OKAY, so one of my favorite cartoonists right now is Sammy Harkham, who you may or may not have met at this year’s HeroesCon. I met him, and might as well have been meeting Farrah Fawcett, considering how nervous I was the whole time. I LOVE HIM! But besides being a studly cartoonist, Sammy also edits the preeminent anthology KRAMER’S ERGOT, six volumes of which have come out over the last 8-10 years or so.

THIS FALL WILL SEE the release of Kramer’s Ergot #7, which will be published as a 16″ x 21″ massive tome for $125, filled with a laundry list of great creators, including Chris Ware, Dan Clowes, Adrian Tomine, Seth, Kevin Huizenga, Matt Groening, Jaime Hernandez, and a bajillion others. It’s crazy. While the book will only be 96 pages–I know, I know, let me FINISH–it’s all material created SPECIFICALLY to see print at this size, comparable to the size of old Sundays like Gasoline Alley, etc. This has NEVER BEEN DONE in comics before, and from all accounts some of the work is breathtaking. Imagine what someone with the graphic sense and careful pacing of Dan Clowes could do with a page over 4 times larger than a standard comic page. I’m getting sweaty just thinking about it, and I’m not even that big a Clowes fan. But I AM a big fan of comics, and the thought of pushing into this kind of territory is really exciting to me.

BUT NOT to everybody. A lot of people–maybe even YOU–are put off by the high price point and relatively low page count. Which is totally fine. There are a lot of books that are too expensive to buy at ANY price for some people. But the strange thing is that a lot of people have decided that they need to COMMENT on how expensive the book is, regardless of whether they care of not about what’s in the book, whether they’d have EVER bought it, etc. Boring, I know; but on the Internet people have to talk-talk-talk, especially bloggers, even when they pretend to be objective and journalisty. Imagine needing to say something EVERY DAY to an audience you can’t see. You can almost forgive these guys for their digital demagoguery.

ALMOST.

I have been more vocal in this dumb debate than I normally would be, half because I find it childish for people to complain about art–ignoring art is the best defense against art you don’t like. And half because I REALLY AM excited about this book, and want to stick up for it like you would for anything you like. And my excitement was only quadrupled a few days ago when Tom Spurgeon posted this excellent interview with Sammy Harkham about the book, the creators involved, et cetera, rather than flinging opinions out all willy-nilly with little more information than the size and cost of the book. But I’m a fan of Tom Spurgeon too, so maybe I’m just playing favorites.

SO, I say all this NOT to bring this cacophonous kerfuffle into our blog. I am uninterested in hearing what everyone thinks about expensive artsy books–I like the folksy neighborly vibe we have on this blog, and would prefer not to enter into some rejoinder war with anyone. So, if you’d like to be heard, please feel free to post on any of the threads I’ve linked to above.

THE REAL PROBLEM WITH THIS BOOK for me is all about the retail risk. Kramer’s Ergot #7 will be available for much less than $125 on Amazon, possibly as low as $80–how in the world can we compete with that? While I intend to support the book by purchasing it here, I get a fat employee discount, so it’s a wash. And while I’d love to order a bajillion, just to shut up the people who say that comic shops will never order such a pricey book, I’d have to defend to Shelton why I spent so much of his money (which is never in surplus anyway) on even a few of such a pricey book.

SO LET’S SAY (pending confirmation from the publisher of what our cost will be) that we offer the book to anyone who special orders it for an even $100. That’s 20% off the retail price; a little more than it costs on Amazon, but we throw in the satisfaction of supporting your locally owned and operated comic shop for no additional charge. This will ONLY apply to people who special order the book by posting here or e-mailing me directly–other copies purchased in the store will be at regular price, although stuff like your reserve discount, etc., would still apply. If I don’t know you, I may ask for some sort of confirmation, just so we don’t end up with a stack of these things unsold if you change your mind later. If you’re from out of town and would be mail-ordering the book, it’s probably better if you order it directly from the publisher (Buenaventura Press), as it’s an oversized package and would add too many weird costs for us.

ANY TAKERS? I really do think this is going to be one of the most talked-about and influential books of the DECADE, a historical event in comic book publishing. I CANNOT STOP USING CAPITAL LETTERS when talking about it.

I’M SORRY.

