Comics

Yesterday, Apple servers were challenged when the world rushed to download iOS 5 with a host of new features -- and something called Newsstand, which will help readers subscribe to their favorite magazines available on iPads. Graphicly is there, so far the only mobile comics platform to be available, with titles like WALKING DEAD:

PW reports that Books-a-Million, the OTHER book chain remaining, has also ordered DC's top 100 GNs removed from their shelves in retaliation for DC's signing a digital four-month exclusive with Amazon.

As you may have heard, DC had this relaunch thing going on in September, ending several months of deck-clearing and water-treading in the company's superhero line. The kick-off came in the last week of August, with the release of Geoff Johns and Jim Lee's Justice League #1, which -- to nobody's surprise -- leads the August charts by quite a margin. To gauge what this means in the broader context of the comic-book direct market, though, we'll have to go back a few years.

GeekChicDaily, the daily nerd news email, is launching an edition for New York, and also teaming with the Tokyopop brand for a special edition spotlighting Japanese culture trends and news. The New York edition will cover the Big Apple's lively offerings in geek culture, following localized versions for LA and a national edition. GeekChicDaily also added Microsoft's Mich Mathews to its board of directors.

Another cartoon luminary of the past has joined IDW's Library of American Comics with the announcement of Cartoon Monarch: Otto Soglow and The Little King, a survey of Otto Soglow, the New Yorker minimalist who created The Little King, a much-admired character that influenced such design-heavy cartoonists as Ivan Brunetti and Chris Ware.

It's all design all the time in this miniseries by Dean Motter, Michael Lark and Mark Chiarello, who team for an extended homage to art deco architecture. Originally published by Vertigo, it's one of several distinctive limited series from that era getting new editions.

The comics industry lost an amazing man with the death of Dylan Williams, but it isn't losing Sparkplug Books. Williams's widow, Emily Nilsson, has announced that she, Virginia Paine, and Tom Neely will be keeping the publisher going for as long as they can:

A whole bunch of new art from the loincloth king from a HEAVY METAL magazine profile has been posted at this blog. Gorgeous in its simplicity.

In a better world, I would not have learned of Joe Simon's 98th birthday today via Facebook at 8 PM.

This iFanboy interview with a comics pirate who recently quit indicated that even among the scanning community, the good old days were awesome. Now, not so much.

Woot. Great reveal at the end. That said there's nothing incredibly spectacular in this trailer aside from the fact it's the friggin' Avengers. Like, if it was called...Thunderbirds, you'd think it was pretty typical. However, in Joss we trust.

Internet author sensation Amanda Hocking is coming to comics with a deal at Dynamite to publish her Hollowland books—a zombie-based fantasy— as GNs. Hocking self published her books as e-books with over a million books sold, and now a print deal at St. Martin's. She's also a comics fan, and will be involved in writing the books herself.