With the long Thanksgiving weekend upon us here in the United States, blogging will likely be pretty light until next week. But before settling in for a few days of rest and relaxation (not to mention food, football and shopping), I polled the Blog@ team to see what they were thankful for this year. Here’s our list:

1. The Black Dossier
2. Bully!
3. The Complete Peanuts
4. The Perry Bible Fellowship
5. Josh Fruhlinger’s Comics Curmudgeon
6. Brubaker’s Captain America
7. Quiet! Panelologists At Work’s inspirational podcasting
8. The friendly old-timey captions of a Stan and Jack comic
9. Creator blogs, particularly production and sketch blogs
10. The Last Call by Vasilis Lolos
11. The increasingly earlier Best Comics of the Year lists
12. Jeff Parker
13. Atomic Robo
14. Gail Simone writing Wonder Woman
15. Matt Fraction
16. Scott Pilgrim
17. Watchmen jokes on primetime TV
18. Jeff Smith
19. Alan Davis doing new Clandestine comics
20. The arrival of Tintin and Alph-Art, a book I never thought I’d see
on U.S. shores
21. Sundays With Walt and Skeezix
22. My wife, who’s very understanding about the amount of money I spend
every month on comics.
23. The crazy comics internet and all who sail in her

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

G. Willow Wilson, who wrote the recent Vertigo graphic novel Cairo, was a guest on NPR’s Talk of the Nation yesterday. You can listen to her segment and read a blog post she did for them here:

For the first time in my adult life, I’m living in my own country. I’ve discovered that adulthood doesn’t mean the same thing in the US as it does in Egypt, and the skills I learned in the marketplaces of Cairo don’t translate into the skills I need in the supermarkets of Seattle. I can bargain over the price of a live chicken with the best of them, but buying health insurance leaves me totally confused.

After watching Sicko the other night, buying health insurance no longer leaves me confused, just very, very angry.

In any event, I read Cairo a couple of weeks ago and was pleasantly surprised … not because I expected it to be bad or anything, but because I really didn’t know much about it before reading it. It’s a fun story that combines the real-world politics of the region with that old-school Vertigo-ish magic. It kind of reminded me of one of those mid-1990s movies that featured an ensemble cast in what appeared to be unrelated stories that eventually all came together at the end to solve a bigger puzzle … only with magic carpets and demons and a pretty cool djinn thrown into the mix. The only problem I saw with it was the price … $25 is a bit higher than I would have expected to pay for it. It’s well worth the $16 Amazon is charging, however.

Sonny Liew shares sketches — lots and lots of sketches — on his LiveJournal for a new Malinky Robot book he’s working on.

Mark Millar reminisces about last weekend’s Dublin Comics Convention:

The first Dublin con was an achievement last year, but this was just spectacular. It’s my third show this year and despite being stuck on a rain-swept rock between Britain and America this one had the most stellar guest list. Jimmy Lee? Steve McNiven? Carlos Pacheco? Ado Granov? CB Cebulski? A dozen others? AND ME? Jesus God. This was pretty damn sweet.

More drunken details, plus stories from the BAFTA awards and other events, in the link.

Dan Buckley is talking to CBR about Marvel’s Digital Comics Unlimited program, and what it means for the rest of Marvel’s internet presence:

One of the benefits of this launch is that it provides many of our fans with the opportunity to “legally” read our comics. We sincerely hope that this service offering will curb these “illegal” downloading activities. The music industry’s reactions to the illegal downloading did help us with us the formation of our business strategy, but it was not the driving factor behind our business model… We will be reviewing and evaluating “illegal” downloading activities on a case by case basis.

Also interesting: A hint that original material, along the lines of Zuda, isn’t an impossibility in the future… Go read.

I’m getting in a look at DC’s February superhero solicits (mostly) before getting out the door for Thanksgiving.

COUNTDOWN

Dare I imagine a world without Countdown? It seems so ubiquitous now that it’s hard to imagine it has an end. Nevertheless, that end is near, or so I’ve heard; and on February 27 the numbering cracks the single-digit barrier.

