News

The looooong convention schedule is just about set to wrap up with the last big regional show of the year, the Long Beach Comic Com, in balmy downtown Long Beach this weekend. Guests include Marv Wolfman, Jimmy Palmiotti, Jeph Loeb, Stan Lee, Thomas Jane, and more. One last chance to frolic! Programming is here in a form you can import right into your social media. It's going to be a fun, Halloween themed weekend with lots of Walking Dead-related activities.

Canada Reads, a yearly contest to pick the best Canadian books of the year, has launched a campaign to select the Top 40 Essential Canadian Novels of the Decade, and two graphic novels have been selected by the public, ESSEX COUNTY by Jeff Lemire and SKIM by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki.

Times are tough, people. Several folks in our comics community can't pay the rent this month and are raising funds via selling cool things. Help them out if you see fit.

Just a quick note -- DC sales figures for August are, as you have seen, VERY late this month due to actual work for Marc-Oliver. He assures me he IS working on it, however, and we're hoping to have it finished imminently. Thank you for your patience.

A big birthday shout out to the Beat's own sainted mother, who is celebrating a special birthday today. My mother's art and cartooning and continuing interest in everything from MMORPGs to webcomics has always been an inspiration to me, and it's probably a huge reason why I've ever reached toward success in any endeavor. Thank you, Suzu.

One of The New Yorker's most iconic cartoonists, Leo Cullum has passed away at age 68. The NY Times obituary has an associated slide show, and proves that some New Yorker cartoons will actually make you laugh out loud.

Silver Age inking manstay Mike Esposito has passed away at the age of 83, according to numerous online sources. Esposito was best known for his collaboration with penciller Ross Andru on Superman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man and hundreds of other books.

In Portland, OR and Flemington, NJ.. Celebrate the season and please give to help stop domestic violence.

As you may recall, I lost my camera at this year's SPX. Soon after, Jen Vaughn, bless her heart, started a fund raising drive to buy me a new camera, and -- mostly I'm sure because of Jen's enthusiasm -- folks had donated about enough for a more than decent digital camera.

Over at iFanboy, Josh Flanagan continues this week's succession of toilet metaphors for the monthly sales figures with "Q3 Comic Book Sales Are in the Crapper". We don't agree with Flanagan's overall distress -- there is no need to "cross fingers" that comics will get through this rough patch. Let's get one things straight in all this mishegoss: comics will continue on in some format either like or unlike the one we have today. Period. People have been proclaiming the death of comics for over 50 years and something new always comes along. The particular aspect of the present day comics industry that you or I are involved with may not make the jump but something else will. Them's the breaks.

That aside, the article is interesting for the comments section, which doesn't go for the knee-jerk complaint that big events are killing comics.

There seems to have been a recent rash of comics show crimes, what with a daring theft at NYCC. Alvin Buenaventura reports that two copies of the rare and valuable KRAMERS ERGOT were stolen from his booth at APE. Let's call this one a brazen heist.

Anyone setting eyes on the Library of America's gorgeous new Lynd Ward boxed set will immediately add it to the Christmas wish list. (It's the first time a graphic novel has been added to the list on classic works.) But the pioneering graphic novelist is getting a new honor -- Penn State is naming an award after him, The Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize (also the Lynd Ward Prize for the Best Graphic Novel of the Year). Ward's daughters donated a collection of his wood engravings, original book illustrations, and other graphic art donated to the Penn State University Libraries, establishing an association. The prize of $2500 will be announced each spring and be presented to the best graphic novel, fiction or non-fiction, published in the previous calendar year in the United States by a living American citizen or resident.