Publishing | Sales of IDW Publishing's My Little Pony comics, in single-issue and graphic novel format but not counting digital, have topped 1 million copies. (It does really well in the iBookstore — there are multiple issues in the Top 10 every week — although it seldom registers on the other digital comics platforms.) IDW's Ted Adams says this is because it's such a great comic, but shrewd marketing such as offering a special Scholastic Book Fair edition with a bonus pony figure probably helped a lot. [ICv2]

Digital comics | The motion-comics platform Madefire has secured $5.2 million in funding. In July it announced agreements with four comics publishers — IDW, BOOM! Studios, Top Cow and iTV — and the first IDW comics came out in August. Madefire also has a partnership with DeviantArt. [Publishers Weekly]

Passings | Tom Spurgeon notes the passing of Sol Davidson, who may have been the first scholar to write about comics in an academic setting: In 1958 or 1959 (the date isn't clear) he completed a dissertation for a PhD from New York University on the topic of "Culture and the Comic Strips." Davidson made his career elsewhere but occasionally returned to comics, and the Sol and Penny Davidson Collection at the University of Florida contains a selection of early comics and newspaper strips. [The Comics Reporter]

Creators | Grant Morrison talks about his work and his plans for the upcoming Sydney Graphic Festival. [Junkee]

Creators | In a video interview recorded at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, Eva Volin talks to Hope Larson. [Good Comics for Kids]

Creators | Paul Gravett interviews Marc-Antoine Mathieu, author of the comics/wine-making graphic novel The Initiates. [Paul Gravett]

Creators | Ricardo Siri Liniers, who is well known in his native Argentina but is just making his U.S. debut with the Toon Books title The Big Wet Balloon, talks about his work and how he thinks it will go over with U.S. readers. [Voxxi]

Creators | Sisters Ginny and Penelope Skinner discuss their graphic novel Briony Hatch, the story of a teenager who prefers fantasy novels to real life. "We both remembered the time during our own teenage years when we suddenly realized that magic might not be real and how sad that felt and we wanted to write something about that," said Penelope, who is also a writer for a U.K. sitcom Fresh Meat. [GetReading]

Comic strips | Nancy cartoonist Guy Gilchrist caused a ripple of excitement in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, by putting Aunt Fritzi in a MTSU (Middle Tennessee State University) T-shirt. [dnj.com]