Hey folks, those of you in the Pacific Northwest should get ready for the Emerald City ComicCon this weekend (March 13-14) in Seattle! We'll be there in full force all weekend, with Top Shelf superstars Matt Kindt (Super Spy), Jeff Lemire (Essex County), and Andy Runton (Owly) at the Top Shelf booth -- and Owly fans have an extra reason to go, as this year's official ECCC T-Shirts for both women and children feature an awesome "Owly in Seattle" design by Andy Runton!

See you in the Emerald City!

Wow! No sooner do we announce a new graphic novel by Eric Orchard (Maddy Kettle, coming in 2011) than we receive news that Eric has won a Spectrum Award!

The Spectrum Awards celebrate the best in art and design in the fields of fantasy and science fiction, as selected by a peer jury of working artists. The winning pieces will all be included in volume 17 of the Spectrum fantasy art anthology, to be published this fall. Eric's winning page comes from his mini-comic "The Cloud Cave," which he's currently expanding and adapting into his full-length graphic novel debut, Maddy Kettle. So we're totally claiming this one for Team Top Shelf! Congratulations, Eric, and hats off to all the winners.

Hey fans, as if our awesome Swedish Invasion party and book launches weren't enough reason to make this year's MoCCA Festival a must, the festival has now announced panel programming for the show -- and Top Shelf is featured on both Saturday and Sunday!

Saturday (April 10) will see Alex Robinson and James Kochalka included in an all-star panel of artists discussing their favorite comics of the decade. Then on Sunday (April 11), Top Shelf 2.0 editor Leigh Walton will join a host of folks talking about comics and new technology, and later a Scandinavian Comics panel will feature both Johannes Klenell and Mats Jonsson (Hey Princess), our friends from Swedish publisher Galago and key figures in the Top Shelf Swedish Invasion!

Full details on the three panels are after the jump, or click here to see all the great programming lined up for the show.

It’s always exciting when we discover new talent, or get a brilliant new proposal from one of our established masters. At the moment we can announce several of BOTH! The upcoming graphic novels we’ve recently signed include five new kid-friendly series, five new graphic novels by wonderful female creators, a massive award-winner from France, a full-length graphic novel from mini-comics master Will Dinski, the writing debut of Eric Skillman (designer of the beautiful ALEC omnibus, as well as the upcoming PLAYWRIGHT and AX anthology), and ten (!) incredible new graphic novels from our all-time greats. We’ll have more details on each book as they get closer to publication, but for now we’ll direct you here to check out the details we have available: Future Releases & 2010 Releases (as some will be published this year). And you can also see a list of titles by reading the rest of this post.

The March 2010 issue of Diamond Previews just landed, and it's got a ton of great new Top Shelf books ready to be pre-ordered, in advance of their May arrival. First, Rich Koslowski (creator of the beloved graphic novels Three Fingers and The King) teams with talented writer J.D. Arnold for a thrilling, emotional tale of racism, murder, revenge, and music, in BB Wolf and the 3 LPs. Then, the phenomenal team of Kathryn and Stuart Immonen make their Top Shelf debut with Moving Pictures, a tense portrait of a complex relationship and the fate of art during the Nazi occupation. Then, Jeffrey Brown presents a massive, long-awaited collection of his shorter works, Undeleted Scenes! And finally, the international gang at Stripburger have a beautiful new collection, Greetings from Cartoonia, based on the idea of borrowing each others' national culture.

For details and previews of each book, click below!