Now up on Newsarama is an article I wrote for Matt Brady on selling Watchmen to customers–very apropros considering this Saturday’s Watchmen Discussion Group. Matt asked me to write something after a conversation he and Shari Brady and I had at the recent Mark Millar/Tony Harris signing. Sweet! This will increase the value of any copies of Superior Showcase #3 I’ve signed for anyone, so all FOUR of you go ahead and start thinking of how to spend all that money!

Every Wednesday we run down the 5 most interesting comics or graphic novels coming out for the week.

5 ACHEWOOD: THE GREAT OUTDOOR FIGHT
By Chris Onstad
Dark Horse
$14.95 | 104 pgs

The cream of the webcomics pile continues to rise to the top where it’s offered book deals and, who knows, maybe movies some day. It’s an interesting experiment in figuring out whether people will pay for what they can get for free and Dark Horse Comics has had some success with that recently thanks to Nicholas Gurewitch’s Perry Bible Fellowship. Will Achewood, a webcomic with almost as big a following, do as well in this market? If you haven’t read it, Achewood is an absurdist strip about a group of anthropomorphic stuffed animals that live together with their owner in a house in the fictional suburb of Achewood. This book collects the popular story arc, The Great Outdoor Fight. The humor of this strip isn’t really for me I think but it has a huge cult following and I’m all for webcomic peeps making money so hopefully people will check this out.

4. TALL TALES
By Al Jaffee
Abrams
$14.95 | 128 pgs

Al Jaffee is known to everyone who’s ever read Mad Magazine as the guy who did those brilliant fold-out cartoons. From 1957-1963 he did an innovative vertical, wordless comic strip for the New York Herald Tribune that is collected here in one volume.

Comedy Central‘s Stephen Colbert provides an introduction for the book which should be worth the price of admission alone.

3. NEW AVENGERS #44
Written by Brian Michael Bendis; art by Billy Tan
Marvel
$2.99

I don’t normally point out the odd issue of an ongoing series unless it’s a good jumping on point or a special stand-alone story. In this case, if you’re reading Marvel’s Secret Invasion series but you’re not picking up all the various crossovers and tie-ins (and seriously how could you – there’s just too many) you might want to check this one out because it looks like it’s going to fill in a big part of the Secret Invasion storyline by showing us how the whole Skrull takeover of Earth came about. Brian Michael Bendis, writer of Secret Invasion, has been setting up threads for this storyline in his books for years and one of the books that this draws heavily on is his Illuminati mini-series which revealed that various events in Marvel history had been secretly orchestrated by a committee of well-meaning but foolhardy heroes.

2. TYPHON
By Various
Dirty Danny Press
$24.95 | 192 pgs

This is yet another anthology book (we’ve had a lot of these this summer) but I happened to browse through this one at Heroes Con and man is it a crazy book. Forty two full color stories from various cartoonists, many of which are relatively unknown but include some names like David Chelsea, Tim Lane (who we saw last week with Abandoned Cars), Victor Cayro , Matthew Thurber, Hans Rickheit and Eric Theriault.

In the tradition of the great underground comic anthologies like Weirdo and Raw, this book allows the artists to do whatever the hell they want and let their ids spill out all over the page. It’s full of graphic sex, gross out humor, weird ideas and cool, modern cartooning from some fresh up and coming talent.

There’s some relatively NSFW previews here at the editor’s blog.

1. FINAL CRISIS: SUPERMAN BEYOND #1 (of 2)
Written by Grant Morrison; art by Dough Mahnke and Christian Alamy
DC Comics
$4.50 | 40 pgs

I know this is the second week in a row that I’ve picked a Final Crisis tie-in as the top book but this one has got alternate-Earth Supermen and a special 3-D section with glasses included! Plus it’s written by Final Crisis writer Grant Morrison and has art by Doug Mahnke who previously collaborated with Morrison on Seven Soldiers: Frankenstein. This two issue mini deals with Superman trying to save Lois’ life after the events of Final Crisis and getting caught up in the even bigger problem of preventing the end of all reality.

By the way, speaking of Grant Morrison, if you’ve never read the greatest Superman book EVER then it’s your duty to disregard everything else on this list and pick up the new trade paperback collection of his All-Star Superman book which also comes out today.

