A tweet yesterday about “packing up my office” prompted some concerned private messages, and I am always touched by concern, but I am just moving office, not leaving office. However, I’ve been packing up all the stuff piled in my cubicle and it’s just insane. My packrat nature has rarely been such a burden. Plus, I’m recovering from a sprained ankle and putting extra weight on it (like say lifting a giant box of books) results in an unpleasant bulgy feeling.

Plus what to do with all these p-p-…comic books. Tons and tons of comic books that I think I will someday get around to reading, just like someday I will get around to climbing Annapurna.

I took heat from one poster yesterday for saying I called comic books periodicals instead of pamphlets, heat which was somewhat justified. In my fatigued state, I should have added the word “now.” I certainly have written about floppies and pamphlets many times, often derisively, but in their current, endangered state that seems kind of below the belt. While editing articles for PW Comics Week, I sometimes find our writers using the word “pamphlet” in a business sense — pamphlet publishers, pamphlet industry. The word “periodical” seems more dignified, perhaps.

The origin of the phrase “32 page pamphlet” as a negative term for periodical comic books is usually attributed to either myself, Kurt Busiek or Marv Wolfman. Specifically it goes back to PROcon, a gathering for comics professionals, back in the early ’90s, that was sort of an industry issue conference. Attendees listened to panels of other pros, and spirited hand raising debates often began. And everyone wore togas.

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Via pr, it seems that ComicMix, the website offering classic and new comics material in serialized webcomic form, has just landed a print deal, via IDW. Previously, a few print editions of ComicMix titles had been published as a one-off for the Baltimore Comic-Con.

IDW Publishing, a leading publisher of comic books and graphic novels, has begun an innovative partnership with ComicMix.com, a free website offering new and classic comics. Through this multi-year agreement, IDW will publish graphic novels, books and comics for ComicMix.com properties, enabling both companies to expand their offerings to customers and retailers, and combine their audience reach.

“ComicMix has a great line up of original and classic brands that are currently only available online, and despite the shift to the virtual world, there is still something unmistakable about reading a real-life book” said Greg Goldstein, chief operating officer of IDW. “IDW is known for producing some of the highest quality books in our industry, and we are looking forward to offering this to fans of ComicMix properties.”

Beginning in the fall of 2009, IDW will release trade paperbacks of ComicMix comics, as well as monthly comics, including many new stories that have previously been only available online at ComicMix.com. Initial titles will include GrimJack: The Manx Cat by John Ostrander and Timothy Truman, Jon Sable Freelance: Ashes of Eden by Mike Grell, and Hammer of the Gods by Mark Wheatley and Mike Avon Oeming, among others.

“This is a bit of a homecoming for many of us at ComicMix, because we have had a professional relationship with IDW Publishing over the past several years,” ComicMix Editor-In-Chief Mike Gold noted. “We’re honored to be among such first-rate comics and graphic novels. Quite frankly, I don’t think the ComicMix properties could find a better publishing home than IDW.”

The partnership with ComicMix allows IDW to distribute comics via mobile devices, increasing the company’s growing digital, downloadable publishing program, which already includes several major titles such as Star Trek: Countdown and Ghostbusters.

A few people have emailed us with the link to the WWD article on Marvel’s licensing deals for female apparel and cosmetics. Current items include contemporary fashion tops from Mighty Fine, junior fashion tops from Junk Food, mass fashion tops with Fortune Fashions, and jewelry with H.E.R. Accessories. Later in the year, new products include handbags from Bioworld, stationery with iScream, color cosmetics with Lotta Luv, and watches and fashion jewelry with MZ Berger. The piece contains much of demographic interest:

“Since our core customer has always been guys, we need to be very careful when we introduce female product so that we don’t alienate our core,” said Paul Gitter, president of consumer products, North America, for Marvel Entertainment Inc. “What we have found through testing is that we haven’t alienated them, which gives us the OK to move forward with female product.”

