Our new book The Thin Black Line: Perspectives on Vince Colletta, Comics’ Most Controversial Inker is just out, and it’s already garnering rave reviews for its fair-handed treatment of its subject. Here’s one example from reviewer Dan Nadel:

http://comicscomicsmag.com/2010/08/whats-wrong-with-this-picture-2.html

The book debuted last week at Comic-Con, and we sold completely out there. When we first announced it, a lot of people were puzzled: “Why would anyone do a book on Vince Colletta?” I was asked numerous times.

Now that they’ve read it, they totally understand, and many, like Nadel, want to see an even more extensive look into Colletta’s life and career (which Vince’s con Franklin has been working on, and hopes to have published soon).

Yknow, contrary to what some believe, I like Vinnie’s inks over some artists, and even like his Jimmy Olsen work over Kirby. In doing the book, I think I discovered why.

I searched for before/after comparisons where Vinnie omitted stuff in Jimmy Olsen, but I only have access to pencil copies of the last half of Jack’s run on the series. And there’s virtually no examples of erasures, unlike the earlier Thor work, where omissions are all over the place. (I designed the book, and could’ve easily added dozens more Thor before/after examples if there’d been room. But I had trouble finding a single instance in Jimmy Olsen #139-148.)

This may’ve been Jack figuring “Vinnie’s going to omit all the details anyway” and Jack putting less into those pages for him to erase. But I think more likely, it was a result of Kirby confronting Vinnie up at DC around 1971 (when he got Royer assigned as new inker on the other Fourth World books), as documented in the book. I suspect Vinnie was more concerned about being faithful to Jack’s pencils after that heated exchange, which apparently was pretty unpleasant for both men.

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!

I’m wrapping up the layout on TwoMorrows’ new book on Vince Colletta this week, and if all goes well on press, it’ll debut at Comic-Con next month. Entitled THE THIN BLACK LINE: PERSPECTIVES ON VINCE COLLETTA, COMICS’ MOST CONTROVERSIAL INKER, it’s a really fascinating look and Vinnie’s life and career, and answers a lot of questions fans have had. His son discusses Colletta’s alleged mafia connections, and a wealth of top pros weigh in on VC’s work, pro and con. It’s written by Robert L. Bryant Jr., who spent months researching Vinnie’s history, family, and friends both in and outside of comics.

It’s one of the most fascinating life stories I’ve ever published, about an inker whose inking I pretty universally despised over Kirby. But like him or hate him, he was quite a character, with an amazingly colorful life. Really a fun read for me, as a big Kirby fan, and I think it’ll be pretty eye-opening for any fan of comics.

And don’t worry; I resisted the temptation to leave the last few pages blank to make the Comic-Con release, in honor of Vinnie’s own solution to all the last minute deadlines he was constantly handed.

Doing his part to keep comics history alive, Kirby Collector columnist Adam McGovern has a story in the tabloid newsprint anthology “pood,” from Big If/Blurred Books. Adam teams with artist Paolo Leandri (his partner on the Ignatz-nominated “Dr. Id”) for a Twilight Zone-ish parable taking up a full page of “pood”’s 17 x 23-inch format. Fifteen other creators from comics’ cutting edge have a page each too. It premiered exclusively at the indie-comic MoCCA Fest in April to rave reviews and was picked up by Diamond (order code MAY100817) for release in comics shops July 14. Sample it in this YouTube clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpuZg2klfKs. So check out “pood”: as Adam says, it’s “cutting-edge comics like they did ’em in 1910!”

Hey, gang, TwoMorrows Publishing is closed from June 18-25 for convention and vacation travel, but our 50% off magazine sale is still going on! So feel free to place orders over the next week, and we’ll get them processed the week of June 28. I hope you’re having a great summer, and I hope to see some of you at Comic-Con next month!

You guys and gals have repeatedly asked me something to this effect for years now:

“Hey John, I love the half-price Ultimate Bundles you offer, where I can get, say, EVERY issue of Alter Ego or Back Issue at half-price, but I don’t want to buy the WHOLE SET! I’ve already got a few of the issues; can I just get PART of the bundle at 50% off?”

Well, no, you can’t. Logistically, we’d go nuts trying to figure up the cost of, say, the KIRBY COLLECTOR ULTIMATE BUNDLE, less 7 random issues that you already own, then try to figure up one for your neighbor who has all but 3 of the issues, and so on, and so on.

BUT…

Now through June 30 , we’re having our “Build-A-Bundle” Sale, where almost all of our mags are 50% off. So you can create an order with any combination of the issues you want, and they’ll be 50% off. (Only the latest issues are excluded from this sale, but even those are 15% off, making this your best chance ever to fill the holes in your collection.)

So go crazy! The Half-Price “Build-A-Bundle” Sale includes:

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

plus other miscellaneous humor and one-shot magazines, all at 50% off cover price. We’ve even got a select group of books that are also 50% off during the sale.

But you HAVE TO order at www.twomorrows.com by the end of June to get this deal.

AND PLEASE BE PATIENT!!! We’ve already been inundated with orders for this sale, and while we normally get orders shipped within a day or so of being placed, we’re currently running about 3-4 days later than usual on shipments. We’re working overtime to get to them all, and if you’ve paid extra for Priority Mail shipping, we’ll fill yours first in each batch that’s processed.

Our pal and do-everything-guy Eric Nolen-Weathington just got back from Charlotte, NC, where he manned our booth at Heroes Con (still one of our all-time favorite conventions). Here’s a big shout-out to everyone that came by the booth; sales were brisk, and according to Eric, the conversation was fantastic as usual at our booth.

Next up is the Big Kahuna: Comic-Con International in San Diego, from July 21-25. We’re frantically getting several new books and mags to press the next couple of weeks, so they’ll be on hand for the expected 125,000 attendees to scoop up. (Not that all 125,000 show up at our booth, but most days it FEELS like they’re all there at once!)

Before Comic-Con, BrickJournal editor Joe Meno and I will be at the BrickWorld LEGO convention in Chicago, and then I’ll be taking a week off with the family, plus working in a trip to the Grand Canyon with our kids on the way to Comic-Con. As usual, it’s going to be a fun, fast-paced summer, and will be over way too soon, but I plan to enjoy every hot, steamy minute of it, wherever I am. Hope you do too!