With no in-person San Diego Comic-Con this year, the Eisners are still taking place virtually. However, there have been a lot of questions about how the voting took place. In short, it was shut down just before the deadline ended due to “an anomaly” which turns out to be some voters being able to access the data of others. It was reopened, for a complete revote, but it seems that some people who heard about the problem and thus didn’t […]

Heidi MacDonald wrote about the economic effects of a year without conventions. There have been no big shows since C2E2 in Chicago at the end of February, and everything else has been cancelled (except for ReedPop’s New York show in October, but I can’t see that happening). Heidi also does a convention-based podcast called “Women in a Hotel Room” that I’ve been part of. The most recent were two C2E2 episodes, found in that link above, and we also had […]

Brian Hibbs’ yearly BookScan analysis is always worth reading for the insight it gives into how comics (mostly in the form of graphic novels and collections) sell in the wider book market (even with the caveats that this data doesn’t cover the entire market, only those that choose to report, and the data providers have their own restrictions, even more this year). The 2019 analysis ends with this particular pie chart that I found striking. The “comic big two” was […]

Y’all know I rarely do this, because I still have conflicted feelings about crowdfunding and its risks. But I like Dash, which can be reductionally described as “the gay hard-boiled detective comic”. The most recent out was issue #5 in late 2018. (They say issue #6 has come out, but Diamond has it listed for August, so … keeping up with comics is hard.) Now, they’re Kickstarting the collection. Written by Dave Ebersole and drawn by Delia Gable and Vinnie […]

I have missed the wonderful true-science graphic novels of Jay Hosler. He’s put out, among others, The Sandwalk Adventures (about Charles Darwin and evolution, as told by eyebrow mites), Last of the Sandwalkers (the life of desert beetles), and Clan Apis (the biography of a honeybee). That last one came out 20 years ago, but in its direct yet caring approach to the subject matter, it’s timeless. Which is why I was thrilled to see his announcement that the book […]

Well, yes, but I’ve been saying that the book-format comic is a superior format for decades, now. (I made a list, somewhere, but searching “graphic novel” on this site is futile.) What spurred the latest? Retailer Brandon Schatz in his column at the Beat has an entry titled “The Death & Rebirth of Print Single Issues”. He’s reflecting on how both DC and Marvel used the pandemic disruption to decide that some of their series — including Supergirl, The Terrifics, […]

This is the problem with tying your Free Comic Book Day titles into storylines and events. That’s what a big superhero comic publisher has to sell, though — continuity and a shared universe. Free Comic Book Day has been indefinitely postponed. As “comics’ national holiday”, organizers need to be sure that all stores that want to can participate. More importantly, big group turnouts are a bad idea right now, and there’s no vision for when they will be safe again. […]