An ad currently running in the Archie comic books is promoting the Archie Comics Book Club, a new subscription offer beginning January 2011. For $19.99 a month, billed automatically to your credit card, you’ll get two new graphic novels a month, plus a one-year subscription to an Archie comic book, plus a one-year subscription to Archie Digital Comics. The digital product itself is priced at $9.95 month or a year for $49.95. The Archie “baby trade” collections (my term, since […]

Life With Archie, the magazine-format comic telling alternate-future stories of Archie’s marriages to Betty or Veronica, is apparently quite the success, so much so that today Archie Comics announced a second magazine title: Veronica & Betty. The new title, set to launch in May 2011, “will take Veronica and Betty far away from Archie and the small town of Riverdale into worldwide adventures!” They’re exchange students, and while they’re gone, Archie and Reggie are hanging out with the two girls […]

For this week’s PW Comics Week, I interviewed Alex de Campi about her digital comic Valentine and the issues she’s had making it so widely available in so many different formats. Key excerpt: De Campi’s activities are driven by a unique understanding of the speed of digital. She knows her audience is asking, “Why wait?” As she sees it, “This isn’t that world any more. We want everything now, thank you, and in convenient digital form and not for some […]

This year’s Friends of Lulu awards were presented last night at the Long Beach Comic Con. According to an official source, 1164 people participated in the online voting. The winners are: Leah Adezio Award for Best Kid-Friendly Work: Diana Nock: The Intrepid Girlbot Best Female Character: Ramona Flowers: Scott Pilgrim, Bryan Lee O’Malley Kim Yale Award for Most Talented Newcomer: Kathryn Immonen, The Runaways Lulu of the Year: Kate Beaton Woman of Distinction Award: Lauren Sankovitch, editor, Marvel Comics Female […]

Four months ago, I warned people of the dangers of Kickstarter before moderating my concerns. Since then I’ve donated to my first Kickstarter effort — I’m looking forward to seeing the preordered book before the end of the year — and I’ve found this excellent post on how to make Kickstarter effective for your project. I don’t agree with all the advice — I never watch the videos, for example, since I’m usually surfing in an environment where the audio […]

Ed, Julia, and I enjoyed this year’s Small Press Expo, so we talked about it in the latest installment of the Manga Out Loud podcast. It’s great fun going over convention memories with others, since I wind up remembering things when I tell stories I otherwise wouldn’t. We talked about panels we attended, our general impressions of the show, and the many cool comics we got there. As part of discussing the critics panel, we also argue about The Comics […]