In the meantime, there’s more carnage and death — including, apparently, the destruction of Darkseid’s Franklin Mint chess set. Those things are $17.95 apiece, and they only come out once a month! Just when the Ray Palmer figure arrived in the mail, too….

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In his Lying in the Gutters column this week, Rich Johnston shares a letter from artist Brian J. Crowley about money owed to him for work he did on Fangoria’s now-defunct comics line. The letter reads:

Enclosed is a copy of an invoice for $2,160 that your company received on Aug. 17, 2007, for work I completed as an Independent Contractor for Moe Greene Entertainment LLC.

As of this date, Oct. 22, 2007, payment has not been received.

Last week, during a telephone conversation with Jeanine Walsh, who described herself as the “payroll manager,” said she was aware of the invoice but informed me that the “investors” of Creative Group/Moe Greene Entertainment have decided that the company will not pay its outstanding invoices.

Mr. Avallone, I met my contractual obligations with Creative Group/Moe Greene Entertainment. The books I lettered were completed on time, without problem and in accordance with our agreement signed on April 12, 2007.

Please note that the invoice for $2,160 states that it is “approved by Scott Licina” (executive editor) and was, “payable on invoice date” of Aug. 17, 2007.

At this point, I can only assume that Ms. Walsh was misinformed about Creative Group/Moe Greene Entertainment’s intentions toward paying money it owes to independent contractors and others.

My working relationship with the company has been enjoyable and I hope to have the opportunity to continue working with Creative Group Inc.

Mr. Avallone, I would appreciate it if you would look into this matter for me and promptly let me know when I may expect to receive payment of $2,160.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Moe Greene Entertainment LLC is the parent company of Fangoria. Over email, Crowley told me he’s taking them to court; he’s filed a small claims in Chicago with the help of Unscrewed. Now he’s waiting for the papers to be served so things can move forward.

Slam Dunk and Vagabond manga-ka Takehiko Inoue was at Kniokuniya Books in New York City recently to promote his books and paint a mural. Chris Butcher and Heidi MacDonald have pics of the event. Viz has a press release about the event and Inoue’s upcoming books that you can read after the jump.

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JK already caught the big Publisher’s Weekly story this week, regarding Francoise Mouly’s plans to launch a children’s graphic novel line.

But, naturally, the folks at PW had plenty of other goodies to share, including an interview with Fred Hembeck about his upcoming Image Omnibus:

PWCW: What can readers expect to see in the Omnibus?

FH: Besides all the Dateline:@#$! strips that appeared in The Buyer’s Guide in the late ’70s and into the early ’80s, nearly two hundred strips from the feature’s mid-’90s revival are included, as is all the material from seven Fantaco books from the ’80s—now all are long out of print. But it was Erik who suggested I open the flood gates and include all sorts of other stuff, so I included a number of my own characters like The Dog and Mr. Mumbo Jumbo in the mix. A fair amount of the material has either never seen the light of day, or only shown up in the most obscure of places (for instance, there’s a whole section of strips done for an apa [amateur publishing association], an original audience of roughly forty). Cover redos, Christmas cards, Internet illos, commissions–even two page of nature art! It’s all here—heaven help us, it’s all here…

PWCW: How does it feel to look back on your career through this 900 page book?

FH: It’s a bit sobering—where did those thirty years go anyway? And to be totally honest with you, I couldn’t help but notice a few definite ebbs in my flow—by the time I was finishing up my first run on Dateline:@#$! circa 1983, I was clearly losing interest. But Al and Erik wanted all of those strips included, so there are a few grimace inducing pages in the book (but, I’d like to think, only a few. Really.). Otherwise, it might be fun for readers to see how often I repeat the same gags over and over during a three decade span—my sense of humor hasn’t changed all that much, it would seem.

Also this week: A profile of Malaysian cartoonist Lat; Mike Richardson talks about his upcoming horror miniseries; and Tokyopop picks up some titles from ADV.

