Google+

Publishing | Marvel and DC Comics are among the first companies to join Google+ as a part of the Google + Pages initiative, along with other early adopters like the WWE, Angry Birds, The Muppets and Pepsi. Companies that initially joined Google+ back when it first launched had their accounts shut down as Google worked on “building a similarly optimized business experience for Google+” like they had for individuals. Google+ Pages launched yesterday. [The Source, Marvel.com]

Creators | Cartoonist Susie Cagle shares her account of being arrested last week during Occupy Oakland. [AlterNet]

Digital | Digital comics distributor iVerse Media has received a $4 million private-equity investment for the expansion of marketing and product development for its Comics+ app. [TechCrunch]

Comics | They can’t call it The Avengers, because, well, you know, but BOOM! Studios is reprinting the Eclipse series Steed and Mrs. Peel, written by Grant Morrison. The original miniseries, which ran in the early 1990s, comprised three issues, but BOOM! will be splitting it into six, priced at $3.99 each. [Multiversity Comics]

Resurrection Man #3

Creators | Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning discuss their work on DC’s Resurrection Man. [USA Today]

Creators | Robot 6 contributor Brigid Alverson and Anime News Network reporter Crystal Hodgkins interview Hiro Mashima, creator of the whimsical shonen manga Fairy Tail. [MTV Geek]

Retailers | Chris Sims tours the Marvel Retailer Resource Center, saying that it is “a neat idea with a lot of potential that could easily help retailers, with a few major bugs that still need to be fixed.” [ComicsAlliance]

Comics | Super Itch shows off some vintage issues of Stan Lee and Stan Goldberg’s teen comic Kathy the Teenage Tornado. [Super Itch]

Scene | Kevin Czap reports in on the comics scene in Cleveland, hometown to such legendary creators as Harvey Pekar, Bill Watterson, and Brian Michael Bendis, as well as a fresh crop of young artists and writers. [The Comics Journal]

Conventions | Margaret O’Connell takes the long view in her report on New York Comic Con, giving a good overall view of this year’s con and its evolution during its short life. [Sequential Tart]

This is not the Kodansha Comics Facebook Page

Some manga publishers do social media very well. Others don’t. Kodansha Comics took forever to even put up a website (and the one they have is pretty bare-bones—I think they just added a “News” section this week), and they told fans at San Diego Comic-Con that they expected to have Facebook and Twitter accounts by the end of the year—hardly an ambitious schedule. So an impatient fan has done it for them, creating a Kodansha USA fan page on Facebook, complete with logo and the note “I’m hoping if we can make a good fan page it will inspire the real Kodansha Comics USA will make one for them self.”

The only thing worse than having no Facebook page, of course, is having a bad one. When Tokyopop shut down earlier this year, they redirected the Tokyopop.com URL to their Facebook, which is now populated mainly by teenagers asking plaintively for the next volume of their favorite series. Which, the other teenagers sharply tell them, is not forthcoming (although there’s someone who wants to take up a collection and restart the company). Anyway, under the circumstances, it seems to be in rather bad taste to post pictures of Tokyopop’s booth at the German anime con Connichi. Most of the responses to the pictures are along the lines of “Come back to the U.S., Tokyopop!” but one Ryk Holm expressed the disgruntled fan point of view: “Hey, thanks for leavin’ me hangin’ with unfinished titles. Then your gonna post shit here to show me what you are still doin’ elsewhere. No thanks.”

In the same spirit as the Kodansha fan, someone has posted a link to a Gakuen Alice scanlation site on Tokyopop’s Facebook page so at least those fans can read it for themselves. Too bad Tokyopop doesn’t have someone monitoring the page to catch things like this…

Green Lantern

Movies | National Public Radio commentator John Ridley critiques Hollywood for being even less diverse than the Big Two when it comes to diversity in lead characters, and demolishes their blame-the-audience theory that white people won’t go to see a movie with a black lead by pointing to a study by Indiana University professor Andrew Weaver: “Weaver found that white audiences tended to be racially selective with regard to romantic movies, but not necessarily when it came to other genres. So, sorry, Hollywood. You can’t blame it on the ticket buyers.” [NPR]

Piracy | Comic-book torrent tracker Z-Cult FM, which was threatened with legal action by Marvel in 2007 and eventually shut down in 2009, has re-opened its virtual doors. [Facebook]

Creators | Becky Cloonan talks about the joys and the hardships of being a full-time comics creator: “Comics are hard work. Comics are relentless. Comics will break your heart. Comics are monetarily unsatisfying. Comics don’t offer much in terms of fortune and glory, but comics will give you complete freedom to tell the stories you want to tell, in ways unlike any other medium. Comics will pick you up after it knocks you down. Comics will dust you off and tell you it loves you. And you will look into its eyes and know it’s true, that you love comics back.” [Becky Cloonan: Comics or STFU]

Creators | The Sixth Gun writer Cullen Bunn has returned to writing a column for Broken Frontier. [Broken Frontier]

Creators | Vera Brosgol, whose first graphic novel, Anya’s Ghost, was just published by First Second, talks about being that funny immigrant kid… who knew how to draw comics. [Speakeasy]

Creators | Robot 6 contributor Brigid Alverson interviews artist Ramon Perez about his work on A Tale of Sand, a graphic novel based on a recently discovered script written by Muppets creator Jim Henson. [Publishers Weekly]

Creators | James Romberger talks to Anders Nilsen about his ambitious new work, aptly titled Big Questions. [Publishers Weekly]

Creators | Vaneta Rogers talks to Scott Lobdell and Ron Marz about their Twitterfight of last week, which started when Lobdell criticized Marz for Tweeting “‘Worst. Week. Ever.’ — Racists.” If you’re expecting more snark, go elsewhere; everyone has calmed down and is being all nice now. [Newsarama]

Creators | Sean Kleefeld links us up with a beautiful piece of animation by Little Nemo creator Winsor McCay. It’s all hand drawn and amazingly fluid — like watching one of McCay’s cartoons come to life. [Kleefeld on Comics]

Infographics | Freestyle Interactive compares popular social media sites to superheroes, noting Facebook is “big, ugly, powerful, but not very friendly” like the Hulk and flickr is “Very impressive to look at but you wouldn’t miss it if it was extinguished” like the Human Torch. Burn. [Freestyle Interactive]

Retailing | Todd Allen looks at a little-understood phenomenon, the placement of comics in big-box retail stores — sometimes priced at less than the wholesale cost. [Publishers Weekly]

