Conventions | Wizard World Chicago Comic Con kicks off today with a guest list that includes Stan Lee, George Perez, Neal Adams, Greg Capullo, Humberto Ramos, Carlos Pacheco, Barry Kitson, David Mack and Chris Burnham. The convention continues through Sunday in Rosemont, Illinois. [Wizard World]
Creators | Cyriaque Lamar has a brief interview with Matt Kindt about Mind MGMT #0, which is being solicited now for a November release. (Issues 1-3 are already available.) Here's Kindt on the look of the comic: "For this project, I wanted it to be less like you're picking up a comic and more like you're holding a story, right down to everything outside of the panels. I want it to feel interactive, something you don't just drift into. I tend to read graphic novels over issues — I can't remember thirty days ago from a bit of story. I wanted each issue something you'd go back to every month. My goal was give the book as much depth as possible to reward monthly readers." [io9.com]
Creators | Curtis creator Ray Billinsley sold his first drawing at age 12, and Beetle Bailey cartoonist Mort Walker was an early mentor, but being a boy wonder had its downside: "'It sort of isolated me,' he said. 'I gave up part of my childhood.'" [The Stamford Advocate]
Creators | Noah Van Sciver discusses the genesis of his new graphic novel The Hypo, and how the idea evolved from a short comic to a full-blown graphic novel after he read Carl Sandburg's biography of Abraham Lincoln: "After finishing the book I realized that what I was really interested in wasn’t his rise to presidency, or the Civil War or even his assassination. I was interested in finding out more about his struggles with the restraints of poverty and how he dealt internally with his deep gloom. His apparent emotional troubles made him more three dimensional to me, and more relatable." [Forbidden Planet blog]
Creators | David Axe and Corey Hutchins discuss The Accidental Candidate, the graphic novel the two journalists wrote about Alvin Greene, who won the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate from South Carolina in 2010 despite his considerable eccentricities (including, apparently, a failure to campaign at all). [Slate]
Comics | Alex de Campi and Christine Larsen's Valentine, one of the pioneering digital comics, will be published in print form by Image. [The Beat]
Comics | Joe Keatinge comments on Twitter about the cover price of Glory going from $2.99 to $3.99: "Word from @imagecomics was that we either raised the price or ended the series prematurely." [Blog@Newsarama]
Crowdfunding | Anne Hambrock discusses the difference between Kickstarter and IndieGoGo — they actually operate quite differently, and that difference could translate to dollars for many creators. [The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee]
Advice | You would think sending out a digital review copy would be simplicity itself, but Sean Kleefeld has a fairly egregious example of someone doing it wrong. Really, a PDF via Dropbox or YouSendIt is the way to go. [Kleefeld on Comics]