Stephen DeStefano comes clean:

It was me. I was the one who redesigned Black Canary’s costume in the mid-eighties. I did away with the fishnet stockings. I gave her the godawful headband and the cowl neck. I’m not proud of it. But you’ve got to understand–this was Post-CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS DC. Everything was going to be new, and whatever wasn’t new, would soon have to be. Or so it seemed. I was still a teenager back then, lurking the halls of DC, trying to get my first regular series, ‘MAZING MAN off the ground. And I originally got my job at DC by designing characters. Len Wein said that Black Canary was going to have to be redesigned anyhow. And I didn’t see why, because I always thought her costume was so nifty. But, I figured, hell, if it HAS to be redesigned, let me be the one to do it. My original sketch was different, all grey and black, no blue. No headband, but a feathered head piece. Bad ass feathered head piece, not a pansy one. Len and Marv Wolfman asked me to change it. And then they bought it. And then Brian Bolland burned it.

He also talks about redesigning Elongated Man and an aborted attempt to turn the Flash into a “laser-guy.”

Read it and weep. Literally. (via Kotaku)

The week in TV started with a trip to the fictional comic shop Coolsville and ends with a visit to a comics convention, courtesy of the CBS show Numb3rs.

The folks at CBS sent us a link to a teaser video from this week’s episode, which is the comic convention episode I blogged about a few weeks back. It features Wil Wheaton as Myles Sklar, a young comic collector who owns a vintage comic book that gets stolen. Christopher Lloyd guest stars as the comic’s creator.

On his blog, Terry Moore announces his next creator-owned project, Echo:

Echo is the story of Julie Martin, a photographer taking pictures in the desert when she finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s all I’m going to tell you about the plot at the moment. The Diamond solicitation coming out in January will reveal a bit more. Echo #1 will be in stores March 5th. It will be 24 pages, B&W like SiP. The first printing of issue one, and only the first printing, will feature a silver foil cover. Why? Because that’s not rain, or hail.

Vaneta chats with Moore about the book and his other work over at the main site.

Via

Blogging would be heck of a lot easier if the pesky real world would stop getting in the way. Ah, well, better late than never, right? Right?

This week finds a veritable treasure trove of collections, from the fifth volume of DC’s 52, another edition of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World Omnibus, Captain America and New Avengers hardcovers, Love and Rockets, Battlestar Galactica, the Complete Badger and — well, just trust me. There are a lot of collections. Just in time for the holidays!

To see what other titles Chris Mautner and I think are worth mentioning, just keep reading. As always, let us know your choices in the comments below.

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Calvin Reid at Publisher’s Weekly spoke with Françoise Mouly about Toon Books, the new imprint she’s started that’s “designed to nurture basic reading skills and encourage a love of visual storytelling.” It’s aimed at really young kids, as she explains:

“Comics are the gateway to literacy for young kids,” said Mouly who expects Toon Books to transform books for early readers the same way RAW influenced indie comics. “RAW showed that comics can be taken seriously,” she said. Little Lit, a comics line for older kids launched by Mouly and Spiegelman in 2000, “was an intermediate step using the RAW model. Now there are more comics for kids 10–12 years old but not for very young kids.”

The line launches next spring with three books — Benny and Penny by Geoffrey Hayes, Silly Lilly by Agnes Rosenstiehl and Otto’s Orange Day by Frank Cammuso and Jay Lynch. Three more should follow in the fall, including Dean Haspiel and Jay Lynch’s Mo and Jo – Fighting Together Forever, which Haspiel talks about on his blog, and Jack and the Box by art spiegelman.

More details on the line can be found at the Toon Books website.

(Hat tip!)

Dan Clowes talks to Canada.com about his appearance on The Simpsons this past Sunday:

“I thought it would be a good way to impress my son’s friends when he got a bit older,” says Clowes, the author-artist behind the Ghost World graphic novel and the co-screenwriter of the 2002 Academy Award-nominated movie of the same name.

“Turns out all the other stuff I’ve done — including being nominated for the Oscar — is nothing compared to something like this. When people hear I’m going to be on the show, jaws drop and then, all of a sudden, people are fascinated by my career.”

