Publishers

Stopping digital piracy has become a full-time obsession for most major entertainment companies; but the Stop Online Piracy Act now wending its way through Congress is probably not the way to do it -- a far too broad law that would give lawmakers powers to stop just about any activity they don't like via cutting off funding to the site and other zero tolerance measures. Although aimed at hard-to-stop foreign websites that recognize no copyright laws, opponents say the bill goes way too far in allowing copyright holders to choke off stuff they don't want with an arsenal of tools.

From 1958's SUPERMAN'S GIRL FRIEND, LOIS LANE #5 Can you imagine what would have happened if the Internet existed in 1958? Perhaps people like Mort Weisinger could not exist in a wired world. Julie Schwartz would probably have been running a website and playing Halo.

Marvel Executive Editor Tom Brevoort has opened up some kind of secret vault where artifacts from Marvel's history have been stored; and just like anyone else would do, he's putting them on Tumblr. For instance, here's the origial last page of AVENGERS #1 with Tom's annotation:

Today, the final issue (#72) of DMZ shipped. With a quiet epilogue, a series that started as a love letter to New York City ended as a love letter to New York City. This time, a bit more literally as the narrative was driven by excerpts from protagonist Matty Roth's prison-penned book.

With FEAR ITSELF wrapping up, Marvel had several major releases in November - the POINT ONE one-shot, the relaunches of UNCANNY X-MEN and FANTASTIC FOUR, and the first issue of new ongoing title AVENGING SPIDER-MAN.

We've also got the epilogue of FEAR ITSELF, the start of BATTLE SCARS, and a bunch of other "Regenesis" tie-ins from the X-books.

Marvel found itself behind DC for the third straight month in November, though the gap is growing closer. DC led by 40% to 38% in unit share, and 35% to 33% in dollars. And of course, it should be remembered that DC's extra sales don't appear to have come at Marvel's expense; if DC's relaunch has brought any new or lapsed readers into the market, then in theory, that's good for other publishers too - it brings them into everyone's potential market.

Thanks as always to ICV2.com for permission to use these figures.

5. POINT ONE
11/11  One-shot - 113,352

Marvel's top selling comic of the month! Or is it? This book was massively overshipped, with retailers receiving twice the number of copies they'd actually ordered, at no extra cost. Those copies are presumably included in this number - that certainly appears to be Diamond's standard practice, given the odd sales spikes that we've seen when this strategy has been used before.

If that's the case, then the actual orders of this book would be 56,676 - which would have placed the book at number 29 between AMAZING SPIDER-MAN and AVENGERS. Considering the solicitation ("You CANNOT miss this. Catch a tease of the biggest change to the Marvel Universe in over 35 years!") that number would surely have been disappointing, even allowing for the six dollar price tag. The wisdom of pricing a teaser book that high must also be open to question.

Fantagraphics is having a four-day 40% off sale featuring some amazing books by Gilbert Hernandez, Robert Williams, Jules Feiffer, Carol Tyler, and more. You really can't go wrong with anything on the list, but here are a few of our own picks:

Almost every time the name of SLG publisher Dan Vado is mentioned, the word "survivor" is appended to it -- surviving over 20 years in an industry that provides indie comics only scant handholds in its forbidding rockface is no mean feat. But you will never know just how much of a survivor Vado and crew are until you read Five things we survived at SLG., an account of rodent, insect and human scourges on their physical offices. The most famed, of course, is the drunk driver that plowed through their office in 2004 -- thanks to a woman who insisted on stealing the keys to someone else's car after everyone deemed her so drunk they had taken away her own car keys.

By Todd Allen There's a sub-genre of espionage that's come to be called "Spy-Fi."  Spy-Fi is the blending of science fiction and spy stories.  It's...

Via their Facebook page, the upcoming Spider-Man reboot movie posted some stills. Surely Jim Carrey is very excited now over this still of Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy, as well as Captain Stacy and Peter Parker in action. Is it just us or has this Spidey reboot hype kind of gotten lost in the Batman/Avengers shuffle?

"I think a solid core of high-selling mainstream-y genre comics would be nice, but it really hasn't happened (except for arguably the manga phenomenon,...

Given that creator Pendleton Ward is a huge comics reader and sometime cartoonist and that half the staff consists of folks you would normally see at Stumptown, AND that the cartoon itself is heavily influenced by generations of alt.comix (Ward says Trondheim's Dungeon comics are a huge influence) ....it's a surprise that up until now there hasn't been an ADVENTURE TIME comic book based on the hugely popular Cartoon Network show. But now BOOM!! is remedying that with a new ongoing monthly series written by Ryan North (DINOSAUR COMICS) with art by Shelli Paroline (ICE AGE: ICED IN and MUPPET SNOW WHITE.) It's part of Boom's KaBOOM! kid line. Also of note: the book is coming out from BOOM! rather than DC, which, like the Cartoon Network, is owned by Warner Bros.

In an emailed newsletter, artist Steve Rude reports that his rough year is ending on an up note, and he'll be re-teaming with writer Mike Baron for a new Nexus story starting in DARK HORSE PRESENTS #12 in May. The three installments of the story will then be collected into a standalone 30-page book. The story deals with the "nature of evil". Nexus, the spacefaring tale of a superhero who kills mass-murderers -- has had a long run with multiple publishers since the early '80s. Baron and Rude self-published an issue a few years ago but the series has been hit with delays since then.