Bundled, Tossed, Untied And Stacked: A Publishing News Column

By Tom Spurgeon

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* the cartoonist Andi Watson has done three Skeleton Key stories for the new Dark Horse Presents. The DH announcement of the first story is here. Watson mentions the work and the titles of all three stories here.

* Brian Wood is bringing his DMZ to a close with its 72nd issue. The next one out is #65, so there's a while yet before the close.

* here's a potentially interesting publishing strategy, announced by DC Comics late last week. The week that the fifth issue of their Flashpoint "event" series ships, it may be the only DC comic book that ships that week (the language DC uses suggests this, but hedges a bit). If that comes off as most people think it will, this would ostensibly throw a big spotlight on the event-ness of that specific event comic, and in that it even earns a mention on this site some extra attention seems likely. The flip side of this is that if DC displays the discipline to not ship anything else for an entire week, this throws the spotlight on just how much control they have over shipping product when they want to exercise it. A longstanding objection of some forward-thinking retailers is that the mainstream companies could do a much better job of being precise with their shipping of certain titles within a monthly schedule.

* there are a bunch of worthy Kickstarter projects up right now, all clamoring for your attention and patronage, all willing to dispense with the premiums in order to secure your support. One that caught my attention is Zak Sally's Sammy The Mouse project from his La Mano.

* NBM will put out a fourth volume of their Little Nothings series from Lewis Trondheim, comics I would eat with a spoon if that were possible. That this volume will come out mid-year as opposed to the first few months on the calendar will hopefully place it into more people's minds come best-of-year list-making time. You can see some of that material on the NBM site.

* a second Crossgen property is being revived by Marvel: Mystic.

* Blank Slate is firing up a high-concept anthology book for this fall, called Nelson. It's being edited by Rob Davis and Woodrow Phoenix.

* Ditkomania #84 is out.

* this is more a publishing news column than a column about stuff that people have for sale, but I'm sure you'll forgive me a slight digression to note that the minis distributor Profanity Hill is apparently selling copies of Justin Green's Sacred And Profane for five bucks a pop. That's a good comic at five times the price.

* Valerie Gallaher is blogging again.

* not comics: Art Spiegelman is providing illustrations to one of a number of limited releases being put out by legendary singer-songwriter Van Dyke Parks. Thanks to Jamie S. Rich for bringing that to my attention.

* Evan Dorkin has announced that some Beasts Of Burden material will appear in the new Dark Horse Presents.

* Jillian Tamaki talks about placing a short work of hers into the next Best American Comics.

* Hinako Takanaga announces the end of The Tyrant Falls In Love. No fair quizzing me on any of that, and doubly-unfair to quiz me on content, but damn if that isn't an terrific-sounding title for a comics series.

* the cover to Richard Sala's The Hidden, no longer hidden.

* finally, I keep forgetting to mention Benjamin Marra's new web-oriented project: Space Barbarians Of The Ultimate Future Dimensions.

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