It may still be August, but the Calvin Reid nevertheless has next year’s New York Comic-Con on the brain, how else to explain his lead PWCW story on organizer Greg Topalians’ plans to reach out to small press publishers and other alternative circles:

In an interview with Topalian, he also noted the absence of indie houses like Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly at this year’s NYCC and said he plans to reach out to small indie comics publishers to offer assistance and to encourage them to exhibit at next year’s show. “If a press wants to come and can’t for money or whatever,” said Topalian, “we want to try and help them get here.” In addition Topalian outlined plans for all-day kids’ programming on Sunday and “comic book”-themed programming areas—“Batman” or “Manga”-themed areas, he said—added to help fans navigate the Javits Center, as well as adding roving helpers to answer questions and hand out maps.

I don’t mean to criticize, but I think the story would be more buzzworthy if Topalian could actually have bragged that one of those “indie houses” was actually scheduled to appear at the con. You can reach out all you like, but that in and of itself doesn’t necessarily merit a feature article. (Though I am glad to hear they’ll be expanding their space at the Javits.)

Also in this week’s edition: an interview with Kyle Baker about his new Special Forces series; an article on the new, ongoing Halo comic; and a look at Viz’s plans to publish Taiyo Matsumoto’s Tekkon Kinkreet. Man, I want that book bad.

This might be of interest to all you academics out there. The University of Toronto will be holding a conference in May on “The New Narrative? Comics in Literature, Film and Art.” The keynote speaker will be Seth.

Why am I telling you this? Because the one of the organizers, Dr Andrew Lesk, has issued a call for papers. So if you feel like you’ve got something intelligent to say on the matter, click on the jump to read the full press release.

All proposals are due Jan. 5 by the way.

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Blab, that critically-acclaimed, annual anthology edited by Monte Beauchamp, now has its very own Web site, featuring some sample pages from the latest, soon to be released volume, number 18.

Mighty Wizard editor Sean T. Collins dropped a note to let me know of two new interviews up on the Wizard site. The first, is with My Chemical Romance’s lead singer Gerard Way and Dark Horse editor Scott Allie about Way’s upcoming Dark Horse series The Umbrella Academy. Actually the interview is mostly with Allie, but I’ll share a snippet of what Way had to say:

Was it difficult to make time for Academy in your touring schedule?

WAY: Writing the book while on the road was a challenge at first, and at times still a struggle. It really boils down to discipline, though, as you can have all the time in the world, but if you aren’t disciplined you’ll spend your downtime drinking too much coffee in cafes and walking around looking at statues all day, which is all very helpful, but sucks up your time. The biggest battle was becoming exhausted, physically and mentally, from being on the road. It’s tough to pull yourself out of bed on an off-day when you have been run ragged, but I get as much sleep as I can these days, go to bed early and wake up early, in order to get as much done as I can on the comic. I’ve turned into a responsible adult because of the comic. Ha!

Then, Mike Mignola talks about the upcoming film Hellboy 2: The Golden Army and his new prose novel, Baltimore:

Okay, let’s switch gears and talk about the book: How did Baltimore come about?

MIGNOLA: This one came about very different than most things I’ve done. This is gonna sound weird. I was actually watching a really boring movie, my mind wandered and I made up probably two-thirds of this story in five minutes. Between the time I got bored with the movie and the time my wife and I walked out of the movie, I had made up most of the story. The movie took place in this Italian village, so it had these beautiful villas with amazing architecture with great old stone crumbling walls. And I thought I wanted to do something cool in that setting. And it just…thwppp…came out.

The owner of Sarge’s Comics in New London, Conn., has pleaded guilty in federal court to selling pirated DVDs and CDs. He faces up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine when he’s sentenced in November.

The Day reports that Robert P. Miller admitted to federal agents in 2005 that he’d been using a DVD/CD burning to make copies of movies and television shows to sell to customers.

When agents raided the store in 2005, they reportedly recovered 778 DVDs and CDs containing pirated works. On Monday, Miller accepted a deal from the government, and pleaded guilty to one count of criminal copyright infringement.

W. Alan Davis, owner of Silver Bullet Comics, dropped me a note in regards to my earlier post on the site being down and customers complaining about their orders not being filled:

Alan here, owner of Silver Bullet Comics.

Was given the heads up you ran a post on us.

Of course, you had to do it on a day when our hosting company’s scheduled backup power test somehow corrupted our PHP software on the server, leaving our site down and me on the phone with multiple levels of tech support at Media Temple, but coincidence seems to be my middle name. Site should be back up soon, though hours after promised… but isnt that tech support for you.

