Pete Von Sholly’s swamped with a big storyboarding project right now, so we won’t be featuring his cartoons here for a few weeks, until he’s wrapped his paying gig. But stay tuned; just like Arnie, he’ll be back!

We’ve gotten a nice plug for George Khoury’s upcoming book Image Comics: The Road To Independence here.

If you’re curious to talk to George about the book, or any of his other projects, check our this link to the “Marvel Masterworks” website, and post to the message board, which George frequents.

The book’s almost done, and man, people are going to be talking about it for a long time to come. It’s not just about the Image founders; it’s about the whole state of the comics industry from 1990 to today. And like so many of our publications, it all comes back around to Jack Kirby. Yes, Jack Kirby; just wait and see!

It should be out the last week of May. Trust me, you’ll want to read this book.

Yep, Alter Ego is nominated for “Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism” in this year’s Eisner Awards! The category was especially challenging this year, since it included not just print publications, but websites as well. Haven’t seen the list of what AE is up against yet (we just got the word from Eisner chair Jackie Estrada a few minutes ago via e-mail), but this is great timing, considering Roy Thomas is a Guest of Honor at this year’s Comicon International: San Diego, where the Eisner Awards will be handed out this summer.

Great work, Roy, as well as Jim Amash, Bill Schelly, Michael T. Gilbert, P.C. Hamerlinck, Chris Day, and everyone else who’s worked so hard over the last 68 issues to make this honor so well-deserved!

The Scoop (Diamond’s e-newsletter) just gave a great plug for the Blue Beetle Companion. Thanks, guys!

Get the Von Sholly Bundle. You’ll love it!

Just got samples of our Free Comic Book Day publication, COMICS 101, back from the printer, and it looks great! Now, for all of you who’ve pestered me about it: We will have a limited number of copies available for sale for people who weren’t able to get it at their local comic book shop. But if you can get it FREE from your local retailer, please do; you’ll save some cash, and get a chance to see what other great stuff they have to offer locally!

Our webmeister Rand Hoppe will have the listing updated shortly so you can preorder it, but copies will NOT be mailed until the week of May 7, after Free Comic Book Day—knowing how our readers hate to wait for stuff, that’s another great reason to get it locally!

The US postpaid price will be $2. If you’re in Canada, you’ll have to add $1, or $3 if you live anywhere else. (Yeah, I know that’s a lot for a “free” publication, but that basically covers our costs for printing, envelopes, and postage. Still, I think it’s well worth it; our editors really knocked themselves out on this one!)

A few years ago, a major US newspaper was involved in a brouhaha when one of their longtime reporters was caught plagiarizing material in his articles. At the time, I thought, “Yeah, he was wrong to do it, but man, aren’t they making an awfully big deal of all this?” I mean, it was constantly on all the news networks for several days. Surely they’ll just give the guy a slap on the wrist and be done with it, I thought.
But having gone through a similar incident at TwoMorrows recently, I’m not so naive anymore. Plagiarism not only steals material from the person who put in the actual effort, it causes a huge domino effect that needlessly drags down not only the offender, but the innocent author, their publisher, and likely a lot of other people. It can cause a huge loss of time, productivity, and—if the victim is litigious—money in legal feels. It also causes publishers to burn up space in their blogs like this one, when they really should be getting Comics Gone Ape! ready for the printer.

All in all, it’s a big pain in the posterior, just because a writer was too lazy to simply credit sources in their work.

So, here’s our official policy on quoting material for our publications. If you’ve ever considered writing something for us, these are the guidelines if you’re going to quote from someone else. This info is also available on our website under “Submission Guidelines.”

Also, if you’re thinking of quoting some TwoMorrows material for use at a different publisher, I’d strongly advise you to adhere to these guidelines: request an OK from us first, and credit our source material when you do. Our contributors work really hard on our books and magazines, and I will do whatever possible to protect the rights of our authors to benefit from their hard work.

Sorry if this is a downer, but it’s serious enough that I felt I had to make everyone aware of it. Just credit your sources; it’s really not that much extra work, and it’s the right thing to do.

TWOMORROWS PUBLISHING POLICY ON QUOTING MATERIAL

“Fair Use” allows excerpts of copyrighted material to be used for journalistic purposes. However, it must be credited to the copyright owner, or it becomes plagiarism—presenting someone else’s work as your own—which cannot be condoned.

So if you quote a previously published source for your work for TwoMorrows Publishing, the source you’re quoting must be properly credited. It can be as a footnote, bibliography, or a note at the end of the article, or it can be included as a line in the article itself, such as:

–In his interview with Roy Thomas in Alter Ego #44, Joe Blow stated, “That guy was crazy!”–

At the bare minimum, you should credit the title of the publication and the author you are quoting from, ALWAYS. When possible, we encourage contributors to also include specifics about the publication (publisher’s name, issue and page number, etc.).

It is the contributor’s responsibility to ask permission from the author of the source they are quoting from, if the material to be quoted is more than 3 paragraphs (or in the case of shorter source material, roughly 5% of the material). While it’s not required, we also encourage contributors to ask permission of the author to quote their material when it is less than that amount. In most instances, author’s will gladly give permission, as long as credit is given.

Publisher John Morrow is happy to provide assistance in tracking down the authors of any source material for permission; send your request to twomorrow@aol.com. If we’re unable to track down the author for permission, John will make a decision on a case-by-case basis about whether to include the material without specific permission. However, if permission is expressly denied by the author, the material can not be used.

If, in the opinion of publisher John Morrow, a contributor violates this policy, the contributor will receive one warning. If the problem occurs again, TwoMorrows will no long accept any material from that contributor.

I’ve been going nuts trying to wrap up the new Kirby Collector, and it’s almost done. Pages 2-75 are complete, and will be guest-proofread tomorrow by Eric Nolen-Weathington, pinch-hitting while Chris Irving gets back up to speed from his travels.

All that’s left is the letter column (one of the most fun parts of putting an issue together), and the table of contents and house ads (probably the least fun/most boring parts). Then, I’ll spend a solid day cleaning up scans, and it’ll be off to press, for release either last week of April, or first week of May (just about on schedule, give or take a week).

Check it out:

http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=106926

Newsarama is featuring an interview with our own Christoper Irving, about his just-released book The Blue Beetle Companion. We literally got our copies from the printer today, so as soon as Chris gets back in the office tomorrow (following his trip to the Emerald City Con in Seattle to handle our booth, and to interview Peter Bagge for the first volume of his new Comics Introspective book series), he’ll be getting copies mailed out.

I remember meeting Chris for the first time back at a 1990s San Diego Comicon, and wondering why a guy so young would be so interested in the same Golden and Silver Age creators that I am. He’s a bit older now, but he hasn’t lost one ounce of the enthusiasm he had back then, as anyone who reads the Blue Beetle Companion will easily be able to tell.