Awards | Girl Genius, Vol. 8, by Kaja and Phil Foglio, and The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman, received the 2009 Hugo Awards last night for Best Graphic Story and Best Novel, respectively. The awards, presented each year at Worldcon, recognize the best in science fiction and fantasy. [The Hugo Awards]

Events | An art auction held Saturday at Chicago Comic-Con raised more than $13,250 for veteran writer John Ostrander, who's been battling glaucoma. An additional $15,000 has been donated through the Comix 4 Sight website. [Comic Book Resources]

Publishing | Tom Spurgeon previews some of the fall's more notable releases. [The Comics Reporter]



Retailing | Boston comic store Comicopia has launched a blog to update Twilight fans on the franchise's moves into comics, and to recommend other titles (such as Vampire Knight). [Twilight@Comicopia]

Creators | Playing off of a recent article at The A.V. Club, Justin Zyduck considers 21 writers who changed mainstream comics, for better or worse. Among them: Brian Michael Bendis, Chris Claremont, Gardner Fox, Geoff Johns, Stan Lee and Harvey Pekar. [MightyGodKing]

Creators | Neil Gaiman discusses storytelling, the mainstreaming of comics, and working with Marvel and DC: "They're sweet people and I love working with them but dealing with them is often a lot like being nibbled to death by ducks." [io9.com]

Creators | Brian Heater kicks off a three-part interview with Bryan Talbot who, in this first installment, discusses conventions and superhero comics: "... If you really think about it, a superhero without a supervillian, there’s nothing they can do. So, here’s a good guy, here’s a bad guy, they have a fight, the good guy wins. Now, after reading them, about 20 years ago, I started to realize that I had been reading the same story, over and over again. That’s the point that I just stopped buying them—apart from when an exceptional one will come out, like Watchmen, obviously, or Dark Knight." [The Daily Cross Hatch]



Creators | Scott Pilgrim creator Bryan Lee O'Malley is briefly spotlighted by his hometown newspaper. [The London Free Press]

Creators | Evan Miller interviews Amy Reeder Handley, artist of Vertigo's Madame Xanadu. [Anime News Network]

Creators | Tattoo and comic artist Buz Hasson, co-creator of The Living Corpse, gets a sizable profile in the local newspaper. [The News Journal]

Comics | Glen Weldon discusses why some comics work while others don't: "In the best graphic novels/comics/sequential art/whatever, the art doesn't just sit there. It doesn't simply illustrate what the words are describing, because comics are more than just books with pictures. ... No, the art takes over a share of the heavy lifting. It does its own, independent narrative work: it characterizes, sets the tone, advances the plot, etc." [NPR]

Manga | Katherine Dacey live-blogs her reading of the first chapters of the five series available on Viz Media's new Shonen Sunday website. [The Manga Critic]