won’t be charged until the statue ships.

• Announcements at the Marvel panel included Jeff Parker and Patrick Zircher’s Hulk of Arabia arc, a new Deadpool arc, an Avengers Academy recruitment drive and Villains for Hire, a new spin on the Heroes for Hire concept. Also in the works: A series of Avengers Origins one-shots.

• T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents is coming back in November; the new comics will be written by Nick Spencer and drawn by Wes Craig.

• At the Marvel Digital panel, Marvel senior vice president of publishing David Gabriel announced that Marvel will begin simultaneous print and digital release of its Spider-Man and X-Men comics, starting next week with Amazing Spider-Man #666 and Spider Island line.

• DC released art for several of their New 52 comics. They also revealed Lois Lane’s new boyfriend.

• At the Vertigo panel, Executive Editor Karen Berger announced a new graphic novel called Marzi that would ba marketed to both young and old readers. She also said that Vertigo will launch a new Halloween anthology in October and a totally new series later this year.

• Writer Tim Seely (Hack/Slash) and artist Victor Drujiniu will collaborate on a four-issue The Occultist miniseries for Dark Horse.

• Following up on yesterday’s announcement of a Wally Wood collection, IDW announced John Romita, Sr.’s Amazing Spider-Man: Artist’s Edition. Also, IDW also announced that it is teaming up with DC to create the crossover Star Trek/Legion of Superheroes. Chris Roberson will write the comic, which will be published by IDW.

• In one of Riverdale’s unlikelier pairings, the Archie gang will meet KISS. Archie Comics and IDW share the KISS license now; IDW’s KISS series will launch next year.

• Drawn & Quarterly announced Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City, the latest in cartoonist Guy Delisle’s graphic memoirs-slash-travelogues.

• Van Jensen and Dusty Higgins announced a third volume of Pinocchio: Vampire Slayer.

• Anime Diet liveblogged the Stan Lee/Yoshiki and “Manga: Lost in Translation” panels.

• The Japanese publisher Square Enix is offering a free first volume of any of its 15 online manga, including Fullmetal Alchemist and Black Butler, for con-goers and Facebook fans, through August 10.

• Director Robert Rodriguez said he is still working with Frank Miller on the script for a Sin City 2 movie, but he plans to make it this year.

• Hugh Jackman confirmed that he will fight the Silver Samurai in Fox’s The Wolverine.

Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer: Of Wood and Blood

Van Jensen and Dusty Higgins will wrap up their epic Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer trilogy with the final volume next summer — Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer: Of Wood and Blood. Jensen debuted the cover and title in San Diego this week, and sent over a description of the book:

Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer: Of Wood and Blood, the final graphic novel in the trilogy, will be released in summer 2012 from SLG Publishing. The book picks up after the cliffhanger ending to Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer and the Great Puppet Theater as a human Pinocchio and his decimated band of slayers struggle onward in their fight against vampires. Weighing in at about 250 pages, Of Wood and Blood will mark an epic conclusion in the former puppet’s battles against the bloodsuckers.

You can find Van at the SLG Publishing booth this week.

Snow White: Through a Glass, Darkly

Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer writer Van Jensen dropped us a note about his next project, which attendees at HeroesCon last weekend had the chance to check out in the form of a five-page preview. Jensen and Val the Red Beard creator Robin Holstein are working on Snow White: Through a Glass Darkly, a new six-issue series due from SLG Publishing next year.

According to Jensen, the tagline for the book is, “We all think we know the story of Snow White, the poor girl who suffered under her evil stepmother. But what if the stepmother wasn’t evil after all? What if the mirror was evil?”

Look for it next spring, and in the meantime, be sure to check out Holstein’s webcomic, Val the Red Beard, which is about pirates in flying ships fighting monsters that live inside village-destroying storms. He’s posted seven strips so far, it looks like, so you’ll be getting in on the fun early.

SLG describes Stephen Coughlin’s series Sanctuary as part Lost, part Island of Dr. Moreau and part Jungle Book. The Jungle Book influence is easy to get from all the talking animals, but the other two aren’t as immediately apparent. At first Sanctuary reads more like Madagascar, a simple story about a bunch of funny animals hanging out at the zoo.

But things get strange quickly when Coughlin reveals that there are no visitors to this zoo and that the humans running the place may not be helping the animals. And then the first death occurs.

Sanctuary #1 can be downloaded for free from the SLG store.

Pepper Penwell and the Land Creature of Monster Lake
Written and Illustrated by Steph Cherrywell
SLG; $14.95

I hope it came through in my review of The Incredible Change-Bots that what I liked most about it was its ability to lovingly kid the things that Transformers fans like most about that cartoon while at exactly the same time successfully reproduce those qualities. That’s so difficult to do, which is why most of the time we see skewering, Mad Magazine-style parodies of things instead. As rare as it is though, lightning struck my reading pile again when I got to Pepper Penwell.