Since 2007, the $5.7 billion consumer products division at Marvel has been testing select items for females, such as graphic character T-shirts at Hot Topic and Gap, and jewelry at Claire’s, among other items at select mass and mid-tier retailers. What executives at the firm found while testing was that when it comes to females, relevance to trends is key. Simply relying on the character alone to sell themselves doesn’t fly.

[Thanks to Jeff and Steve for sending the article.]

BIG NUMBERS may just be the most checked out comic in the Library of Imaginary Books — a companion piece to FROM HELL and LOST GIRLS as one of the projects Alan Moore launched when he left DC in the late ’80s, two issues, with art by Bill Sienkiewicz, were published by Moore’s own Mad Love imprint (distributed by Tundra.). As opposed to his other, more period and fantasy-influenced tales, this would have been contemporary fiction in a slightly more traditional vein, if you consider Philip K. Dick traditional. The story was inspired by fractal numbers and chaos theory and was at one point called The Mandelbrot Set.

Sienkiewicz left the series after the second issue and Al Columbia took over as artist. What happened next depends on who you ask. What all agree on is that Columbia also withdrew from drawing the book, perhaps after destroying an entire issue’s worth of art.

Some Sienkiewicz art for #3 did exist at some point, however, and an LJ user aptly named Glycon has just posted them:

In any case, everything I know leads me to believe that this is a copy of the unpublished third issue of Big Numbers, and I genuinely didn’t believe it existed, and certainly never expected to actually see a copy, led alone own one. Even Alan Moore doesn’t have a copy, to the very best of my knowledge, which in this case is considerable, as I decided to specifically ask his permission before I posted this here. He is happy for it to be made available to the world, so here it is.

Get ‘em while their hot!

Spike Jonze, I never stopped believing in you.

§ THE COURIERS, by Brian Wood and Rob G, has been picked up by Intrepid Pictures. Javier Grillo-Marxuach, formerly of Lost, and more recently of a bunch of comical books of his own, will write the script. “The series follows the adventures of two gun-toting mercenary couriers named Moustafa and Special who take on jobs other couriers will not tackle, involving intelligence, large cash transfers, protection, assassinations and blockade-running.”

§ Meanwhile, THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF H.P. LOVECRAFT, a graphic novel by Mac Carter and Jeff Blitz which hasn’t even been published yet, has been picked up as a potential directing vehicle for Ron Howard:

U sparked to “Lovecraft” because its take on classic horror fits in well with the studio’s library of monster fare featuring Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy and the Wolf Man, the last of which is being brought back to the bigscreen later this year.

Created by Mac Carter and Jeff Blitz, book borrows elements from Lovecraft’s life, such as his family’s struggle with mental illness and his own bouts with writer’s block, and transforms the young writer’s darkest nightmares into reality when he comes across a book that puts a curse on him and lets the evils he conjures up loose on the world.

Will the film portray Lovecraft as the oddball, mother-fixated, asexual racist many think he was? Hm, didn’t Howard direct A BEAUTIFUL MIND, which completely omitted the fact that the (real) main character was bisexual? We shall see.

The graphic novel, btw, was apparently drawn by the very talented Tony Salmons — a page art is seen above.

§ Director Matthew Vaughn had such a great time making a commando-style (i.e. self-financed) film based on Mark Millar’s KICK-ASS, that the duo may team again for an “AMERICAN JESUS” movie:

Vaughn is eyeing Millar’s “American Jesus” as his next directing vehicle, which would be produced by Vaughn and his Marv Films partner Kris Thykier and financed independently in the same manner as “Kick-Ass.”

The story centers on the return of Christ in the modern world, leading to a final confrontation with the Antichrist in a bid to save humanity.

The book debuted as CHOSEN, and the artist is Peter Gross. We wonder if a film with this title would be controversial at all? Probably not, but it’s funny to think about.

