• Ladies and gentlemen, Dwayne McDuffie has an announcement:

The very first Milestone comic will finally be collected, 17 years after its original publication. HARDWARE: THE MAN IN THE MACHINE will reprint Hardware #1-8, featuring the character’s origin, and first adventure. The Direct Market (comic book store) release date hasn’t been announced yet, but it tends to be about a month earlier than in the general market.

• In other news, Archaia announced plans to start a new $9.95 hardcover line of books, where one graphic novel will be released each quarter at that low price. The plan kicks off in August with the release of The Engineer: Konstrukt.

• Fantagraphics co-publisher Kim Thompson says the Norewegian artist Jason's next project will be a repackaging of his previous books in the new Low Moon format. The first book, Almost Silent, will collect You Can't Get There From Here, The Living and the Dead, Tell Me Something and Meow Baby! The next book, What I Did, will tentatively collect The Iron Wagon, Shhhhh and Hey Wait. Thompson also adds that Jason is working on a new graphic novel, Werewolves of Montpellier, which will be out in summer of 2010.

• Eddie Campbell has information about and sample art from his upcoming Alec Omnibus, entitled The Years Have Pants. Eddie Campbell is awesome, so you should check this out immediately.

• Finally I wanted to point out some upcoming titles from the "How to draw X" art publisher Watson-Guptill. In addition to their usual "how-to" series by Christopher Hart, the publisher is going to release a series of classic Spy vs. Spy books by the original creator Antonio Prohais. Anyone who grew up reading Mad magazine should herald these books arrival (there will be three of them) when they hit stores in early August.

On a separate note, the publisher will also be releasing The DC Comics Guide to Digitally Drawing Comics in September.