Jon B. Cooke’s COMIC BOOK CREATOR magazine just got a Harvey Award nomination for BEST BIOGRAPHICAL, HISTORICAL, or JOURNALISTIC PRESENTATION. Named in honor of the late Harvey Kurtzman, the Harvey Awards recognize outstanding work in comics and sequential art. They will be presented September 26, 2015 in conjunction with the Baltimore Comic-Con.

These are the only industry awards both nominated and selected by comic book professionals. Voting is open to anyone professionally involved in a creative capacity within the comics field. Final ballots are available at www.harveyawards.org, so if you’re eligible, go ahead and vote now before you forget!

Back Issue #82 (84 full-color pages, $8.95) looks at pivotal Bronze Age Events! With extensive coverage of the Avengers/Defenders War, JLA/JSA crossovers, Secret Wars, Crisis’ 30th anniversary, Legends, Millennium, Invasion, Infinity Gauntlet, and more! Featuring the work of SAL BUSCEMA, DICK DILLIN, TODD McFARLANE, GEORGE PÉREZ, JOE STATON, LEN WEIN, MARV WOLFMAN, MIKE ZECK, and more. Plus an Avengers vs. Defenders cover by JOHN BYRNE! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

Alter Ego #134 (84 pages with FULL COLOR, $8.95) celebrates SOL BRODSKY—one of the most important and underrated artists in comics! He inked Fantastic Four #3-4 and designed its logo—became Marvel’s production manager during crucial years—co-founded Skywald, then Marvel’s British weeklies! Daughter JANNA PARKER talks about her father—and so do STAN LEE, HERB TRIMPE, STAN GOLDBERG, DAVID ANTHONY KRAFT, TONY ISABELLA, ROY THOMAS, and others! Learn about his work on Blue Beetle, Kid Colt Outlaw, Red Cross (his Holyoke creation!), Volton, and Cracked Mazagine! Plus FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, BILL SCHELLY, and more! Cover portrait by JOHN ROMITA! Edited by ROY THOMAS.

Click the links above to see a free preview and order! Both will be in stores next Wednesday (July 29) and are now shipping directly form us.

While TwoMorrows HQ will remain open so you can take advantage of our 40% off sale on Artists Biographies (and order our new Monster Mash and Herb Trimpe books), I’m leaving tomorrow (natch!) for sunny San Diego and our annual pilgrimage to Comic-Con International.

This year, we’re nominated for not one, but TWO Eisner Awards (alas, both in the same category, so they’ll likely split the vote). But hats off to Roy Thomas and ALTER EGO, and Jon B. Cooke and COMIC BOOK CREATOR for the nods for Best Comic-Related Publication (or website, or blog, or who knows what else our print pubs are getting lumped against these days).

At booth #1301 (our usual spot, next to the Golden & Silver Age Pavilion, just inside the main entrance to Hall B), we’ll be offering 40% off nearly everything at our booth. So if you’re there, elbow through the crowd and stop by to chat. We love, love, love talking to our readers each year. It personally energizes me to get to hear what we’re doing right, wrong, and what you’d like to see us do that we’re not already doing. See you there!

Our new book Monster Mash is, as I expected, selling really, really well. After all, who doesn’t love all the wacky weirdo monsters of the 1960s, like the Munsters, Addams Family, those great Universal monsters who were on the syndicated Shock Theater tv series we all watched as kids, and my personal fave, Dark Shadows?

Mark Voger hit a home run with this one. Early reviews are in, but perhaps my favorite is this one from the Psychbabble website:

“Looking at Monster Mash is like having a giant nostalgia bug lay lovely eggs in your eye sockets.”

Intrigued yet? You owe it to yourself to check out the free preview HERE.

To celebrate the our JUST RELEASED new book on the life and career of Herb Trimpe, I’ve decided to offer all our existing artists biographies on sale at 40% off. So whether it’s Eisner, Heck, Buscema, Romita, Infantino, Marie Severin, or even Matt Baker you’re into, there’s something for everyone in this sale.

And the Herb Trimpe book is stunning; my only regret is that Herb didn’t live to see it actually published. But he worked with Dewey Cassell and Aaron Sultan the whole way through on it, and saw the final layout just prior to it going to press, and I know he was very happy with it. I think you will be too now that it’s shipping directly from us, and in stores next week. (NOTE: Herb’s book isn’t part of the sale, but it is available at 15% off when you order directly from us. And we’ll have debut copies at our booth at Comic-Con this week, at our usual booth #1301, so stop by and take a look if you’re in San Diego!)

