DC Comics Reorganizes as DC Entertainment

The winds of change once again blew over the comics industry last week, as Warner Bros. announced a major restructuring and executive changes at DC Comics. The home of Superman and Batman will become part of a larger division called DC Entertainment, to be run by WB branding veteran Diane Nelson.

Ed Brubaker: Crime, Superheroes and Comic Book History

Comics writer Ed Brubaker's body of work stretches beyond the superhero genre and into gritty crime dramas and dark espionage tales. This November, two of his series, Criminal and Incognito, will ship new book collections—a debut trade paperback for Incognito and an oversized hardcover omnibus for Criminal, which will feature a new story arc called "The Sinners."

R. Sikoryak’s Comics Masterpiece

R. Sikoryak's dead-on recreations of historical cartooning styles—utilized to adapt canonical Western literature—were immediately striking as witty, smart, and intensely well-crafted manifestations of the postmodern impulse within the comics form.

Jewish Life and Comics in ‘The Big Kahn’

Superheroes, action comics and horror stories—comics writer Neil Kleid does it all. But in an unusual twist, two of Kleid’s recent books, have pointed their story-telling lens at Jewish life and history. Brownsville, which came out in 2006, is set in 1930’s Brooklyn in the world of the Jewish mob, and his newest book, The Big Kahn, is a family drama that takes place in a contemporary Orthodox Jewish community

Comics Briefly

Reed Combines NYCC, NYAF at Javits Center; Stitches Online Video; SPX Programming Listing ; A Day for the Bookstores; Seven Seas Manga For Kindle; Archie, Veronica Wed; Old Characters Return; Full House Comes To Netcomics; and Picture Box; Top Shelf Offer Book Sales;

Panel Mania: Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth

Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth is an examination of the life and ideas of the mathematician and philosopher, Bertrand Russell, which surveys both his increasingly messy personal life and the intellectual issues that motivated his groundbreaking work in mathematics and logic. Logicomix is written by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou, with art by Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna, and will be released by Bloomsbury in October.

The Shows Go On with Lance Fensterman

Lance Fensterman is increasingly running an empire of his own. As v-p at Reed Exhibitions, not only is he the show runner for BookExpo America and the four-year-old New York Comic Con, but a growing portfolio of consumer shows, including the just-concluded video game show PAX (in partnership with founders Penny Arcade), the New York Anime Festival (to be held Sept. 25-27), and next April's C2E2 comics show in Chicago.

Tokyopop: Good News, Bad News

The past week was a mixed bag for manga publisher Tokyopop: They revealed they would no longer be doing business with the Japanese publisher Kodansha but also announced a handful of new licenses and put several stalled series back on schedule.

ADV Shuts Down; Assets, Staff Shift to New Companies

U.S. anime distributor and manga publisher AD Vision is no more. The company's assets (and an undetermined number of its employees) have been divided up among four separate companies: AEsir Holdings, SXion 23 (Section 23) Films, Valkyrie Media Partners, and Seraphim Studios. Section 23 will continue to service former ADV accounts.

September Comics Bestsellers

Jeff Kinney’s Wimpy Kid: Last Straw continues its long run at the top, followed by Viz’s Vampire Knight vol. 7, Naruto and Tokyopop’s Fruits Basket, Vol. 23. Neil Gaiman’s Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader is #5 and just below the Top Ten are Darwyn Cooke’s The Hunter, David Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp and David Petersen’s Mouse Guard: Winter 1152.

Comics Briefly

Del Rey Hosts New York Anime Fest Party, ‘Action Philosophers’ Collected, Jaime Hernandez Book Signing in L.A., Spiegelman, Mouly Sign in New York City; Ben Katchor In Concert; and This Week @ Good Comics for Kids

Costumes and Comics at Dragon Con

Dragon Con, North America's largest fan-run pop culture convention, was held in downtown Atlanta over the Labor Day weekend. Now in its twenty-second year, Dragon Con is remarkable not merely for its size—the annual show generally attracts more than 30,000 fans—but for its remarkable variety.

Panel Mania: Beast

In Beast, the first solo graphic novel by Marian Churchland, Colette, a struggling young sculptor, is commissioned by the mysterious man to carve his portrait in marble. Over the course of the job, Colette discovers it is more sinister than it seemed. Beast, published by Image Comics, will be in stores on September 23rd.

Comics Briefly

Breaking Down Disney's Acquisition of Marvel

Can a mouse and a spider make lots of money together? We'll soon find out. The entertainment world was rocked Monday morning by the news that Disney plans to buy Marvel Entertainment for a cool $4 billion. Even the Kingpin would say that's a lot of dough.

Candlewick’s ‘Vermonia’—Multifaceted, Mythic Manga

Like the characters in its own story, Vermonia has a distinguished and almost mythic beginning. The manga series is the brainchild of a renowned editor and a manga professor and has a multifaceted existence in print and online. The series is being published in the U.S. by Candlewick Press (the initial printing is 25,000 copies); in the U.K. by Walker, and in Italy by Mondadori.

Why I Wrote 'Stitches'

As part of our on-going series, Why I Write, PW invited the award-winning illustrator David Small to comment on the incident that sparked the writing of Stitches, his graphic account of a harrowing childhood, which will be published by W. W. Norton in September.

Life in Comics: Competing with the Old Guard

In last month's column I parenthetically mentioned graphic novel publishing imprints that are a part of large traditional publishing companies. Several prominent publishers have established themselves with strong graphic novel showings in recent years.

Hackers are People Too: Ed Piskor's 'Wizzywig'

In an unusual creative effort that mixes fictional techniques with serious nonfiction research, cartoonist Ed Piskor has self-published the first two volumes of Wizzywig, a planned four-volume graphic novel that folds the history of the hacker community into a single fictional character named Kevin Phenicle in order to document the history and technological and social development of hacker and online culture.

Panel Mania: Ball Peen Hammer

In the dark, post apocalyptic world of Ball Peen Hammer in which plague has infected the city, Welton, infected himself, has locked himself in a basement to stay safe. In this preview, Welton opens the door of his refuge. Ball Peen Hammer is written by Adam Rapp, with art by George O’Conner, and will be released by First Second on September 29th.