Retailing | Damage to the Birmingham, England, Nostalgia & Comics store during the recent riots was limited to some broken windows; there was no looting, and no one was hurt. [Forbidden Planet]

Jobs | Want to get into digital comics from the inside? Dark Horse is looking for an Application/Web Developer. [Dark Horse Comics]

Thwipster

Social media and e-commerce is ever-evolving as all of us can easily attest. In the past month or so, I became aware of Thwipster, an online enterprise with the slogan “Daily Deals for your Inner Geek.” The enterprise describes itself as follows: “At the core of Thwipster is a daily deal website that offers a little bit of everything for the person who loves their geek culture. Simply put, it is the daily deal site for your inner geek. We are striving to make Thwipster a destination that will make your quest to score the world’s finest graphic novels, toys, games and assorted geek culture items a more rewarding experience in a multitude of ways. We are also taking a very hands on approach to the selection of the materials we sell, so you can trust us to provide only the highest quality geek culture related items.” To better grasp the game plan for Thwipster, I recently caught up with Lance Sells, co-founder and director of Thwipster. In addition to discussing Thwipster, we also delve into his work in motion graphic novels (via Motherland).

Tim O’Shea: How did you initially conceive of Thwipster and how long was it in development before it launched?

Lance Sells: My brother Chad and I would talk on the phone and he would consistently bring up his thoughts about opening a comic store down in his area. He’s someone that goes to his local comic shop to hang out and talk where I’m someone who orders mainly online and have a pretty big interest in startups and technology. So from there we merged our interests, buying habits and tastes and came up with this idea to do a Daily Deal for geek stuff with a strong focus on graphic novels. As far as development time it was pretty fast from concept to launch. We talked mid-February and launched late April so it was about 10 weeks from idea to fruition.

O’Shea: What makes Thwipster unique?

Sells: The daily deal mechanism is definitely NOT unique but bringing that to comics/toys/etc. is. I think it actually works really well from a graphic novel perspective because we make it really, really simple to discover and buy a really, really good book. I live in NYC and we have amazing comic shops here but it’s just overload for me when I walk into a place and look for something. So what we try to do is say here’s 1 item a day that we think is great. If you have it or aren’t interested come back tomorrow and check out something else. It’s really more like curating than traditional retailing.

O’Shea: How often do you do trivia question giveaways (such as the recent “Guess the names of the final 3 DC Reboot Books” contest)?

Sells: As I write this we’re just beginning our 8th week since launching so it’s hard to say how often. We’ve done two contests on the site so far and a couple quick things on Twitter and Facebook with giveaways. We’re working on a couple new ideas that are hopefully a little more fun and a step above the traditional trivia questions.

O’Shea: You’re a man of many talents, in addition to Thwipster, you also are involved in the development of motion comics and other digital media. What lead you to this unique skillset?

Sells: A man of many talents but master of none. Haha. It’s been a long, weird road to what I do now, which is directing animation for Motherland and co-founding Thwipster. To compress 15 years in as few words as possible: High School, Penciller for Extreme Studios (thankfully books never published), CGI & Storyboards in LA, Advertising Art Director, Animation Director, Founder of Motherland, Co-Founder of Thwipster. By the way, I think the term motion comics isn’t nearly as classy as motion graphic novels.

O’Shea: Are you currently working on any motion comics projects?

Sells: We’re working with DC on this thing they are calling the DC Reboot. A couple of people have been talking about it in the last week but I’m not sure it’s really broken wide on the comic news circuit.

O’Shea: Has the comics industry transition to digital happened more quickly or more slowly than you had expected it to go?

Sells: It’s going about the speed that I thought it would. Kind of slow for my tastes but the publishing industries aren’t known for their speed.

O’Shea: Of the comics publishers, are there certain folks that you think understand the digital evolution (and how to navigate it) better than others?

Sells: I find it a bit crazy that comic publishers aren’t going balls out on digital. I love the DC digital day and date for all of the new books but I’m confused as to why they want to penalize people that want it digitally. Sell them for the same price and let the market sort itself out. Even as a person selling physical books I don’t think it’s Marvel, DC’s or any other publishers job to save my business or make it work. In summation: The iPad exists and is not going away. Alternative summation: Good news, they are years away from figuring out how to sell digital statues.

O’Shea: Any last thoughts or questions you would like to toss out to the Robot 6 reading audience?

Sells: I just want to say thanks to everyone that’s been kind enough to visit Thwipster and give us a spin. Even the people yelling at us for selling out too fast. Haha.

The only question I have for Robot6 readers is: “Hey, what would you like to see at Thwipster?”

And they were. If you missed part one, no worries; you can find it here. In part two, they discuss Marvel and DC, the recent focus on creator-owned comics, Dungeons & Dragons, their ad swap and more.

Zub: So, speaking of collaborators, how did your DC and Marvel work come about?

Cullen: I did a little thing for Marvel a year and a half ago, which was one of the Immortal Weapons books. That one came after I sent the editor a copy of The Damned. He finally got around to reading it and said, “Hey, you want to do this one-shot?” The new stuff all came about primarily through The Sixth Gun. A number of writers, artists and editors have picked it up, read it and either pushed me to their editors or thought I would work for other projects they had. It was definitely weird because I’m not used to anyone contacting me. I’m used to begging for work. For years I’ve gone to San Diego, and it’s the most humbling experience.

Zub: Yeah, up until now I’ve been going to San Diego with UDON and helping run the booth. This summer for me is, honestly, kind of terrifying. I’ve got this new trade now and I want to walk around, show publishers and say “I made this,” but I don’t know what the reaction’s going to be like. People are enjoying it, the sales are fine, but when you’re giving it to your peers -– editors, professionals, people you respect like that — you just don’t know.

Cullen: For someone like me, I’m networking adverse. I’m not good at it; I don’t like breaking the ice. I can’t stand those awkward first few minutes of meeting someone. Unfortunately, it’s the only way to do it. Thankfully there’s Facebook and Twitter for people who are paralyzed in person by it. You have to get out there.

Immortal Weapons #2

Zub: A lot of people don’t appreciate how important the social element is. Some people get bitter about it, too. They think “You’re getting that opportunity because of your friends,” but you need to be able to do the work, too. Admittedly, people enjoy working with someone they like more than a stranger or an asshole.

