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Brett Schenker is pressing onwards with his Facebook research into comics likers, who they are what they buy and what they do. While his gender based research continues to be a benchmark, this time out he has a lot of trends on education, employment and so on.

Since relaunching early last year, the new Heavy Metal has been relatively quiet, relaunching Hoax Hunters under their banner and pursuing their multi media plans mostly behind the scenes. However, a recent appearance at Wizard World Portland has revealed plans for locating the comics operations of the company in Portland, OR where they'll pursue a model that takes advantage of their well known branding:

Yesterday's announcement of Milestone 2.0 was broken in the Washington Post, but principles Reggie Hudlin and Denys Cowan did more extensive interviews talking about what they have planned in a few places. Talking with Albert Ching at CBR they noted "We're Not in the Nostalgia Business", which is a pretty good platform to build from. While the details are still sketchy, they confirmed that they have some projects in the works with DC, among other publishers, although there was a long legal tangle to unravel.

Last fall, we here at The Beat teamed up with the awesome folks at The Devastator to put together a survey for convention exhibitors. With all the controversy over who is spending and what cons are con games, it seemed like time to seriously upgrade this survey. And you responded, with more than 100 people taking the survey, giving results on the top cons and CAFs that revealed average sales and average amount of satisfaction with each show. In case you've never heard of them, The Devastator is a humor/comic magazine based in LA that features sharp satire and art by founders Geoffrey Golden and Amanda Meadows as well as people from The Onion, the Daily Show, Adult Swim, Marvel and more. The result, as crunched by the Devastator's staff, has some eye-opening statistics. You can read the entire report right here, and see some of the Devastator team's own comments below, but here are a few of my own eye-openers:

Well, bam, 2015 is off to a rousing start, with news breaking this morning that San Diego's IDW has acquired Atlanta/PDX's Top Shelf, with Top Shelf's Chris Staros to remain as Editor in Chief, while partner Brett Warnock retires from comics to run a food and nature blog. Top Shelf will remain as a separate line at IDW, while Leigh Walton, Chris Ross and Zac Boone will all stay on at the new imprint.

It's the final Humble Bundle of the year and it's $555 worth of Dynamite Comics for a pay what you want model. THIS IS...

Among the information revealed by the disastrous Sony documents leak, of most interest to comics types is a series of emails in which Sony and Marvel discussed a Spidey crossover. . This was widely rumored earlier this year, and yep it was true. Studio head Amy Pascal and Sony Pictures president Doug Belgrad discussed an offer from Marvel to produce a new trilogy of Spider-man movies, and a possible appearances for the webslinger in Captain America: Civil War. But alas:

Over at PW I reported on Consortium starting to distribute Alternative Comics and Secret Acres to bookstores. They currently distribute Uncivilized, Toon Books, Nobrow...

Insiders have been whispering that Hasbro the toy making giant, may buy Dreamworks Animation. The two companies would definitely find some of what they're missing in one another.

We've been talking about how the comics industry is doing well, and people seem to be making good on their business plans. But there are still cautionary tales. One such tale is Kaboom Test Labs, a two store cain located in Albuquerque, NM that abruptly closed shop this weekend. The main site has only a note that the owners were leaving New Mexico; a Facebook page where disappointed customers wondered what happened has been removed.

Every once in a while I mention the "small companies banding together to survive in a hostile environment" strategy, and here's a perfect example. Aspen Comics, the long running company founded by the late Michael Turner, has acquired Big Dog Ink as an imprint. Both Aspen and Big Dog publish primarily periodicals, and that really is a tough business plan these days unless you have well known IP, and even then it is no cakewalk.

Things are changing rapidly in comics retailing, and as we mentioned previously, this year's ICv2 conference which will be held the day before New York...