Ezra Clayton Daniles has taken his infamous Comics Art Battle ONLINE!!!

These epic events have always been a hoot live and in the flesh, and the online version kick ass too. Whoo hoo!

•Â Here's the most recent Diamond Previews ad for Top Shelf. After our Winter hiatus, we're starting to get some real nifty books off to the printer. This month, Liz Prince's sophomore effort, Delayed Replays, and David Chelsea's 24x2, which collects two of his NINE 24-Hour comics. They're all very excellent, and hopefully sales on this book will be enough to do more.

• Alan David Doane has an excellent interview with Robert Scott, from Comickazi Comics in San Diego, at Comic Book Galaxy. Robert is also the head honcho at the CBIA (Comic Book Industry Alliance). The interview provides another considered response to the current debate on pre-selling comics at conventions.

I have an idea about this, that i think (i hope) might work for everybody, but first, one more time i have to take umbrage with one of Robert's comments from the interview.

Scott says, "It really shouldn't be that hard to understand that if they are already struggling so much selling this work in the DM, that pre-selling into that market is going to capture sales that would've been made in DM shops but unfortunately most publishers seem to feel that their need trumps everything and everyone else. I believe this is shortsighted and destructive both to the publisher and retailers, regardless of how much money it brings in the short term because it closes off avenues for growth."

I have never disparaged the job of a direct market retailer. I know scores of retailers personally, most of whom i count as friends and comrades-in-arms in an industry that in the best of times, is difficult to navigate. Until there is at least limited returnability for backlist titles and such, direct market retailers are caught between a rock and a hard spot, literally rolling the proverbial dice on a weekly basis, as a matter of fact, hoping they at least break even on their investment.

I clearly understand, and appreciate this. Now, i can't speak for any other publisher (some, like Fantagraphics claim they operate conventions at a loss), but at Top Shelf, our A-List authors can often sell numbers on a given book, that almost rivals the actual direct market advance purchase order on said book. (That certainly doesn't bode well on the support [in orders] we get from the majority of retailers.)

For us, convention debuts truly are a matter of survival. We've stated publicly many times that roughly a third of our annual income comes from convention sales. And launch books play a significant part in that. This is simply not a practice we can afford to eliminate. Period.

NO retailer could make the claim, that in the case of Top Shelf, we're stealing from our own benefactors, because not even the combined amount of our total direct market retail support (in advance purchase orders) for 90% of the books in our line, come close to break-even. Without decent advance orders, we bleed money, and sell at shows as a matter of survival. We would be out of business if we didn't do otherwise.

I won't comment on the aesthetic value of our own line of comics and graphic novels, but i can say that lots of people besides ourselves have made wads of money from our A-List titles. Is Robert saying he would rather not have ANY Top Shelf books to make money from at all, were we to go out of business? That makes no sense whatsoever. No Blankets, From Hell, or Lost Girls to make handsome profits from?

O.k, enough of the bitch-fest.

I propose a volunteer program along the lines Robert talked about, wherein as much as possible, publishers and the CBIA work together and the publishers give advance notice to the CBIA, when they become reasonably aware that a book might launch at a particular show. It's not always an easy task, though, because the publishers are at the whims of fate, as they wait for copies to arrive directly from the printer … often times from China or Hong Kong. Publishers might only know this information a week or two in many cases (or less).

Moreover, these publishers should build-in to their projected convention inventory needs a modicum of overage dedicated to selling (at wholesale, of course) to retailers in the city of the convention in question. The advance notice would allow for retailers to inform customers to notify their staff and clientele.

The onus on the member publishers would be the need for honesty and transparency concerning debut books. That said, the onus on the CBIA would then be to first contact the member publishers in advance of a show (maybe three or four weeks ahead), and simply ask; "Do you have any debut books at the show? Any attending authors we should know about?" Copies of these launch books would then be available either before the show opens to the public during set-up (why the gods created the mobile phone), or at any point during the show.

Chris Staros and myself have ALWAYS honored a similar system, of not only of selling our debut books to retailers at the show itself, but also at a 60% discount! For my two cents, a system like this wouldn't deviate from our own method of operation much at all. And i'd wager that many or most of my publisher friends would gladly participate.

I absolutely LOVE Robert's ideas. Advance knowledge of an attending creator allowing retailers to build creator-based displays is genius. So is the idea of producing book plates for the retailers only, for their stores.

I believe there can indeed be a middle ground here, folks.

• Michael Golden has an exhibit up at the Society of Illustrators. So if you're in Manhattan this month, and as much of a Golden fanboy as myself, get yer butt on over there and check it out!

From the press release:
THE paramount club of renowned artists for over a hundred years, and boasting a membership that at various times included such talents as Montgomery Flagg and N.C. Wyeth, the Society of Illustrators has also become the artistic home of many of today's top sequential art illustrators.

A member since 2007, Golden was inducted on the same night as Neal Adams! Michael's artwork is currently being displayed in the third floor gallery, right next to the likes of Rockwell, Lyndecker and Parrish.

