News

Well, the RSS spam crisis seems to have passed. We called the web host and after a hold of a mere 45 minutes they ran a clean-up program and found the offending files which had been embedded in the theme folders. Not sure how the original hack occurred, but there are a lot of WordPress vulnerabilities that still exist.

The business news website ICv2 isn't known for being hyperbolic. So when Milton Griepp said that this month's comics sales had "plummeted" everyone leaped up, screaming, knocking over chairs and spilling drinks everywhere.

Sales of comics and graphic novels through Diamond Comic Distributors dropped substantially in August with periodical comics falling 17% and graphic novels down 21%.  There wasn’t a single comic title even close to the 100,000 in August. 

If it weren't for the continued strength of SCOTT PILGRIM trades, the GN drop would have been even more grisly. On the periodical side, there was no big book, but, said ICv2, Certainly "the lack of one big title can’t account for everything." The grim details immediately set the punditocracy to arms, perhaps sniffing the hint of burning smoke in Tom Spurgeon's Doomapocalyptigeddon which he descried from his aerie high in the Misty Mountains, the same distant smell of charring paper and brimstone that we've been picking up for the last few weeks.

Over on her blog, Valerie D'Orazio announces that as of January she will no longer be running Friends of Lulu, the organization formed to promote women in comics. Instead she'll be putting her efforts toward a new organization called "Comics are for Everyone."

Can an old-fashioned comic book company that lasted about a year in the newsstand era find happiness in the modern world of licensing and Hollywood exploitation? That's what Stan Lee's cousin (by marriage) is counting on, with the relaunch of Atlas Comics. Atlas/Seaboard was founded by Martin Goodman, founder of the original Marvel/Atlas/Timely. After selling Marvel to the distributor Cadence, Goodman got back into the publishing game in 1974 with Atlas Comics, a short-lived but innovative outfit that offered art returns, profit sharing, and other ahead-of-their-times perks. However, it didn't last long -- by 1975, it was dead.

A year ago, two major events happened in the world of comics -– it was dubbed The 10 Days That Shook the World. On August 29, 2009 it was announced that Marvel was being acquired by Disney. A few short days later on September 9, DC Comics became DC Entertainment. It was also announced that Paul Levitz -– who had been at DC for some 37 years -- would be stepping down. The world held its breath to see what would happen next. There were big changes brewing at the big two. How would Disney and Warner Bros. change the face of comic book publishing as we know it?

We are still having problems where people's private emails are visible on the site. It's a very, very weird problem, evidently related to our use of Supercache to alleviate the GPU problem. We're actually in the process of moving to a new server. I tried turning off comments, but that doesn't work either. What I would recommend to people who don't want their private emails available to the next few posters is to use a dummy email for now. The way the controls are presently set, there is no technical reason to post a working email. I will of course continue to monitor comments and remove asshats, so this is not carte blanche to go nutso.

Nominees for the 2010 Lulu Awards, recognizing "the people and projects that helped to open eyes and minds to the amazing comic and cartooning...

Another tweak in the ongoing book distribution shifting: Cartoon Books, Jeff Smith's company and publisher of the 1 Volume BONE and RASL books, is moving from Diamond Book Distributors to PGW. The move affects only Cartoon Books' returnable sales -- direct sales will continue to be offered through Diamond Distribution. Recently out from cartoon Books: RASL POCKET EDITION #1, collecting issues 1-7 of the story of a dimension-jumping art thief. Good reading.

Presented Saturday night at the Small Press Expo, here are the 2010 Ignatz Award winners. Nominees were chosen by a panel comprised of Anders...

A lot of you have been emailing me about the comment glitch wherein the previous commenters information is still in the commenting box, and some bogus posting has resulted. Unfortunately, I've had to disable comments until we can figure out what's going on.

Re the current discussion following the actual creative costs quoted by Glenn Hauman in a recent post ,Todd Allen reminded me of a piece he wrote for PW COmics Week a while ago breaking down printing costs vs profits. Here's an excerpt ( but the whole piece is very long and should be read in its entirety.)

Khepri Comics is a web-based comics seller that's been around for over a decade, offering a lot of indie books but specializing in work by Brian Wood, Cliff Chiang, Becky Cloonan, and other "new mainstream" creators. Over the years, owner Brian Scot Johnson has built a strong relationship with these creators by promoting their work via special sales and so on. By partnering with Khepri these creators -- who, in addition to their distinctive work, have well-defined fanbases which they maintain via web interaction -- would be able to, say, offer a blog preview of their small press work with a link to Khepri and know that consumers would be able to purchase a copy.