Cullen: I’m not going to recommend friends who can’t do the work. It reflects poorly on me. But that’s not just comics, that’s everywhere! People want to interact with folks who have similar interests and can engage them, not just be a cold sales pitch saying, “Will you publish me”, right?

Zub: I think some people, artists or writers, they feel like if they’re talking to an editor that will be their only shot ever and if they don’t make that connection right then, it’ll never happen. In reality it takes years, you go to shows for years; interacting with people for a long time before it kicks into whatever it’s going to be. I didn’t fully appreciate that before.

My first year at UDON, the gang was doing a couple books like Agent X and Sentinel, so I thought I had an “in.” I grew up on Marvel books, and I figured this is my big chance. So I put together a pitch with Ray Fawkes. We brainstormed a cool new take on a character that wasn’t being used at the time, and I was really proud of the pitch. And, of course, it didn’t even make a ripple because who the hell were we? We had no body of work, and no one gave a damn. At the time I was really hurt, but I didn’t know about all those other social elements. I didn’t think about the fact that everyone who writes at Marvel has been where we were. Nowadays Ray’s done Oni books and a Marvel gig and now I’ve got UDON books and an Image book under my belt and I have a greater appreciation of the whole process. The time will come if it’s meant to be and doing the work, doing it well, is the most important thing.

Cullen: I would go to the World Horror Convention year after year and they’d set up these pitch sessions. They did one in New York, before The Damned came out, and I had a pitch session with Marvel. I remember putting all these pitches together for all these different characters -– Moon Knight, Devil Dinosaur, Morbius -– this big folder full of pitches. I wanted to throw it all at the wall and see what happened. It was Axel Alonzo and Ruwan Jayatilleke in the room. I sat down there and couldn’t even tell you what I said in the five minutes I had. I’m certain I sounded like a 12-year-old boy asking out the first girl he ever wanted to date; Stuttering, muttering. I think I even pitched Top Dog, that Marvel kid’s comic from the 80’s. [laughs]

Zub: That’s awesome. I know what you mean. I just didn’t appreciate how much those guys get inundated with material from every direction. In the end if you’ve got a body of work and if someone there likes it, then that makes all the difference. I know that a book like Skullkickers may limit me right now because the only clear connection is a character like Deadpool or whatever. If I show that I can write stuff that has a different mindset and atmosphere, maybe something will come of it. I’ve got the day jobs, I’m doing a book I enjoy and have more ideas for the future. I’ve still got the Marvel heart on my sleeve but I can’t worry about it in the short term.

Cullen: That’s honestly a healthy attitude to have about it.

Zub: The nice thing is I’m doing a book I love writing right now and I have the ability to pitch something else and have people at least look at it. Yes, there’s a part of me that really wants to write Dr. Strange and wants to make my mark on these long running characters but what I’m doing right now is great too.

I think it’s great that you’re able to leave your day job and just jump right into this stuff. That’s the dream.

Skullkickers #7 variant

Cullen: It’s taking some getting used to. Now I have to really prioritize my day. I’ve never been busier, but I’m enjoying it.

Zub: It’s weird because there’s been a surge of fresh conversation about creator-owned books lately. How do you feel about that?

Cullen: There really has been.

Zub: When I think about the fact that if we would’ve gotten Skullkickers off the ground two years ago, when I originally pitched it, maybe it would have done well but it might’ve just fallen through the cracks. I have no way of knowing. But right now creator-owned books seem to be a talking point again, and it’s exciting.

Cullen: It’s been just a few months of real intensity. It’s nice to see the attention.

Zub: Between Scott Pilgrim and The Walking Dead, there’s been a sense that these properties are just as worthy as superheroes. I don’t know if a book like Chew would’ve shown up on peoples’ radars before and now they’re really pushing the forefront.

Cullen: Some of these books are really the gateway for new readers into comics as a whole. A book like Skullkickers is a fantasy book, a comedy book, and you can get people who might be into either of those things.

We get a bunch of people who come up to us at conventions and say “I don’t normally read westerns but I read The Sixth Gun”… do you get that with Skullkickers?

Zub: Totally. They tell me “I don’t read sword and sorcery stuff” or “I’m not a D&D guy” but they enjoy the book and they get into it anyways. It’s easy for new readers to pick up.

You’ve got so many fantasy elements in Sixth Gun. Are you getting fantasy fans on board?

Cullen: Yeah, we are. A lot of people categorize the book as a “horror-western” and to me it’s really a “fantasy-western.” There’s fantasy, swashbuckling, the Old West and monsters –- somewhere in there I’ve gotta catch something people are going to like.

Zub: I think both of our books have real cross-genre appeal going for them. They work in multiple fan camps. Taking elements from different areas and retooling them to surprise and entertain.

from Skullkickers #7

Cullen: The Sixth Gun as I originally pitched it was definitely a horror story. It was much smaller in many ways, and I don’t think the audience would have responded as positively if we had gone that direction with it. It was originally conceived as a six issue mini-series and it was a bleak, very dark and depressing story. Drake was a villain. He was the bad guy in the piece even though he was our point of view character. Maybe he is even now, but…

Zub: He definitely has moral greyness. In Skullkickers, because I’d written the two idiots as wholly morally reprehensible in the short stories, I needed to pull back a bit and make sure it stayed fun in the series. They used to be maliciously nasty and now they’re more ineptly bad for everyone around them.

Cullen: You want it to be fun at times, dark other times. When I get together with the Oni guys they’ll ask me “Is Drake evil or just morally grey?” and I don’t want to answer that question yet. I know how his arc plays out but I kind of like that even my publisher isn’t sure just yet.

Zub: Swashbuckling is a great term for both books. The adventure is the thing, not good versus evil.

Cullen: Okay, so let’s get back on this creator-owned stuff… We got some buzz when we did the ad swap between our two books.

Zub: Yeah, and that’s also how this whole interview between you and I came about, too.

Cullen: I don’t think the ad swap is anything groundbreaking, but I got a lot of people asking me about it, wanting to know how it came about and why we did it, all that. Why do you think people reacted that way to it?

from Skullkickers #7

Zub: Whether it’s true animosity or just a big game, there’s this entire Marvel versus DC antagonism, right? This sense that they’re at each other’s throats for the market share. So publishers, business people in any industry, everyone thinks that if they’re not actively partnered together they can’t possibly be happy for someone else’s success. This weird assumption that every sale you get is one you took away from me or some crazy crap. The feeling that I have to choke you out in order to “win,” something ludicrous like that. So the idea that two companies would be cool enough to say “Hey, let’s brag about each other because we feel there’s some crossover appeal here” is nice and it’s noteworthy. I don’t understand why more companies don’t do it.

