Manga | The 13th volume of Hajime Isayama’s hit dystopian fantasy Attack on Titan sold 1.4 million copies in Japan during its first week of release: 1.13 million copies of the regular edition, and 270,000 of a special edition that includes the original video animation. Kodansha ordered a 2.75 million-copy initial print run, a record not only for the series but for the publisher as well. The 66th volume of One Piece holds the record in Japan for highest sales in the first week with nearly 2.3 million copies. [Crunchyroll]

Publishing | Darren Davis of Bluewater Productions, talks about the evolution of his company and the origin story of its Female Force bio-comics line: "[W]e saw a comic book done of Barack Obama and John McCain during the 2008 elections, and my partner joked and said, 'Why don’t we do Hillary?' And I thought, oh my God, that’s a brilliant idea.So I thought, let’s do this, but let’s do it differently. Let’s not do it like everyone else, with a boring biography. We did it with a female empowerment angle. We released Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin at the same time, and whether you like Sarah Palin or hate Hillary Clinton, you have to respect both of them for where they came from and who they are." [The Beaverton Leader]



Creators | Matt Fraction, writer of the Eisner-nominated Sex Criminals, talks about sex and comics, and argues that despite what people like to say, most comics aren't about sex: "There’s a lot of comics that peddle in titillation and sensationalism but are there comics capital-A about sex? Not that I can think of. Which was part of what drew me to the idea of the project. I don’t think a drawing that gazes surreptitiously up at the pudendum of a woman as she kicks another woman in the face so hard we see both her tits and her ass in the same pose as being about sex, I guess." [Wired]

Creators | Artist Dave Wachter discusses his work on Golem: Breath of Bones, both what attracted him to the project and how he researched it. [Pittsburgh City Paper]

Creators | Nicole Georges, author of Calling Dr. Laura, is the latest guest on the Tell Me Something I Don't Know podcast. [BoingBoing]

Creators | Forrest Helvie conducts a roundtable interview with four writers published by Monkeybrain: Paul Allor, Ryan Ferrier, Jeremy Holt and Ryan Lindsay. [Newsarama]



Creators | Beth Hetland, whom I spotlighted last year in my list of minicomics whose creators are likely to go far, is well on her way: A recent graduate (2011) of the Center for Cartoon Studies, she is now a professor at the Art Institute of Chicago and has just released a collected edition of her three-part graphic novel Fugue. She's also working on a new book, Half Asleep, with collaborator Kyle O'Connell. [The Schulz Library Blog]

Webcomics | Lauren Davis compiles a list of 51 webcomics that she deems Eisner-worthy. [io9]

Review | Noah Berlatsky critiques Peter Bagge's Woman Rebel: The Margaret Sanger Story and also discusses something that Bagge includes but most reviewers left out: Sanger's views on eugenics. [The Hooded Utilitarian]

Awards | U.K. publisher Myriad Editions has announced the longlist for its First Graphic Novel Competition 2014. The name is a bit confusing: This is not the first competition, it's a biennial contest for first graphic novels, designed to provide a platform for previously unpublished creators. [Booktrade.info]