Retailing | Publishers Weekly's annual comics retailer survey yields some interesting commentary, although the sample size is small (just 10 stores): Sales are up, retailers are optimistic, and Saga is the hot book right now. Also, booksellers who underestimated the demand for Chris Ware's Building Stories lost out to direct-market retailers who didn't, making for some nice extra sales during the holiday season. And while readers seem to be getting tired of the Big Two and their event comics, they are more enthusiastic than ever before about creator-owned comics, and Image is doing quite well. [Publishers Weekly]

Awards | Ladies Making Comics presents the complete list of women Eisner nominees for this year, noting that women have been nominated in almost every category. [Ladies Making Comics]

Awards | Dave Roman presents the results of the Kids Comics Awards, along with photos of what looks like a very wacky awards ceremony. [Kids Comics Awards]



Theme parks | Robert Niles lays out who holds the theme-park rights to DC Comics and Warner Bros. characters -- that's Six Flags and Universal Studios (east of the Mississippi and in Japan), respectively -- and the details, as far as they're known, of the arrangements. [Theme Park Insider]

Comics | Bluewater Productions is planning a comic-book biography of Paula Deen, and company President Darren G. Davis swears the book was in the works long before her recent woes. [Chicago Tribune]

Creators | New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast talks about her work process and her early influences, including Charles Addams and a book of sick jokes she had as a kid. [The Dartmouth]



Creators | His new graphic novel Hip Hop Family Tree (which first appeared as a series of individual comics on BoingBoing) is not really about the music, Ed Piskor explains: “It's a story about how creative people in the ghettos of the Bronx were able to get together and inspire each other long enough for other people to realize and generate a global culture.” [Publishers Weekly]

Creators | Robot 6 contributor J. Caleb Mozzocco interviews science-comics writer Jim Ottaviani about his latest graphic novel, Primates, which tells the story of three famous primatologists, Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Biruté Galdikas. In a companion interview, Mozzocco also talks to the artist of the book, Maris Wicks. [Good Comics for Kids]



Creators | Writer Joshua Williamson discusses Ghosted, the new Image Comics/Skybound supernatural-heist series he created with artist Goran Sudzuka. [USA Today]

Creators | Texas A&M associate professor Alan Dabney talks about his role as co-author of The Cartoon Introduction to Statistics, which he co-authored with cartoonist Grady Klein: “Grady is not a statistician, and I’m certainly not an expert story-teller. He would continually ask, ‘What does probability mean in plain English, and why do I care?’ It was a challenge, but a good challenge, which is why I think it’s going to be a good book.” [tamuTimes]

Comics | Comic Foundry founder Tim Leong, who now works for Wired, talks about his new collection of infographics, Super Graphic: A Visual Guide to the Comic Book Universe. [Hero Complex]

Editorial cartoons | Jonathan Guyver takes a look at the different reactions editorial cartoonists have had to the political crisis in Egypt — and notes that the military has shut down the offices of the Muslim Brotherhood newspaper Freedom and Justice. [The New Yorker]