The Fox News station in San Diego ran a really nice feature on Shel Dorf, my friend, and founder of the San Diego Comic-Con. It’s here:

http://www.fox5sandiego.com/news/kswb-shel-dorf,0,658394.story

In case you haven’t heard, Shel passed away this week. Shel was a big supporter of the Jack Kirby Collector from its early days, and of course a close friend of the Kirby family. My wife Pam and I had the privilege of visiting Shel at his home after a San Diego Con in the mid-1990s, and man, what a treasure trove of comics memorabilia he had there. (Shel lettered for Milton Caniff, and he had a lot of comic STRIP material around; maybe more than comic BOOK material.)

He was a delightful host that day, showing us all around the beautiful beach town he lived in. We got to have some very interesting conversations over the years, and Shel entrusted me with a lot of photos he took at Comic-Con over the years, with the hope that we’d help preserve them and publish them in our books and mags. With his passing, that responsibility hits home even harder.

My sense was that he was really astonished to see what his little “West Coast Comic-Con” morphed into over the years, being somewhat impressed by its current size and scope, but a little dismayed that it’d gotten quite so large. I know he had stopped coming the last few years, because he couldn’t handle all the walking around it required.

Y’know, this is a really weird time of life for me. I’ve been doing this publishing thing for 15 years now, and I’ve been blessed to make so many really nice friends while doing something I absolutely love. It’s just been the best experience, and for so long it seemed like they’d always be around, ready to pick up a conversation the next time we saw them (which, in many cases, would only be at the next year’s comic convention). But now, 15 years into this, each passing year seems to bring the loss of someone else that I didn’t really get to know well enough before they left us. For so long, this stuff was just fun, fun, fun for the most part. But losses like this really do temper it, I’ve gotta say.

I’m really glad I got to know Shel. But now I realize it wasn’t enough time to really *know* him, y’know? I just wish I had a few more Comic-Cons with him there, to get to know him even better. I really do miss him.

Thanks to Terrence Sanford for alerting me to the Fox piece on Shel.

Now through the end of November, all in-stock MODERN MASTERS books are on sale for just $10 each! Where else can you get that comics fan on your holiday gift list (or yourself) such an enjoyable present for ten bucks? Take your pick from volumes on these top artists:

Alan Davis
George Pérez
Bruce Timm
Kevin Nowlan
José Luis Garciá-López
John Byrne
Mike Wieringo
Kevin Maguire
Charles Vess
Michael Golden
Jerry Ordway
Frank Cho
Mark Schultz
Mike Allred
Lee Weeks
John Romita Jr.
Mike Ploog
Kyle Baker
Chris Sprouse

Sorry, our volumes on Arthur Adams and Walter Simonson are sold out (although we plan to do new printings of them soon).

WE NEED YOUR FEEDBACK! Do you want us to add color to the print editions of our magazines ALTER EGO, BACK ISSUE, and DRAW! (with a corresponding cover price increase)? Or keep them black and white? Please CHOOSE ONE:

* Keep ’em black & white and stay $6.95 per issue
* Make 16 of the pages full-color, for $7.95 per issue
* Make the whole issue full-color, for $8.95 per issue

There’s two ways to vote. You can click here to go to our Yahoo group and vote in about 3 seconds (requires you to sign-in to a free Yahoo account if you don’t already have one):

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/twomorrows/surveys?id=2918875

Or just send us an email with one of the three choices in the body of it. The email address is:

twomorrow@aol.com

Please let us know what you think; your vote will help us shape the future of our mags! Thanks for taking time to respond.

John Morrow, publisher

Now through October 31, 2009, all our “COMPANION” books are on sale for 30% off. This includes:

All-Star Companion, Volumes 2-4 (by Roy Thomas)
Batcave Companion (by Michael Eury and Michael Kronenberg)
Best of the Legion Outpost (by Glen Cadigan)
Blue Beetle Companion (by Christopher Irving)
Comic Book Podcast Companion (by Eric Houston)
Flash Companion (by Keith Dallas)
Hawkman Companion (by Doug Zawisza)
Justice League Companion (by Michael Eury)
Krypton Companion (by Michael Eury)
Silver Age Sci-Fi Companion (by Mike W. Barr)
Titans Companion, Vol. 2 (by Glen Cadigan)
THUNDER Agents Companion (by Jon B. Cooke)

We’ve also just added a new, lower “flat rate” shipping option for international customers, making it much more economical for overseas readers to place larger orders.

The sale is only valid for orders placed online through the end of October, so click on the huge “COMPANION SALE” banner atop our home page for a listing of the books on sale.

Our half-price magazine sale ends tomorrow (Sept. 30), and what a sale it’s been! We put nearly 300 issues at 50% off, and have been overwhelmed with the response (to the point that we’ve been running about a week behind on shipping; we’ve managed to cut it down to about 3 days behind as of this writing, so thanks to all our customers for their patience!).

