News

After a few weeks of buzz and speculation -- or merely simple detective work based on the very final sounding August DC solicits -- it's been announced:DC is revamping its entire line this September with new versions of classic characters and 50 new #1 titles, USA Today reports.

The 2011 Reuben Awards for the best in cartooning and related fields were presented at the annual National Cartoonists Society meeting on Saturday. Richard Thompson beat out Glen Keane and Stephan Pastis for THE Reuben as cartoonist of the year. Jill Thompson won the Comic Book category for BEASTS OF BURDEN, and Joyce Farmer won the graphic novel category for SPECIAL EXITS, while Jeff Parker and Steve Kelley's DUSTIN won for best comic strip.

Artist Phil Yeh is a familiar sight at comics and books shows, painting murals as part of his "Cartoonists Across the World" literacy campaign which he's been doing for over 20 years.

Marvel editor Steve Wacker was tweeting some art earlier in the day, including rather nice page by Emma Rios on the Cloak & Dagger Spider-Island tie-in. Clickee for largee!

Industry analysis site ICv2 has just released a new industry report card for Q1 '11, and while sales were a bit patchy, it wasn't a disaster. This article contains links to a bunch of category analyses, but perhaps the most interesting is that non-Big Two, non-superhero titles are beginning to take up a bigger part of the market share:

Day 2 of BEA produced more sore feet and shoulders as books were schlepped everywhere. but also books, authors, talks, and even a few comics. The Beat's day started with an Author's Stage interview with Bill Willingham on the subject of his new YA prose novel, Down the Mysterly River. Author's Stage interviews are kind of like Inside the Actors Studio -- they take place on a stage ...in front of people...sitting in a chair. No place to hide! They are not meant to engage a sense of comfort in the interviewer! Luckily Bill is such a great raconteur and talker, I had no worries. Publisher Tor has written up the talk:

There was some floor chatter at BEA about Barnes & Noble yesterday -- although we all know Borders is not long for this world, some are suggesting that all the book chains are going to be bye-bye within two years. This despite the recent $1 billion purchase bid for Barnes &Noble by John Malone's Liberty Media. But is Malone's bid really about brick and mortar stores?

The first day of exhibits at this year's BEA kicked off with a smaller floor space, and, as opposed to years past when the Diamond booth was the place to be for comics, found comics publishers scattered all over the floor -- Archaia being the latest to move out, over to PGW. But wherever they were, comics seemed comfortable to be there.

Archaia is making some moves, both with a new distributor -- PGW -- and its first illustrated novel, strong>Conspiracy of the Planet of the Apes. Buried in a PR on the Ape book is the news that Archaia is leaving Diamond for PGW, which already distributes Cartoon Books. PGW distributes over 100 independent publishers, so picking up a few GN publishers makes sense. And Archaia's new books-only plan is also a good bit for a books-only distributor.

Borders' woes continued in April as their losses mounted, PW reports.

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.

WARNING: EXTREMELY NERDY MAC CONTENT -- proceed at your own risk. As you know, I've been complaining about computer problems for a few months now, with tedious frequency -- but not as tedious as seeing a spinning beach ball is to me. Basically, every morning when I started up my iMac to get to work on The Beat it would take anywhere from 5 minutes to half an hour for the beachball to stop spinning and all the programs to start responding. Unbearable, right? You bet!