Cullen: I freely admit that, especially now that I’ve grown past it, several years ago I had real difficulty being happy for other peoples’ success, even good friends.

Zub: Oh, I’ve been there. The more people I meet in this industry, the more folks you see going through upswings in their success and it puts you through an emotional ringer wondering “Am I not doing the right thing? Am I missing opportunities?”

Cullen: I had a really rough time of it. I couldn’t be happy for anyone and I had to fight through that because it was petty and stupid. I think a lot of creators have to fight through it.

Zub: Totally. You go to a convention and you see other people with line-ups at their booth or you hear about some amazing new project just announced and all you can think is “I really want to be there. I want to feel that.” You can’t help that but you have to look past it.

The Sixth Gun #7

Cullen: People love to talk about the things they hate and the things they think are terrible or stupid, but we don’t spend nearly enough time talking about the things that are awesome. I’m glad we did the ad swap because I think people who like The Sixth Gun will enjoy Skullkickers. They have different vibes, different moods, but the audiences are compatible. I am happy to be able to say “this is something I like and I think you’ll like it too.”

Zub: Places like Twitter where creators, retailers and fans are having frank discussion is part of it too. People seem more willing to talk about the things they enjoy. I don’t want to rage about what sucks in such an immediate forum like Twitter. I want you to know what I like, to get excited about possibilities. I find myself being more positive, hoping it’ll follow The Golden Rule. I want people to speak positively about me and the best way I can do that is to make sure I’m not spewing negativity.

Cullen: Yeah, it all comes back.

Zub: As much as I feel I’ve learned things working at UDON, this summer in particular, emotionally, it feels a bit like I’m starting over. I’m making impressions on people who didn’t even know my name before. I’m out there for the first time saying “I have ideas” and “I write stories.” That scares the crap out of me.

[pause]

It’s been great talking about the books. I am so glad we had this conversation, Cullen.

Cullen: Yeah, I am too. I appreciate it. We will have to meet up at San Diego and drown our sorrows.

[both laugh]

Batgirl #17

Welcome to a long holiday weekend (at least here in the United States) edition of What Are You Reading? Today our special guest is Doug Zawisza, who writes reviews and the occasional article for Comic Book Resources.

To see what Doug and the Robot 6 gang are reading, click below.

*****

Brigid Alverson

Pooches of Power!

I’m overwhelmed by cuteness right now! Capstone Press, which is a publisher I mainly associate with the library and school market, is launching a line of DC Super Pets chapter books, illustrated by Art Baltazar of Tiny Titans fame. I picked up Pooches of Power!, in which Ace the Bat-Hound and Krypto the Super-Dog team up to thwart a gang of sardine-stealing birds working under the aegis of The Penguin, and I have to say I enjoyed it. Despite being an early reader, it had a fairly complicated plot and plenty of interesting characters. I can see a lot of comics fans reading this story with their kids, but it’s also accessible enough that a child who had never heard of Batman before could enjoy it.

So, to bring my blood sugar levels down a bit, I read the first volume of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead. Yes, I know it’s been around forever, but I hate zombies so I never felt the urge to pick it up. Of course, I quickly realized what everyone else already knew, that this is far more than a zombie story; it’s one of those comics in which, in the immortal words of Pogo, “We have met the enemy and it is us.” In some ways, it’s a very familiar and typically American story — people thrust out of normal society (and away from the government) and forced to live by their wits, supplemented with plenty of guns. Kirkman makes it interesting even to zombie-haters like me with a varied cast of characters and some interesting interpersonal dynamics. By the end of the first volume, I knew I would be signing up for the duration.

Sean T. Collins

I’ll tell you what — if you ever wanna feel good about comics, spend a few days cramming with nearly every title you heard positive things about at the end of the year. Click the links for full reviews!

The Incredibly Fantastic Adventures of Maureen Dowd: A Work of Satire and Fiction by Benjamin Marra (Traditional Comics): In addition to being Marra what he does best — sex and violence in ’80s-trash fashion — this is a killer satire of one of America’s most satirizable pundits.

Crickets #3 by Sammy Harkham (self-published): As rock-solid a showcase of alternative comics as you’re likely to find, centered on a story about life as a low-level hack in Roger Corman’s ’60s/’70s movie factory.

Powr Mastrs Vol. 3 by CF (PictureBox): Kinky, funny, focused alt-SF/F. The artist also known as Christopher Forgues is doing something special in this series.

Mould Map #1

Mould Map #1 by various artists, edited by Hugh Frost and Leon Sadler (Landfill Editions): Each artist in this giant-sized artcomix anthology gets one page to tell a sci-fi story; in many cases this leads to stuff that’s more sci-fi tone poem than actual tale, and the material’s the better for it. It’s a British import, but American readers will recognize and welcome work from CF, Aidan Koch, and Matthew Thurber.

Bodyworld by Dash Shaw (Pantheon): Given the hubbub about how the webcomic version of this near-future sci-fi comedy was pushing that medium’s envelope, I was surprised by just how straightforward and focused it was. Strong character work, too, in an indie-comedy vein.

Map of My Heart by John Porcellino (Drawn & Quarterly): This collection of strips and prose from Porcellino’s seminal King-Cat Comics and Stories minicomic series is pulled mostly from around the turn of the millennium and tracks an ever more impressive refinement of the artist’s minimalist style and frequently melancholy subject matter.

Carla Hoffman

Daredevil: Reborn #1, by Jock

Okay, WAYR, you’re part of my New Year’s Resolutions too, so let’s get to it! I read Daredevil Reborn #1 because I am supposed to. Daredevil is a popular character and if you don’t know where he’s going, you can’t relate that info to customers looking to see where ‘that guy Ben Affleck played that one time’ is. After Shadowland, I was personally just done with Matt Murdock and whatever terrible thing he was going to do to himself this time, but I’m happy to report that Daredevil Reborn #1 is really good. This is exactly what Daredevil needs as far as character tune-up and this exactly feels like what Andy Diggle wanted to write about. The artwork has a hard line, empty feeling to it, where characters look rough and in the middle of nowhere, the perfect canvas for this little expedition to find himself. I’ll admit that I wasn’t surprised by Daredevil stopping at a mean, middle-of-nowhere locale for trouble he whines about not wanting in an internal monologue, but I love the pacing, the artwork and the art in the storytelling and -most importantly- I believe this is all going somewhere. Diggle isn’t just going to give us this same sad Daredevil story we’ve been reading for years, he’s going for change and I can believe that after this issue.

