Comics A.M. | Todd McFarlane cover sells for record $657,250

Comics A.M. | Todd McFarlane cover sells for record $657,250

The Amazing Spider-Man #328

Auctions | Todd McFarlane's original cover art for The Amazing Spider-Man #328 sold at auction Thursday for $657,250, shattering the record for a single piece of American comics art set last year by a splash page from The Dark Knight Returns #3 ($448,125). However, the price falls well short of the $1.6 million shell out last month for the original cover art for Tintin in America. A 9.8 graded copy of X-Men #1 was also sold by Heritage Auctions for $492,937.50, more than twice the previous record for that comic. [ICv2]

Publishing | Lily Rothman takes a look at iVerse's newly announced comics-only crowdfunding platform Comics Accelerator, which will allow immediate delivery of digital rewards in a more sophisticated format than an e-mailed PDF and cap its share of the take at $2,500. As Laura Morley of Womanthology points out, it can go both ways: Being on Kickstarter, a trusted platform with wide visibility, helped boost the project, but on the other hand, 'Any site that's able to take advantage of the fact that comics online already work as a big community, as a place where people talk to their friends and promote things they're interested in, is likely to do well.' [Time]

Mastering Comics

Creators | Robot 6 contributor Chris Mautner talks to Jessica Abel and Matt Madden about their new book, Mastering Comics, how it relates to their previous work, and their view of the essential building blocks of comics. [The Comics Journal]

Creators | J.T. Waldman, who said he felt like he had 'won the lottery' when Harvey Pekar asked him to illustrate Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me, talks about how the book evolved, how he filled in the gaps left by Pekar's death, and how he ended up as a character as well as the artist. [Haaretz]

Creators | Douglas Noble, the creator of the self-published comic Strip for Me, talks about playing with alternative formats, as in The Silent Choir, a webcomic whose pages can be read in any order: 'Charles Fort said that 'One measures a circle, beginning anywhere.' I don't think that there is any right way to tell a story, and it's really down to the story itself to dictate how it should be told. The Silent Choir is based around the idea that something in the past happened that affected a whole choir in such an extreme way that the members no longer sing. That meant that every member of that Choir could become a way into exploring what happened, until the collective shape of their memories describe the mystery that sits in the centre of the story. There didn't need to be a single entry point, and if I wasn't going to limit that, then naturally there could be any number of ways to read through the story.' [Broken Frontier]

Digital comics | Rob Salkowitz reports on the panel he moderated at Comic-Con International titled 'Are Digital Comics Expanding the Market?' [SPOILER: The answer is yes.] There's some good discussion here with David Steinberger and John Roberts of comiXology, Mike Richardson of Dark Horse, and Ted Adams of IDW Publishing all giving their takes. [Rob Salkowitz]

Grant Morrison

Comics | Brian Truitt proposes 10 possible replacements for Grant Morrison as the writer of Action Comics. [USA Today]

Comics | Charlie Jane Anders and Will Brooker, author of  Batman Unmasked, compile a list of hard-to-find Batman comics that everyone should read. [io9.com]

Comics | Here's a different type of Top 10 list: Molly McIsaac counts down the cutest comics and manga, from Paradise Kiss to Owly. Some good picks here, but what, no Yotsuba&!? [iFanboy]

Blogs | Alan David Doane has relaunched Comic Book Galaxy, primarily (at least for now) as a news site. [Comic Book Galaxy]

• July 27, 2012 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson
• Tagged: Action Comics, auctions, comic art, comics a.m., comiXology, crowdfunding, Dark Horse Comics, David Steinberger, digital comics, Douglas Noble, grant morrison, Harvey Pekar, IDW Publishing, J.T. Waldman, Jessica Abel, John Roberts, Justin Jordan, matt madden, Mike Richardson, spider-man, Ted Adams, The Amazing Spider-Man, Tintin, Todd McFarlane, Valiant, X-Men

3 Comments

ASM 328 is such a sweet cover. I wish Todd still did pencils.

Rumor has it that it would've sold for far less had people been allowed to read the full comic. Oh, the 90s. =) j/k

Thanks for the link on the Batman comics everybody should read. Looks like i got some back issue hunting to do this weekend.

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