Well, this is one way to steal focus from this weekend’s MoCCA festival.

Kelly Rowles reports this message from Rob’s wife Alison, who apparently represents “Rob Granito Art Services” and has tried to get people to pay for interviews with Rob. After telling them they won’t pay for any interviews, she got this reply:

I am sorry to hear that. I will give you a scoop though. That is is illegal to ban Rob Granito as a vendor at all conventions. And currently Rob Granito is working on material for a one-man show/panel in which he admits and apologizes for his past mistakes, while at the same time shedding new light on the politics within the comic book community, and lets you know the REAL story. Rob will also be telling jokes and doing humorous sketches on stage, so it will show a whole new side. We are looking towards premiering this at the New York Comic Con in October. The name of the show will possibly be “Controversey Creates Ca$h”. We believe there is a band wagon making it trendy to hate Rob Granito without knowing him, and the claims that he has stolen all his work has been blown out of proportion, thanks to people like Mark Waid, Ethan Van, Bleeding-Cool, and Jammar (sic) Igle. Again, giving us a chance to tell you the WHOLE story would benefit both your website and the comics convention community. Please reconsider. We are open to working out a payment plan if that works better for you.

Call it a hunch, but I bet the nice folks at NYCC are not going to have Rob on any panels, nor rent him a table, nor even let him in the door. Although they could raise a lot of money if they rented a dunk tank for him.

I’ll have to ask “Jammar” this weekend at MoCCA. See y’all there.

The 2011 Eisner Award nominations have just been announced.

Heading the 2011 nominees with five nominations is Return of the Dapper Men, a fantasy hardcover by writer Jim McCann and artist Janet Lee and published by Archaia, with nominations for Best Publication for Teens, Best Graphic Album–New, Best Writer, Best Artist, and Best Publication Design. Two comics series have four nominations:Morning Glories by Nick Spencer and Joe Eisma (published by Shadowline/Image) and Locke & Key by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez (published by IDW). A variety of titles have received three nominations, including the manga Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys(VIZ Media), John Layman and Rob Guillory’s series Chew (Image), Daniel Clowes’s graphic novel Wilson (Drawn & Quarterly), and Mike Mignola’s Hellboy titles (Dark Horse).

The creator with the most nominations is Mignola with five (including cover artist), followed by Spencer and Hill, each with four. Several creators received three nominations: McCann & Lee, Rodriquez, Urasawa, and Clowes, plus writer Ian Boothy (for Comic Book Guy: The Comic Book and other Bongo titles) and cartoonist Jimmy Gownley (for Best Publication for Kids plus coloring and lettering on his Amelia Rules! series). 15 creators have two nominations each, a new record.

Ballots with this year’s nominees will be going out in mid-April to comics creators, editors, publishers, and retailers. A downloadable .pdf of the ballot will also be available online, and a special website has been set up for online voting. The awards will be presented at a ceremony on the evening of Friday, July 22 at Comic-Con International.

Congratulations to all the nominees!

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Big ups to our friends over at Erfworld for taking home the title last week in our first ever ComicMix Mix March Madness webcomic tournament. The wizards, witches, goblins, and noble knights slayed the adorable Gronk, in a bitter battle to the end.

We apologize for not raising Erfworld over our heads in championship glory sooner… but there was April’s Fool, so no one would believe it if we posted, and then we had to wash our hair, and we swear, our dogs ate the first draft of the story!

Anywho… Congratulations to Xin Ye and Rob Balder for besting all their competition. Good work Erf-lovers… you carry the crown– until the next bloody battles!