Disney and Marvel

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

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

Long Beach Comic Con

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

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

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

Yotsuba&!, Vol. 6

Sales charts | Well, huh. The collection of Kevin Smith and Walter Flanagan's Batman: Cacophany debuts as the No. 1 hardcover on The New York Times Graphic Books Best Seller List. Elsewhere on the chart, Yen Press should be pleased that the sixth volume Yotsuba&! -- the first new installment under the publisher's banner -- premieres as the No. 3 manga. [The New York Times]

Publishing | Diamond Book Distributors has signed an exclusive agreement with Tokyopop to distribute the publisher's titles in the United Kingdom and Ireland beginning next year. PanMacmillan has handled distribution since 2006. [ICv2.com]

Publishing | SLG Publishing has reopened submissions after a two-month hiatus. [SLG Publishing]

Publishing | Eric Reynolds of Fantagraphics Books answers five questions about the publisher's output and the comics market. [Trouble With Comics]

Diesel Sweeties

Webcomics | I'm not sure this article delivers on its title -- "What Newspaper Cartoonists Can Learn from Web Comics" -- but it does spotlight how creators Richard Stevens and Howard Taylor make a living through their webcomics. [MediaShift, via Fleen]

Comic strips | Cartoonist Karen Montague-Reyes reflects on the unsuccessful newspaper syndication of her strip Clear Blue Water: "It got to the point where I dreaded getting my checks in the mail because it would tell you what papers dropped you or added you (the syndicate never told me beforehand).  I made my husband open them; I couldn’t even face them.  He’d just say, 'Holding steady.' Or, 'Two drops this month.' People would ask me what papers I was in and I didn’t know anymore because I chose not to know." [Clear Blue Water, via The Daily Cartoonist]

Creators | Garry Trudeau discusses Doonesbury, deadlines, and the decline of newspapers: "Short-term, we're probably OK. What's not commonly known is that most print newspapers are getting by. It's just the big, debt-loaded metros that are sinking fast. There will probably be enough paper clients to keep me going for the foreseeable future. I feel extraordinarily fortunate that I've been given the long run I have -- if newspapers vanish tomorrow, I'll have no grounds for complaint." [News-Record]

Brother Voodoo, by Jim Rugg

Creators | Sean T. Collins talks with Jim Rugg about his Brother Voodoo story for Marvel's Strange Tales anthology miniseries: "I like the weird '70s Marvel characters like Brother Voodoo, Satanna, Morbius, ROM, Power Man and Iron Fist. Those characters are so transparently a marketing grab, yet the creators seem earnest in their effort and execution, for the most part. There's a sense of anything might happen. You can almost see the duct tape holding these concepts together. They're the second generation of Marvel characters, and they are so different than the Jack Kirby/Stan Lee model. It's almost Marvel's awkward teenage rebellion period." [Marvel.com]

Creators | Abby Denson chats about her new graphic novel Dolltopia. [New York Daily News]

Creators | Steve Ditko: "Spider-Man's Forgotten Father." [Examiner]

Pop culture | Tor.com has launched its first "Steampunk Month." [Tor.com]

So what is ignored/evaded is that there is a long, ongoing “status quo” in Marvel Comics company’s very existence and publishing that needs to be “broken”, “smashed together”.

There are periodic operational changes in the company’s “status quo” with different editors. But while these new editors create different personal styles, they all maintain the same editorial “status quo”, that same anti-hero premise.

Flash: Rebirth

• Really Ken? EW's Ken Tucker declares Flash: Rebirth and Secret Warriors the "two best superhero comics written right now":

For my money (at the comic shop most Wednesdays), both Bendis and Hickman write the best dialogue in comics. (Also check out the banter Bendis bats out in the equally-good Dark Avengers.) So there you have it, writers at their peaks: Johns a master of humanizing comics mythology, and Bendis and Hickman creators of conversation that seems real no matter how "super" the action is.

• Better late than never: The cast of Metabunker (Henry Sørensen, T. Thorhauge & Matthias Wivel) offer their picks for the best comics of 2008

• Rankin vs. Azzarello. The Oregonian's Steve Duin looks at the two opening entries in Vertigo's new crime line and does not care for the latter: "You can not over-state the smug stupidity of this graphic novel."

• Tim O'Neil has some harsh things to say about Flash: Rebirth and Barry Allen in general:

Discount the first fifty or so issues of the great Silver Age run - as era-defining for DC's Silver Age as Fantastic Four was for Marvel. After that, into the late sixties and seventies and eighties, who talks about Barry Allen? Seriously, in all my years on this blogosphere I have never - ever - seen anyone willing to wax rhapsodic about any issue of Flash produced in the twenty years between 1965 and 1985. I'm sure they're out there, somewhere - but just look, for comparisons sake, how much keyboard time is spent lionizing relatively bad comics such as the Mod-era Wonder Woman and Bob Haney's The Brave and the Bold. If there was anything interesting to be found in those twenty years of continuous publication, I have never seen anyone on the internet mention them, which is about as telling a barometer of fan interest as any I can imagine. If people cared, people would talk about Barry Allen - but no one does. Ever.

• Greg McElhatton reads Koren Shadmi's In the Flesh and find "a little Shadmi goes a long way, and having his stories all collected together doesn’t do him any favors."

• Brian Heater declares Gabrielle Bell's Cecil and Jordan in New York, "one of Bell’s strongest work and a friendly reminder of why she has become on of the most celebrated storytellers to come out of the mini-comics scene in recent years."

• The Onion's Keith Phipps uses the awful Howard the Duck movie as a springboard to talk about the Steve Gerber/Gene Colan source material.

• Finally, at the risk of seeming like a shill, I should point out that Noah Berlatsky is blogging about every single issue of William Moulton Marston's run on Wonder Woman. Here's issue one. Here's issue two.

"My Spider-Man/Dr Strange story is now at the half way point. It's a three issue mini-series that will appear under the Marvel Knights banner, probably in the early summer. It's been great fun drawing and writing the series, and Marvel seem to love what I'm creating so far. I'm coloring the book with Steve Cook, who designed the SWIMINI PURPOSE book for me a few years ago.

If Fantagraphics can't have Dr. Strange, as Eric Reynolds suggested in August, this is equally as awesome.

McCarthy says he can't show any art from the book yet, but he does share this piece, proclaiming he's from the lineage of Ditko:

by Brendan McCarthy