Comics

Over at Blog Flume, Alvin Buenaventura announced that his much admired Buenaventura Press -- publisher of such seminal works as KRAMERS ERGOT #7, FIGHT OR RUN, and THE COMPLETE JACK SURVIVES -- was forced to close its doors in January, due to a single devastating financial blow. Buenaventura wrote:

The artist salutes the world's biggest event!

Gary Panter has revamped his website, and of course this means hours of poring over comics, drawings, paintings and historical artifacts. Panter also has a few events coming up for you West Coasters.

Via PR, Gary Friedrich, a seminal figure of Marvel in the 60s and 70s and co-creator of Ghost Rider, and the late Otto Binder, without whom there would be no Supergirl or Krypto or hundreds of other comics, are the two latest recipients of the Bill Finger Award. This honor is presented annually at the the San Diego Comic-Con to honor one living writer, and one deceased who have made significant contributions to the comics industry.

The biggest event in the world, The World Cup is kicking off today and we'll kick off our link blogging with Richard Bruton's tribute to Roy of the Rovers , which, based on the squeal FMB gave when a Roy collection arrived on our doorstep, is some kind of seminal kids footie comic. Bruton concentrates on the "Dark Knight" of Roy comics, a 1994 version by Rob Davis and Stuart Green:

Artist GB Tran has just relaunched his website, and he has a preview of VIETNAMERICA, a comics memoir to be published by Villard next...

Via PR, another swell-looking collection of vintage kids comics, this time collated by Craig Yoe as part of his line of books at IDW....

Via Frank Santoro , a long lost Charlton story by Ditko.

Yesterday's installment of Cup O' Joe was an especially timely one, with Marvel's new Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada explaining a few things. For...

The top “indie” book on the charts this month is a $1 issue of The Walking Dead #1. However, none of the other Image $1 books have charted either this month or last, so I’m not sure how accurate this numbers is. Invincible Returns was the best selling non-reprint #1 of the month, and led to a substantial increase for the regular issue of Invincible as well. While Turf #1, also from Image, was the highest launch of the month. Image had a 4.26% unit share, and a 3.96% dollar share, Dark Horse had a 3.82% unit share and a 4.88% dollar share, IDW had a 3.41% unit share and a 3.92% dollar share. Dynamite fell to a 2.38% unit share and a 2.33% dollar share.

Crossover season continues! SIEGE #4 slipped into May, but that didn't stop a bunch of tie-in books from shipping, including the final issues of several Avengers titles before the line gets revamped. HULK and INCREDIBLE HULK didn't ship either, but there's still some WORLD WAR HULK books on this list. And the X-books kick off their major crossover, "Second Coming." April also saw the release of the Iron Man movie, complete with the launch of a second monthly Iron Man title. And we've got the first issues of new DEADPOOL CORPS, S.H.I.E.L.D. and BLACK WIDOW, as well as a bunch of miniseries. As usual, Marvel had the largest share of the direct market, beating DC by 45% to 33% in units, and 39% to 30% in dollars.

We're not necessarily going to make a cottage industry out of running all these "record setting art sales" PR pieces, but given the recent...