Awards | The 2013 Lynd Ward Prize for Graphic Novel of the Year, presented by Penn State University Libraries and the Pennsylvania Center for the Book, has been awarded to Chris Ware's Building Stories. The jury's comment: "Ware's astute and precise renderings, composed with a tender yet unblinking clinical eye and fleshed out with pristine and evocative coloring, trace the mundane routines and moments of small crisis that his characters inhabit. In so doing, he produces not a document but a monument, a work whose narrative logic is architectural rather than chronological: a set of lives to be encountered, traversed, and returned to as the rooms and floors of a building might be over the years, still sequentially but not in a limited or decided-upon sequence. Stories, here, are meant not to be told but to be built, explored, inhabited—not merely visited but lived in." [Pennsylvania Center for the Book]
Creators | Timely Comics artist Allen Bellman is profiled ahead of his appearance this May at Denver Comic Con. [Denver Post]
Creators | Jim Rugg talks about his upcoming print comics magazine Supermag. [Comics Alliance]
Creators | Two contributors to SpongeBob Comics, Derek Drymon and Nate Neal, talk about what to expect in this year's Free Comic Book Day issue. [Free Comic Book Day]
Creators | Kevin Taft surveys the "gay geek scene" at WonderCon and talks to two gay creators, Jeff Krell (Jayson) and Alex Woolfson (Artifice) at WonderCon. Says Krell, who thinks of Jayson as the "spiritual godfather" of Archie's Kevin Keller, "At first people didn’t know what Prism Comics was. When they discovered this was representing LGBTQ comic creators, the response was typically negative or they’d joke about it or if it was a couple of straight guys it would be like ’this is something for you! Haha.’ But I’ve seen that all change; not just because Prism is more popular, but because people are more accepting of gay themes and characters in comics." [EDGE]
Digital comics | Mark Waid makes some phone calls about the Saga controversy/confusion and draws on some insider knowledge of how comics work to come up with a pretty plausible explanation for why things happened the way they did, concluding with the wise words, "In all matters creative, never attribute to malice what can be explained by bureaucracy." [Thrillbent]
Retailing | Meanwhile, Charles Brownstein of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund explains why brick-and-mortar retailers don't have to worry about legal problems if they sell the print edition of Saga #12. [CBLDF]
Retailing | When the Orlando, Florida, comics shop A Comic Shop expanded, it didn't just add more longboxes; it converted the neighboring store into a comics bar, The Geek Easy, which offers beer, wine, a lending library of graphic novels, and special events. [Orlando Sentinel]