If you missed the show, clips are popping up on YouTube.

Admit it; you’ve always thought that Wizard was bad for comics. But did you know that it’s bad for your computer, as well?

“AVG detects a virus everytime I go to the Wizard site today. Just giving a heads up to those who haven’t visited the site yet.”

“I too just got an error from mine. Virus detected on Wizarduniverse.com”

“The site said I needed a chinese language pack for some reason when I was on there earlier today.”

“It may not be a virus, perhaps the site is coded ina away it ehibits ‘virus like’ activity that triggers your AV proggy. Similar to the way steam from a shower could trigger older model smoke detectors.”

“Could be, but they need to fix that, who really wants to go there and take the chance? Besides I’ve been there before and it never triggered it, shouldn’t it do it everytime? Not just every now and then for a week or so?”

“I got something on my home pc last weekend, My AV picked it up. The only site I looked at, beyond here and the BBC News website, was Wizard’s…”

Consider this a warning.

The Bendis Board isn’t impressed by comic creators and their lack of geographical knowledge:

“Maybe I’m all alone here. But this is twice now I’ve read a comic by a big writer where the setting is North Dakota and there are huge mountains all over the place. Warren Ellis and Steve Niles have both done this now. When I see stuff like that, it tends to really ruin the rest of the story for me as it slaps the fuck out of my suspension of disbelief that there are superheroes and what not, but that there are huge mountains in North Dakota. If you need mountains, just set it someplace else. There are plenty of remote locations. Montana, Colorado, Idaho, whatever.”

“I like how there are tall cactus plants when set in Texas. I have yet to see one of these fabled plants.”

“Writers always fuck up New Orleans and make people talk like they’re from Georgia 200 years ago or French. No one talks like that in the city. Maybe in the swamps. But NOT in the city.”

“Don’t forget the majestic mountains of Dallas.”

Won’t someone please buy those poor comic creators an atlas?

So, wait, how many comic conventions were there this past weekend? Wizard World Texas, Big Apple Con, and the Dublin Comic Convention… Any others? Anyway, Millarworld definitely enjoyed the Dublin event, with many positive comments along the lines of this:

Definitely the season’s big social event with staggering levels of fun, friviloity, alcohol consumption, sketches, inappropriate gestures, blatant antagonism from Team Merkin, cheating from Team Pro-Celebs, great panels, honest debate. Not even RyanAir and the poor traveller hacking up a lung behind me on the plane-ride back could detract from the experience.

For such a quiet convention, there was even some news:

Only notable marvel anouncements were the end of adjectiveless X-Men, which is only half news realy since we were kind of expecting it. It will be replaced by a new series, X-Men Legacy, written by Mike Carey and illustrated by Scott Eaton. Each issue will feature a back up story of 8 pages or so. They will be flashback stories centred on certain characters or events and illustarted by a guest artist each month. The first will be Romita Jr.

New series from Ennis, War is Hell, with a first arc focusing on war eagle. Covers by Cassiday interior by Chaykin.

C.B. also let slip in the getting into comics panel that Marvel will be lanuching a new writers athology, to give new and upcoming writers a chance to showcase their talents in short stories.

Nothing else public. I had one other interesting, well at least to me, bit of news but I’m not spilling because I don’t want to get the artist in trouble if he wasn’t supposed to tell.

OK, let’s see if I’ve got this right. Apparantly someone at the snarky humor Web site Something Awful posted a cartoon that made some rather tasteless, sexually graphic and sexist fun of video game developer Jade Raymond, who recently produced the highly anticipated game Assassin’s Creed.

Anyway, Ubisoft is really ticked off about the comic and is threatening legal action against Something Awful unless they take the image off their site. (Which they seem to have done. Good luck finding a copy of the comic online. Not that you’d want to.)

The comic in question, by the way, was apparently created by Dave Cheung, who’s also responsible for Chugworth Academy, a strip which, if this site hasn’t made fun of yet, absolutely should and soon.

Update: Cheung attempts to defend the strip.