Commentary on various aspects of publishing and marketing, primarily focused on books, magazines, and social media.
Support Independent Comics!Independent comics (and manga) being released tomorrow, 5/4/05, courtesy of ComicList. Not all of these titles will actually arrive in all stores. If your LCBS offers a pre-ordering service, be sure to take advantage of it.What are you reading?AARDVARK-VANAHEIM/WIN-MILL PRO Following Cerebus #3 (AA), $3.95AC COMICS Best Of The West #50, $6.95 Femforce New Millenium Coll Pack, $24.95 Women Of Mystery Pack, $44.95ACTOR Actor DFE Magdalena Preview Book (AA), $3.00 Actor DFE Transformers War Within Vol 3 #1 Foil Ed, $14.99 Actor DFE Witchblade Red Foil Ed #48, $5.00 Actor Identity Crisis #7 Sgn, $29.99 Actor Superman #204…
Most mainstream comic books these days ride a rickety wooden roller coaster throughout their ever-shortening life spans, offering an uneven mix of definitive and forgettable story arcs before inevitably being rebooted by some flavor-of-the-month talent in the kind of short-term thinking that brought down corporations like Enron and Worldcom. Then there are comic books like The Losers, defined by a singular creative vision that, hopefully, is allowed to carry through to its organic conclusion and then able to rest in peace. Typically, though, these types of comics die on the vine, languishing in obscurity as they are ignored by the…
Support Independent Comics!Independent comics (and manga) being released tomorrow, 4/27/05, courtesy of ComicList. Not all of these titles will actually arrive in all stores. If your LCBS offers a pre-ordering service, be sure to take advantage of it.What are you reading?AARDVARK-VANAHEIM/WIN-MILL PRO Following Cerebus #1 (AA), $3.95 Following Cerebus #2 (AA), $3.95ABIOGENESIS PRESS Strangehaven #17 (resolicited), $2.95ABSTRACT STUDIOS Strangers In Paradise #73, $2.95ADHESIVE COMICS Too Much Coffee Man Magazine #22, $4.95AIT/PLANETLAR Filler GN, $12.95ALTERNATIVE COMICS Centerfield One Shot, $3.50 Hickee Vol 3 #1, $2.95AMAZE INK (SLAVE LABOR GRAPHICS) 15 Minutes #3, $3.95 Skaggy The Lost TPB, $16.95 Slave Labor Peepshow…
A month or so ago, Top Shelf Productions was running a great sale on some of their backlist, with an assortment of graphic novels and comix for $1 and $3. [EDIT: The sale is apparently still on, here.] A mixed bag of titles, the vast majority of which I'd never heard of, I decided to randomly pick several that caught my eye and see whether or not any of them could match the subtle brilliance of Craig Thompson's Blankets, a highly acclaimed Top Shelf publication, which I finally read earlier this year. A rather lofty standard-bearer, for sure, but when…
Support Independent Comics!Independent comics (and manga) being released today, 4/20/05, courtesy of ComicList. Not all of these titles will actually arrive in all stores. If your LCBS offers a pre-ordering service, be sure to take advantage of it.What are you reading?AC COMICS Best Of The West #49, $6.95A. D. VISION Maburaho Manga Vol 1 TPB, $9.99ANARCHY STUDIOS/HARRIS COMICS Gold Digger Vol 5 Pkt Manga TPB, $9.99 Vampirella Comics Magazine Burns Cvr #9, $9.95 Vampirella Comics Magazine Harris Cvr #9, $9.95ANTARCTIC PRESS Gold Digger #63, $2.99 I Hunt Monsters Vol 2 #4, $2.99 Mangazine Vol 3 #64, $9.99 Ninja High School…
A few weeks back, we took a trip south to visit my mother in Virginia, and I decided to hit Diamond's Comic Shop Locator to see what the four-color world was like outside of New York City. Punching in the zip code of her suburban Richmond town, I was surprised to see only three shops pop up, none in Richmond itself. I input a few more zip codes for Richmond proper and parts due north, and still came up with the same three shops. Odd, I thought, but Virginia is a bit of a conservative state - to this NYer,…
This guy I work with says, "I've really mellowed out the past month or so."We're preparing for a massive move over the weekend, almost everyone on my floor is shifting places, and he's calming himself down as he tells me and a co-worker about the storage facility where we can send the overflow of boxes of media kits, etc."I lost my mother last month."I hate moments like that, especially with people I barely know. I never know what to say and, not being particularly religious or anything, even the simplest platitudes like "God bless." are awkward. Worse, though, is that…
