Comics

POLITICO's Matt Wuerker has wonthis year's Pulitzer Prize for cartooning, an award presented for "his consistently fresh, funny cartoons, especially memorable for lampooning the partisan conflict that engulfed Washington."

The Archie staff has been busy sitting around dreaming up more outrageous what-ifs, including this gender-swapped natural. Shark jumping...or classic?

By now you know a lot of the wacky details: "Penis! Penis! Penis!", the restraining orders, the menacing muscle who was only a friend, and so on—but this account adds some dog poop.

This art will all be available at the Before Watchmen website later today. Live from #c2e2 UPDATE WITH FINAL ART.

At his panel tonight at C2E2, Mark Waid revealed the details of his ambitious new Thrillbent digital comics portal. It's a new entrant in the original digital comics race, but one with some heavy hitting talent behind it—in addition to Waid, John Rogers is a founder, and artist Peter Krause, who previously teamed with Waid for IRREDEEMABLE, will be collaborating on a new strip with him.

Since the story broke in USA Today, DC has put out a press release with more information on their new original digital comics, which you can read below, but the short version is that the Ami-Comi comics, in addition to being written by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti, will be drawn by the following artists:

A new self-publisher showed up at C2E2: Campaign Comics and creator Shia LaBeouf. He's keeping it low key in artist alley. "We're just here to have fun," he said while signing his OGN.

DC has finally pulled the trigger on their long-gestating original digital comics line, USA Today tells us. Several new projects are going to launch in addition to today's launch for SMALLVILLE SEASON 11, by Bryan Q. Miller and the ongoing BATMAN BEYOND and BATMAN: ARKHAM UNHINGED webcomics. Here's what's new:

Anders Nilsen's acclaimed BIG QUESTIONS has won the second Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize. The award recognizes the best graphic novel, fiction or non-fiction, by a living American and is sponsored by Penn State University Libraries and administered by the Pennsylvania Center for the Book, an affiliate of the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress.

A hardcover comic book! Which costs more like a comic, but looks more like a book! And the first one is free!

Image publisher Eric Stephenson delivered yesterday's lunch presentation for Image Comics at the Diamond Retailer Summit. Instead of announcing any new projects, he used the time to deliver a speech about Image's history and its present, and to urge retailers not to let readers craving something new slip away to digital by not giving Image's ambitious new slate a chance.

DC is having a special focus group to show off a binder full of BEFORE WATCHMEN pages at the Diamond Retailer Summit.