I also read Incredible Hulks #620 in an act of masochism. Don’t get me wrong, it’s well written, it’s just not what I want to read. Me and the Hulk books have had a strained relationship since I want them to be a man’s internal struggle with the monster inside, and they want to be a team book of heavy hitters with some inference to previous stories. I know, women always want to change the men we love, and I want the Hulk books to be more like when we met. I don’t like their new haircut and hip attitude that’s making them all popular. It’s worse too, because this issue mentions the Devil Hulk and boy howdy, I love the Devil Hulk from Paul Jenkin’s run on the book. It has Jarella too, plus Glan Talbot, Marlo Jones, two Abominations, Doctor Strange, Skaar and Korg and Hiroim and possibly the kitchen sink in a background cameo. Like I said, the story was good, but it doesn’t feel like the Hulk I fell in love with.

Man I relate to Betty Banner more and more each day….

Last but not least I read Infinite Vacation #1 (Resolution #3!) because the cover looked interesting and a quick flip through looked weird enough for me. Other people will describe what happens inside the book better than I will, but suffice it to say that buying time to live your alter-selves’ lives in parallel universes with an app on your phone is rad. They don’t hold your hand through the idea, they just jump you right in with David Mackian artwork and smart and clever narratives. Do you like Cory Doctorow? Sure, we all do! Do you miss ‘hard sci-fi’ set in the real world and the idea that New Media could sell us on anything? How about a book that you’ll have to read a couple times to really understand? Infinite Vacation #1 is all of these and more. I think this is what all the cool indie kids will be talking about this week.

Chris Mautner

Networked

Networked: Carabella on the Run by Gerard Jones and Mark Badger — This is a unnecessarily convoluted story about a blue-skinned girl from another dimension who comes to our universe only to have the totalitarian regime from her world attempt to follow over to take over the Earth. The real purpose of the book is to warn everyone about the dangers of social networking and how the government can use stuff like Facebook and Twitter to monitor everything you do, etc. Considering the real dangers involved in sites like those — i.e. stalking, harassment, bullying, sexting — making grandiose arguments about how THE MAN is going to use FourSquare to create a one-world Orwellian state seems not only far-fetched, but a trifle irresponsible. Still, it’s always nice to see Mark Badger’s art.

Elephant Man by Greg Houston — Fitfully amusing superhero parody that dares to say what if Jon Merrick fought crime. A lot of the problems that plagued Houston’s last book — Vatican Hustle — plague this book: It’s a bit too wordy, it’s a bit too self-aware and a bit too in love with how “zany” it is. Still, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t laugh several times and the plot is a lot tighter than Hustle‘s. For those who don’t get easily offended and don’t mind yet another collection of smart-ass jokes about superheroes, Elephant Man will suit you fine.

Rat Catcher by Andy Diggle and Victor Ibanez — This is the latest book in Vertigo’s Crime imprint, about a double-agent in the FBI who goes around killing mob informants and another agent who attempts to go after him. The book plays around with the two characters’ identities to keep you guessing as to who’s who, but it’s pretty obvious from the outset. More to the point, the book’s very plot-heavy, to the point where there’s really no room for characterization. It moves speedily enough that fans of the genre probably won’t mind too much, but it comes up short when compared to more notable recent crime comics like Criminal or 100 Bullets.

Tim O’Shea

Superman #707

Used to be I believed the closest I would get to Mark Waid writing Superman was Waid on Irredeemable. But if Chris Roberson remains as strong as he is on this first issue of his Superman run ([#707]/part five of this JMS-initiated Grounded storyline), this is the closest we can get to Waid. I’m often nervous when a writer shares that he’s been a fan of a character since childhood (as Roberson has said of Superman), but I was pleasantly surprised to see Roberson’s healthy knowledge of Superman is something that he wields in a reasonable, while engaging fashion.

So, this week the final Thor: The Mighty Avenger came out and was as strong as the other seven issues. And I’m still waiting to hear from Marvel when writer Roger Langridge and artist Chris Samnee have their next ongoing or limited series is scheduled. Those two need to work together again on more than just Free Comic Book Day material.

Bryan Miller concocts the finest Damian Wayne scene to date in Batgirl #17, as he is forced to go undercover as a grade school student on a field trip.

Doug Zawisza

For the past half-decade I start every year with the same resolutions: lose weight, eat better, read more. Every year, I fail at all three. I decided to bring those resolutions back again this year, and I’m trying, I really am, to knock them down this year. I’m sure most of you are familiar with similar resolutions, but the read more resolution is one that I try to apply to things outside of comics.

I’m the father of three very bright girls, all of whom love reading. My wife is a kindergarten teacher, so there’s never really a shortage of reading material in our house. As a matter of fact, there’s usually too much. Everyone’s reading two or three things, here, there, or wherever. I’ve always had multiple reading options open at all times, and right now is no different.

Secret Zoo

The Secret Zoo by Bryan Chick is a book that I happened across while researching an idea that’s been baking in my brain for longer than I care to think about. As a father of three voracious readers, I’m always trying to help them find new worlds. This is one world I’m glad we’ve found. My oldest and youngest haven’t had a chance at this book yet, but my ten-year-old and I have been enjoying it immensely. It’s the story about a boy who is looking for his missing sister, Megan. Noah Nowicki finds clues that tie his sister’s, disappearance to the Clarksville City Zoo. Most of those clues come to Noah via the animals AT the zoo. Chick delivers a story that is filled with adventure, child-like enthusiasm, and unbridled hope.

Chick has stated that he has a target audience of 9-12-years-old, but I’m enjoying it nonetheless. It’s a smart read that holds a great deal of potential beyond this book. Chick has planned the series to run over ten volumes, with the second set to be released on Feb. 1.

Skippyjon Jones came home with my wife. As I’ve already mentioned, she’s a kindergarten teacher and has her students bring in their favorite books to share. How my children made it past kindergarten without partaking in the free-wheeling, madcap imagination of Skippyjon is beyond me. Judy Schachner delivers the story of this creative young kitty who imagines himself as a Chihuahua and dreams up adventures for his “pack” of Chihuahuas (who are really stuffed animals in his closet). It’s zany fun that even my 13-year-old gets a good laugh at.

