The News Blog of Comics Culture
Over at Blog Flume, Alvin Buenaventura announced that his much admired Buenaventura Press — publisher of such seminal works as KRAMERS ERGOT #7, FIGHT OR RUN, and THE COMPLETE JACK SURVIVES — was forced to close its doors in January, due to a single devastating financial blow. Buenaventura wrote:
April brought a hat trick for recently crowned DC Entertainment executive Geoff Johns, who wrote the three top-selling North American comic books.
Thanks to the strong debuts of Brightest Day and The Flash, DC Comics’ April numbers remained rock-solid after the conclusion of Blackest Night. The two new titles took the two top spots in the Top 300 chart, while Green Lantern, Batman and Robin and Green Lantern Corps also placed in the Top 10. Compared to Marvel, the publisher was still a distant second in terms of market share, however, and DC’s average and total sales have seen better days.
At WildStorm, average comic-book sales fell below the 6K mark for the second time in the imprint’s history. This wasn’t unexpected, given that neither of WildStorm’s two top-selling series, Astro City and Ex Machina, came out in April. At Vertigo, meanwhile, average sales appear to be solidifying around 10K again, thanks to a range of books that are selling well for a change.
See below for the details, and please consider the small print at the end of the column. Thanks to Milton Griepp and ICv2.com for the permission to use their figures. An overview of ICv2.com’s estimates can be found here.
The artist salutes the world’s biggest event!
Masters of Manga is a new web project by translator Marc Bernabé with interviews with such giants as Moto Hagio, Urasawa, Tako Saito and more many. First up, Hideshi Hirata (known for thre gekiga samurai yarn Satsuma Gishiden) and Ken Akamatsu (Love Hina, Negima.) BOOKMARK MUST.
Gary Panter has revamped his website, and of course this means hours of poring over comics, drawings, paintings and historical artifacts. Panter also has a few events coming up for you West Coasters.
Although we’re probably the very last person to get our HeroesCon thoughts online, it was such a good time, it would be wrong not to enumerate a few of the ways it rocked. Although everyone knows that Shelton Drum, Dustin Harbin and the rest of the Heroes crew know how to extend Southern hospitality to convention guests in a relaxed, unassuming way, the show — the largest HeroesCon yet by all signs — also served as a near-perfect capsule of the comics industry, thanks to a wide ranging, well-deployed guest list showcased in diverse, entertaining programming. While Indie Island is Harbin’s baby and remains a hotbed of amazing talent, the rest of the show showed off other elements of the cartooning world — there was a wall of strip cartoonists, for instance, and the “mainstream mainland” included an amazing lineup of artists from Brian Bolland to Jill Thompson to Adam Hughes and Tony Harris.
Via PR, Gary Friedrich, a seminal figure of Marvel in the 60s and 70s and co-creator of Ghost Rider, and the late Otto Binder, without whom there would be no Supergirl or Krypto or hundreds of other comics, are the two latest recipients of the Bill Finger Award. This honor is presented annually at the the San Diego Comic-Con to honor one living writer, and one deceased who have made significant contributions to the comics industry.
Via PR, due to the great number of hotels outside the usual shuttle route at this year’s con, CCI is expanding the shuttle route, expanding bag check hours and facilitating advance parking permit purchases. All these changes will make getting to and from the con is not easy, at least easier. You can read all about it in the PR below, but it’s of some note that the shuttle cost’s are being partially paid by TravelPlanners — it’s no secret that Travelplanners kind of screwed things up this year, with what was supposed to be a first come, first served hotel system being changed to a willy nilly lottery.
Des Yahoo hold the answers to everything we need to know? Does Jake Forbes know how to save manga? Does Stan Lee know how to answer ticklish questions? Is Brian Wood as metal as they come? What made the internet great? Does Tom Brevoort know how to tweak the competition? Does Shaenon Garrity know how to read BL? All this and more in today’s exciting episode of…KIBBLES ‘N’ BITS!
The biggest event in the world, The World Cup is kicking off today and we’ll kick off our link blogging with Richard Bruton’s tribute to Roy of the Rovers , which, based on the squeal FMB gave when a Roy collection arrived on our doorstep, is some kind of seminal kids footie comic. Bruton concentrates on the “Dark Knight” of Roy comics, a 1994 version by Rob Davis and Stuart Green:
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