Plus, there’s even more classic Morrison on the shelves with a $30 hardcover collecting the first 9 issues of his run on the relaunched JLA comic from somewhere around 1996. From a historical standpoint, this is a highly influential book that many would say kick started the whole “widescreen” action method of telling superhero comics. Personally, I have trouble getting past the artwork in this one but it’s pretty wild superhero fun, nonetheless.

Oh, the hate! I’ve been informed by The Light Factory that the George Romero film retrospective, along with the Heroes signing scheduled for September 19, will be cancelled. Apparently a late-breaking movie greenlight means that Romero is beginning production on a new movie at around the same time. How do you like all that Hollywood-speak? Snazzy, I know.

It looks like there’s a chance that the retrospective will move to early 09, and if so, we will likely still be hosting a signing here, and will of course drive it into your heads with constant reminders for months in advance. But for the nonce… no Romero.

But dry those eyes! Still coming up on October 17 is the big Harvey Pekar/Alison Bechdel signing! This is going to be super-huge, and we expect as many or more people as we had last week for the Mark Millar/Tony Harris signing, so don’t miss it! Don’t worry, we’ll continue to remind you constantly!

Now up on our ginormous Flickr site (over 1,000 photos now!) is a massive photo report of last Sunday’s big “Tour of Duty” shindig! The short version was that there were a ton of people, and they all had an AWEsome time, which was great. Mark and Tony were super sweet, as were special guest stars Tommy Lee Edwards and Nathan Edmondson. I’d say more, but I just spent like three hours screwing with all these photos and writing little descriptions. You can see the Flickr set by clicking the photo above or right here. Enjoy!

Shocking insider video! Reputations ruined! A legion of teenaged fans disillusioned forever!

‘i am 8-bit’ art show opening 2008
by pennyman

Our buddies Jim Mahfood and Scott Campbell profiled in a video at the recent I Am 8 Bit gallery show in (I think) California somewhere. Probably Los Angeles? I think Los Angeles takes up most of California anyway, so that’s a safe bet. Anyway, there’s a bunch of cool pieces, some of which you can see on Scott and Jim’s blogs. Check it out!

Every Wednesday we run down the 5 most interesting comics or graphic novels coming out for the week.

5. AIR #1
Written by G. Willow Wilson; Art and Cover by M.K. Perker
DC Vertigo
$2.99 | 40 pgs

The creative team behind the recent Vertigo graphic novel, Cairo, begin a new series about air travel, terrorism and anti-terrorist vigilantes. Blythe, an acrophobic flight attendant (hey it’s a tough economy out there and some people have to take whatever jobs they can find) gets caught up with an organization called the Etesian Front that are taking on some radical means to stop planes from being hijacked by… hijacking planes. Writer G. Willow Wilson has written articles about religion and the Middle East for publications like the New York Times and is now plunging head first in the comics world. She even has a spot at Jason Aaron’s new Vertigo themed blog Standard Attrition. M.K. Perker has a quirky way of drawing people that I think could grow on me pretty easily. There’s a preview here if you’d like to look.

4. MYSPACE DARKHORSE PRESENTS VOL.1
By Various
Dark Horse
$19.95

Either you’re a Marvel person or a DC person. A Mac person or a PC person. A Facebook person or a MySpace person. Since I’m a Facebook guy I never step foot in MySpace so I’ve never seen the free web comics that Dark Horse has been putting out over there. Why get something for free when you can pay for it though? For less than $20 you can get this new collection of the various strips that were put on the Myspace website over the past year. There’s some good stuff here like a new Umbrella Acadamy story by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba. A Joss Whedon story called “Sugarshock” with art by Fabio Moon. A new full color Empowered story by Adam Warren. Plus Mike Mignola, Guy Davis, Eric Powell and more. Can’t beat a lineup like that.

3. ABANDONED CARS #1
By Tim Lane
Fantagraphics
$22.99 | 168 pgs

Tim Lane is a fairly new face to the comics world, having appeared in some various anthologies here and there but his first book is a collection of short stories that together aim to examine the theme of “the American mythological drama” by way of cars, carnivals, rockabilly, train yards and of course, Elvis. As the previews will show you, Lane works in a wordy, caption-ific style with black and white artwork that brings to mind Charles Burns pretty readily. If you don’t mind some words mixed with your pictures this looks like it will be an interesting and moody look at Americana in all it’s sordid and noirish glory.

