Indie Comics

Very sad news. Even as a recent Kickstarter campaign had raised money for a new digital edition of Dave Sim's seminal "High Society" storyline in CEREBUS, in a horrible stroke of irony, all of those negatives and all the digital scans made from them have gone up in flames, as the home of Sandeep Atwal burned to the ground. Sim updated the situation on the Moment of Cerebus page:

This year's Small Press Expo, to be held September 15-16 in Bethesda, has one of the most amazing guest line-ups in forever, with Jaime Hernandez, Gilbert Hernandez, Chris Ware, Dan Clowes, Francois Mouly, Adrian Tomine and MORE. Programming director Bill Kartalopoulos has out done him self with a program that covers all the bases and more. Suffice to say we'll be glued to the two programming tracks.

With Jeff Smith's first post-BONE project, RASL, wrapping up after a four-year run, he's doing a bunch of interviews, and here's a good one from Paste Magazine. HUGE SPOILER WARNING: If you haven't read all of RASL, this is definitely one to save for afterwards as it discusses plot twists and turns in depth.

The nominees for this year's Ignatz Awards, to be presented Saturday, September 15th at the Small Press Expo, have been announced. As usual, it's an eclectic mix spotlighting some outstanding work from off the beaten path—Inés Estrada— and some from mainstream publishers—My Friend Dahmer.

Walking Dead rules the top of the charts again, in preparation for next month's centennial issue, while new entries for Mars Attacks and Harbinger sandwich the ever improving Saga. Elsewhere, Spawn celebrates its 20th anniversary by almost tripling its regular sales and Brian Wood's The Massive launches encouragingly high, while a bunch of successful recent launches consolidate their figures. Lots of books dropping, further down the charts though.

   

135 indie books charted this month, up on last month's 128. The bottom book sold 3,302, down on last month's 4,477. They sold approximately 1,344,491, down on last month's 1,392,594. Average sales are 9,959 per book, also down on last month's 10,880. As usual, UK and European sales from Diamond UK are not reported in this chart.

 

Out of the 135 books, only 29 went up in sales, far less than last month, and 87 went down, with the rest made up of one-shots and debuts.

 

Forget Kickstarter! Let's talk OLD SCHOOL SUBSCRIPTIONS! Micropublisher Oily Comics has a DEAL for you. Center for Cartoon Studies alum, two-brick Ignatz winner and future Fantagraphics author, Charles Forsman is offering a subscription service for a few more hours! Days after subscribing I received a package full of comics. BAM!

August 17-25, members of Canadian independent comic book collective Colosse tour from San Francisco to Vancouver BC with multimedia readings of their acclaimed and edgy works, followed by book signings. Authors include Sophie Yanow (In Situ, a graphically daring, poetic journal strip) and Francois Samson-Dunlop and Alexandre Fontaine Rousseau (Pinkerton, an indie-rock rom com about getting over a truly 90s breakup in a post-90s world). Don’t miss this rare West Coast appearance!

Yet another good-looking new creator-owned imprint is coming, this time from Ivan Brandon.

Kickstarter has become an avenue for cartoonist to get funding for their projects. Lately more and more working professionals have taken full advantage of this major platform. Here are some projects that are promising and deserve support.

By Paul Mellerick--

Walking Dead shoots up in sales with two issues this month, while X_O Manowar marks the return of Valiant with the second best-selling indie book this month. Saga, Buffy and Fatale follow shortly behind, with a nice handful of strong new launches from all of the major players as the indie books continue to make their mark in the upper part of the chart.

And back in the real world. Toronto-based indie publisher Koyama Press has announced three fall releases from Julia Wertz, Michael DeForge and the Team Society League collective. Details below:

For all you stay at homes who are sick and tired of endless San Diego talk, we hope to provide a distraction or two. Like KUTIKUTI, a Finnish comics anthology. You can download all the issues as pdfs. We've always found Finnish humor to be equally fatalistic and merry, and so is KutiKuti.