Hope Larsen writes and Bryan Lee O’Malley draws an online comic strip called
Bear Creek Apartments. Check it out here.

Related: The Asheville Citizen-Times profiles the couple.

While traveling and working on board the Sea Bird, a National Geographic ship, T. Edward Bak filed this “graphic” report about the landscape. (hat tip: On Panel, which has some worthwhile news about what Bak’s current projects.)

Zuda’s latest “instant winner,” Imaginary Boys by Carlos Lopez Bermudez, debuts on the webcomics site tomorrow, but the Zuda folks were kind enough to send over a preview of the first two pages. The strip was teased ever so slightly at the Zuda panel in San Diego.

Here’s the original pitch:

We’ve always been told that when we die we go to Heaven or Hell; however in the Otherworld there are an infinity of unknown places. Join Elise and her pet Robert, along with Trauma Boy and Young Jack – collectively The Imaginary Boys - as they explore life after death, the “Town of Dead Children” and what lies beyond!

And here are the first two pages … enjoy, and look for more pages on the Zuda site tomorrow:

Smith magazine continues their series of “next-door neighbor” stories with this entry by Sari Wilson and Josh Neufeld.

Sharknife and Dead in the Now creator Corey Lewis has launched a webcomic called Seedless, which he’ll update every Wednesday.

Just in time for the Beijing Olympics, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has debuted a bizarre anti-doping comic strip for kids called The Case of the SpoilSports (PDF). It stars Rattus Holmes and Felis Watson, the … um … oversized, anthropomorphized pets of — you guessed it — Sherlock Holmes and John Watson who are hired to investigate suspected steroid and stimulant use by local athletes.

I’m not sure what bothers me most about the strip: that they got Sherlock Holmes’ famous address wrong (211 B  Baker Street instead of 221 B); that Holmes’ neighbors own a television; or that the two most likely candidates for doping, Rattus Holmes and Felis Watson, are never investigated.

The newly redesigned Tor.com has posted their first webcomic, The Leviathan by Wesley Allsbrook.

Keep watching the site for more comics and stories, as well as Cory Doctorow’s “The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away,” an originally 16,000-word novella, which will go up on the site Wednesday morning.

– The Hero Initiative has another round of Hulk covers up for auction.

–ComicsPro has launched a site dedicated to 24-Hour Comics Day, with information on how to host an event, who is participating and other information. 24 Hour Comics Day is scheduled for Oct. 18.

– Steven Grant and Scott Beiser are working on a new webcomic over at Big Head Press called Odysseus the Rebel.

– Virgin is giving away some of their Comic-Con exclusives on their website.

– io9.com has an interview up with Middleman creator Javier Grillo-Marxuach.

– Bam! Pow! Ouch!

–Racked.com has posted the Jack Spade “Breaking and Entering” Comic Book, which details a weird break-in at the Jack Spade store in New York. (Via)

A psychoanalytic take on Little Nemo, courtesy of Marcus Parcus (link via The Ephemerist).

Nabiel Kanan (Exit) has begun a new webcomic (link: Derik Badman).

The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards were presented last night in a ceremony held at the San Diego Convention Center. Frank Miller was the keynote speaker.

And the winners were …

Best Short Story: “Mr. Wonderful,” by Dan Clowes, serialized in New York Times Sunday Magazine

Best Single Issue (or One-Shot): Justice League of America #11: “Walls,” by Brad Meltzer and Gene Ha (DC)

Best Continuing Series: Y: The Last Man, by Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra, and Jose Marzan, Jr. (Vertigo/DC)

Best Limited Series:The Umbrella Academy, by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá (Dark Horse)

Best New Series: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8, by Joss Whedon, Brian K. Vaughan, Georges Jeanty, and Andy Owens (Dark Horse)

(more…)

Random House’s new genre blog, Suvudu, previews this year’s Eisner Awards with overviews of the nominees for Best Single Issue (or One-Shot), Best Continuing Series, Best Limited Series and Best Humor Publication.

The ceremony for the 20th annual awards kicks off tonight at 8:30 Pacific in Ballroom 20 of the San Diego Convention Center. You can see the complete list of nominees here.

After several significant publishing announcements right out of the gate on Wednesday — among them, the Vertigo Crime imprint, Darwyn Cooke’s Parker adaptations and the BOOM! deal with Disney/Pixar — the first official day of Comic-Con seemed, well, subdued. At least as far as new projects go.

The biggest news on Thursday probably came from the “DC Nation” panel, where it was revealed that Kevin Smith will write a three-issue Batman miniseries called Cacophony, which features the villain Onomatopoeia from Smith’s 2000 run on Green Arrow. If you were planning some jokes about whether the miniseries will be late, or never finish, save them: Smith beat you to it.

