Item: The Canadian Bookseller’s Association is appealing to the federal government to block Amazon’s plans to open a distribution network in this country. CBA President Stephen Cribar argues that Amazon’s entry into Canada would detrimentally affect the country’s independent businesses and cultural industries: “Individual Canadian booksellers have traditionally played a key role in ensuring the promotion of Canadian authors and Canadian culture. These are values that no American dot.com retailer could ever purport to understand or promote.”
Item: Irish police have arrested 7 people for planning to kill another cartoonist over depictions of Mohammad: “The alleged target of the murder conspiracy, Swedish artist Lars Vilks, told The Associated Press he believed that the Irish arrests are linked to two telephone death threats he received in January over one of his drawings published in a Swedish newspaper in August 2007.”
Item: Comic Book Resources interviews Kathryn Immonen.
Item: Tim O’Shea talks to Ho Che Anderson.
Item: Big surprise. Conservative columnist David Frum hates Doonesbury.
Item: The B.C. and Yukon Community Newspaper Associatio’s Ma Murray awards noms are out. Gerald Tisdale got the nod for policart.
Item: The Globe and Mail’s Ivor Tossell profiles the creators of a new webcomic/graphic novel about the protests in Iran, being serialized by First Second in the U.S.