After the kids go to bed and when the wife tunes in to her shows, I find myself with some spare time to flip some pages, so I do. This week the highlight of my comic stack was Batgirl, a book I’ve been enjoying since issue #1. Issue #17 features a team-up between current Batgirl (Stephanie Brown) and Robin (Damian Wayne) in a story that Bryan Q. Miller delivers with equal parts humor, adventure and character. The team-up is driven by Batgirl’s first official Batman Inc. assignment. It’s definitely the lightest of the Bat-books, but strong enough to leave you wanting to read more in a hurry.

Superheroes, Strip Artists, & Talking Animals

I’m also making my way through the anecdote-laden Superheroes, Strip Artists, & Talking Animals book by Britt Aamodt. Published by the Minnesota Historical Society, this book covers Minnesota’s Contemporary Cartoonists. It doesn’t limit itself to just mainstream comic books (and thereby the work of luminaries such as Dan Jurgens, Peter Gross, Doug Mahnke, and Pat Gleason) it also looks at the comic strip artists that call the North Star State home. Aamodt does a nice job of letting each artist – mainstream, independent, or comic strip – have a few pages of glory, including more than one sample from most of the artists. It’s a black-and-white book, but the art reprinted here translates well to grayscale life. The book itself has the heft of one of TwoMorrows’ Companion books, and the quality of the material within is pretty darn close to TwoMorrows’ standards.

The last thing I’m reading is on my iPod touch. I haven’t committed to a Kindle, iPad or other such reader device yet, but I have decided to experiment with the apps and my Touch. I’m reading The Inner Circle by Brad Meltzer. The book just hit the stands (digital and deadwood) on Tuesday past, but I’ve been able to bust out the iPod Touch while waiting for kids at dance or swim, or heating up my lunch at work. This has given me the chance to pack an extra seven chapters of reading into a week that wouldn’t normally allow such an extracurricular activity. The book is standard-fare from Meltzer, playing close to his Decoded show while investigating the National Archives in more detail. Beecher White is an archivist who happens upon a secret that may or may not be tied to the President of the United States of America. From there, assumptions are made, conclusions are jumped to, and adventure busts forth. As he has done in previous prose works, Meltzer peppers the story with comic book-related winks and nods. It’s a page-turner at this point, and I’ve found myself unlocking the Touch to read one more page quite frequently.

As for what’s waiting for me next, well, I just checked out Ed Brubaker’s Rise and Fall of the Shi’Ar Empire from the library. I haven’t done much X-Men reading in the past few years, so I’m looking forward to an interstellar adventure with Nightcrawler, Havok, Polaris, Marvel Girl and Warpath. That will be waiting nicely over to the side as I finish one of these other books.

Friend up the Robot

The good folks over at CBR proper, who set up their own Facebook page not too long ago, have set one up for us as well. If you’re on Facebook, head over there and click on the “Like” link to befriend the robot and follow our feed. And don’t forget you can follow us on Twitter, if you prefer … we’re easy.

Tom Brevoort

This is old news if you, like me, follow Tom Brevoort’s blog and Twitter account with near-religious zeal. But Marvel’s Senior VP – Executive Editor and candidate for Comics’ Most Outspoken Editor has set up an account with Formspring, the service dedicated solely to allowing readers to ask any question they like of its users. Needless to say, it’s a match made in Web 2.0 heaven.

Recent topics include potential copyright infringement by artists and strippers, how novelists or journalists or would-be interns could get work at Marvel, how powerful the Sentry is, the relative merits of back-up stories and the $3.99 price point, why DC doesn’t use recap pages, Jean Grey, Jean Grey, and more Jean Grey, and the list goes on and on — and that’s just over the past day or so.

Sure, it’s rendering my job here partially obsolete, but journalistic ethics dictate that I had to let y’all know. Go ask him somethin’, why don’t you?

Longbox

Digital Comics | Rantz Hoseley posted some additional information and answered questions on the Longbox digital comics in the comments section of the iFanboy article Kevin linked to yesterday.

Those updates include:

• Although only BOOM! and Top Cow have been announced so far, Hoseley said seven publishers have signed on for the launch, and the other five will be announced in the next few weeks leading up to the San Diego Comic Con.
• The software will include a “Manga Mode” that flips the left-to-right reading order. That’s pretty damn clever.
• The software will also allow for “age-restricted sub-accounts,” so your kids can read the Muppets but can’t get to your Black Kiss comics.
• Hoseley says that “while we certainly welcome DC and Marvel’s participation, the entire system was designed to have a business model that would be successful and profitable for all involved if they chose not to participate.”

There’s more at the link, so click over and read. This gets more interesting by the day …

e-Devices | Uclick, which has brought titles like Bone and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to the iPhone, announced today that they’ve released an Eisner Award iPhone application, available now for free on iTunes. The app will update with icons indicating the winners in each category shortly after the voting results are announced on Friday, July 24 at the San Diego Comic Con.

I actually downloaded it last night; it only works in landscape, but it includes information on the awards and Will Eisner, as well as covers of all the nominees. It’s pretty slick and well worth the asking price.

Social media | The Castaways and Bluesman writer Rob Vollmar is tweeting a comic script at the rate of one page per day. No doubt that’s one way to ensure that every word — heck, every character — counts. (Via)

e-Devices | Publishers Weekly’s Calvin Reid reviews the Kindle DX, which started shipping June 10. “Comics displayed on the improved Kindle 2 looked dim and small and were hard to read and the device’s zoom feature didn’t really help much,” he wrote. “Comics are now much easier to read on the DX but they still seem dim and veiled by the screen’s grey cast.” He also notes that Amazon was meeting with comic publishers at the BookExpo America to discuss enhancing the device for comic viewing.

Webcomics | Wired.com’s GeekDad interviews Dr. McNinja creator Chris Hastings.

Social media | MySpace announced they are cutting another 300 jobs overseas.

Social media | Coming soon to a theater near you — Facebook, the movie.

MySpace.com

Yesterday the social media megasite MySpace announced that it was laying off almost 30 percent of its staff, about 400 employees — a move their CEO called “necessary for the long-term health and culture of MySpace.” Per the L.A. Times, MySpace’s user numbers are down from last year, and ad revenue is projected to fall 15 percent in 2009.

As reported on Comics Alliance yesterday and confirmed by our sources, MySpace Comic Books is shutting down. An attempt to e-mail the current contact for MySpace Comic Books resulted in a response that he was no longer with the company.