It’s easy for a couple of people to say annonimously that their order didnt fill… last time your site had posts on this, in talk back, it was spearheaded by a 17 year old who misread the details of his order. It happens. The internet is a great big place to vent frustration without having to supply fact. Fact is though, I’ll be honest with you that we are behind where we like to be, considering the move from store to warehouse did create it’s own hickups and problems (ever move 3200 sq ft of store then try to find where you put anything?). However, as has been the case, every order will be taken care of…even if a few require patience. We’ve been doing this for years, and even with a 98% success rate - better than UPS - that means 2 in 100 are going to require special help. With the move, people returning to school, etc., this month has been dificult to stay up with… but find any business without complaints. Our goal is satisfaction, even if a few people are frustrated at first, we’ve never had a customer complain about our product and meticulous shipping once it arrived. We may not be the fastest everytime, but we try to be the best shipper - that’s our goal.

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Although Naruto Nation is unleashed on the bookstores this week, the direct market is spared the wrath of the spikey-haired ninja until next Wednesday. (I think.)

So, what’s that leave for comic shops? How about a big 50th-issue blowout for DC’s Teen Titans, a giant-robots parody from Jeffrey Brown, and the long-anticipated Mice Templar from Michael Avon Oeming?

All right, it’s a little quiet this week. Consider it the calm before the nine-tailed demon fox storm. Or something.

For a rundown of the titles Chris Mautner and I think are worth special mention, just keep reading.

As always, let us know your choices in the comments below.

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Earlier this month I posted about North Carolina retailer Silver Bullet Comics closing down their physical store and moving to strictly online sales.

Since then, a few of our readers have posted comments about ordering comics from Silver Bullet, being charged and never receiving their books. Inertia is one of three people to comment on it:

I actually placed an order with them online on July 30, received confirmation that my credit card was charged and the order processed on the 31st, and I still have not gotten any shipping notification nor have I gotten what I ordered. Two emails to their support/feedback addresses have gone unanswered so far. I can’t recommend that anyone do business with them in their online incarnation either… I will update this if I ever receive any response from them.

I tried to visit their site this morning (to find an email address and get their side of things) and received an error. If someone from Silver Bullet would like to drop me an email about the order delays, I’ll gladly add an update to this post. Update: You can read the response form the store’s owner, W, Alan Davis, here.

EDIT: I should add that Silver Bullet Comics, the retailer, shouldn’t be confused with Silver Bullet Comics, the news site, which features news and columns from Park and Barb Lien-Cooper, Brandon Thomas, Beau Smith and Tim O’Shea, among many others.

The Bendis Board investigates the link between manga and western indie comics:

Most manga I read thru have tremendous amounts of dialogue, page after page of characters just hanging out and talking. They are packed with angst, lots of shy characters finding the courage to confess thier love only to be humiliated in the most emotionally painful ways. If you love uncomfortable emotional exploration manga really delivers. Even the most popular and mainstream titles have strong emotional elements that are suprising, people who enjoy stories that are heavily emotional would find alot of manga they would like I think.

The only real difference I notice between most indy comics and popular manga is the conclusion of the stories. In Manga main character, starting out as a loser, works to improve thier lives and often, after 20 or 30 volumes of pain, succeeds and has a happy ending. With many Indy comics the loser often fails uttery as the story goes down dark paths and often even dies. Other than that I think alot of manga would appeal to indy comic fans, definately worth checking out if you havn’t.

It takes one post for someone to disagree:

“based on what you wrote here, i think you have a pretty ill-informed view of indy comics. but i’d say the reason a lot of indie fans don’t go for manga has more to do with a distaste for the artistic and storytelling conventions of manga. it’s the reason for me at least.”

“indy and manga are my favorite genres!”

“I tend not to read magna books beacuse they dont interest me as much as other comics. That said there have been magnas that I really liked, Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha for example (I’ve only read the first two volumes though) and what I’ve read of Akira.”

God bless Charlie Anders, and not just because of her footwear on Sunday:

All of the discussion about the continuity snafu in Birds of Prey #109 started me thinking. For those who missed it, Tony Bedard goofed as to which of Oliver Queen’s illegitimate sons was the result of a supervillain raping him. Ollie’s firstborn son, Connor Hawke, was the result of a casual hook up with a woman named Moonday Hawke Armitage. And then later, a supervillain named Shado raped Ollie and had his baby against his will, a kid named Robert. But Bedard accidentally said Shado was Connor’s mom, which would have made a creepy recent cover of Connor and Shado making out way creepier.

Anyway, I was thinking about the fact that Starman also had a supervillain rape him and have his baby without his consent: The Mist, who left Starman a note saying that she would raise Starman’s son to be hate him and want to destroy him. (Did this plotline ever go anywhere? Is there still an evil Starman baby out there somewhere?)

So I wonder: Is this a trope? Have there been other instances in superhero comics of female villains raping male villains in order to have their super-babies? Come to think of it, didn’t this happen to Nexus as well?

There’s a slight follow-up here, but seriously - What is that all about?

