Announcements

After announcing a book for Free Comic Book Day and a lot of teasing, the relaunched Valiant has announced it's first title. X-O Manowar is launching on May 2nd. That's actually the Wednesday BEFORE Free Comic Book Day. X-O's high concept is, roughly stated, Conan in Iron Man's suit. Essentially, a Visigoth warrior/barbarian is abducted by aliens and ends up with the aliens' most advanced weapon in the universe suit of armor. It's also been a popular concept a couple times around, particularly during the first Valiant run. Between the two previous Valiant launches, here's a quick partial list of creators who've worked on X-O: Jim Shooter, Steve Englehart, Barry Windsor-Smith, Bob Layton, Bart Sears, Jackson Guice, Mark Waid, Dwayne McDuffie and Scot Eaton. Which is to say, "no pressure."

The mostly triumphal (photos to come) Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival was marred for one indie comics stalwart when AdHouse publisher Chris Pitzer's car was broken into and several art items stolen. The complete list is in the link -- as Pitzer notes, it's kind of unlikely that that thief was much interested in the art, but there is a reward for its return.

Lauren Weinstein has posted an update from Tom Hart and Leela Corman, who tragically lost their young daughter last week:

Tom and Leela asked me to thank everyone from the bottom of their hearts. “We feel every word, every thought, every intention, and please tell them that their help has enabled us to pay for our families – who don’t have much money – to fly here rapidly to be with us. And that it has helped us with all of the costs of this horrible experience. We are beyond grateful and we owe you many lifetimes of kindness and service. We hope that you will never experience anything remotely close, but please know that whatever help you need, we are with you too.”

Although the whole situation is unbearably sad, we should all be thankful that our community has been able to help these two good people at this time. The fund is still open for donations here.

Over on the Vertigo blog, we find an announcement that Vertigo's titles are starting to be released simultaneously in both print and digital ("day and date" is an insipid phrase; let's all stop using it).

Yen Press has announced two manga style adaptations of bestselling YA novels: Sherrilyn Kenyon's Chronicles of Nick and Cassandra Clare's The Infernal Devices trilogy.  HyeKyung Baek...

This is a little premature, but we might be looking at Sesame Street comics in the not-too-distant future.  APE Entertainment, which does have some...

This is interesting.  Viz is migrating Shonen Jump to a digital edition that's only 2 weeks removed from the Japanese original.  (And you can...

DC announced yesterday that Ann Nocenti will be taking over the writing chores on Green Arrow, as of issue #7.  JT Krul was previously...

A special birthday shout-out to Jimmy Palmiotti, the best friend and advisor of almost everyone in comics--The Beat included--and creator or co-creator of comics from The Pro, Monolith, 21 Down, Painkiller Jane, Back to Brooklyn, and of course a long, acclaimed run on Jonah Hex.

Trolling the internet while on vacation, I was chilled down to the bone (impressive given the 100+ temperatures in Texas) to see on the announcement on the Center for Cartoon Studies website that the Xeric Award would be no more. Since 1992, Peter Laird of the amazeballs black and white comic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (self-published in 1984) has granted two awards a year to a cartoonist or project for its excellence.

Lettering lord Todd Klein has not only won more awards for lettering than any other living human, he's created six striking limited edition prints in collaboration with Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Alex Ross, J.H. Williams III, Mark Buckingham and Bill WIllingham all of which are available on his site. . All the prints feature Klein's masterful lettering with original words or art by his collaborators, each with a rough alphabetical theme. He's just announced a SEVENTH print, this time in conjunction with Steve Rude, entitled "Hope" and depicting Pandora.

Writers Val and David celebrated their wedding day this weekend, and it was a laugh-filled day of friendship and good tidings for the happy couple. It also blossomed into its own hashtag, #weddingcon, because the guest list was so loaded with talent. Good times and all the best to two great people.