No doubt with the 30 percent cut in employees, you can expect other initiatives on MySpace to be cut or at least scaled down as well.

The MySpace Comic Books community launched in 2007 and has played host to numerous comic previews, full issues of comics like Hexed, interviews, a news feed from Comic Book Resources and MyCup O’ Joe, which ended its run on May 1. MySpace is owned by News Corporation, which also owns 20th Century Fox, FOX Broadcasting Company, The New York Post, HarperCollins and IGN Entertainment, among many, many other media outlets.

DMZ on Google Maps

Internet | Brian Wood uses Google Maps to highlight key locations from his Vertigo series DMZ.

Social media | Twitter, apparently, has taken the place of message boards as the preferred arena for fights between comic pros and gossip columnists.

Last Friday, an online dust-up occurred between comics writer Mark Waid and former All the Rage columnist Rich Johnston. You can read their respective takes on it here and here.

It was certainly a lot easier to follow the back-and-forth flames in the old days of message boards. Kids and their crazy newfangled internet tools …

Digital comics | And now a look at the gentler side of Twitter … also on Friday, Johnston interviewed Ryan Penagos, aka Agent_M, about Marvel.com and Marvel’s Digital Comics Initiative. The interview took place on Twitter.

Internet | The New York Times talks to artists who were recently invited by Google to contribute artwork that would be used on their web browser, Google Chrome. Google asked them to do it for exposure rather than pay. (via)

Sword of My Mouth #1

Digital comics | Jim Munroe follows in the footsteps of PictureBox with an interesting sales offer for his post-Rapture comic Sword of My Mouth. He’s published the first issue as a comic, and issues #2-6 will be available online only. Next year it’ll all be collected into a trade paperback.

So for $12 + shipping, you can get the digital versions of each issue, as well as a signed and personalized copy of the printed graphic novel when it’s published in early 2010. The first 40 orders will also receive a screenprint. And for $6 you can get the six digital issues.

“In a time when the economy and other forces are making the print pamphlet model unsustainable for many indies, we’re excited to see how this will work,” he wrote. “The digital format isn’t going to replace the print book, but it’s an interesting format that allows for cheaper prices and more direct interaction between creators and readers — one we hope to foster by adding commentary.”

e-Devices | Here’s an often-linked to post by Scott McCloud about the new version of the Kindle and its size.

Social networks | The Hollywood Reporter reports that Warner Home Video is set to “announce a plan to sync up ‘friend’ networks on Facebook with the interactive community-screening features of Warners’ Blu-ray Disc releases, starting with the release of ‘Watchmen Director’s Cut.’”

Internet | Valerie D’Orazio points to this interesting article in the Chicago Tribune about TV executives reacting to the success of Hulu.com, the NBC/FOX joint venture (Disney recently signed on as well).

Here’s the money quote:

“If you give away your premium content for free, you are basically hastening your own demise, signing your own death warrant,” said Laura Martin, a media analyst with Soleil-Media Metrics. “There is a choice that companies have to make.”

Webcomics | He’s a no-nonsense cop. He’s a former cash register. Together, they fight crime.

Social networks | Marvel.com lists all the social media sites where the company has a presence.

Kindle DX

e-Devices | Amazon.com this week announced a larger version of their Kindle device, called the Kindle DX. The e-book reader is two-and-a-half times the size of the current Kindle and will retail for almost $500. The New York Times, Washington Post, and Boston Globe, however, will offer “subsidized on-contract Kindles to customers who can’t get at-home delivery when the DX ships this summer.”

So, the natural question for comic fans — is it big enough to show a comics page? Kelson at the Speed Force blog has the same question: “Unless I’ve got my numbers wrong, that makes it larger than the standard manga page, though not quite as big as the standard American comic book page,” he said about the 9.7 inch screen. “And it’s only 1/3 of an inch thick, comparable to a typical trade paperback.” The BBC has more on the specs.

Social media | Ypulse, a teen marketing blog, wonders if teens would follow Twitter feeds for characters from young adult novels. Apparently teens haven’t embraced Twitter (which surprises me … I figured they’d been using it and dropped it when all the old people showed up, kind of like Facebook), and the post wonders if they’d start using it if, say, the sparkling vampires from Twilight had their own feeds.

“Protagonists, antagonists and supporting characters (the latter might be especially intriguing) would continue to gain depth and dimension in the intermittent period between books and meanwhile, readers would feel more connected to the world that the author created,” writes Meredith, who blogs for the site. “Or, as connected to them as they choose to be depending on whether they simply read the tweets or actually respond to them and engage in dialogue.” She also notes that characters from Mad Men showed up on Twitter last year, which everyone assumed was a marketing ploy for the show, but turned out to be more along the lines of fan fiction.

BOOM! Studios recently launched a Twitter feed for one of their fictional characters, the talking teddy bear who thinks he’s James Bond, Mister Stuffins. Is it a marketing ploy, an extension of the story, or maybe both? And would comic fans follow the Twitter feed for, say, Batman, Luke Cage or Scott Pilgrim, if their tweets were written by Grant Morrison, Brian Michael Bendis or Bryan Lee O’Malley, respectively?

Digital Comics | Nerd Dads points out that Atomic Robo #6 moved into the top 20 ebooks on iTunes. Several of IDW’s Star Trek books are also on the list.

Digital comics | Speaking of which, in this week’s Publishers Weekly Comics Week, Heidi MacDonald writes about IDW’s success with porting their Star Trek comics to iTunes.

Webcomics | Rich Lovatt, whose Mecha Simian webcomic came in 7th place in Zuda’s April competition, shares some of the things he learned during the process.

Digital comics | Robot Comics and Alterna Comics, which publishes Jesus Hates Zombies and Birth, announced a deal whereby Robot Comics will bring the publisher’s titles to mobile devices.

Comics on Handhelds

South by Southwest is currently underway down in Austin, Texas. The giant music, film and multimedia festival runs through March 22. On today’s agenda is a panel called Comics on Handhelds, hosted by Dan Goldman and featuring Diesel Sweeties creator Rich Stevens, Uclick.com CEO Douglas Edwards, Dr. Sketchy’s creator Molly Crabapple, Google Android engineer Dave Bort and The Longbox Group’s Rantz Hoseley.

No doubt this will be a great discussion, and if you’d like to participate, you don’t need a plane ticket to the Lone Star State … all you need is a Twitter account. Goldman explains:

And those of you not attending… you’ll still be able to interact with us over Twitter during the panel using #comicsonhandhelds. The panel will be available in audio+video online soon as well; watch this space for details.