I wasn’t much into the kid-sleuth genre as a youngster, other than Hanna-Barbera’s Legion of Meddling Kids. I had one Hardy Boys book and a Tom Swift, but my childhood heroes were mostly grown-ups: James Bond, Sherlock Holmes; Hercule Poirot. It hasn’t been until my adult years that I’ve experienced much interest in stories about child detectives. Maybe it’s an attempt to re-experience childhood; maybe it’s just a search for great literature for my son; maybe my wife – a big Nancy Drew fan – is starting to influence me. Whatever the reasons, I’m finding myself drawn to stories about tween or teenaged detectives and titles like The Clue in the Crumbling Wall or The Case of the Mysterious Handprints.

These stories are the inspiration for Steph Cherrywell’s Pepper Penwell and the Land Creature of Monster Lake, a book about a genius girl detective who’s kicked out of her posh boarding school for uncovering so much crime at the institution that parents are beginning to pull their kids out. Having nowhere else to go, she visits her police inspector father in Monster Lake, a quiet village in the English countryside where he’s investigating the disappearance of a young girl. Pepper’s looking over the case files before she even arrives.

The Land Creature of Monster Lake isn’t a straight homage to these kinds of books. Like Incredible Change-Bots, it pokes a lot of good-natured fun at its genre. Almost all of Pepper’s old cases seem to involve weapons and tools made of ice for instance. “We simply can’t figure out how the thief did it. The only thing out of the ordinary at the crime scene is this mysterious puddle of water!” There’s also the cute, but unhelpful boy; the plucky friend; the smart-but-not-quite-as-smart-as-his-daughter father; and more suspicious villagers than you can wag a finger at.

Cherrywell doesn’t stop there either. As she says just after Pepper’s expelled, “The story of Pepper Penwell, Girl Detective was at an end. The story of Pepper Penwell, Girl Spunky Adventurer with Detective Elements, on the other hand – that one was just beginning.” And so The Land Creature of Monster Lake includes mysterious druids, an ancient vampire-hunting priest, a mad scientist, a spooky castle, and of course a weird creature that drools acid. All of this is blended together into a bona fide mystery that holds together as a story and makes sense at the end.

And it’s hilarious. The crotchety old priest for example spends his spare time writing strongly worded, illuminated letters to Stakes and Crosses Magazine protesting their selection of the Celtic as the Cross of the Decade. I laughed a lot at that guy.

Something else impressive about Pepper Penwell and the Land Creature of Monster Lake is that – like its title – it’s really long, but you don’t care. There are two-hundred pages, which might have been a chore had the book been less entertaining. But the laughs, the mystery, and the adventure are so consistently fun and funny that turning pages becomes a joy and each is as rewarding as the last. It could have gone for another two-hundred pages and I wouldn’t have minded. In fact, I hope the forty-something fake names of other books in the Pepper Penwell “series” that Cherrywell includes on the copyright page – The Dreadful Drapes, To Catch a Yorkshireman, etc. – are an indication that she’s got a lot more of this up her sleeve. I’m in the mood for more and while I could read some Nancy Drew, I’d much rather read more of this.

Justice League of America #55

Welcome to Food or Comics?, where every week we talk about what comics we’d buy on Wednesday based on certain spending limits — $15 and $30 — as well as what we’d get if we had extra money or a gift card to spend on what we call our “Splurge” item.

Check out Diamond’s release list or ComicList if you’d like to play along in our comments section.

Graeme McMillan

If I had $15 this week, I’d probably put it towards the latest issues of series I’ve been enjoying for awhile: Batman Inc. #4, New York Five #3, Justice League of America #55 – Yes, even with my nervousness over Brett Booth’s art – (All DC Comics, $2.99) as well as Jeff Parker and Gabe Hardman’s Hulk #31 (Marvel Comics, $3.99).

If I had $30, however, I’d probably put JLA back on the shelf and add The Arctic Marauder (Fantagraphics, $16.99), instead. I found myself enjoying Tardi’s Adventures of Adele Blanc Sec earlier this year, and Chris’s review has tipped me in favor of picking up this latest translation of his work.

Splurgewise, it’s a tough one – I’d like to pick up the collection of Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan’s second Demo series (DC/Vertigo, $17.99), but I see that the hardcover collection of Greg Rucka and Matthew Southworth’s spectacular Stumptown (Oni Press, $29.99) is out this week, and that really falls into the
category of having to have it. I’ll grab Demo next week.

Chris Mautner

It looks like I jumped the gun a bit last week as some of my picks arrive in stores this week, namely Arctic Marauder and New Character Parade. So feel free to add those books to your shopping list too. Unless, of course your store did actually did get them last week. Hooray for the Direct Market!

If I had $15:

The new Batman Inc. is a pretty safe bet for me, as is the latest (and, apparently penultimate) issue of Alan Moore’s Dodgem Logic magazine.

