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Tor.com Offers New Sci-fi and Fantasy Web Comics

Partnering with another Macmillan imprint, the comics and graphic novel publisher First Second Books, sci-fi and fantasy publisher Tor Books has launched Tor.com, its own online comics imprint. The site features a high-profile collection of notable comics artists including Andi Watson, Sean Bieri and Shooting War co-author/artist Dan Goldman, whose original Obama-centric sci-fi goof, an online psychedelic satire, was published on the site the day before the presidential inauguration.

The new Tor.com imprint is simply a comics expansion of one of the publisher's better ideas: publishing online-only science fiction and fantasy prose stories that give creators access to a broader market without costing the publishers much of anything to distribute them. With the expansion from prose fiction into sequential art, Tor hasn't simply gone fishing for new talent like Elizabeth Genco (who’s set to create a comics strip about the Greek gods with a teen focus), they've also picked up established webcomics as well. The Tor.com site features strips like Emily Horne and Joey Comeau's "A Softer World," which has gotten more SF-centric since its migration to the website.

Pablo Defendini, the Tor.com producer, said that the site will probably stay online-only for a while yet: "There are really no concrete plans to go print. Every once and a while we talk about it. There's a chance that toward the end of the year we'll start putting something together." Defendini says that he's not anxious to start a print version a la the MySpace Dark Horse Presents site, which acts as an online publishing outlet for the Dark Horse print anthology.

Sex, Costumes and Videotape: The Comics of Koren Shadmi

Moody, thoughtful and rich in emotion, Koren Shadmi’s comics combine gripping, surreal imagery with vivid narrative scenarios.

February Comics Bestsellers

Wimpy Kid, Naruto and the Joker continue to lead the pack.

Image Adding All-Ages Focus

Image's Silverline Books imprint is adding a new focus on children's comics with books by Joe Kelly and Mark Andrew Smith.
more on comics
Based on a real diary found in a gas station bathroom, this eight-page preview of Esther Pearl Watson's Unlovable is a window into one high school girl's hilariously awkward sophomore year in 1985. Unlovable will be released by Fantagraphics in March.
Click above for the full preview.
See all Panel Mania


The 2008 Retailers Survey

It isn’t hard to take a look at what books are at the top of the Diamond sales charts. You can even pick your flavor of sales estimates: ICV2, Comic Book Resource’s Mayo Report or the Comics Chronicles. Diamond's charts are over-all sales charts and don’t necessarily reflect sell-through at the level of the individual retailer, nor does anyone have a good sense of how graphic novel/trade paperback backlist book pile up (although Diamond’s recent expansion of their graphic novel chart from the top 100 to the top 300 should change that—thanks, Diamond).

Nocturnal Conspiracies
DAVID B. NBM (www.nbmpublishing.com), $14.95 (124p) ISBN 978-1-56163-541-2

Author David B (The Epileptic) sets down 19 of his dreams, and it makes for a gorgeous, mysterious volume. His nocturnal topics run from the French resistance, Nazis, whores and wives to figures from the mythical history of Samarkand. Most of the dreams involve chases, danger and life-threatening conspiracies, all given life by B’s startlingly clear presentation, etched in shades of moonlight blue and black. The overall sense of foreboding is as haunting as a nightmare. The text, at least in translation, is more prosaic and adds little; it’s the art that’s the real treasure. B handles panel to panel progressions like no one else: theatrical, yet loose and immediate in their storytelling, the panels are also stunningly beautiful. Think of an easy Modernism married to a novelist’s sharp eye and a printmaker’s graphic touch, all things "painterly." B's eerie dreamscapes succeed mostly as an art piece, but for enthusiasts of European cartooning at its most confidently experimental, this will be a must have. (Feb.)
see all reviews

"First of all, comics on the web are free. They always will be. The cat isn't out of the bag on this one, it's out of the bag, out the window, down the street, and up a tree mauling a bluejay. No matter how many pay-per-view comics are online, there will always be some totally free ones, and those will always outperform the non-free ones because people expect the internet to be free."

—Jeph Jacques, creator of the eb comic Questionable Content, blogging about potential revenue streams for webcomics.


February 4, 2009
  • Apple Anthology Vol. 2 (Udon)
  • Captain America: Truth (Marvel)
  • Eternals Vol. 1: To Slay A God (Marvel)
  • Invincible: The Ultimate Collection Vol. 4 (Image)
  • Magic Touch Vol. 1 (Viz)
  • Missing The Boat (Image)
  • Marvel: Europe (Marvel)
  • Saga Of The Swamp Thing Book 1 (DC)
  • Scott Pilgrim Vol. 5 Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe (Oni)
  • Tiny Titans Vol. 1: Welcome to the Treehouse (DC)


  • Reed Launches New Chicago Con; Moves NYCC to Fall 2010
  • Blutch Wins Angoulême Grand Prix
  • CBLDF at NYCC
  • PWCW Editors at NYCC
  • Way Hosts Fresh Ink Online
  • Whedon's Dollhouse at NYCC
  • British Porn Laws Target Comics
  • MySpace Comics Lay-offs
  • Graphic Novel Buyers Survey
  • Jerry Craft Children's Book
  • Murder of Abraham Lincoln Reprint
  • Unlovable Book Launch; Exhibition

PW Comics Week
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