Announcing: Womanthology

8 Comments POSTED ON Jul 07 2011 AT 6:00 pm BY The Beat

Artiest Renae De Liz (THE LAST UNICORN) is putting her energy where her mouth is and compiling WOMANTHOLOGY, an anthology of female creators, with a lineup that includes:

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Disney’s D23 festival announces schedule and Marvel events

0 Comments POSTED ON Jul 07 2011 AT 5:00 pm BY The Beat

For years, we wondered why Disney didn't do it's own Comic-Con...and now they are with the biennial D23 festival in Anaheim. This year's show, set for August 19-21, is the suspected reason why Disney's Hall H presence for such films as John Carter and The Avengers will not be at Comic-Con. And indeed, the presentation schedule has just been announced and not only does it include a 90 minute Hall H style presentation, but an entire Joe Quesada-led Marvel event. This would be an awesome thing to attend if it weren't just a month after Comic-Con for us East coasters. Anyone want to cover it for us? Also, nice to see the Disney princesses getting named as legends.

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DC Comics Month-to-Month Sales: May 2011

51 Comments POSTED ON Jul 07 2011 AT 3:45 pm BY Marc-Oliver Frisch

Despite the debut of this year's big blockbuster series Flashpoint, average DC comic-book sales were down in May. In part, that's because Flashpoint itself came in 13,000 units below the magical 100K mark and ended up charting second after Marvel's Fear Itself #2, which has to be quite a disappointment for DC. On the other hand, most of the rest of DC's line didn't join in the crossover until June, so the overall numbers may still pick up. The other notable thing about DC's May output is that there wasn't a lot of it. The number of new comic books released by DC in May was 59, which, along with January 2004, holds the record for the fewest number of books released by the company since Diamond started publishing data on actual sales. Looking at the solicitations, it's not hard to find the reason: None of the five Green Lantern film tie-in books scheduled for May came out (one of them still hasn't been published as I'm writing this), while the launch dates of Static Shock and Batwoman were pushed back to September. And, while we're at it, the David Finch vehicle Batman: The Dark Knight remained in limbo in May. DC's Web site currently lists issue #3 for July 13 and issue #5 for August, with no information on #4. So not even DC seems entirely sure what's going on with the book.

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SD11: Thursday programming is here!

5 Comments POSTED ON Jul 07 2011 AT 2:29 pm BY The Beat

Programming for PREVIEW NIGHT and Thursday is up! If there ain't something you like here then you are sick of life! Highlights later,

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Sony ends comics sales on PSP

6 Comments POSTED ON Jul 07 2011 AT 11:44 am BY The Beat

One of the earliest outlets for digital comics -- Sony's PSP gaming system -- will no longer be selling them, according to an announcement on the Sony blog:

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Exclusive: Kim Harrison’s Blood Work Blog Tour

20 Comments POSTED ON Jul 07 2011 AT 8:00 am BY The Beat

Original comics additions to best-selling fantasy series are one of the hottest trends in graphic novels these days, and here's a new one that looks to continue that trend. Kim Harrison's The Hollows urban fantasy series has already sold over a million copies and now it's joining the graphic novel world with BLOOD WORK, an original gn set in the Hollows world with art by Pedro Maia an Gemma Magno. The book was written by Harrison herself and goes on sale on July 12th. The Hollows series is set in an alternate world where supernatural witches, vampires, werewolves and pixies lives alongside more regular humans. Rachel Morgan, a witch, is a detective who investigates crimes that involves both worlds. BLOOD WORK tells the story of how Morgan and her vampire partner Ivy Tamwood met for the first time and teamed up.

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BONE announces 20th Anniversary Tour Dates

3 Comments POSTED ON Jul 07 2011 AT 7:00 am BY The Beat

At the Book Expo in May we were asking an indie book store owner if she sold many graphic novels and she said "Only the classics, like BONE." To celebrate, the BONE crew is hitting the road with the spectacular deluxe 20th Anniversary edition, the first full color one volume edition of BONE. Details here.

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San Diego Comic-Con: The Map is here and we’ve annotated it

23 Comments POSTED ON Jul 06 2011 AT 5:23 pm BY The Beat

CCI has just released the exhibitor list and floor plan for this year's show. How you can figure out your escape route, and where to pose, and how long it will take to go from the Corey Feldman autographing session to buying a an exclusive Mini-Mate 7th Bounty Hunter from the left action figure. We've made our own EXCLUSIVE annotated map with some regions of note. Click to embiggen.