Whirlwind Wonderland

On the other hand, Sparkplug has a pair of pretty nifty books that I might pick up instead including Rina Ayuyang’s Whilrwind Wonderland, which I wrote about briefly, and Chris Cilla’s bizarre, surreal The Heavy Hand which is about .. well, caves, monsters, masked men and job seekers … I think. It’s pretty out there, but in a good way.

If I had $30:

The book of the week for me is easily The Cardboard Valise by Ben Katchor. Katchor is admittedly an acquired taste; it took me a few tries before I began to fully appreciate his work. He’s since become one of my favorite cartoonists — an utterly unique artist who uses the medium in ways that few, if any, dare to try. He doesn’t publish on anything resembling a regular schedule, so any new book from him is cause for celebration. If you want to learn more about Katchor and his work, you can read an interview by our own Sean T. Collins.

Splurge:

I’m not a huge Jeffrey Jones fan, but I’m willing to bet the new $80 coffee-table book A Life in Art is worth at least a flip through if not actual purchase. I’d also be looking pretty closely at the new Starstruck hardcover collection, and I bought all the initial issues.

Michael May

Marineman #4

If I had $15:

I’d start with the Lorna: Relic Wrangler one-shot ($3.99) from Image. Treasure hunters are always an easy sell with me. Next I’d add Marineman #4 ($3.99) because I love sea-themed superheroes and this is a good one. Echoes #4 ($3.99) also hits this week, as does Namor: First Mutant #8 ($2.99), so I’d get both of those too.

If I had $30:

I’d add Pepper Penwell and the Land Creature of Monster Lake ($14.95) from SLG because if there’s anything I like as much as treasure hunters it’s monster hunters and teen sleuths. Pepper Penwell is both of those things.

Splurge:

Like Brigid, I’d grab the Western Classics volume from Graphic Classics ($17.95). Graphic Classics has never disappointed me and I’m getting ready for a cowboy binge anyway. This is perfect timing.

Chris Arrant

Creepy Comics #5

Another busy week on my pull list at my local comic store, but $15 would still get me four titles. First up would be the newest installment of Creepy Comics #5 (Dark Horse, $4.99). Criminally under-rated, but I think these stories are really high quality stuff – I’m excited to see what Dave Lapham does in this issue. Second up would be Jonathan Hickman and Steve Epting’s new FF #1 (Marvel, $3.99) – a not-too-subtle re-jiggering of the Fantastic Four name and concept. Third would be the Wood + Kelly joint of New York Five #3 (DC/Vertigo, $2.99) – why can’t there be a music/college genre as big in comics as there is superheroes? Lastly would be Batman Incorporated #4 (DC, $2.99); this is such a refreshing title for me after all that’s gone on with Batman, and I hope both Morrison & Paquette are on this for a long time.

Oh, what’s this – I found an extra $15? In that case, I’ll call my LCS and tell them to hold a pair of Point One issues – Captain America #615.1 (Marvel, $2.99) and Thor #620.1 (Marvel, $2.99) to be exact. I’ll also get the Kirkman/Ottley Invincible #78 (Image, $2.99) and Remender/Ribic Uncanny X-Force #6 (Marvel, $3.99). Seriously, the latter – is it the best title in the X-Men family of books or is it just me?

For splurge’s sake, I’d plunk down some tall dollars on the Oni collection of Stumptown (Oni, $29.99). I loved this series in singles, but I feel buying it in trade is important – how else can I cajole Greg Rucka to do more of these when I see him at a convention?

Brigid Alverson

21: The Story of Roberto Clemente

This is a tough week, because the ratio of expensive, interesting graphic novels to cheap pulp entertainment is very high. Let’s see what we can do.

If I had $15…

I’d get the fifth volume of Time and Again ($10.99), a Korean series about ghost hunters that deserves more attention than it is getting. The stories stand on their own pretty well, so even though I haven’t read the last few volumes, I’m not worried about having to catch up. The stories definitely have an edge to them, but the art is really lovely. And that leaves me enough change to pick up the latest issue of The Sixth Gun, my favorite American supernatural story.

If I had $30…

I’d leave Time and Again on the shelf (for now) and go for 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente ($22.99). I’m not much of a sports fan, but there was a lot more to Clemente than baseball, and Wilfred Santiago’s biography has a real richness to it, bringing in Clemente’s background and upbringing and wrapping it all together in deceptively simple, almost primitive looking art. With this I can still get The Sixth Gun and add one more; I’ll take Fables #103 ($2.99) to round out the week’s reading.

Splurge….

So much to choose from! I’d get the third volume of Bunny Drop ($12.99), a charming manga about a young man who impulsively adopts an orphaned six-year-old girl. I really enjoyed the gentle humor of the first volume and would like to read more. The Graphic Classics Western Classics anthology ($17.95) is right up my alley, with classic tales of the west (like Zane Gray’s Riders of the Purple Sage) brought to life by a variety of artists. And I love NBM’s Louvre graphic novels, so how could I resist The Sky Over the Louvre ($19.00), the latest addition, which looks lush and beautiful.