Publishers

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.

Dirk Wood has earned a promotion to VP of Marketing at IDW. That means we'll be hearing his gravelly-voiced uttering for a long longer. Many congrats to Mr. Wood!

Okay so everyone who figured out that that SPIDER-MEN project MArvel was teasing was a 616/Ultimate crossover—you are correct. Of course, Marvel wasn't exactly making it hard to figure out. Marvel has been teasing a bigger crossover between the regular line of comics and the Ultimate line and this seems like a good way to kick it off.

“Not all of our fans have access to comic book retail locations, so by expanding our website to offer the entire product line, we’re adding an element of convenience and the ability for fans to collect every single product they’re interested in,” stated Hank Kanalz, senior vice president of digital, DC Entertainment. For fans attending C2E2 in Chicago this weekend (April 13-15) Geoff Johns will moderate a DC Collectibles panel that will showcase the new website and brand logo, and offer an exclusive sneak peak of never announced DC Collectibles products coming later in 2012.

Marvel continues to pull out all the stops for promoting Avengers Vs. X-Men. If you've been on Facebook, particularly if you've been playing the Marvel: Avengers Alliance game, you may have noticed some comic book down the right hand side of the page. Ads that look like these:

For years, writers Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray have been running a "Get MONOLITH A Trade!" campaign to get their 12-issue maxiseries from 2004 a collection. Although the book had a dedicated following—especially for fans of Phil Winslade's amazing art—given that its sales were modest, that wasn't the most likely outcome. However, on Facebook it's revealed that rights have finally reverted and a collection is in the works from Image. Or rather—two collections, both in an oversized European hardcover album, like The Pro deluxe hardcover.

At his blog, famous realist/curmudgeon SLG publisher Dan Vado explains why he wasn't at ECCC and won't be at C2E2 and "recreates" the experience of the SLG booth:

Marvel's Junior Art Director Rich Ginter -- the man responsible for many of their ad campaigns and advertising materials, such as this stylish Defenders campaign, is moving to Disney in California, Twitter tell us. There he'll be a Digital Designer, where he'll be "working on their comic/magazine apps & designing stuff for that and new apps."

Yes yes, reprint pr is a dime a dozen, but from Image comes word that FATALE #1 the first issue of the Image book by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips is going back to press for a fifth printing. The first printing came out in January, so that's a printing a month. Issue #4 is currently out, and issues #2 and #3 have also been reprinted. Does this just mean tiny print runs? Not enough preorders? Maybe. It could also mean that a very good book keeps finding new readers.