§ Finally, to those of you fretting over whether WATCHMEN’s tepid reception has killed the superhero movie, this headline will come as gladsome news: Wolverine ‘heralds new age of superhero movies’:

The film, it says, “heralds a whole new approach to the superhero movie” because it goes beyond Wolverine’s backstory and introduces a gallery of other comic book favourites such as Deadpool and Gambit.

Empire’s Helen O’Hara writes: “So it’s not quite a simple spin-off like 2005’s ill-fated Elektra, not quite a prequel or reboot like Batman Begins - rather part of a spreading trend in Hollywood to look beyond the obvious Franchise III: Return of the Whatever formula for superhero sequels.”

Hooray! We were very worried for a bit, but all is well now!

§ Steven Grant looks at DC’s return to back-up features:

Not that DC’s heart is in the wrong place. In a sane market, the move makes perfect sense. Raising prices is a great way to lose sheaves of readers who might be forgiven for bristling at paying more money for the same amount of material. The theory is sound: add enough additional material to offset reader doubts and offset the additional cost of the additional material with the additional income provided by the higher price. In theory, it should work, even if the general scheme smacks a bit of if we had some eggs we could have some ham and eggs if we had some ham. All things being equal, it would work.

BTW we have many evolving thoughts on the evolution of the “pamphlet” or the “periodical”, as we prefer to call it, but finding time to give them a coherent shape continues to elude us. Some day.

§ The Great Recession may be killing newspapers and cutting a swath through the ranks of editorial cartoonists, but financial bad times are GOOD times…for Dilbert!

As it turns out, economic collapse benefits at least one oppressed office worker. Dilbert, the iconic cartoon character who represents the crushed souls and wrecked dreams of so many cubicle dwellers, is having a banner year.

In February, dilbert.com handled 1.5 million unique visitors, among the busiest of months in the site’s history. Maybe that’s because lately the strip’s stories of pointed-haired bosses, corporate gobbledygook and naked incompetence feel like chicken soup for our downsized souls.

An interview with Scott Adams follows.

§ Sean T. Collins has the first long consumer review of David Mazzucchelli’s long awaited graphic NOVEL, ASTERIOS POLYP, that we’ve seen:

What I can say with confidence, however, is that I enjoyed that story immensely. And a big part of that is because this isn’t a Woody Allen film or a Philip Roth novel–it’s a comic, and there’s no mistaking it. Yeah, the basic story could be told in other ways, but if you wanted an illustration of that old saw that you should be able to look at a comic and determine why it’s a comic and not a movie pitch or a short story, look no further. Mazzucchelli clearly had a blast drawing this thing.

(Btw, we read it and liked it.)

§ Disappointment. This headline from Women’s Wear Daily looked so promising:Marvel Debuts Female Apparel and Cosmetics…but goddam it, they have a paywall! We’ll have to leave non-subscribers to only imagine White Queen lingerie, Wasp (female) concealer, She-Hulk after-shave skin conditioner, and Aunt May elastic-waist slacks.

§ BUT — see Tom Crippen on Stan Lee’s female characters before you get too excited.

§ We’re GUESSING, this story on a college talk by Ivan Brunetti was evidently written by a college journalism student because it’s got that weird AP style one-sentence-to-a-paragraph thing going on with absolutely no sense of how people talk, and the awkward result becomes a kind of clumsy poetry:

One of the cartoons Brunetti presented in the slide show was about his first wife in what he considered “a marriage from hell.”

He also showed naked cartoon drawings of himself.

“I am getting rid of my persona or façade,” Brunetti said.

In some of his works, he made fun of his co-workers.

Brunetti said usually people are OK with it.

“One co-worker was angry,” he said. “But the drawing wasn’t even of her, anyway.”

§ However THIS college paper human interest story about young student/fencer/cartoonist Sam Tung is a real charmer:

Wrought in a clean, high-contrast black-and-white style that sometimes resembles a woodcut, the story is set in the Dustbowl of ‘30s. “It was a strange, uneasy point in American history and kind of a cool retro thing,” notes Tung. “I enjoyed researching it.” The hero, a former mercenary, and his buddy, have unwittingly been hired to transport what turns out to be a doomsday device. Machine-gun toting bad guys, bent on stealing the goods, unleash on them gunfire and booby traps at every turn.

