Manga | The Japanese market research firm Oricon reports sales of manga volumes (tankobon) slipped 1.5 percent last year, to about $2.886 billion, the first decline since the company began reporting the figures in 2009. [Anime News Network]
Graphic novels | The Scottish Archaeological Research Project has put together a rather lively looking graphic novel about the history of Scotland, including such little-known events as the Storegga Tsunami. [BBC News]
Manga | Someone with a sharp eye spotted a manga license that hasn't been officially announced: Kodansha Comics will publish Sherlock Bones, a series about a crime-solving boy and a talking dog, by Shin Kobayishi (Drops of God, Kindaichi Case Files) and Yuki Sato (Yokai Doctor). [allfiction]
Creators | Cartoonist Corey Pandolph's car was towed because of overdue parking tickets, so he is selling his rejected New Yorker cartoons on Etsy to raise the funds to get it back. [The Daily Cartoonist]
Creators | In an interview at the Amazing Arizona Comic Con, writer John Layman talks about Chew and his other work, and explains why he chose Image to publish the series: "A few other publishers had said no and I went to Image looking for an artist, not actually pitching, and I got approval, I got them to say ‘Oh, we’ll publish it. Find an artist. We like the concept,’ when I wasn’t actually pitching them. I got approval without pitching." [Bleeding Cool]
Creators | Zainab Akhtar starts a week of looking at Sonny Liew's new Singapore comics venture, Epigram, with a lengthy interview with Liew himself, the creator of Malinky Robot and the artist for the Vertigo series My Faith in Frankie. [Forbidden Planet]
Creators | Free Comic Book Day organizers have been posting a lot of short creator interviews at their site lately; in this one, Shane Houghton talks about writing the Peanuts ongoing comic for BOOM! Studios. [Free Comic Book Day]
Comics | Richard Bruton offers a peek at LOAF, a crowd-funded comics anthology aimed at 9- to 12-year-olds. [Forbidden Planet]
Digital comics | Sean Kleefeld posts the first part of a two-part interview with Ron Perrazza and Daniel Govar, the duo behind Comic Book Think Tank. [MTV Geek]
Digital comics | GEN Manga, the digital magazine that publishes real Japanese manga in DRM-free PDF format, is switching things up a bit, suspending the magazine for a year but launching a new manhwa (Korean comics) magazine later this month, while continuing to publish manga by the volume in print and digitally. Also: Their first four issues are free on Kindle, iTunes, and Comics Plus, but they read very differently on each platform. [Good E-Reader]