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Marvel Month-to-Month Sales: May 2011

44 Comments POSTED ON Jul 06 2011 AT 3:17 pm BY Paul OBrien

It's month two of event season, and FEAR ITSELF tie-ins are starting to crop up across the Marvel Universe. And there's also the relaunch of MOON KNIGHT - wisely given a clear run in a month that's otherwise pretty light on new titles. DC's FLASHPOINT event also gets underway in May, but with the crossover titles not hitting until June, it's no surprise that Marvel were once again the top company in the direct market. They led DC by 46% to 28% in unit share and by 42% to 27% in dollars. All of this, of course, could be turned upside down in September - a month which will be unpredictable if nothing else. But for now, let us cast our minds back to a simpler time. Thanks as always to ICV2.com for allowing us to use these figures. And a reminder for newer readers: these numbers only relate to the North American direct market. They don't cover newsstands, or foreign markets. And the same material will also (eventually) sell in digital and trade paperback format, so the total sales will be higher. On the other hand, these numbers reflect the orders placed by direct market retailers - it doesn't follow that all the copies were actually sold to customers. But the longer a book has been going, the more accurate the retailers' estimates ought to be.

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Anders Nilsen hits the West Coast with ‘Big Questions’

1 Comment POSTED ON Jul 06 2011 AT 1:02 pm BY The Beat

The complete BIG QUESTIONS by Anders Nilsen is ure to be one of the books of the year, a 600+ page meditati

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Steve Bissette is back with TEEN ANGELS & NEW MUTANTS

4 Comments POSTED ON Jul 06 2011 AT 12:07 pm BY The Beat

Steve Bissette is second to none when it comes to well-sourced, exhaustively thorough and stimulatingly thoughtful writings on culture, so his new book TEEN ANGELS & NEW MUTANTS should be quite the read. ... Amazingly, while EW's comics coverage has been spotty of late, here's an awesome interview with Bissette in Shelf Life : Brat Pack is not a graphic novel that tends to get mentioned in the same breath as, say, Watchmen or The Dark Knight Returns, when people talk about all-time great comics.

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Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa talks about Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark

1 Comment POSTED ON Jul 06 2011 AT 8:30 am BY The Beat

Now that the drama had ended, and the show has gone on, some of the folks associated with the epic Spider-Man musical revamp are talking about their roles in it. Playwright/comics scribe Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa pens his memoirs of how he came to help rewrite the show and it's quite sunny in tone, but also gives his side of it for the first time:

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IDW announces 30 DAYS OF NIGHT monthly comic

2 Comments POSTED ON Jul 06 2011 AT 8:00 am BY The Beat

This October Steve Niles and Sam Kieth will be teaming on an ongoing 30 DAYS OF NIGHT comic. The story adds new characters to the vampire saga that spawned the popular film. Now you may be asking yourself, wasn't there already an ongoing? N0 -- there were lots of mini series but not an actual ongoing comic book. More via PR:

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Comic-Con daily news: Banners, creator connection, Fantagraphics debuts, etc.

1 Comment POSTED ON Jul 06 2011 AT 7:30 am BY The Beat

The con itself rolls out a couple of features, Fantagraphics announces some amazing debuts, and Casey/Johnny Storm/Lucas Lee/Jensen/Steve Rogers will be signing at the Marvel booth, most likely.

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Coming Attractions: July 2011

0 Comments POSTED ON Jul 06 2011 AT 7:30 am BY Torsten Adair

So much good stuff! Bestselling author Christopher Moore writes a graphic novel! Ray Bradbury, Grandmaster, has two classics adapted! Grant Morrison writes about superheroes and religion! Disney and Hitler, together again! Girlie comics from Marvel! "Good Girl" comics from Jim Silke, Doug Sneyd, and Dean Yeagle! Great Women comics from Gail Simone, Colleen Coover, Megan Kelso, Jill Thompson, and Corinne Mucha! (Can't find female creators on the newsstands? Check the bookshelves!) And lots of masterful work from Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, Jim Starlin, and Floyd Gottfredson!

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Assistant Editor: Kate Fitzsimons

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