Comics | A copy of the Canadian comic Better Comics #1, published in 1941, has been listed at $100,000 by Hamilton, Ontario, retailer Walt Durajlija, who owns Big B Comics in Hamilton and Niagara Falls as well as the online retailer icomicexchange.com. That's far above the record price of $13,000 paid for a Canadian comic, but Better Comics #1 is incredibly rare, with fewer than 10 copies known to still be in existence. The comic was one of a number of Canadian comics produced during a World War II ban on importation of products, including comics, from the United States. Durajlija will have the comic on display at the Niagara Falls Comic Book Con(vention) this weekend. [The Hamilton Spectator]

Political cartoons | South African cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro, who goes by the pen name Zapiro, has apologized for a cartoon that depicted President Jacob Zuma as an organ grinder and Shaun Abrahams, the head of the National Prosecuting Authority, as a monkey. Both men are black. Zapiro said he had no intent to be racist: "I had Zuma as the human and his lackey was Shaun Abrahams. This is the first time ever that I am utterly sorry. I wish I could turn the clock back and I should never have done that." [Eyewitness News]



Comics | Trina Robbins talks about the genesis and evolution of Wimmen's Comix, the underground comic created by a collective of women creators, and about the way women were excluded from the early underground comics scene. Fantagraphics has just published The Complete Wimmen's Comix. The article includes samples of the work, which, being underground comics, is NSFW. [The Huffington Post]

Comics | Rebecca Robbins looks at some of the ways drug companies are using comics to educate — and market to — children, and some of the concerns being raised about the practice. [Stat]

Creators | Nick Burns, editor of Arctic Comics, and Michael Kusugak, who wrote several of the stories, talk about their work and the importance of telling stories about life in the far north. [Arctic Deeply]

Publishing | Michael and Michelle Mitchell met in 2008 at New Hampshire's Granite State Comic Con, and on one of their dates, a tour of a submarine, they conceived the idea for Zombie Sub-920, a comic about zombies on a submarine — with the Mitchells as the lead characters. Since then they have created and published several other comics with a local twist, including UFOs Over Exeter (about flying saucer sightings in Exeter, New Hampshire), and A Flight Aboard Freedom 7, a bio-comic about New Hampshire astronaut Alan B. Shepard. [The Citizen]