If you like reading public domain Golden Age comics and are willing to pay a little for ease of access to them, then you may want to check out the iPad app Dime Comics. It’s a dollar for the app, which comes with 20 downloads. Additional downloads are a dollar for 20 more, or $7 for unlimited access. Currently, there are over 7,000 issues available from 12 publishers and over 500 series. Those publishers are Ace, Ajax-Farrell, American Comics Group, […]

Iron Circus Comics, publisher of the successful Smut Peddler anthology series, has announced that they are taking submissions for New World through November 20. This anthology will be a black-and-white book due out in spring 2015 containing science fiction and fantasy stories focusing on “exploration, colonization, conquest, assimilation, “going native”, appropriation, imperialism, strained relations… essentially, what happens when mutually un-contacted cultures, continents, and species collide. We want your strangest stories about situations where characters are encountering — and having to […]

As of January 2015 — the system works two months ahead, so that’s the earliest they can change — the Previews monthly comic store ordering catalog will be $3.99 a copy instead of the current $4.50. Diamond is promoting this reduction as making the price the same as “the cost of a comic book.” I think that says more about rising comic prices than Diamond decreases, but then, I have long-standing qualms about being asked to pay money to buy […]

I’ve been enjoying the Resident Alien series written by Peter Hogan and drawn by Steve Parkhouse. It’s published by Dark Horse, and it’s the story of an alien trapped on Earth. He takes the form of a crotchety old retired doctor, Dr. Harry Vanderspeigle, in a small town in the Pacific Northwest, but he finds himself drawn into solving a murder mystery in the first volume, Resident Alien: Welcome to Earth! The story continues in the second volume, The Suicide […]

Speaking this Thursday, October 23, on “Comics and LGBTQ Identity” is Phil Jimenez. It’s the Keynote for LGBTQ History Month at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Phil is a comic artist and writer who’s worked on such titles as Wonder Woman, Teen Titans, The Amazing Spider-Man, and X-Men. Come hear him “on his creative process, his favorite drawings, and the influence his identities have had on his artwork” from 6-8 PM at room L140 in the Conrad A. Elvehjem […]

We don’t get anyone trick-or-treating in our neighborhood — no kids around, and it’s too far away for them to travel to us — so we can’t give out comics any more, but when we did, they were always well-received. You have to be careful about which titles, of course, since most corporate superhero comics are no longer appropriate for younger readers, and you don’t want to make any parents mad. But a little work at selection, and you can […]

We all agree that the portrait of the comic customer is changing, right? Heck, next week they’re holding an entire conference about the topic. Some readers want to buy digitally, because they don’t have the space for lots of paper issues. Some want to buy only books, because they don’t care for the regularly weekly or monthly comic shop visit or they find the collected edition a more preferable product or, well, they shop on Amazon for better prices. Some […]

At least, that’s the message I took from Steve Morris’ useful round-up of submission guidelines for comic writers. The best-known flat-out don’t accept unsolicited submissions. Others only want to see completed comics or, at least, pitches from creative teams with several pages of sample art, which means an aspiring writer has to find an artist to team up with. You want to write comics? You’re going to have to do a lot of work, including talent review and networking. This […]