Tom Brevoort gets nostalgic:

There was a time, back in the late ’90s. when I was seen in some fan circles as the “great white hope.” Some of that was that people were liking the books I was editing that, but some of it was also, I feel, that I wasn’t so much at the center of things. Because the closer to the center you get, the more people you’re affecting, and the greater the chances become that you’ll piss someone off with something. You can’t swing a dead cat but for hitting somebody who thinks Joe Q is Satan, Brian Bendis is the antichrist, Mark Millar is an Al Qaeda mastermind, Axel Alonso is the enemy of all that is good and decent, and JMS is the devil. And the same thing is true with the folks in charge across town.

The thing that’s sort of funny to me is how a new, younger breed of editor has risen to take my old place as the great white hope. Whether it’s Andy Schmidt or Warren Simons or Steve Wacker or “whoever’s editing WORLD WAR HULK, that guy knows what he’s doing!” (Mark Paniccia), there are quarters where this is spoken as gospel truth. And what’s funny to me is that nobody on the outside really has any idea how much (or how little) input and effect I might have on any of the projects they love at the moment. And assuming that their careers continue to rise, it’s only a matter of time until Warren, Steve and Mark are traitors, mercenaries, liars and fiends. (Andy Schmidt avoided all this by leaving staff.)

Oh, Tom. You say that like it’s a bad thing.

Except for a wrap-up appearance at Golden Apple Comics in Los Angeles this Saturday, the McCloud clan has wrapped up their one-year, 50-state tour to promote his book Making Comics:

Yes, we actually did it! Even though we still have one more event — the wrap party at Golden Apple in LA listed below — we’ve now successfully fullfilled the mission we set out to accomplish: Staging at least one public event in every state in America in a single year. We could get hit by a meteor tomorrow and it wouldn’t change a thing since California has already seen a full 11 events even before the wrap party

Congrats to the McCloud family, who I’m sure are happy to be on the way home.

TVGuide.com has a preview page up from Buffy the Vampire Slayer #6, due in stores Sept. 5. They also talk to writer Brian K. Vaughan, who wrote the issue, and Drew Goddard, who will write issues 12-15. Goddard produces Lost and also wrote for the Buffy and Angel TV shows.

Neatorama points to these, um, Watchmen-inspired T-shirt designs at Threadless. Cease-and-desist letters in 3 … 2 … 1 …

* Alternate titles: “Watch. Men. Get it? Get it?” and “Quick! To the Lawyer-mobile!”

Brendan Wright has a two-part interview with writer-editor Jamie S. Rich and artist Joelle Jones, who collaborated on the graphic novel 12 Reasons Why I Love Her.

1) A podcast of the “Comics Are Not Literature” panel at San Diego.

2) A two-part interview with Gilbert Hernandez done in 1989 by Gary Groth.

3) Chris Ware performing on piano the 1923 ragtime tune “Skeezix,” based, of course, on the popular Gasoline Alley character. You can dowload the sheet music here. (You may also want to read Ware’s comments on the D&Q blog).
4) Allan David Doane interviews Harvey Pekar.

Over on his blog, Stuart Moore shows off some really nice Jon Proctor art for a project they haven’t sold to a publisher yet called Shadrach Stone. Moore describes it as “a politically-charged drama about the biggest liar in America, who undergoes a horrific ordeal on 9/11 and finds, afterward, that he cannot lie. And that’s only the beginning of his initiation into a nightmare of parallel worlds.”

Jack Kirby, the man who created a significant portion of our superhero mythology, would have been 90 years old today. Mark Evanier has a nice remembrance of Kirby, focusing on The King’s continued influence on creators and on the comics industry.

Related links:

Tom Spurgeon’s sampling of Kirby artwork

Kevin Church’s annual tribute

Datajunkie’s gallery of Kirby’s 1970s DC covers

Jack Kirby Museum

Mark Evanier’s Jack Kirby Page/FAQ

Isotope Comics owner James Sime dropped us a note about a “Comic Nerd All-Star Game of Croquet” in San Francisco this past weekend. Taking the top spots were Matt Silady’s Homeless Channel team and Kirsten Baldock’s Smoke & Guns team.

“Last place finishers included Ian Brill and yours truly,” James said. “It’s no excuse for lousy croquet abilities, but I’m pretty certain we drank more champagne than those other teams.”

Other participants included our own Graeme McMillan and his wife Kate, Matt Silady’s wife Serena, Ash Aiwase, Annalee Newitz and Other Magazine’s Charlie Anders.

“Even though Kate and I were the movers and shakers in organizing the whole thing (in belated celebration of Kirsten’s birthday), my complete ineptitude for any organized sport managed to make sure that our asses were well and truly whupped by the deadly team of Matt and Serena. Truly, their skills go farther than just the creation of Homeless Channels,” Graeme said. “That said, we still did better than Ian Brill, so there’s that.”

More pictures can be found here.