Item: The magazine Canadian Business profiles publisher Chris Oliveros and D+Q. The highlights? Chester Brown’s Louis Riel has sold over 36 thousand copies (that’s alot of comic books!) and D+Q annual revenues are around the $2 million mark, with 10% coming from the taxpayer and $300,000 coming from the D+Q store. The retail number strikes me as a little low –there is definitely room for growth there.
Item: B.C. publisher Ira Hunter is the brains behind the comics horror zine phenom Absolute Underground.
Item: Cartoonist Jesse Jacobs is interviewed over at the Fabler blog.
Item: Jeet Heer writes about terminally ill The National Post and its book critic, Philip Marchand. Jeet also writes about Dave Sim and Jack Kirby at the Comics Comics blog. As well, he comments on Seth’s assertions about the influence of Chris Ware. Jeet Heer: our busiest critic.
Item: The latest podcast adventure of Canada’s greatest superhero, the Red Panda, is now available: “The newspapers trumpet murder and mayhem almost every day, and there’s more than enough to keep the Terrific Twosome of Toronto busy in their own hometown. So why are they racing off to the Big Apple in spite of their own strict “no meddling” policy? Can even the Red Panda bring the guilty to justice when… Murder Wears a Mask?”