This week, we’re shipping Monster Mash, author Mark Voger’s outrageously fun book on the Monster Craze of the 1960s. If like me, you grew up building the Aurora model kits of Frankenstein and the Wolfman, or stayed up late on Friday nights watching Shock Theater’s rerun of old Monster movies, you will absolutely love this book.

Don’t believe me? Check out the free preview we’ve posted HERE.

It’s a full-color hardcover, beautifully designed, with hundreds of images and interviews with everyone from the cast of Dark Shadows, to Ed “Big Daddy” Roth.

All back issues of BACK ISSUE magazine are on sale for 40% off, now through July 1. So complete your collection while the savings last!

(The sale is for PRINT issues only, ordered through our website. It doesn’t include digital editions, the latest or upcoming issues, or bundles or subscriptions.)

It’s a big day today at TwoMorrows, with these three new issues NOW SHIPPING!

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #65 goes all-out and all-in with our Anything Goes (Again) issue! This new potpourri issue covers anything and everything from Jack’s 50-year career, including a head-to-head comparison of the creative genius of Kirby, against the design expertise and ALEX TOTH! Who will come out on top? Plus a lengthy Kirby interview, a look at Kirby’s work with WALLY WOOD, MARK EVANIER and our other regular columnists, unseen and unused Kirby art from JIMMY OLSEN, KAMANDI, MARVELMANIA, Jack’s COMIC?STRIP & ANIMATION WORK, and more, all behind a classic 1960s cover inked by KIRBY?himself, complete with our gorgeous new color printing. Edited by John Morrow.

Comic Book Creator #8 is double the fun with two main features—MICHAEL (iZombie) ALLRED and BOB (Mystery Men) BURDEN—who share a surf-crazy jam cover featuring their respective creations, Madman and Flaming Carrot hanging ten! Comprehensive interviews and art galore await as we respectively visit these two innovative and individualistic creators. Plus BILL SCHELLY is interviewed about his new Harvey Kurtzman biography, and we present the conclusion of BATTON LASH’s career-spanning interview which discusses his Supernatural Law series. We also join STAN LEE on The Man’s last European comic convention tour… and HEMBECK! Edited by JON B. COOKE.

BrickJournal #35 (84 full-color pages, $8.95), the magazine for Lego enthusiasts, goes back in time to look at History in Bricks! We’ll talk to LEGO Certified Professional Ryan McNaught about his LEGO layout of Pompeii and his many other projects, military builder Dan Siskind about his work and business selling custom models at BrickMania, and Lasse Vestergard about his historical building. Plus: our regular feature on Minifigure Customization by Jared K. Burks, more step-by-step “You Can Build It” instructions by Christopher Deck, DIY Fan Art by Tommy Williamson, MINDSTORMS robotics lessons by Damien Kee, and more! Edited by Joe Meno.

Click the links above to see a free preview, and order!

I love, love, LOVE those great DC Comics giants and reprints of the 1970s, especially the 100-Page Super Spectaculars. And the new issue of Back Issue (#81, shipping today from us and in stores next week) spotlights those big beauties. Editor Michael Eury and his band of faithful contributors have created my new favorite issue of BI (previously it was #61, our tabloid-size issue on DC and Marvel tabloids and treasury editions—and that one quickly sold out, so I wouldn’t wait to pick up #81 if I were you!). This expanded 100-pager (natch!) has a one-time price increase to $9.95, but it’s worth every penny.

Of course, nothing in this world is perfect, as you’ll see when you get the print issue in your hot little hands. It was originally planned to cover both DC and Marvel giants, but Michael soon realized that, even with its 100-page expanded size, he needed much more space to do them both justice. So he opted to give Marvel giants their own issue, #86, shipping in January.

But in the frenzy to get this oversize issue to press, I accidentally used the original version of the cover that mentioned Marvel giants, instead of Michael’s revised cover that was all-DC. So please ignore the Marvel blurb on the printed copies, and look for the all-Marvel giants issue early next year!

The new issue of Alter Ego (#133) is shipping today (and in stores next week), and features Gentleman Jim Mooney in an extensive interview, never before published. He discusses his storied career, including his work on Supergirl, Batman, Dial H for Hero, and the Legion of Super-Heroes, an all-time favorite of mine.

The issue also features FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), Michael T. Gilbert in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, Bill Schelly’s Comic Fandom Archive, and more of the amazing discoveries on comics history that have netted editor Roy Thomas’ mag another Eisner Award nomination this year. You can see the preview and order it HERE.