One of the stories coming out of New York Comic-Con that caught my attention is Vertigo's announcement that they are seeking to acquire original graphic novels. They've announced Jeff Lemire and Peter Bagge as coming on board, both of whom do comics work outside of the speculative fiction genres Vertigo has traditionally published. Karen Berger, ( Read more... )

Hey, SLG readers, Eisner Award nominations were announced today, and guess what?

We were totally and completely snubbed!

Not that it's much of a surprise, and the judges have to nominate what they feel is the best work produced in the last year, but it's still kind of a downer, in an amusing sort of way. I'm into ambivalent emotions -- they're ( Read more... )

Because I know how fascinating my life is --

You might know that when Comic World News closed, my commentary column moved to Publishers Weekly Comics Week and is now called "Life in Comics." I was kind of sad to give up the title "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now," but I thought I should go for something more straightforward. But nature must still ( Read more... )

Whoops, I almost forgot about this week's "Do You Think You Can Help Me?"! I was just finding putting together that trade paperback so fascinating, I guess. If you don't know what DYTYCHM? is, you'll soon realize that it is an advice column about working in independent comics. If you want to get involved, email your question to slgchief@gmail.com.

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Welcome once more to my comics advice column, "Do You Think You Can Help Me?" I have a few questions in my queue, and I'll try to double up in future installments so those of you so good to send me email won't have to wait too long for answers. Do you have a question? Send it to slgchief @ gmail.com and be sure to tell me it's for the advice column ( Read more... )

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A fair number of people said they wanted advice about working in the comics industry to appear on this blog in the poll I did a few weeks ago, and yet when I offered to answer questions emailed to me, NOT ONE PERSON SENT ONE. I suppose the problem is in the subtext: People who want to work in this industry don't know what to ask. They want advice, ( Read more... )

I received in the mail this week a pretty negative review of one of our graphic novels in a print magazine. That, I take in stride. I think part of the problem was that question of audience--this magazine just wasn't the right place to send the book. However, what really struck me as wrong-headed was this comment: "the pictures are in black and ( Read more... )

Speaking of Ben Towle, he is one of the respondents to Heidi MacDonald's Annual News Survey at The Beat. Particularly of interest to me is Ben's thoughts about the changing prevailing format of comics, "in 2007 the overall move in comics away from episodic storytelling seems to have finally cemented itself as the prevailing narrative mode of the ( Read more... )