If you’ve been trying to take us up on our newly posted FREE Digital Editions of our latest issues, you’re not alone! Our servers have been overloaded with thousands of orders since Sunday, so you may have had trouble getting through, or your downloads may have gotten corrupted and wouldn’t open.

If that’s the case, please try again in a day or two when things have slowed down a bit, and they should work fine. Sorry for the inconvenience.

We’re about to embark on our annual pilgrimage to Comic-Con International: San Diego, so TwoMorrows will be closed from the time you read this till August 1. (We’re working in some R&R on this trip too, including a stop at the Grand Canyon with the kids.) It looks to be another really eventful con for us this year, so without further ado, here’s the official PR:

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On July 21, TwoMorrows Publishing will make their 16th consecutive appearance at Comic-Con International: San Diego. The company will again be exhibiting at booth #1301, in their usual spot in front of the San Diego Convention Center, just inside the doors for Hall C, and bringing with them a literal ton (more than 2000 lbs.—we weighed it and shipped it there!) of printed goodness for fans of comics and LEGO.

Debuting at Comic-Con will be the new book THE THIN BLACK LINE: PERSPECTIVES ON VINCE COLLETTA, by Robert L. Bryant Jr. Vince Colletta has long been a controversial figure in comics history, known for his ability to ink an entire comic book over a weekend when needed, but often taking some startling shortcuts to meet his deadlines. In anticipation of the book’s release, TwoMorrows is letting readers download a FREE 5mb PDF preview of the chapter on Colletta’s THOR work at this link:

http://twomorrows.com/media/CollettaPreview.pdf

Also at Comic-Con International 2010, TwoMorrows will debut:

Alter Ego #95 (the Marie Severin/humor issue of Roy Thomas’ Eisner Award nominated magazine)
Back Issue #42 (the Wild West issue, cover-featuring a retrospective on Jonah Hex)
BrickJournal Compendium 4 (compiling never-printed digital issues of TwoMorrows LEGO magazine)

Other new items TwoMorrows will have on hand include:
Age of TV Heroes (showcasing the live-action TV appearances of comic book characters)
Sal Buscema: Comics’ Fast & Furious Artist
Recent Modern Masters books on Mark Buckingham and Guy Davis

TwoMorrows will also have a limited number of DVD and Blue-ray copies for sale of the acclaimed documentary Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist in conjunction with Montilla Productions, the documentary’s producers. The DVD hits stores in early August, but will only be available at Comic-Con at booth #1301.

Other TwoMorrows Comic-Con related items of note:

• On Friday night, July 23, the annual Eisner Awards ceremony takes place, honoring the best in comics from the previous year. Roy Thomas’ ALTER EGO is again nominated for Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism, a category the magazine won in 2007.

• For those that missed the company’s recent Half-Price Magazine Sale, TwoMorrows will be bringing hundreds of back issues and older books, all available at 50% off cover price.

• On Thursday, July 22 at 2:30 pm in Room 7AB, TwoMorrows will be presenting the panel BrickJournal: Looking at the LEGO Community. In the past decade, a community of adult LEGO builders has sprung up and created models, websites, and even conventions. The staff of TwoMorrows’ BrickJournal, the magazine for LEGO enthusiasts of all ages, will take a look at the community (and what it builds) at this talk, with Brandon Griffith (top LEGO builder), Jonathan Bender (author of LEGO: A Love Story), Nathan Sawaya (LEGO Certified Professional builder), and Jim Foulds (Community Operations Manager, Community Development – Americas and Australia, for the LEGO Group). The panel will be moderated by BrickJournal editor Joe Meno, and there will also be a Q&A afterward.

• Nathan Sawaya and Jonathan Bender will be signing at booth #1301 after the BrickJournal panel from 4-5pm Thursday, July 22. Sawaya will be signing again from 4-5pm Friday, July 23.

• Rand Hoppe, curator of the online Jack Kirby Museum (www.kirbymuseum.org) will be at the TwoMorrows booth for all of Comic-Con, with his large format scanner in tow, scanning collectors’ Kirby original art for the Museum’s digital archives. Hoppe will be accepting Kirby Museum memberships at the booth as well, and displaying exclusive Kirby premiums available with new and renewing memberships.

• The annual Jack Kirby Tribute Panel will take place on Sunday, July 25 at 10am. Both John Morrow and Rand Hoppe will be in attendance, as moderator Mark Evanier quizzes top panelists about how Kirby influenced them.

Right now, you can try the most recent issues of all our magazines for FREE!

We’ve just added 7 new FREE Digital Editions to our website, so you can sample a FULL ISSUE of each of our magazines, to try out “going digital,” or to see what you’ve been missing in our recent print issues! (For instance, we’ve just added FULL-COLOR pages to both Alter Ego and Back Issue, so take a look at how much that adds to these already fantastic mags!)

These are full-color PDF files, viewable on any computer (using Adobe’s free Acrobat Reader software, available here), or on an iPad or other portable device that reads PDF files.

These new issues have just been added for FREE downloading:

Alter Ego #94
Back Issue #41
BrickJournal #10
Draw #18
Jack Kirby Collector #54
Rough Stuff #12
Write Now #20

Just got to the “FREE STUFF” section of our website and start enjoying these FULL-COLOR, COMPLETE PDF issues:

http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=108

And while you’re there, you can download FREE catalogs as well; they’re fully interactive, so if you see something you want to order, just click on the item, and it’ll take you to the page on our website to order it.

Hey, gang; I’ve just extended our HALF-PRICE MAGAZINE SALE through July 4th. So in between those hot dogs, beer, and fireworks, mosey on over to www.twomorrows.com and stock up on any of these issues you’ve missed at 50% off:

Back Issue! #1-34
Jack Kirby Collector #23-52
Draw! #4-17
Alter Ego #2-86
Rough Stuff! #1-12
Write Now! #1-20
Comic Book Artist #9-25
BrickJournal #2-5

HAVE A SAFE AND FUN FOURTH OF JULY!