Tag: Top News

A mural at a French hospital showing Wonder Woman getting it every which way from Supergirl, the Flash, Batman and Superman in the most crude ways possible has generated controversy. LINK SO NSFW. You don't say.

We're looking for a few writers around here and near here.

§ Jason Enright is moving on from the Marvel monthly sales charts due to some exciting but unannounced news. I know a bunch of you apply for this every time, but please reapply -- previous experience with databases and a glee for number crunching required. Jason is graciously doing this month's chart but after that, we are on our own. Email me at comicsbeat at gmail.com if interested. This is a volunteer position.

§ The March crew of Rep. John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell talk a little about why we need this message and these reminders now with EW's Joshua Rivera.

Congressman Lewis is aware of this, and it’s his hope that people will take the time to reflect on what came before. “This book is a guide, we can use it,” says Lewis. “This is what people tried to do, this is what people did in the late ’50s and the ’60s to try to make things better.”

Bookmark! Bookmark! Bookmark! Darling Sleeper is a new comics magazine hosted on medium.com. It's run by cartoonist Jesse Lucas, who has put out books including Colloquial and works at Forest Giant when he isn't cartooning. The site is billed as "a publication focusing on comics, art and other independent thought" and has already featured interviews with Box Brown, Aisha Taylor and Sam Alden, a comics excerpt from Whitney Taylor, new comics from J. Jonny and Keiler Roberts and Lucas's own Guide to Self Publishing.

When IDW acquired Top Shelf a few weeks ago, there was much talk about creators like Alan Moore staying around, but Top Shelf's Chris Staros made it clear that he had discussed the move in advance with his top creators. One much liked book that Top Shelf published for about a decade is Andy Runton's Owly series, a steady seller that helped establish kids content in the indy world long before it was fashionable. However, as noted by Johanna Draper Carlson, Runton tweeted that he would be self-publishing Owly going forward.

Somehow I managed to miss last week's biggest news of all: a new collection from Adrian Tomine, coming in October! The ominously titled Killing and Dying which collects the last few issues of Optic Nerve:

Despite a Twitter non-denial denial, from owner Renee George, Wizard World has confirmed they have acquired the long running Pittsburgh Comicon, to be held September 11-13 at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. “We are excited to have acquired the long-standing and popular Pittsburgh Comicon from Renee,” said John Macaluso, Wizard World CEO. “We are excited to inject the Wizard World flavor in the Pittsburgh market, a city we’ve been wanting to expand to for many years. We are looking forward to seeing all our fans in September!”

The Small Press Expo, to be held this year Sept. 19-20, isn't a fully curated show. About half the booths are grandfathered in, but the rest are open in a "lottery" that is nerve-wracking but ultimately fair. While curated shows like TCAF and CAB present a sleek line-up, it's good to have some element of the random for one premiere CAF. REgistration is open from February 1-15 and the rest of the process is laid out in an announcement. "What to expect when you're expecting to table."

Dynamite has been making a lot of announcements, and there isn't even a con coming. Here's the round-up: • CEO Nick Barrucci is selling art from his personal collection by Tom Raney, Mark Bagley, Scott Hanna, and Patrick Zircher from books like The Outsiders, The Punisher, Uncanny X-Men, Ultimate Spider-Man, The Order, Robin, and more. A portion of the proceeds will go to benefit the CBLDF. Barrucci owns hundreds of pages of art, and fans can order by artist: orders will be filled randomly for $75 a page.

Last fall, we here at The Beat teamed up with the awesome folks at The Devastator to put together a survey for convention exhibitors. With all the controversy over who is spending and what cons are con games, it seemed like time to seriously upgrade this survey. And you responded, with more than 100 people taking the survey, giving results on the top cons and CAFs that revealed average sales and average amount of satisfaction with each show. In case you've never heard of them, The Devastator is a humor/comic magazine based in LA that features sharp satire and art by founders Geoffrey Golden and Amanda Meadows as well as people from The Onion, the Daily Show, Adult Swim, Marvel and more. The result, as crunched by the Devastator's staff, has some eye-opening statistics. You can read the entire report right here, and see some of the Devastator team's own comments below, but here are a few of my own eye-openers:

It's not a surprise, given that it was a fairly big ratings success, but FOX has renewed the Batman prequel series Gotham for another...

In the post Amazology world. many digital comics apps and companies have sprung up trying to stake their claim in this growing world. Farrago Comics is an app for iPad and android that offers a range of free comics. As suggested by their motto "Comic Book Freedom!" the idea is to provide a manageable app for sampling and reading—which isn't a bad one given today's crazy quilt of digital platforms. Revenue is provided by ads, as it is with many apps. Up until now they were offering mostly Golden Age and indie comics, but they've just sign up with IDW to offer some fan fave #1 from the likes of Steve Niles, Ben Templesmith, Jonathan Maberry, Chris Roberson, Ashley Wood, etc.