This story has everything but a byline, apparently. Oh well.

Flickr and Twitter are pretty much the Infinite Monkey Theory in actual practice–ultimate ephemeral randomness, projected from the brains of a representative sampling that approaches the average. And now you can prove it by turning these two movable zeitgeists into comics via a randomizer!

Infinite Monkey Comics takes a similar approach, however with less deliberation (and even fewer humans), and presents you with a random image from Flickr superimposed with some random text off of Twitter based on keywords of your choosing.

We typed in “toast ” and “spree” and got the masterpiece seen above. (Click for a larger image.)

You know how when you are painting a watercolor and you rinse your brush in the water and eventually all the colors blend in and you get a greyish/brownish/reddish muck? The no-color that is all colors? It is possible we have achieved that, but with much more effort.

If you watched last week’s episode, you know where this is going. So let’s get right to it.

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A post at Consumerist rounds up a variety of bad owen surrounding troubled big box bookstore chain Borders:

Yesterday’s post about Borders closing down its unprofitable CD and DVD sections prompted a tip from the owner of a small music label. He says his distributor has already cut off shipments to Borders once for nonpayment (in November 2008), and on Monday the distributor warned labels that they’ll have to agree not to hold him “liable on any future shipments to Borders in case they file for bankruptcy.” Borders’ CFO left in January, which is rarely a good sign for a troubled company. And this morning, the Detroit Free Press notes that the bookseller is facing being delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. We may not have to wait long to find out; CEO Ron Marshall is hosting a conference call with analysts and investors next week.

The grim comments section has even more baleful signs, including this:

I work at a B&N in a town where there is also a Borders, and I’ve been hearing various grumblings from customers recently, from Borders not being able to special order certain items, or requiring that all special orders be paid for ahead of time. These weren’t always small-press books either, some of them were from major publishers. Word was that it was because their suppliers were not getting paid and were severely limiting what they could get. The above story seems to support that.

Borders’ financial troubles have been a point of much worry among comics publishers and distributors — some of the smarter among them are making future plans around the idea that there will not be a Borders around very soon. At the very least, proceeding with caution around the retailer would seem to be a necessity.

What does everyone think would be the result of a World Without Borders®?

The Harvey Awards nominations close Friday, so if you haven’t organized your voting tong yet, hurry up! Ballots are downloadable at the above link.

A. David Lewis has made SOME NEW KIND OF SLAUGHTER, a look at mythic floods by the writer and MP Mann, available to download for FREE at the above link. The move is to get more people to read it and nominate it for a Harvey Award, but it’s also just a good comic, so enjoy.

Anne Cleveland, a cartoonist from the ’30s to the ’50s, whose main subject was college humor and her alma mater, Vassar, has died at age 92, according to a comment on this blog by her granddaughter, Ursula. We’ve taken the liberty of reprinting the comment here with some minor technical editing:

My grandmother died in February 2009 (she was born in May 1916, not 1917, so the previous age was wrong). The Oregonian refused to publish a paid obituary with a cartoon instead of a photograph– yeah, I know, my mother is up in arms about it.

Anne had a twin brother, Van (short for Van Buren; I think that was his middle name), and two younger brothers, Stanley and Harlan. Her father had volunteered as a clergyman in WWI; he died of a blood infection contracted during that time period when Anne was a girl (somewhere between ten and thirteen). Her mother supported the family; she worked at Andover as a house mother for a while, and eventually became Dean of Women at Rollins College.

Anne started out at Vassar as a classics major, and soon switched to art history. (There are several family legends about her ability to identify art forgeries.) At some point she taught a few classes at Rollins; during WWII she worked for the WAC, drawing maps. (My mother has some sketches of Anne’s fellow WACs.)

