News

With the rampaging (heh) success of The Walking Dead TV show, expect comics as episodic fodder to get a fresh look in Hollywood --...

Via email from Jeff Lemire, the exciting news that "ESSEX COUNTY BECOMES THE FIRST GRAPHIC NOVEL TO BE NAMED ONE OF THE TOP TEN ESSENTIAL CANADIAN BOOKS OF THE DECADE!" The selection comes as part of Canada Reads, a yearly literacy campaign aimed at spotlighting the best in Canadian literature. Voting was open to the public, and comics types have supported a vote for ESSEX COUNTY as a vote for comics legitimacy, but it's certainly a deserved honor. Lemire's bleak, spare tales of rural Canadian life and coming of age are timeless and powerfully told.

The Fire Dept. of New York -- and other fire safety organizations -- promote the time changes in fall and spring as a reminder to change your smoke detector batteries -- doing so saves lives and property. As someone who lost a lot of her childhood comics in a fire that was undetected by a fire alarm, I can testify that this is a really great cause and a good reminder.

In all the massive changes taking place at DC of late, the fate of the Vertigo imprint has caused much speculation and fretting. The staff has been slashed, output has been slowed, and what the future focus will be has not been publicly revealed. This comes, ironically enough, at the very time that plans long hatched for Vertigo to become more of a graphic novel imprint are finally being published. Chris Mautner takes a look at several recent GN offerings, which include work by novelists Stephen King, Peter Straub, Denise Mina, and Mat Johnson, as well as more typical comics types like Matt Kindt, Sarah Glidden and Dean Haspiel. There are hits and misses but this is really a pretty lively line-up for any publisher, let alone one that is being completely rebranded.

Continuing on with the end of year announcements, PW's annual Best Books issues is out, and it includes 10 graphic novels, as follows:

It's starting! PW's Best Books will be out on Monday, but here's the Amazon editors' choices for the year:

[In recent weeks there's been much discussion of comics pricing, and both Marvel and DC have made changes to their pricing levels in order to face the realities of the current economic climate. While DC has announced an across the board roll-back of prices from $3.99 to $2.99, Marvel's policy announcements have been somewhat less clear. At the ICV2 conference last month Vice-President Sales & Circulation David Gabriel announced a rollback on selected titles, but no details. In addition at a retailer meeting, Marvel announced that they would be putting out fewer titles. An interview earlier this week with VP-executive editor Tom Brevoort made it clear that the rollback was limited but left details to Gabriel. In order to clear up what Marvel's policies are in regards to pricing, Gabriel and Chief Operating Officer Jim "Ski" Sokolowski sat down for an interview, discussing some of the business realities of publishing, the growth of digital and how to reach new readers as older ones cycle out.]

Just last week it was announced that Wizard was bringing its Wizard World tour of pop culture-themed autograph shows to New Orleans -- at the exact same venue as the existing NOLA Comic Con. Now it turns out that Wizard has acquired the NOLA con, and is moving it to their earlier, January date. Many of Wizard's convention acquisitions have been more of an organizational shift than an actual purchase—the two entities share leads and resources and the original show runners get to broker exhibit space. New Orleans is a notoriously difficult locale for vendor conventions, so in this case, teaming up makes a lot of sense.

Bob Schreck, one of the industry's best regarded editors, has left his position as Senior Editor at IDW to start a comics division for Legendary Pictures (not Entertainment, as the IDW release states), according to PR that just went out. The parting was amicable. Legendary Pictures, founded by Thomas Tull, has produced such films as Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Hangover, Inception, and Where the Wild Things Are, so the connection to starting their own comics company is pretty obvious and Schreck is well qualified to start such an effort.

Presented last night at at the Long Beach Comic Con. Leah Adezio Award for Best Kid-Friendly Work: Diana Nock, The Intrepid Girlbot Best Female Character: Ramona...

The Eagle Awards were presented at the MCM Expo in London Last night,. And the winners are: Roll of Honour – Brian Bolland Favourite Newcomer Writer...

Over at the Source, PR for DC Entertainment's new SVP of Finance, Nairi Gardiner. Things have been quiet on the DC front, publicly, for a variety of reasons, but there is still a lot of restructuring going on. Burbank-based WB vet Gardiner replaces New York-based Pat Caldon, who is retiring, and shows in emerging detail that DC Entertainment is very much a Burbank company.