The Beat

By Matt O'Keefe Jim Zub has been on a tear since Skullkickers debuted in 2010. In four years he's gone on to establish himself as writer...

Every year seems to bring an eagerly awaited, long brewing graphic novel by an industry master -- and in 2015 that book looks to be Scott McCloud's The Sculptor, which has been in the works for years and years. It's currently slated to be released in February, and USA Today has the first look at the cover as well as some chat from McCloud on the subject matter:

Locust Moon Comics in Philadelphia has been putting together ran all-star anthology celebrating Winsor McCay's LIttle Nemo with contemporary artists going nuts artistically. The above strip by David "Mouse Guard" Petersen is but one example of many jaw-droppers. The Kickstarter for the book launched Monday and has already been funded, but you will probably want a copy of it, anyway. Here some more art just to add to the persuasion.

I've been hearing a lot of conspiracy theories of late about DC, and some of them involve their participation/royalties system. In addition for quite a while, people have been complaining about the fact that colorists aren't eligible for royalties—and neither are digital-first comics. But that is changing. I understand a letter has just gone out to DC creative folks announcing a complete overhaul of the DC royalty system. For the first time colorists will be eligible for royalties and will get cover credit. And digital first will also be eligible for royalties. Little things like direct deposit and electronic vouchering will also be available.

Original Sin is Marvel’s big new event and it debuted at 147k and then dropped down to 92k. But is that good for a major event book? For fun I pulled the numbers for #1 issues of the last several big event books from Marvel to see how Original Sin stacks up. As you can see out of these 7 books it ranks 5th. I did better than Siege and Fear Itself, but worse than Age of Ultron, AVX, Secret invasion or Civil War. Two other interesting trends to note is that events have become more frequent and sell worse. I cherry picked these events because they fell around the same time of year as Original Sin and were Avengers-focused, but the last few years have been very event heavy and sales have been dropping overall on these events. They are still the best-selling books of their month generally but Marvel has yet to recapture the excitement and sales of Civil War.

by Brandon Schatz There was a piece hovering around the comics internet this weekend about the industry’s supposed need of more shit-talkers. It was an...