I find this odd – perhaps I shouldn’t – but several comics blogs have picked up the news that we’ll be offering the swell collection Mouse Guard: Fall 1152. I wouldn’t think the fact that we’re offering any particular book was specifically newsworthy, but I’m happy to be proved wrong. (Publishing is an attention economy, so I’ll take any I can get.)

And the Altiverse does do more than a few graphic novels – recently, we’ve offered the new edition of Gaiman & Vess’s Stardust, Matt Wagner’s Trinity, and Star Wars Omnibus: X-Wing Rogue Squadron. But that’s not quite as many as we might like to do, though, so we’d love suggestions – and, even more so, for people to buy GNs from us so we can keep offering more and more of them.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Laurell K. Hamilton announced a new comics project recently: "The First Death," a two-issue mini-series which takes place almost a year before the events in the first Anita Blake novel, Guilty Pleasures. It will be a two-issue series coming in July.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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The New York Daily News yesterday had the exclusive story, since picked up by every media organization on earth (except this one, until now), that Captain America, the original sentinel of liberty, was shot dead by a sniper in Captain America #25 (which, by purest coincidence, also went on sale yesterday). The shooting follows Cap's arrest at the end of the Civil War storyline, in which Iron Man and the forces of law'n'order defeated Cap's rag-tag band of freedom fighters -- probably the first time in comics such a thing happened.

It's been hinted very strongly that the Punisher will become the new Captain America (at least for a little while), but considering that a Captain America movie is in the works for 2009, there's an obvious deadline for the original Cap (Steve Rogers) to return.

But, for now, all foes who chose to oppose his shield will not yield...

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Free Comic Book Day will be held on May 5th this year, huzzah! For those of you who haven't celebrated this holiday in the past, this is the third annual FCBD -- FCBD is characterized primarily by the giving of free comic books, but can also, in isolated cases, lead to roistering, noise-making, and a general hullabaloo.

You can see a selection of the free comics you might find online, and you can use Diamond Comics's Comic Shop Locator Service to find a shop near you. So you've got no excuse not to try to celebrate FCBD!

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The delightfully angry blog Girls Read Comics (and They're Pissed) presents a detailed look at the Body Mass Index of a bunch of Marvel characters, and then compares them to real human beings.

The results ain't pretty, folks. (The really sciencey version is here.)

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Harlan Ellison has just sued Fantagraphics Books (and its owners Gary Groth and Kim Thompson) over the upcoming book Comics As Art, which Ellison says defames him.

Fantagraphics announced the suit here, and the full complaint (which, to my eye, appears to have been drafted by Ellison himself rather than by a lawyer) is also online as a PDF file.

Those of you with long memories will be asking yourselves "does this have anything to do with the old Michael Fleisher suit?" Yes, it does. Apparently, that will never go away.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 08:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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