Retailers | Little Island Comics -- "the first kids comic book store in North America–maybe even the world" -- opens its doors today in Toronto. The store is owned and operated by The Beguiling, and is located around the corner from the flagship store. The store will hold an official grand opening in a few weeks. [The Comics Reporter]

Publishing | DC Comics co-publisher and Justice League artist Jim Lee discusses his work on DC's flagship title, which came out in digital form last Wednesday, the same day it hit comic shops. "It's also setting records digitally. I can't give numbers, but on the first day it set a record for us," Lee tells Heidi MacDonald.

That leads Tom Spurgeon to throw a flag on the play: "... it looks like DC won't be releasing its New 52 digital numbers but will feel confident in making claims on their behalf. It also looks like comics sites will then repeat this claim as news, perhaps qualified by source or as a claim but still putting that information out there. This should stop. I think DC has a really dubious history with using the hidden portions of their numbers to PR advantage -- call it the 'I have a girlfriend in Canada' of sales analysis. My take is that this practice has intensified slightly ever since the numbers have become smaller and therefore more crucial. When in the 1990s sales on mainstream comics dipped to the point where people questioned the profitability of certain issues of certain titles, perhaps leading to a line of analysis about mainstream publishers making books at a loss for market share advantages or to knock other comics from the limited stand space, we were sometimes assured that there were sales elsewhere we didn't know about that pushed certain comics over this projected threshold." [Salon, The Comics Reporter]



Comics | Glen Weldon explains DC's New 52 relaunch to the rest of the world. [NPR's Monkey See blog]

Comics | Not interested in this New 52 thing, even after reading Weldon's explanation? Relax, there's plenty more out there: The writers at Sequential Tart recommend 52 non-DC comics coming out in September. Looks like it will be a good month! [Sequential Tart]

Comics | KC Carlson discusses the guidelines for first issues, including the need for a good issue #1 to be self-contained: "A first issue that is Part 1 of 6 is, by definition, no longer a first issue. It’s a first chapter of a potentially great collection/graphic novel. Your first issue should be both widely accessible and a satisfactory read. A complete story is the best way of achieving that." [Comics Worth Reading]

Comics | In his latest What's Wrong With You? column, Josh Flanagan delivers beatings all round — to creators, for not doing a professional-quality job on creator-owned comics, and to readers, for sticking to the Big Two and not wandering further afield. Good discussion, with suggestions for good creator-owned comics, in the comments. [iFanboy]



Creators | Martyn Pedler delivers a great Matt Fraction interview for fans of Casanova, in which Fraction discusses process, the autobiographical nature of the book and his dislike of "the addicted and tortured artist cliché": "I loathe it. It is monstrous. It has killed my friends. I knew people who are dead now because they believed that without being fucked up they couldn’t create, couldn’t express themselves, couldn’t live. This cult of bullshit that surrounds these dead kids -- and make no mistake, Kurt Cobain, Jimmy Hendrix, they were children. I think about what I knew at twenty-seven and I didn’t know fucking anything. I’ve gained the wisdom to realize I know nothing about wisdom. We just went through all this stuff again with Amy Winehouse. It’s one of the worst fictions of pop culture. It’s worse than Kangaroo Jack. It’s monstrous bullshit and it kills people." [Bookslut]

Creators | Blankets creator Craig Thompson is all over the place these days; in this story, he talks about his newest graphic novel, Habibi, and how writing and drawing it over the past seven years intertwined with events in his real life: "I started working on Habibi after a devastating breakup; at the point of the reunion of the characters in the book, I felt I was starting to make progress in the relationships in my life. I went from a little "emo boy" to much more of an adult in a relationship over the course of working on Habibi." [Library Journal]



Creators | Tony Daniel discusses his run on DC's relaunched Detective Comics. [USA Today]

Creators | Ian Brill announced that after three years as an editor at BOOM! Studios, he's left the company to pursue a career as a writer. [Brill Building]

Conventions | Ferret Press publisher Dara Naraghi explains why he won't be attending Mid-Ohio-Con, which is now owned by Wizard World. [PANEL, Via]

History | Noel Murray traces the history of the newspaper comic strip, its precipitous rise in popularity, and the reasons why the medium is in trouble today, with plenty of examples. [AV Club]

Webcomics | Delos reviews Sarab, a webcomic by Arien Artemis in which the readers are allowed to vote on which of two paths the protagonist will follow. It's like choose-your-own-adventure but with shared decision-making. [Art Patient]

Reviews | Tucker Stone looks back at Darko Macan's Cable work. [Factual Opinion]

Reviews | Charles Hatfield reviews The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century: 1969. [The Comics Journal]