For a long time, we’ve been hearing from our international customers about how expensive shipping from the US is, but haven’t found a solution. We currently offer First Class Mail International service for packages weighing up to 4 lbs., and anything larger than that has to go by Priority Mail International (which is fast, but much more expensive). That’s all the US Postal Service offered us (they did away with “surface” mail more than a year ago)—or so I thought. A very savvy overseas customer mentioned “M-bags” to me the other day, and I honestly had never heard of them.

After some investigating, I discovered M-bags are ideal for overseas packages weighing at least 11 lbs. (you can ship less than that amount, but you get charged the full 11 lb. rate), and up to 66 lbs. They’re slow (6-8 week delivery, like the old “Surface Mail”), but much cheaper. So now, we’ve got a much less expensive international shipping option for packages larger than 4 lbs.

An imaginary tale:

Suppose in some far-off other dimension, Marvel Comics was bought out by, oh, say, Disney. And Disney already had excellent bookstore distribution in place. And we knew Disney didn’t put any real effort into producing Direct Market comic books of their characters, since they licensed them out to companies like Gemstone and Boom! Studios instead of creating the comics themselves. So we’d assume the Direct Market really didn”t mean much at all to Disney, and they wouldn’t care whether it lived or died.

If, in this mythical world, this buy-out actually happened, it would seem to me that Disney, soon after taking possession of Marvel, would consolidate all of its lucrative bookstore distribution (of both Marvel and Disney properties) into one place—and I’d bet it wouldn’t be at little ol’ Diamond. And if Marvel pulled its bookstore material out of Diamond, Diamond would be in serious danger of collapse, leaving the Direct Market without its one main distributor, and all the comics shops and publishers would be looking for a very large paddle to get them up that creek.

And even if that didn’t happen, I’d bet that, in this imaginary world, some clever corporate person at DC/Time Warner would be smart or scared enough to at least imagine it could happen, and would start taking steps to come up with a contingency plan for DC’s Direct Market distribution, figuring, “Hey, if there’s even a chance Marvel might do it, we better be prepared.”

And wouldn’t you suppose that, even if Marvel wasn’t really planning to pull their stuff from Diamond, some honcho there would find out that DC was making alternative plans, so they’d figure, “Hey, if DC’s doing it, we might as well do it anyway,” making it even more likely to happen.

And just for the sake of argument, let’s suppose that DC’s contingency plan revolved around some rumored “right of first refusal” to buy Diamond that was part of an exclusivity agreement Diamond got DC to sign the last time Marvel took distribution into its own hands, during that Heroes World debacle of the 1990s. That could leave DC/Time Warner owning Diamond, and distributing all the Direct Market product (including Marvel’s, assuming that Disney didn’t try to start its own Direct Market distribution system).

And wouldn’t you imagine that the Steve Geppi of this other dimension, reportedly plagued with some financial woes and already enacting major cost-cutting measures at Diamond, would jump at the chance to sell the whole shebang if a decent offer came along.

Just imagine:

A world with no Diamond.
(Goodbye paper comics industry, hello Internet?)

A world where Diamond was owned by DC.
(Where would that leave all the smaller publishers?)

A world where DC distributed Marvel’s comics to the Direct Market.
(Would DC limit Marvel to, say, 8 titles to the Direct Market, a la the deal Martin Goodman had with DC in the early 1960s?)

So many questions…

All I know is, I wouldn’t want to be a small Direct Market publisher in an imaginary universe like that one.

I’m just sayin’…

Now through September 30, virtually ALL of our in-stock magazines are on sale for half-price!

An awful lot of people have enjoyed our magazines over the last 15 years, and this is their chance to fill the holes in their collections without leaving holes in their wallets. By my rough count, there’s well over 200 different issues on sale. So for about the price of the Digital Edition of one of our mags, you can get the print version—and in many cases, you’ll get a Digital Edition thrown in for free.

The sale includes issues of:

Back Issue!
Jack Kirby Collector
Draw!
Alter Ego
Rough Stuff!
Write Now!
Comic Book Artist
BrickJournal

plus other miscellaneous humor and one-shot magazines, each at 50% off cover price. The only magazine-related items excluded from this sale are subscriptions and the most recent and upcoming issues of each magazine. As a bonus, we’ve got a selection of books that are also offered at 50% off during the sale period.

PLEASE: Don’t try to get the sale price by mail order or phone. It’s only valid for orders placed at www.twomorrows.com through the end of September, and does not include shipping costs. (If we have to manually process a zillion orders by mail or phone, we’ll never get them all shipped out, so please order ONLINE ONLY!)

There’s a special “Half-Price Mags” category is listed atop the TwoMorrows’ home page, which includes the issues on sale. So get to it! And enjoy!

