Author: Glenn Hauman

The Sidekick Foundation is a new confederacy that seeks to generously aid comics creators in need of financial and medical assistance. Sidekick’s board of directors and advisors consists of established, respected comics professionals who have agreed to support the organization’s initiative which, in its first year, shall be to donate 90% of all generated proceeds directly to those in need.

“Sidekick was established by Clifford Meth, whose work on behalf of comics creators in need is well known,” said Jim Reeber, president of Aardwolf Publishing and Secretary of Sidekick. “By adding the weight of some of the industry’s most respected names to his own, I believe Cliff can help more people than ever before and do so more effectively.”

“I’ve spent the last three years working for well-known charities and non-profits,” said Meth, a former Executive V.P. of IDW Publishing and recent spokesman for Kars4Kids. “Regardless of the cause, the one thing that always irked me was how much money goes to the overhead of charitable organizations. While it may be legal to only give away a small portion of collected proceeds, I find it ethically unacceptable. The Sidekick Foundation will not have a paid Director nor full-time staff. Most work will be done by volunteers allowing the foundation to keep expenses to a minimum.”

Sidekick’s Board of Advisors includes Neal Adams, Harlan Ellison, Joe Sinnott, Tom Palmer, Herb Trimpe, and Morris Berger (former president of IDT Entertainment and chairman of IDW Publishing).

“I’m particularly proud to have Neal Adams and Harlan Ellison with us,” said Meth. “Neal laid the foundation for art returns and his work on behalf of Superman’s creators is legendary, while Harlan Ellison is <a href=”

stalwart champion of creator’s rights. With friends like these in your corner, you can move mountains.”

Sidekick will debut at New York ComicCon on Sunday, October 16. Artist David Lloyd (“V for Vendetta”) will be drawing for Sidekick at the Cadence table #3153 from 12:30 to 1:30 pm. In addition, Clifford Meth and writer Don McGregor will be selling donated art as well as items from the late Gene Colan and Dave Cockrum, among others. Future signings and events are planned from artists Michael Netzer and Bill Messner-Loebs.

For more information, visit http://www.thesidekickfoundation.org/

Not a dream! Not a hoax! Not an imaginary tale! It was this week in 1996 that Clark Kent and Lois Lane got married, an event comics fans had been anticipating for 60 years.

Superman: The Wedding Album was published during the week of October 6, 1996, coinciding with an episode of the television series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman that also featured the wedding of the two characters. Nearly every major comic artist who’d ever worked on Superman contributed to the book.

Of course, nowadays, Clark and Lois are no longer married, as post-Flashpoint they have been exposed to the Anti-Marriage Equation (only slightly less expensive than a Vegas divorce) and they aren’t even dating. It seems to be contagious, as Barry Allen and Iris West have also been exposed to it as well.

But we’ll be able to buy a new wedding issue in… 45 years. Of course, by then comics won’t be printed on paper anymore, but it’s the thought that counts.

While DC triumphed over Marvel in September’s charts — if they hadn’t, it would have been the greatest shock of the year — but some folks, like Warren Ellis were unimpressed with the margins:

But all those units DC sold are returnable.

Thank god all those DC execs told everyone they weren’t interested in market share. Otherwise someone might have come away with the notion that DC really intended to give Marvel a fight in the marketplace and make Marvel sort their own shit out. What a stroke of luck for everybody.

However, one thing that these figures Diamond released today don’t take into account is that when comics are returnable, they are automatically downgraded by around 10%.

via DC’s victory over Marvel was bigger than Diamond figures show — UPDATED.

One more time: WE DON’T KNOW WHAT THE SALES FIGURES REALLY SHOW.

The only numbers we have to work with are Diamond’s numbers. In addition to not knowing newsstand and overseas sales, we do not know what the sales figures are for digital. Since the digital editions will be available forever (or close enough as makes no difference) with infinite copies available, sales will continue on these books for weeks and months afterwards.

And we have no idea what the market looks like for digital editions, or how it will expand in the upcoming months and reach people who have not stepped in a comics store in years, if ever.

We have now reached the reverse of the original Phil Seuling days. When he first started selling books, publishers would not include them in their calculations because they only sold to a narrow fan market. Now, we aren’t counting sales that don’t sell to that narrow fan market. We have no idea what the market share is in the brand new markets.

And it will be this way going forward, unless Comixology and Graphicly start releasing their numbers. Don’t hold your breath waiting for them.

Steven Paul Jobs, co-founder, chairman and former chief executive of Apple Inc., former owner and CEO of Pixar, and the single largest shareholder of The Walt Disney Company (now owner of Marvel), passed away Wednesday at the age of 56.

It would be almost impossible to overstate Steve Jobs’ impact on the world at large, and many other obituaries will do so. We’ll merely touch upon his impact on comics and popular culture: from the creation of the Macintosh, the computer of choice for most comics creators, to his stewardship of Pixar, which revolutionized the animation industry, to the iTunes store, the largest digital sales platform on the planet, to the creation of the iPad and iPhone, widely agreed to be the platform of the future of comics.

He will be sorely missed. Our condolences to his family, friends, and fans.