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[Chris Sotomayor is a successful and well known colorist for Marvel and other publishers. Recently he began a series of interviews he called "The Dirty Dozen" where he asks industry figures questions about their careers from a business standpoint. The themes are among those that we've recently been exploring here at The Beat as the career paths for cartoonists become more tangled -- here is more opportunity than ever, but the way to get there is not always clear. Although the interviews appear first at his site, Chris has graciously allowed The Beat to reprint them. Up this time, writer/artist Jimmy Palmiotti.]

In spite of all the gloom and doom you get from looking at sales charts, in reality the comics business is holding its own, mostly due to the perseverance and savvy of retailers such as those polled by Ada Price in this long piece for PW. The bottom line: Although times are tough, by being cautious, stores are staying healthy:

Back in August, 2010, we told you all about the story behind OBLIVION, a graphic novel concept by director Joe Kosinski (TRON: LEGACY) that was optioned to Disney Studios for a cool $500,000. It seemed like a lot of money for yet another "celebrity comic" so what was so hot about it? At the time we wrote:

As everyone has probably already heard (just scroll down the page), Rob Granito is a plagiarizing conman. He claimed to have done work for DC and Marvel, been the secret hand behind Brian Stelfreeze and, hilariously, to have worked on Calvin and Hobbes, and sold direct copies of other people's work with a few scribbles on top for hundreds of dollars. Not the usual pose tracing for a different use or character, but direct copies, with perhaps an arm moved slightly. And he did it for years. Artists known to have been plagiarized includes Jan Duursema, Tim Sale, Bruce Timm, Mark Bagley and Ivan Reis among others. As a response to this, the website Legit-o-mite.com has been started as a clearinghouse for evidence of direct plagiarism and fraud like this, on the part of Granito or any other artist.

Uh oh, when The Beatdips into the Cover Browser you know it's one of those "I'm all stressed out!" posts. Indeed, I'm finishing a VERY big and vital project and just can't keep up with everything going on. (Yes yes, Ron Granito, I know.) I'm very sorry. There are times I jut sit staring into space and wish I had a day where I could do nothing but read email, accept Facebook requests and drink coffee. That day is as likely as a day where I do nothing but shop at Prada and Bottega Veneta, but...you never know!

Joanne Siegel, widow of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel and the model for Lois Lane, died on February 12th at age 93 after spending most of her adult life helping her husband fight legal battle to get adequately compensated for creating the first and best known superhero of them all. Before she died, she wrote a letter to Time Warner chairman Jeff Bewkes, asking for some civility. Nikki Finke has printed this letter and we're taking the liberty of reprinting it because the topic is so germane to the matters we cover here.

With a bunch of editorial types going off to California to join Geoff Johns' secret avengers team, there have been a few openings in DC editorial of late, and at least two have been filled.

Now this is kind of interesting. Avatar, publisher of some of the greatest writers in comics, like Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis and so on, is switching distributors from Diamond to...BOOM!? Wait, BOOM! is a distributor? Not really, but they have their own distributor deal with Simon & Schuster for the US and HarperCollins for Canada. Avatar will be tagging along on BOOM!'s truck route for a unique partnership. We had the chance to chat informally with several Avatar personnel about this move at C2E2 -- and it's definitely a good one for them. Moore and (to a lesser extent) Ellis are perennial bookstore bestsellers, so being able to hop on that bandwagon should definitely help their trade program. Although not noted by anyone, really, Avatar significantly slowed their trade collection release schedule over the last few months; this deal enables them to get it going again.

In a world of empty PR speak the follow pr from Wizard about a new Chairman of the Board reads like it chugged a couple of Rockstars then doused itself with FourLoko before shooting up some crank. Look at these action verbs: excited, accelerate, momentum, increase, velocity -- just in ONE SENTENCE. That is really impressive. Whatever it is that Michael Mathews is going to do it is going to be WILD. And DIGITAL.

Via pr this morning, AdHouse publisher Chris Pitzer announced that the already much-lauded DUNCAN THE WONDER DOG by Adam Hines has won the first Lynd Ward Prize for graphic fiction. In a tweet, Drew Weing mentioned that his SET TO SEA had been named a Lynd Ward Prize Honor book. More honors may be announced when the actual PR goes out. Named for the seminal woodcut artist who created some early American graphic novels, the prize is sponsored by the Penn State University Libraries and presented to the "best graphic novel, fiction or non-fiction, published in the previous calendar year by a living U.S. citizen or resident." DUNCAN THE WONDER DOG has already been nominated for the LA Times Book Prize, and been named one of publishers Weekly's Best GNs of 2010. The book is currently sold out in print form but a second printing will be on sale imminently; a digital edition is currently for sale here.

Aaron Colter at Comics Alliance rounds up the latest news of t-shirt makers ripping off artists for ideas without paying them, including the granddaddy of them all, Todd Goldman, whose idea thievery is notorious -- his huge David and Goliath novelty company has a long, well-documented track record for necoming "majorly inspired" by other artists' ideas and then paying a little hush money when caught. We had a whole bunch of posts about Goldman's past sins up here once, but his lawyer made us take them down. Let's hope AOL has a few more resources to keep this story up, because he's a total ______ and a ________ too.

No one rocked that '60s eyeliner style like her.