2. SCORCHY SMITH AND THE ART OF NOEL SICKLES
By Noel Sickles
IDW Publishing
$49.99 | 394 pgs

Don’t be ashamed if you’ve never heard of Noel Sickles (I’m sure there are plenty of other things you easily can be ashamed of, GarfieldFan78!) or if you’ve never heard of the aviation-based newspaper strip that this book collects. Sickles only drew the strip for three years and then left comics altogether for the more lucrative and glamorous career of editorial and advertising illustration. However, in those three short years (1933-1936) Sickles revolutionized the world of comic strip art with his cinematic panel compositions and chiaroscuro inking. His work here influenced such greats as Milton Caniff, John Romita, Sr. and even recently Dave Sim. This hefty volume contains Sickles’ complete run as well as some extras like illustrations from Sickles’ non-Scorchy work.

1. FINAL CRISIS: LEGION OF THREE WORLDS #1 (of 5)
Written by Geoff Johns; Art by George Pérez and Scott Koblish
DC Comics
$3.99 | 40 pgs

Of the many Final Crisis spin-offs coming out now, this is by far the most highly anticipated. Written by Geoff Johns and illustrated by George Perez, two men who are both closely associated with Crises of the past, this 5 issue mini-series picks up on threads that have been left hanging from such books as Infinite Crisis, JLA: Lightning Saga, The Sinestro Corps War, JSA, Action Comics and others. It involves the Time Trapper utilizing Superboy Prime to erase Superman’s impact on the universe and three versions of the Legion of Superheroes trying to stop him. Usually just mentioning the Legion is enough to confuse most readers, nonetheless putting all three versions from different continuities into one story. But God put Geoff Johns on this earth to help us understand the DC Universe and it’s convoluted continuity and his mission continues here. If anyone can make sense of the Legion it’s him. If nothing else though at least the artistic presence of George Perez will help lend this book the Crisis Event gravitas it needs.

I’m going out of town for the next couple of days (to see the MELVINS, baby!), so I wanted to get a few pictures up for those of you who were unable to come today. As I type they’re still signing away, but things will be wrapping up pretty soon. I’ll put a couple of photos up here, but expect by the end of the week a longer report on our Flickr site.

The line early on–things started a hair late, but everyone was SUPER cool, as usual. Of course, we have great customers.

Here’s “Locutus”, whose name I just forgot (sorry, Loc). He won the Hero Initiative auction for the first spot in line and a free copy of the tour incentive cover. My man Loc!

You don’t write all those famous comics without a big brain–here Mark Millar poses while Tony Harris does ALL the work, sketching away.

Also on hand were our buddies Tommy Lee Edwards and Nathan Edmundson, who are both pretty fun to talk to.

A quick shot of how fun everything was. Oops! I gotta go to a party with all these guys. Finally, a perk! I’ll give you a full report later in the week. Keep it real, guys!

Two things, quickly:

1) As I write, the store is steadily filling up with people showing up for our BIG SALE and the huge MARK MILLAR/TONY HARRIS signing going on from 2-5 this afternoon. Scroll down to earlier posts for all the skinny on that.

2) Though we earlier said that the exclusive WAR HEROES #1 tour exclusive editions would be $5 apiece, after some reflection and a closer examination of how much this big shindig is going to cost us, we’ve decided that we’d better charge TEN bucks for those. We apologize for any inconvenience this causes anybody. Remember that everything ELSE in the store is on sale, so there’s a silver lining! They’re also limit one per person.

Okay, come on in!

We’re getting our ducks in a row for this Sunday! Just as a reminder: we’ll be having a SALE all day long, and be opened for extended Sunday hours, from 11am to 7pm. More details at this post.

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL! As part of the Tour of Duty in support of the new War Heroes book from Image, we’ll be hosting Mark Millar and Tony Harris in a store signing from 2-5pm!

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE! We’ll also have a SUPER limited edition tour exclusive version of War Heroes #1, available while supplies last for $5 a pop.

OH BUT CHECK THIS OUT! You can still bid on the first spot in line, as well as a FREE copy of the tour exclusive, the proceeds of which go to the Hero Initiative! Good Lord!