Indie Comics

On Saturday we broke the news that the MoCCA Festival in New York and Stumptown in Portland, OR would share the same dates, April 28-29, as MoCCA had finalized their dates for the same weekend. Since then, all the participant have spoken out regarding the unfortunate timing. MoCCA museum director Jack Walsh has just released a statement:

Terry Moore has a pretty amazing track record as a self-publishing cartoonist. He's wrapped up his magnum opus STRANGERS IN PARADISE, but instead of going into that awkward "I just finished my magnum opus" mode, he jumped right back in with a new series -- the SF-tinged ECHO -- and just wrapped up THAT. And now he's a launched a new thriller series called RACHEL RISING, which debuted at Comic-Con. However, as successful as he's been, Moore still found his new #1 underordered, and #2 orders cut back even more. It's a familiar problem in the direct market. In an interview with Russ Burlingame, Moore is askedthe inevitable questions about digital delivery:

WOMANTHOLOGY, the huge collection of comics by women succeeded in meeting its Kickstarter goals. In fact, it exceeded them by some bit, raising $109,301 in 30 days. The original goal was $25,000. Womanthology had some fantastic premiums to get people to pledge -- including contributions from Kevin Smith, Neil Gaiman, Jim Lee, and tons more. But thats still a crazy amount of money. Over 2000 people pledged, 433 of them between $65 and $100.

In a rather surprising turn of events, New York's MoCCA Festival has announced their 2012 dates -- and not only are they a change from previously announced dates, but it's the same weekend -- April 27-28 -- as Stumptown Festival, the alt-comix festival held each year in Portland. The Stumptown dates were announced months ago, so the change comes as a surprise. As one exhibitor who forwarded the letter told us, in previous years MoCCA and Stumptown were a week apart, which was hard enough, but now the already small pool of indie comics publishers and creators are going to have to skip one or the other.

MacDonald chaired a Comic-Con panel on Legendary Comics, the new comic book offshoot of movie powerhouse Legendary Pictures.

At Image's Creator-Owned panel, Image did what Image does best - original books by independent creators. Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard will be releasing a series of original graphic novels called Album.

Friday at San Diego Comic-Con has brought a boatload of indie comics news. Here's a quick run down of the highlights: At the Image panel, it was revealed that Ted McKeever will be doing a new comic called Mondo for Image Comics. Landry Walker and Eric Jones, creators of Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the Eighth Grade, will create Danger Club, a new non-family friendly comic, for Image.

A slew of Ignatz-Award wining guests will be at this year's SPX:

Exhibit A Press is publishing its first-ever full-color book: The Life-Partner of Frankenstein: A Supernatural Law Book by Batton Lash (60 pages, $10.95).

Gabrielle Bell is releasing her San Diego Diary mini, and Lizz Hickey is releasing SUCK IT. Both are JUST IN TIME. more info

I can totally relate to Lauren Weinstein's latest comic, The Sit Down Test. But not because I've recently spawned - I just failed the sit down test miserably and there's photographic evidence of it! Check that evil dressing room mirror, ladies. And be sure to check out more of Weinstein's work over at Vineyworld.

The Walking Dead gets a huge boost this month as the recent storyline is a big hit. The number two issue this month is Kirby Genesis from Dynamite, though as a one dollar title its sales are somewhat inflated. Coming in at number three is the IDW launch of a Rocketeer anthology. Further down the chart we have new Star Wars comics from Dark Horse, the most recent GI Joe relaunches from IDW, a new Megaman title from Archie, and a bunch of Image comics with increased sales.