Publishers

While Marvel keeps rolling out its latest round of relaunches, DC is sticking to its guns in November. There's the "Death of the Family" crossover that continues running through various Batman titles. There's the "Rise of the Third Army" crossover that continues running through the Green Lantern books. There are three minor crossover storylines running through various other titles. And there are, finally, the Before Watchmen and "digital-first" lines of books, both of which continue to expand in November.

Lots of shakeups emerged in yesterday's DC April solicitations, which you can read about here and here. The swift replacement of Robert Venditti on Constantine and Jim Zub on Birds of Prey got the most comment. How swift? As recently as last week , Zub was doing interviews to promote his run and then...it wasn't happening. Zub, widely known as a thorough professional, was very gracious about it on his blog

The solicitations for April's DC titles reveal that four of their books will be ending, including Joshua Hale Fialkov's I, Vampire and Paul Cornell...

DC has just started a new feature with CBR called B&B wherein EIC Bob Harras and executive editor Bobbie Chase answer questions and head...

While the Marvel Now! relaunch programme got under way in October, November saw it in full swing, with the first issue of ALL-NEW X-MEN, new creative teams (and new numbering) on HULK, IRON MAN, THOR, CAPTAIN AMERICA, X-MEN LEGACY, FANTASTIC FOUR and FF, and a new direction for JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY. With all the issue #1s supported by extensive promotion, the chart is turned upside down. You won't be surprised to hear that this gives Marvel the largest share of the North American direct market in November, leading DC by 40% to 33% in units and a rather closer 34% to 30% in dollars.

As roundly predicted by the internet, Marvel's 'XX' teaser from last week was indeed a relaunch of adjectiveless X-Men. Today, though, USA Today's comics pin-up...

DC's Source Blog has seen two updates this week, with the announcements for new creative teams on Swamp Thing and Red Hood And The...

DC's DJANGO UNCHAINED mini series has gotten a lot of press and sales—the first issue was a sell-out, but in all the hoopla we'd always noticed that while it was billed as an adaptation of Quentin Tarantino's screenplay, with art by R.M. Guera and an actual writer was never named. (MOvie scripts don't just adapt themselves.) Well, it turns out, in a publicity blitz last week that now Oscar-nominated producer and long time comics scripter Reginald Hudlin did the actual adapting. The comic is based on the original screenplay and includes many scenes that were cut from the final film, as he told Comics Alliance.

Aside from being Dennis Hopeless week once more, this week saw every company release a massively publicized, 'important' comic. From Dark Horse's new Star...

As announced earlier today, Image publisher Eric Stephenson was decisively voted The Beat's Comics Industry Person of the Year by comics professionals. Stephenson graciously agreed to be interviewed on the big impact Image had on the industry in the past year and what's next for the publisher.

This is the third year of our Comics Industry Person of the Year poll, and the winner was pretty much a landslide. Every year we ask the participants in our survey to name who they thought was the person who made an impact or set the pace, and to comment anonymously (or on the record) and it was a clear choice this time out. With many people saying it was the Year of Image, Image publisher Eric Stephenson was the runaway winner—and the Saga team of Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples were definitely the Team of the Year, with a significant number of votes.

I'd like to think this is a joke....and while I don't like spotlighting trolls, they may be the most appalling and yet hilarious comment on a comics related topic I've read in a while. It comes in Deadline's report on the WB win in the Superman case yesterday, and this poster has it all figured out. I've actually edited the comment a bit to get to the punchline faster, but nothing that changes the meaning.