My grandfather’s name is Augustus R. White; to this day, he says that he married Anne because she was the most brilliant woman he’d ever met. Anne and Gus had two children, A. Tobias White and my mother, Susan (now Susan Whitcher). Gus’s family had lived in Shanghai before the War, and maintained business interests in Japan afterwards; that’s why Anne spent time in Japan (where my mother was born).

I understand that in addition to the books, which one can buy on Amazon, Anne published some cartoons in the New Yorker, but I have not yet tracked them down . . .

Anne & Gus divorced c. 1965. After that, Anne spent a couple of years in New York, battling depression, then moved to Ashland, Oregon. She lived in Ashland until the early 1980s, until she moved to Baltimore to be closer to my mother; she moved back to Portland, Oregon with my family in 1992.

Cleveland’s cartooning career was fairly minimal, but she became something of a cause celebré here at this blog, for various reasons. Instead of rehashing that, we’ll just post links to appreciations by Shaenon K. Garrity, here, here, and here. (We’ve stolen a photo of young Cleveland and a cartoon from Garrity.) Our last post on Cleveland can be found here. Our condolences to her family, and thanks to Ursula for passing on the news.

Craig Yoe has been reminding us to remind you about his new blog, Secret Identity, which both celebrates the release of his Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-Creator Joe Shuster — which just came out this week! — and other matters of some…naughty import. Plus, he’ll be talking about the book — which, as the title suggests, reveals a little-known facet of Shuster’s career - in April!

draws…things.

Michael Kupperman has a blog!

How swamped are we? So swamped that we missed covering the story of a lifetime, as a tale of heroism and hope unfolded in Thailand. A Thai fireman who just happened to have a Spider-Man costume in his locker over at the firehouse, donned the costume in order to save a frightened autistic boy who had gone out on a ledge and refused to come in. “The boy immediately ran into his arms with a smile,” the hero Spidey’s boss reported.

This story reveals many things about life and love and loss. It reveals that keeping a spare superhero costume around is a very good idea. It reveals that Spider-Man is loved around the world. It reveals that mentally challenged children love superheroes and hope to be rescued.

The fireman, Sonchai Yoosabai, also keeps an Ultraman costume in his kit, allegedly to “liven up” fire drills. In many cases, we’d advise caution around anyone who likes to “liven things up” by dressing in a spandex long underwear suit, but in this case, it saved the day.

§ Scott McCloud will be teaching a two-day seminar on Visual Storytelling Through Comics: Theory and Practice at SVA in May. Sign up!

§ Accused “comic book killer” Michael George may be released from prison as he awaits a retrial. George was convicted of killing his wife nearly 20 years ago, but the verdict was overturned on appeal.

§ Comics historian Peter Sanderson recently appeared on WNET’s Sunday Arts program to talk about MoCCA’s WATCHMEN exhibit, which he curated. You can watch the video above, but beware, it made our computer do very strange things.

§ Kiel Phegley interviews Guy Davis as his GN for Les Humanoïdes is serialized in the US.

Kiel Phegley: When the new editions of Humanoids stuff was announced, I was pretty astonished looking over the list to see how many American artists had worked on major projects for them that readers here seemed to be unaware of. In terms of your work on Zombies, where did the comics fall in terms of the other work you’ve done that we have seen?

Guy Davis: Let’s see. When did I start doing the Zombie’s stuff? I think Humanoids started with it around 2004. Originally, it was done for Humanoids in the U.S. when they had Metal Hurlant magazine over here, and then when they stopped publishing that magazine in the US, we started doing Zombies as its own book in France, with the fourth volume coming out just last year… and I think when Zombies started first coming out is also when B.P.R.D. was really starting to get going, and I’d just shift between the two. And for Zombies, it was only in eight-page increments at the start and easier to fit that in with other deadlines.

§ First rate “MeOW!” from Kurt Hassler, publisher of Yen Press, in this profile of Yen cartoonist Svetlana Chmakova, as we return in time to 2005:

When the first volume of Dramacon was published by Tokyopop in 2005, many manga fans rejected works by non-Japanese creators. That has faded, Chmakova said. “I definitely feel more acceptance from the reader side,” she said. “I’ve seen quite a few people shed their preconceptions about OEL manga and become fans.”

