REVIEW: Black Mask Studios Hits the Ground Running with TWELVE REASONS TO DIE

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Tweet Black Mask Studios is the ambitiously game-changing publishing company founded to bring out OCCUPY COMICS and much more, headed by Matt Pizzolo (GODKILLER, HALO-8), Steve Niles (30 DAYS OF NIGHT and much more), and Brett Gurewitz (Epitaph Records). In interviews when the company formally announced itself, they touted a new structural framework for comic [...]

Indie Month-to-Month Sales March 2013

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While Walking Dead and Saga lead the chart again, the big story this month is Jonathan Hickman’s East of West, blowing expectations out of the water with a strong debut. There aren’t that many new titles this month, although Image have four strong debuts, headed up by the infuriating Sex (you’ll see). Elsewhere it’s largely a month of consolidation, with many titles holding within a few percentage points of last month’s sales.

PREVIEW REVIEW: Shipwrecked with BREAKERS

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Tweet It’s a strange guide to a mysterious treasure, this tome launching April 25th at Desert Island (eerily appropriate venue name!) from So What? Press, edited by Lara Antal and Dave Kelly. BREAKERS is the culmination of the Atlantic Center for the Arts Residency Program’s three weeks of seclusion for 26 comics creators in the [...]

Preview: Baltic Comics Magazine s!13 Life is Live

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Tweet  You can tell we’re getting into the comics spring/summer stride as highly desirable books begin hitting the shelves in rapid tandem. Last week saw my postman deliver Nobrow 8, the end of the month sees the launch of the inaugural and very promising looking Tiny Pencil, and in a fortnight ‘s time we get the release [...]

Youth in Decline website debuts

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Tweet Youth in Decline is another in the exploding field of Risograph-based micro-publisher run by Ryan Sands, perhaps best known for his Umezu-obssessed blog Same Hat and his zine Elecric Ant. Youth in Decline kicks off with Frontier, a new serial anthology where each issue focuses on a single artist. Frontier is a quarterly art [...]

Exclusive Sneak Peek: Liberator

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TweetI’ve already pegged this as potentially the debut of the year, and with Liberator #1 now available for pre-order, we get a sneak peek at the new artistic team.

MoCCA Awards of Excellence Winners 2013 and show wrap-up

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TweetNaked honesty: I’m too wiped out from this weekend’s MoCCA Festival to write much about it. It was a blast. But here are the winners of the inaugural MoCCA Awards of Excellence, as chosen by judges Karen Berger, Gary Groth, Nora Krug, David Mazzucchelli, and Paul Pope. I had to jot them down and maybe [...]

MoCCA Debuts 2013: Modan, Boulet, Hernandez (x2), Tamaki and MORE

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New books that are out just in time for MoCCA, which will be held at the Lexington Armory this weekend. This is what folks emailed us, and if the past is any indicator about five seconds after this post goes up a million voices will cry out in terror at not having emailed me, so expect a part two later today!

On the Scene: WonderCon 2013, Matt Kindt on MIND MGMT and Being Happy

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TweetYou’d be forgiven if you think of Matt Kindt as a breakaway success, since the “slow and steady” approach that’s defined his career so far looks like a sprint to the finish line with the explosive success of MIND MGMT from Dark Horse. Educator and author Travis Langley (Batman and Psychology) sat down with Kindt [...]

24 Hours of Women Cartoonists: Jess Ruliffson

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Tweet Jess Ruliffson is an illustrator and non-fiction graphic novelist, increasingly wearing the hat of a comics-medium journalist. She’s working on a graphic novel based on interviews with veterans of the war in Iraq and conflicts in Afghanistan for the Joe Bonham Project, giving wounded vets a chance to tell their own stories of trauma [...]

24 Hours of Women Cartoonists: Andrea Tsurumi

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Tweet Andrea Tsurumi is a freelance illustrator and cartoonist working on a number of platforms. She’s a Harvard graduate currently pursuing an MFA at the School of Visual Arts, but in the meantime her work has been published by Penguin Books and The New York Times. Her long work DANCE PARTY (featured above) appears on [...]

2013 SPX expands in response to exhibitor demand

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Following last week’s gridlock over signing up for tables at this year’s Small Press Expo, organizers have announced that they’ll be expanding the show floor to include the ENTIRE ballroom at the Marriott Bethesda North Hotel & Conference Center. Althugh it seems like a logical development, the announcement makes it clear that attendance must stay commensurate with floor size and this is an experiment:

Indie Month-to-Month Sales February 2013

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Walking Dead continues to dominate, but Star Wars and Saga both go from strength to strength. Strong debuts for Shadow Year One, Legend of the Shadowclan and the new GI Joe book are interspersed with increased sales for My Little Pony, Adventure Time and Hellboy. Elsewhere is the usual clutch of Image debuts, while further down a few series return to the charts after a period away.

MoCCA announces more guests

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Well, not so much guests as awesome people who will be there. Among the ones we’d like to call attention to, the French genius Boulet, graphic memoirist Miriam Katin (who is having her book release party in NYC tonight), animator/illustrator Peter de Seve and the all-around great Michael Kupperman. But you know, really everyone on this list is swell.

TCAF announces new guests, new features

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Speaking of TCAF, announcements are coming thick and fast. More guests \have been announced since last we checked in, including Rutu Modan, Lisa Hanawalt, and C.F., Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez, Boulet, Jarrett Krosoczka, Frederik Peeters, Patrick McEown , Lauren Barnett, Dennis Lo, Patrick Alexander, T Edward Bak, Ulli Lust, and the Australian Caravan of Comics: Bruce Mutard, Mirranda Burton, Scarlette Baccini, Marijka Gooding, Patrick Alexander, Gregory Mackay and Dan Hayward. As the travelled the furthest crew, you can help pay for their trip via this IndieGogo campaign.

Indie Month-to-Month Sales: January 2013

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Walking Dead sees a big rise as expected, while Saga and Buffy sandwich the new Star Wars book, and Invincible’s one hundredth issue. Elsewhere, it’s a good month for all-ages comics, and Image have their usual batch of debuts. Dynamite have a poorer month than usual for sales drops, but a round of relaunches are on the horizon.