Digital comics | Apple rejected 59 comics this year for in-app buying, although many of them were allowed into the iBookstore. I looked at the phenomenon, and talked to Image Comics Publisher Eric Stephenson about the effect that had on Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky's Sex Criminals, which is available via the comiXology website and Android app, iBooks, and Image's own website, but can't be bought in-app from comiXology's iPad app. ""It absolutely hurt digital sales on Sex Criminals #2," Stepheneson said. "This is a series that is getting fantastic word of mouth, it’s amazing work by Matt and Chip that is receiving rave reviews and selling out instantly. Not being able to offer the book to curious readers through our app or the comiXology app is a significant deterrent to reaching the widest possible audience." [Publishers Weekly]



Creators | Michael Cavna talks to Joe Sacco about his newest book The Great War, a wordless story about one day in one battle in World War I, done in a panoramic format; Cavna has picked it as one of the ten best comics of the year. [Comic Riffs]

Editorial cartoons | Judge Smith Haynie recalls the warm relationship between his father, editorial cartoonist Hugh Haynie, and President Kennedy, whom the elder Haynie often lampooned in his work. [WAVE3 News]

Editorial cartoons | Tensions between Australia and Indonesia are so high that Indonesian cartoonist Fonda Lapod was called out of retirement to draw a cartoon of Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott as a peeping Tom lusting after Indonesia. Lapod once depicted Abbott and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer as copulating dingoes. [The Sydney Morning Herald]



Comic strips | Jim Scancarelli, the current writer and artist of Gasoline Alley, the longest-running newspaper strip in the country, talks about being bullied as a child and finding an escape in comics. A recent Gasoline Alley plotline dealt with bullying, and some of those strips will be included in an anti-bullying comic. [Petoskey News-Review]

Collecting | Charlotte Beugge looks a comics collecting on both sides of the pond: Prices are higher in the U.S., but British collectors are willing to pay big bucks for vintage issues of Beano and Dandy with the original free gift attached, or a rare Rupert Bear annual where Rupert is brown rather than black. [The Daily Telegraph]

Conventions | Jordan Cohen reports in on the inaugural Eerie Frequency Film, Toy, Comic, Pop Culture Expo in Niles, Ohio, which was expected to draw 500 attendees. [Youngstown Vindicator]

Conventions | California's Stockton-Con grew from 4,000 attendees in its first year to 7,500 this year, so next year it will move to a bigger venue, the Stockton Arena. [The Record]

Criticism | Jeffrey O. Gustafson discusses why there is so little comics criticism by comics creators. [The Comic Pusher]