One reason for the initial fan rejection of OEL manga was the weakness of some of the early properties, according Yen Press publishing director Kurt Hassler. “People who loved manga but had very little instruction were being given contracts early on, putting out full books without the kind of guidance you need on a professional level.” By contrast, he said, Japanese and Korean editors spend a lot of time working with their creators.

§ Mark Evanier tirelessly investigates the mystery of Lionel Ziprin.

§ Sean Kleefeld mistakes a toilet for Green Lantern; rigorous psychological testing ensues.

Every once in a while, a video crosses your path that changes how you view the world and makes you question the fundamentals of what you thought was true. Such a video is the above trailer for a 12-part CGI adaptation of the manga known, in the US, as APOCALYPSE MEOW, formerly published by ADV. In the rest of the world, it is known as CAT SHIT ONE. If you are not familiar with the series, we BEG YOU, just watch the video. The less you know going in, the better, but perhaps we can entice you with the phrase “Waltz with Bashir meets Kung Fu Panda.”

Have you watched it? Good! Now, it turns out that this trailer is not really a trailer, merely a teaser to raise funding for this PROPOSED series.

Please, to all of you reading this…this is crucial! If there is one cause which must unite the world — rich, poor, man, woman, black, white, Canadian — it is not global warming, not economic recovery, not eradicating rogue nation states. No, it is GETTING THIS CARTOON MADE! Please, please, please! Give, give, give until it bleeds …we’ve GOT to make this happen! We will be setting up a lemonade stand to raise money when the weather is a little nicer, and we implore everyone reading this to do the same. Together, we can make the world a better place, a place where cats kill bunnies in CGI slo mo.

[Thanks to Isaacada for the link!]

The scary thing is…this really EXISTS!

Flog poses this question: Do YOU know this beast? as we imagine a world where this image is posted on every telephone pole in the neighborhood.

§ There is only ONE Donna Barr (above), and Tim O’Shea interviews her at Robot 6:

O’Shea: What motivated you to donate your work, dating back to 1963, to San Diego State University –and have you ever visited your collection?

Barr: One of my life goals was to have my work recognized by a university collection. Yes, I’ve visited the collection. One of my readers, Daniel Hager, put the connection between the university and me into motion.

The collection was opened with a talk in the collection during the 2004 San Diego Comicon. The lights went out when we went to tour the collection and we had a lot of fun viewing it with flashlights; it was like touring a funhouse. My name is on a glass plaque in the Love Library entryway as a contributor, and I am a heritage member of the university.

§ Robot 6 and Chris Mautner also strike gold with an interview with Sparkplug’s Dylan Williams on the New World Ordering Order:

How does Diamond’s new policies affect your bottom line? Are there any past, present or future projects that you feel will not make the cut-off?

Good question. In a weird way it won’t because their discount and cost of shipping was basically eating into any profit but there was an increase in interest with all the books that went through Diamond. By their new numbers, even Sparkplug’s most successful books wouldn’t make their cut. Of course, they turned down some of those books five years ago, so I have faith that things will change. I’m hoping that their change in interest will encourage small stores to go to other sources as well. We’ve been distributing other people’s books for about three years and that side of the business is just growing and growing, which is a sign that people are looking for independent and art comics and don’t know where to find them.

§ WEHT Nicholas Gurewitch of PERRY BIBLE FELLOWSHIP fame? Brian Heater is finding out. Gurewitch reveals that turning out a little comic strip that makes you chuckle is a labor-intensive process:

Is the bulk of that time spent coming up with the idea or doing the drawing?

About half of it is idea, though it ranges quite a bit for each comic. I’d say 50 hours a week, because that’s probably average. I should say I did send hundreds of hours drawing, re-drawing, or reconceptualizing an idea. It was very time consuming. I’m one of those guys who, when working on a project, doesn’t really stop working on it until it’s done. From week to week, it was very grueling to get to the point where I could be at peace with a strip.