The Michael Golden exhibit shows a spectrum of work, and includes a six page sequential segment entitled "The Sniper," which is one of the first appearance of his influential "The 'Nam" characters. In addition, the Golden works include canvas pieces of his X-Men and Jurassic Park pieces and much more.

Here's more fancy art by my favorite comic book artist EVER!!

• I blogged about Ed Piskor's book Wizziwig just recently, and now Ed informs me the story can be read at his website. i really really really dig this work, and think it's Ed's best, most ambitious work to date.

Can't wait to see more!!

a new update from John Weeks in Cambodia, at his fabulous Comics Lifestyle blog.

• Craig Thompson hits yet another one out of the park. (Of course.) Here is this year's Stumptown Comics Fest poster. Take note: Stumptown has moved up from it's early Winter time frame, to April 26 and 27, filling the void of APE's Spring engagement.

• Here's an insanely cool image i lifted from the Comics Alliance website, drawn by Eric Tan, for a benefit for The Hero Initiative, organized by Golden Apple Comics. All part of an event called Under the Influence: A Tribute to Stan Lee.

• Sadly, i heard through the grapevine that John Anderson's Comics Alliance website is now defunct. You can find stuff still archived there, and i really hope these stay available. Our little world of comics is so small, that a site like this that contributed a great deal to our community in such a short period of time should live on, at least in archival form. Big ups to John and all the contributors to the site, including Kevin Panetta, Ian Sattler, Greg Bennett, Wayne Beamer, et al.

• Scott Campbell continues to produce astounding work.

Here is his "alternative" cover art for the upcoming dvd release of King of Kong,

This motherfucker can draw, baby!! Check out his blog for more happenings.

From the same deranged group of killer cartoonists, here is Nathan Stapley's cover for the new issue of the anthology Hickee.

• Issue #3 of Marc Mason's Comics Waiting Room is now live, and worth a visit!

• Tom Hart's Hutch Own comic strip is fucking AWESOME! So much so, i heartily recommend it for nothing less than a Harvey nomination!! Check out this sampler page he made, to see more.

Tom writes, "Here you'll see some recent developments like the Rockabilly Kid, Rebelville, Hutch Owen in France, the Dalai Lama goes commercial and the outsourcing to India and China of the writing of TV shows... And also what is currently running and begins today - a long story about a furry mascot ("The Unpajamable Snowman") that morphs into a couple different types of monsters, then goes and wrecks the white house and... well, that you'll have to read in real time."

Download the Harvey Ballot here.

• Clearing out server space as well as my over-crowded desktop.. more random stuff...

Here's another old Christmas card from Center for Cartoon Studies. I think it's by Rich Tommaso.

Pencils of an old pin-up (is that Big Barda?) from Dean Haspiel.

A beautiful cover for a Spanish-language edition of Dylan Horrocks' seminal Hicksville.

Portland retailer Guapo Comics turns turned two years old on January 29, and they're having a party this Saturday night. Well done, Allie and Jeremy!

• Alan Moore signs Lost Girls at Gosh Comics in London. Cheers to Joel Meadows for the link.

• Renee French rocks! Here's some art from her upcoming book by Picture Box.
Uncle Charles

Uncle Henry

• Charlito and Mr. Phil interviewed inkstud Jeff Lemire in the 107th edition of Indie Spinner Rack! It's awesome.

• Another podcast interview, with Alex Robinson, can be found at Global Comics.

• Lemire also gets interviewed at Tom O'Shea's new website, Talking with Tim.

•Â A beautiful belated greeting from Leela Corman and Tom Hart. Thanks, kids!

• Matt Kindt interviewed at Steve Duin's blog at Oregon Live.

• Even More bitchin' Michael Golden art... this promoting Golden's "Special Guest" status for the upcoming Atlanta Comics Expo.

• From the desk of David Yurkovich:
Mantlo: A Life in Comics, Free Download on Wowio

"Here's an excellent chance for YOU to help comics writer Bill Mantlo (who wrote hundreds of comic stories for titles including Spider-Man, Hulk, Human Fly, Micronauts, ROM, Cloak and Dagger), and best of all, it won't cost you a dime!

"David Yurkovich's 2007 career retrospective of Bill (Mantlo: A Life in Comics) is now available as a free download at Wowio.com. Every time the PDF is downloaded, Bill will benefit directly. As you may know, Wowio features banner advertising. The advertisers pay whenever a book is downloaded. It's that simple. All proceeds (100%) are going directly toward Bill's care. It's WIN WIN!

"If you missed the print version of the magazine, here's your chance to obtain the digital edition and at the same time help out Mr. Mantlo.

"Click here to download the magazine. Special thanks to Bill Williams at Lone Star Press for managing the project and making this happen."

•Â Oh, and here's some kick-ass fanboy art (with two of my favorite Marvel characters) by Frank Cho. I think it's a cover for an upcoming issue of Ultimates Vol. 3. (With some ass-covering art added. Natch.) But really, does it matter? It screams (Druuna artist) Serpieri to me. Fucking killer!!