And, surprising no one, Barry Allen will return in The Flash: Rebirth, by Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver.

The “Mondo Marvel” panel introduced a handful of new titles, including an ongoing Agents of Atlas, Greg Pak and Leonardo Manco’s War Machine as a replacement for Iron Man: Director of SHIELD, the return of Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon for a weekly Punisher: War Zone miniseries, and … an adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s short story “The Electric Ant” by David Mack, with covers by Paul Pope.

Yeah, that last one seemed to surprise, or puzzle, a lot of folks.

At the X-Men panel, the next big X-event was revealed: X Infernus, a sequel, of sorts, to 1989’s Inferno crossover.

Other convention-related announcements:

• Virgin Comics and Perspective Studios rolled out their collaboration with writer Grant Morrison, MBX. It’s an animation franchise based on the ancient Indian epic the Mahabharata.

• Devil’s Due Publishing announced its new online initiative with Kevin Spacey’s talent-scouting website TriggerStreet.com.

• Wildstorm continued its licensing frenzy with a six-issue miniseries based on Electronic Arts’ upcoming video game Mirror’s Edge.

• And then there was the now-usual run of movie news: Bryan Singer’s Bad Hat Harry and Radical Pictures adapting Radical Publishing’s Freedom Formula miniseries; Landscape Entertainment picking up the rights to the Image miniseries Pretty, Baby, Machine, by Clark Westerman and Kody Chamberlain; and Disney renewing its first-look deal with Stan Lee’s POW Entertainment.

You can follow our complete Comic-Con coverage here.

ACT-I-VATE has posted a preview of the second volume of Image’s Popgun anthology, which includes comics by Ulises Farinas, Michel Fiffe, Dean Haspiel, Tim Hamilton, Dan Goldman, Paul Maybury & Nikki Cook. Go check it out.

I don’t know who Chris and Kyle Bolton are, but I like their new Webcomic.

In an interview with Laura Hudson, the Perry Bible Fellowship creator reveals he’s got a new book out for November, hot on the heels of last year’s successful Trial of Colonel Sweeto:

PW Comics Week: How does the upcoming anthology differ from Colonel Sweeto?

Nicholas Gurewitch: The Perry Bible Fellowship Almanack will have all the material that’s in Colonel Sweeto, and a heck of a lot more. It will essentially replace Colonel Sweeto.

PWCW: Did you expect Colonel Sweeto to be as successful as it was?

NG: I can’t say I didn’t expect it. I don’t think I really thought about it. For what it is—a book of comic strips—it sold a lot. I think the most impressive piece of info we got is that it was the 10th bestselling book on Amazon.ca [Canada].

Gurewitch also reveals he’s working on a PBF-style TV pilot for the BBC.

In all the brouhaha over the cover to the latest New Yorker magazine, you may have missed this interview they did with Achewood creator Chris Onstad:

CARTOON LOUNGE: You were Time magazine’s graphic novel of the year in 2007. How does it feel to be on top of the world?

Chris Onstad: When you are on top of the world, at first you wake up not knowing that. Then you go to your computer, and there is an e-mail from someone with a time.com e-mail suffix, and the e-mail wants to become a phone call. It is uncommon for an e-mail to ask to become a phone call, so you agree, and then the call happens pretty quickly after that. It’s a girl named Julie from Thanking & Congratulations, and she does what you might expect. She makes you feel as though you are sitting Indian-style on top of the world, much like the Little Prince, and in my case I had the distinct feeling that I could have taken her to a trendy vodka bar in Alphabet City and talked playfully and open-endedly about bras for a while. Maybe that’s what they wanted me to feel. Maybe I was played to a T

By the one and only Mike Dawson.

Villard Books sent out a press release today saying they’ve picked up the rights to publish “three graphic novels collecting the long-running and wildly popular webcomic Goats.” Goats , which is by Jonathan Rosenberg, has been around since 1997 and per the release gets 1.5 million hits a month.

Rosenberg talks about the deal on his blog:

Weird, huh? I am still in shock about it and I have had months to get used to the idea. I suspect it will have implications and consequences for Goats and possibly other webcomics as well, but that’s speculative. Let’s stick to the facts for now.

The facts are that this would not have happened if not for the hard work and awe-inspiring skill of my agent, Judy Hansen, and the good taste and vision of Tricia Narwani, my editor at Villard. Thank you both for helping to make an internet boy’s dreams come true.

Rick Marshall has an interview up with Rosenberg about the deal over at ComicMix.

Over at Pop Candy, Whitney Matheson has a preview of Street Code, Dean Haspiel’s upcoming webcomic from Zuda.