Event coverage:

§ Rick Marshall presents his Webcomics Weekend Wrap-Up.

§ And TUAW recaps the “comics on handhelds” panel from SXSW:

“What we need to concentrate on is making the comic an enjoyable experience for the reader and not just a compromise that people are willing to make just so they can read comics on the iPhone,” offered Hosley.

Edwards agreed, saying, “The new media transforms the artistic expression. The form is sacred. The longer term experience is that artists will create content specifically for this format.”

“You have to wonder if we’ve actually seen the first comic made for the mobile platform,” added Hoseley.

§ Not Comics: Sometime comics scholar Gene Kannenberg unlaunches the Editor FAIL blog, where we’re sure to end up very, very soon.

The Festival d’Angoulême blog has this picture up, and we had to link to it.

§ Supervillain-styled rapper Doom is back, and we will doubtless find much to amuse us on his new album, dropping today

With a career modeled on the Marvel comics arch-villain Doctor Doom, the metal mask-wearing fortysomething remains characteristically cryptic about future live dates. “I tell you one thing: when you come to a Doom show, come expecting to hear music, don’t come expecting to see. You never know who you might see. It has nothing to do with a visual thing. Use your mind and think. I might be there. Next time I do a show, I might tell everybody to close they eyes. Use your own mind’s eye. That’s better than a camera phone, know what I’m sayin’?’ ”

§ Comics-loving director Guillermo del Toro is embedded in New Zealand for Hobbit filming, but luckily there are fine comics shops in New Zealand.

Despite increasingly cranky Bruce Campbell’s insistence that he doesn’t want to make EVIL DEAD 4, director Sam Raimi was all over SXSW saying that he’s up for it:

However, speaking to Sam Raimi at SXSW on the eve of the premiere of his new film, “Drag Me To Hell,” the director didn’t seem worried in the least and in fact laughed off Campbell’s remarks and insisted the actor would still be onboard whenever they can find time to revisit the beloved cult and campy horror classics.

“He can dream all he wants. He’s trying to get out of getting back in shape,” he smiled. “I’m going to kick his butt in shape. I’m gonna say ‘get back in the chainsaw!’”

Of course just WHEN this might happen with Raimi committed to making SPIDEY 4 for a few years yet is questionable…but if Sam believes, we believe.

While the idea that “comics do well in a recession” is being sorely tested by the ongoing global economic meltdown, the comics industry really does seems to be riding out the storm better than most sectors. The boisterous moods at New York Comic-Con and WonderCon and the faster-than-ever sellout of this year’s San Diego Comic-Con have created the idea of a “fantasy economy” that is very much a standout in gloomy times.

For comparison, check out this report from PW on a DIFFERENT kind of recent book fair:

Stacks of unsold books and glum publishers stood for three days inside the cavernous Dallas Convention Center this past weekend at the Christian Book Expo, a first-of-its-kind event designed to connect publishers and authors directly with readers in the evangelical Christian market. Only problem was there were few readers to connect with, despite the show’s location in Dallas, the buckle of the Bible Belt and a top market for Christian publishers. The show, sponsored by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, attracted 1,500 consumer attendees; it had hoped for 15,000-20,000.

Off the record, exhibitor publishers rolled their eyes heavenward, but spoke with circumspection on the record. “Every new experience has a few nicks and bruises, but things can be worked out,” said Greg Petree, v-p of marketing at Howard Books. A few were more blunt. “We can’t afford these kinds of risks,” said Dennis R. Hillman, publisher at Kregel Publications. “In a year like this the last thing we want to do is something that has no payoff.”

The Christian book market has been one of the fastest growing and stable over the last decade or so; bestseller sales dwarf those of comics bestsellers. Yet people will flood out to see the authors of periodicals that sell barely 10,000 copies a month. Interesting.