That means if you Twitter a question, just be sure to include #comicsonhandhelds in the body of your tweet. The panel begins at 5 p.m. Central, so be sure to get your questions out there before then.

Civil War #1, on a bed of Mylar

Publishing | Louis Holt argues that “collectibility” will save the printed comic from being replaced by the digital version.

“The fallacy of thinking that digital comic books will kill print comic books is that it ignores the collectible value of comic books,” Holt writes. “There is no telling how many comic books sold today aren’t even read but are immediately slid into protective sleeves with backing boards. People can’t trade or wrap digital comic books in plastic.”

I suspect Holt creates a flaw of his own by overstating the hold collectibility has on readers. Handling monthly comics like 1,000-year-old parchments before sealing them away in Mylar bags may be common practice among a segment of the audience (particularly those of a certain age). However, I don’t believe “collectibility” is a driving force — the driving force? — for the readership at large. The increasing popularity of trade paperbacks, the whole wait-for-the-trade “movement,” and, yes, webcomics would seem enough to cast Holt’s notion into doubt.

That said, the band shouldn’t start the funeral dirge for the printed comic anytime soon (whatever “soon” means). Any sort of seismic shift by the industry toward digital comics still faces numerous obstacles — e-device quality and affordability, and the necessity of new business models, among them. I just don’t think “collectibility” is one of the more worrisome ones.

Matt Maxwell also weighs in: “Well, pulp novels are collectable, so are wax cylinders. So are vinyl records. Anything can be made collectible. Collectibility doesn’t mean that a format survives or is necessarily a standard currency any longer. It just means that someone wants the artifact and is willing to pay for it.”

Copyright | Although manga publishers have yet to clamp down on scanlators — fans who translate Japanese comics and post them online — a University of London professor thinks conflicts could arise as the global market becomes more lucrative. She estimates there are more than 1,000 scanlation groups worldwide.

E-devices | Matt Springer sees Apple’s rumored touch-screen Netbook as a contender for “ultimate eComics reader.”

Social media | Advertising Age reports that Facebook is driving more traffic than Google to some large websites.

"Watchmen" on the Kindle

Conventions | Registration is closed for New England Webcomics Weekend, the March 20-22 event in Easthampton, Mass., that some already are calling “Webcomicstock.”

What’s Webcomics Weekend? It’s not really a convention, organizers say; it’s more a gathering — a free one, at that. It will feature panels, livedraw events, book signings, and guests such as Gene Ambaum and Bill Barnes (Unshelved), Danielle Corsetto (Girls With Slingshots), Rene Engstrom (Anders Loves Maria), Meredith Gran (Octopus Pie), Scott Kurtz (PvP), Ryan North (Dinosaur Comics) and R. Stevens (Diesel Sweeties).

E-devices | At Gearlog, Brian Heater tries out Bone, Jimmy Corrigan, New X-Men and Watchmen on Amazon’s new Kindle: “In my humble opinion, the best device for reading comics at the moment (besides, you know, old-timey comics themselves) is the iPhone.”

Webcomics | The Floating Lightbulb and The Comic Chronicles’ John Jackson Miller try to figure out what to make of GoogleTrends data showing a steady decline of unique visitors for many of the most-popular webcomics.

E-devices | Jason Ankeny lays out why mobile devices are the future of comic strips: “Few forms of creative expression are better suited to that kind of brief consumer engagement than comic strips. Life in Hell — a crudely illustrated but consistently sharp and insightful black-and-white strip  — would seem like a natural on a Kindle or on an iPhone, as would any number of classic daily efforts including Calvin & Hobbes, The Far Side, Krazy Kat or Doonesbury.”

Blogging | To mark the second anniversary of Super Punch, John Struan offers some good tips about blogging, with special attention to increasing traffic.

Social media | Gay & Lesbian Times looks out how artists are using DList, a social-networking site for gay men, to promote their work.

Podcasting | The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette profiles local comics podcasters.

E-publishing | Fictionwise, the e-book retailer recently purchased by Barnes & Noble, has sold an estimated 5 million digital titles since its launch in June 2000. (via GalleyCat)

LiveJournal

Scans Daily | While there aren’t any hard numbers to demonstrate whether Scans Daily harmed or helped the sales of comics that were excerpted on the site, Glenn Hauman offers some anecdotal evidence: He posted seven pages on Jan. 19 from the ComicMix webcomic The Original Johnson, but received just 50 click-throughs from Scans Daily. Hauman concludes that the community wasn’t a good promotional platform.

However, Johanna Draper Carlson points out some problems with Hauman’s experiment, and with his conclusion. I think she’s right on both points, namely that a community like Scans Daily isn’t likely to react as positively to publisher self-promotion — Warren Ellis points out it’s actually frowned upon there — and that a biographical boxing comic probably wasn’t the best match for the audience.

The discussion continues in the comments sections of Hauman and Carlson’s posts.

Digital comics | Robot Comics (no relation), “the first publisher of comics for Android-powered mobiles,” is seeking submissions. Android is Google’s software platform for mobile devices. Comics, games and other applications can be downloaded at Android Market. Last month BOOM! Studios announced it had partnered with iVerse Media to offer Hexed #1 on Android. (via Johanna Draper Carlson)

Webcomics | At Mashable, Sean P. Aune runs down his list of the 20 best webcomics.  It’s the usual suspects, mostly.

Social media | ComiPress rounds up manga- and anime-related Twitter accounts.

IPhone | Jeff Whitfield of Macworld.com reviews the free comiXology application, which allows you to access your pull list or comics solicitations on your iPhone or iPod.

E-books | Two years after Radiohead’s pay-what-you-want download experiment, author Ben Wilson will try a similar approach with his book What Price Liberty? The Guardian reports that six weeks before the book’s printed release, Wilson will allow readers to set their own price for the digital version — or even download it for free.

Although Radiohead declared its 2007 trial balloon a success, just 38 percent of fans were prepared to pay for In Rainbows. That said, the downloads didn’t seem to affect sales: The album debuted on the charts at No. 1.

Internet use | According to Nielsen Online, the average American went online 62 times and visited 115 domains in January. Average time spent online for the month? Seventy-five hours.

Digital migration | WebNewser reports attendees at the Magazine Publishers of America’s Digital Conference were told that more than half of their publications won’t be in print in a decade.

Social media | Skittles discovers what happens when tweeting goes awry.