Our new, updated, full-color hardcover version of Michael Eury’s Captain Action: The Original Superhero Action Figure is now shipping, and the reviews are starting to pour in. Check out this one from Gemstone’s “Scoop”:

The book debuted at Comic-Con (with a very limited number of copies), and was featured at special events at Geppi’s Entertainment Museum, and at Midtown Comics and Jim Hanley’s Universe in New York last week. Thanks for Ed Catto and Joe Ahearn of Captain Action Enterprises for all their help getting the word out about it! (And be sure to check out the continuing adventures of the Captain in his current series from Moonstone Publishing.)

I’m leaving in about six minutes to drive up to Tyson’s Corner, VA (a suburb of Washington, DC) for BrickFair, a fantastic LEGO™® convention held each year. Last year I was there as a visitor only, seeing what it was all about as a spectator. This year, I’ll be manning the BrickJournal table, hawking all the various issues and Compendiums of our new LEGO magazine. (We’ll also have a limited number of copies of BrickJournal #7 debuting at the con, hot off the press.) So if you’re in the area, stop by and see all the amazing things people build with LEGO bricks. It’s open to the general public on Saturday and Sunday, and for more info, go to:

http://www.brickfair.com/

OFFICIAL PR BELOW: If you’re in the Baltimore area this weekend, be sure to stop by!

Geppi’s Entertainment Museum (GEM) in Baltimore’s historic Camden Yards sports complex will host a signing on Saturday, August 15, 2009, from noon to 3:00 PM, to mark the debut of the brand new edition of the critically acclaimed Captain Action: The Original Super-Hero Action Figure by Michael Eury. In addition to the author, Ed Catto and Joe Ahearn, the owners of Captain Action Enterprises, will be in attendance for the signing.

The event will also kick off a special exhibit covering the history of Captain Action, from the first action figures in the 1960s to the latest merchandise (and everything in between). The exhibit will run from August 15 through October 13, 2009.

Published by TwoMorrows Publishing, Captain Action: The Original Super-Hero Action Figure chronicles the history of this quick-changing champion, including photos of virtually every Captain Action product ever released. With spotlights on Captain Action, his allies Action Boy and the Super Queens, and his arch enemy Dr. Evil, an examination of his comic book appearances, and more, nearly every facet of the character’s existence is put under the microscope. From the earliest concept stages to the multiple (and supposedly final) demises of the toy line, and from thriving collectibles market to the modern resurgence, no stone is left unturned. It is due in stores on or about August 10.

“When the first edition of Michael Eury’s superb book Captain Action: The Original Super-Hero Action Figure was released, it was rightly referred to by some as a virtual ‘how to’ guide to doing a character-centric reference book. It reached longtime serious collectors, turned casual Captain Action fans into die-hard enthusiasts, and brought many new fans to the character,” said Melissa Bowersox, the museum’s Executive Vice-President. “This is the sort of project that GEM and our patrons are happy to support, and we’re also extremely happy to have the assistance of such passionate, creative fan-owners as Joe Ahearn and Ed Catto to help us present the history of this unique character.”

“We’re very happy to see Captain Action and Michael’s wonderful book given such a spectacular stage. Like many other collectors, Ed Catto and I really enjoy telling other enthusiasts about our favorite character, and this takes that enjoyment to the proverbial next level,” said Joe Ahearn, Partner of Captain Action Enterprises.

The original superhero action figure first arrived on the scene in 1966 with the ability to change into a fantastic range of other incredible heroes, including Superman, Batman, Captain America, Spider-Man, the Lone Ranger, Buck Rogers, and the Green Hornet. He took on their costumes and personas and fought the forces of evil in their places. Produced by the Ideal Toy Company and developed by Stan Weston, who had been involved in the genesis of Hasbro’s G.I. Joe just two years before, Captain Action enjoyed a fairly brief shelf life. The last of Ideal’s original production runs ended in 1968.

In that short time, though, the 12-inch action figure had also doubled for Aquaman, Flash Gordon, the Phantom, Steve Canyon, Sgt. Fury, and Tonto. He had a sidekick, Action Boy (who became Superboy, Aqualad and Robin the Boy Wonder) and a blue-skinned, bug-eyed alien arch foe named Dr. Evil (obviously years before Austin Powers fought another Dr. Evil). There were playsets, vehicles, a headquarters, flicker rings, playing cards, a Ben Cooper Halloween costume, and a fondly remembered five-issue series from DC Comics that included contributions from such legends as Wally Wood, Jim Shooter, and Gil Kane.

As the years followed, Captain Action became the purview of the collecting community. A thriving secondary market developed and kept interest in the character alive within its ranks. In 1998, thirty years after the original production run ended, Playing Mantis brought Captain Action back to the world of new toys. Although their tenure with the toy line would also end after two years, it greatly fanned the flames of interest in the character and the original collectibles, and led eventually to the formation of Captain Action Enterprises, the present day owners of the intellectual property.

The exhibit will conclude just after the Diamond Comic Distributors – Alliance Game Distributors Retailer Summit, which will be held at the BaltimoreConvention Center, immediately across the street from GEM, October 11-13, 2009.