* the comics business news and analysis site ICv2.com has an update on the printer Quebecor, and it's pretty much as expected: horrific losses, still no doubt that the company will pull through.
* the writer and retailer Chris Butcher notes that Fruits Basket will soon end and with it will go Tokyopop's biggest hit by a wide margin.
* speaking of Mr. Butcher, he and the writer/commentator Steven Grant exchange words on the state of comics conventions. Grant's point that for-profit conventions have limitations because there are only limited profits of any kind in comics is well-taken, yet so is Butcher's point that opting for profit isn't as inevitable as Grant seems to be asserting. I think the kind of convention is less important than a lot of execution issues -- I'd rather attend a well-run mainstream convention than a suck-o arts festival, although my opinion may be colored by working to cover the industry instead of simply enjoying whatever I want to enjoy within the medium.
* it's amazing to me that you can get the greatest comics series of all time, Love and Rocket Vol. 1, for $85 brand-new in a great, comfortably-formatted edition. Those are some really awesome comics. In fact, it's weird how much I enjoyed the book of one-offs and hard to categorize works, Amor y Cohetes.
* finally, Dick Hyacinth muses on the Vertigo move into original graphic novels. This is the kind of story that DC's perpetual stranglehold on its own sales number makes difficult to report. I'd guess that there are enough crappy selling Vertigo series that a change in the imprints basic strategy is dependent more on that than some vague sense of possibilities out there.
* the excellent cartoonist Kevin Huizenga 
* it's amazing to me that you can get the greatest comics series of all time, Love and Rocket Vol. 1, for $85 brand-new in a great, comfortably-formatted edition. Those are some really awesome comics. In fact, it's weird how much I enjoyed the book of one-offs and hard to categorize works, Amor y Cohetes.
