The Beat

by Nicky Wheeler-Nicholson Who else but the hipster indie publisher Top Shelf could possibly put out a book entitled God is Disappointed in You. Written...

We missed yesterday's Marvel teaser campaign entry, and it was a good one. The Infinity Gauntlet, originally by Jim Starlin, and one of the cornerstones of modern comics continuity and readership. And today's call out is Old Man Logan, by Mark Millar (him again!!!) and Steve McNiven, who draws this image. This one was revealed in a Tweet.

by Nicky Wheeler-Nicholson Who else but the hipster indie publisher Top Shelf could possibly put out a book entitled God is Disappointed in You. Written by Mark Russell with illustrations by Shannon Wheeler of “Too Much Coffee Man” fame God is Disappointed in You is the Bible boiled down to its essential elements.

by David Carter Greetings, sales charts fans! It's time once again to look at DC's sales figures. As has been their wont for the past few years, DC marks the September anniversary of The New 52 with a publishing stunt. In September 2012 it was Zero Issues; in September 2013 it was Villains Month with fancy 3D covers, weird X.1 numbering, and allocations. And in September 2014 they return to the 3D cover well with Futures End one-shots. This year DC avoided last year's allocation falderal by having retailers get their orders for the Futures End one-shots in a couple of months early, with creative teams announced only a couple of weeks before orders were due, and initial orders only (no Final Order Cutoff). (Retailers were also allowed to order up front as many 3D and standard covers that they wished for each title.) This caused no end of problems for retailers as they had to judge how many to order of these one-shots with no real clue as to how they would sell. Would there be as much demand as there was last year with the highly-publicized 3D cover shortages? How many customers would want to get the fact 3D covers, regardless of whether they were buying the regular titles? How many customers would want 3D covers over standard covers? How many customers would just sit out the one-shots all together?

Ethan Young is a cartoonist best known for his autobiographical webcomic Tails, but he's going to be coming out in a big way next August with NANJING: The Burning City, a full length historical comic to be published by Dark Horse. According to the publisher: After the bombs fell and shook the walls of Nanjing, the Imperial Japanese Army entered and seized the Chinese capital. Through the dust of the demolished buildings, screams echo off the rubble. Two abandoned Chinese soldiers are trapped and desperately outnumbered inside the walled city. What they’ll encounter will haunt them. But in the face of horror, they’ll learn that resistance and bravery cannot be destroyed by the enemy. Dark Horse provided a preview of the book, and it's in a rugged black and white style well suited to what sounds like a grim tale. Tails has a looser, more cartoony look, but this is a little Kubert, a little Tardi...

Digital Manga has been successfully Kickstarting publication of several books by God of Comics Osama Tezuka for a few years now. So far they've done Barbara, Swallowing the Earth and more. But Tezuka drew some 150,000 pages of comics in his lifetime, so this is a pretty big task to bring all his comics to English. The new project has ambitious goals: to publish the following titles: