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§ Nice art: Jim Lee posted the above work in progress Batman v Superman cover on his Twitters.

§ The Mary Sue has a full report on complaints about the Sunday badge for the Merald City Comic Con, which contains the cover of The Discipline, a comic by Peter Milligan and Leandro Fernandez. The badge image shows a woman with a monster tearing away her clothes, revealing her underwear. In the comic, which is about sexual awakening of a socially edgy sort, the scene is consensual, but you might not know that from a badge.

The ECCC/ReedPOP folks apologized and said anyone offended can trade in this badge for a different one. What’s funny is that a similar thing happened at C2E2 two years ago, with a scantily clad woman on the badge, and a similar apology and offer to swap was made. Maybe a post it note in the bullet journal is in order

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§ Anime News Network posts Japanese comic sales rankings every week or so. The top title, My Love Story!! #11 sold about 170,491 copies in its debut. That’s for a WEEK, not a month. Just a little perspective, there.

§ At the Wall Street Journal, Ellen Gamerman looks at The Rise of Cons, but NOT just comic cons…ALL the cons.

All of a sudden, everybody’s got a con. Exercise buffs go to FitCon and dessert lovers hit CookieCon. QuiltCon draws the bedspread set while ParanoiaCon lures conspiracy theorists. This year, CatConLA (pop culture for cat people) stalks into California ahead of Mouse-Con (for Disney memorabilia collectors). Read a lot? Go to BookCon. Like makeup? Beautycon. Drink beer? Why, there’s a Beer-Con, of course. The far-flung corners of fandom used to thrive mostly online, invisible to those didn’t share the same groupie passions. But recently, more fans have been stepping out of the virtual world and into convention centers—the physical manifestation of an obsessiveness bred by the Internet.


Despite the increasing niche-ification of cons, Gamerman credits comic cons for kicking off the trend, even if they aren’t about comics any more:

The beating heart of the empire is the comic con, which has morphed steadily from scattered niche events for comic-book lovers to broad pop-culture fests embracing every entertainment genre. In an effort to capitalize on recent growth, international event-planning firms have been buying up mom-and-pop cons, starting new events and diving into unexplored markets. ShowClix, a platform for live-event organizers, tallied 519 major pop-culture fan gatherings in the U.S. last year, up from 469 in 2014. The 50 new events entering the marketplace in 2015 are more than double the number of debuts in 2009.


I’m guessing that’s still a very conservative estimate, when you factor in anime/toy/collectible offshoot-y kinds of events. The whole piece is a good overview of con-mania, with quotes from ReedPOP, Wizard and other show runner types. The participatory excitement of face-to-face interaction seems to be the driving force of the rise of the con. Among the tidbits revealed: 84-year-old William Shatner is invited to about 100 shows a year but appears at only 31 of them.


§ Black Canary writer Brendan Fletcher joined forces with producer Joseph Donovan and Caveboy singer Michelle Bensimon to create a “Black Canary” band and they have a three song EP to go along with the new collection. Nice marketing.

§ Despite Deadpool’s ascendance, and the return of the R-rated movie. Disney will stick with PG-13 says Disney head Bob Iger. Shocker there, I know.

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§ The DC Super Hero Girls book launch has been successful enough that a second graphic novel has been announced, with the same creative team of Shea Fontana and Yancy Labat. DC Super Hero Girls: Hits & Myths which comes out in November.

In an exclusive interview, writer Shea Fontana, who is writing both the DC Super Hero Girls graphic novel series as well as a series of web-based short animations, said, “The fans have been so supportive and are totally digging the webisode shorts that have been released so far,” Fontana said. “Lots of moms and dads have told me how excited they are to share DC Super Hero Girls with their daughters and how they wished something like this existed when they were kids.”

§ Valerie D’Orazio has announced a new Comic Career Talent Coaching Service. Details in the link. At the same website, a piece called 8 Crucial Points On The Future Of The Comic Book Industry — it’s only from December, but some of the points she raises are already coming about. Seriously, read it.

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