Michel talks about working on his epic projects, including Zed and the Rex saga in the pages of Flight, over at The Pulse.

John Martz over at the popular illustration blog, Drawn!, provides a nice post about the new book.

Over the last several weeks, Jonathan Ellis of Popimage.com has put together a very impressive roundtable interview with 11 of the artists on Flight 3. The initial roundtable will be followed by one-on-one interviews with the artists.

Charley Parker has also posted a feature article on Flight 3 over at his blog, Lines and Colors.

After some more inquiries, it seems that the books will be arriving at their destinations over the course of the next week. I’m still waiting to find out more about the Diamond ship date, but I have heard that some comic stores have been receiving their copies of the book. So, be sure to check in at your local retailer over the next few days to nab a copy of it. I’m also hearing reports of bookstores not carrying very many, and selling out immediately. If you find that you’re clearing the shelf of the last copy, please let the retailers know that there are more people wanting the book! Heheh.

Also, here’s a quick look at a few pages from the next volume of Flight, brought to you by Newsarama.

Flight 3 is trickling into various retail outlets right now. For those that haven’t seen any of its contents, here’s a preview page. We recently discovered that the books won’t be shipping to comic stores this week. I’m not sure why that is (it shouldn’t be the case), so I’m going to check in on that.

Catia Chien currently has a couple of paintings on display in the Animals in Clothing group show at the Wax Poetic gallery. Stop by and check it out if you’re in the Burbank area.

Many apologies for being so late on reporting this, but be sure to check out Jacob Magraw and Kyle Field’s latest gallery show that was recently on display at JUNC. There are some absolutely gorgeous pieces there.

(also of note at the JUNC website are the screenprints and original art by Jordan Crane that are still up for sale.)

Here’s another advance review of Flight 3, this time from Broken Frontier.

Ten days left until the book’s release! We’ll be holding a release party at Nucleus on July 8th. Click here for more info.

From the Nucleus website:

Power In Numbers

Nucleus proudly presents, The Power in Numbers Show, a one week event on behalf of the Red Cross. This show presents a wide variety of new and original art by over 100 artists. The artists will be creating on a strict 4” x 6” postcard format using any desired medium they choose on a two dimensional surface. Buyers will be able to “pick and grab”, taking their purchases immediately after they have been made. All artwork will be marked at exactly $100.

Flight artists involved in this show include: Alex Fuentes, Amy Kim Ganter, Bannister, Catia Chien, Clio Chiang, Israel Sanchez, Jacob Magraw, Justin Ridge, Kazu Kibuishi, Kean Soo, Michel Gagné, Rad Sechrist, Richard Pose, and Yoko Tanaka, alongside other artists such as Andrea Offermann, Andrew Bell, Daisuke Tsutsumi, Debbie Huey, John Pham, Lark Pien, and many, many more. The opening is this coming Saturday, folks. You should go!

Full details of the show can be viewed at the Nucleus website.

The Tulip Tree Press website has just gone live! Tulip Tree Press is a small press imprint that specializes in minicomics and art prints, and it is Hope Larson’s latest project! Their first major publication will be House of Sugar, by Haligonian Rebecca Kraatz (some of you may recognize her artwork on Joel Plaskett’s album covers). They will be posting House of Sugar strips to the website daily until the book’s publication in late 2006. Some of us ’round these parts are big fans of Rebecca’s work.

Check out the Tulip Tree Press website, or spend some time at the House of Sugar.

Comic Book Resources has posted an interview with Scott McCloud where he talks about his new book, Making Comics. The new book is the third volume in his Comics Trilogy, which also includes Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics.

Congratulations to all the talented artists nominated for a Lulu Award! Especially of note, Hope Larson and Clio Chiang have been nominated for the Kim Yale award for Best New Female Talent. If you are a registered member of Friends of Lulu, you can cast your vote online.

View the entire list of nominees on the Friends of Lulu website.

Looks like everyone’s back home from MoCCA and Con reports are surfacing. Here are reports by Kean Soo, Bryan Lee O’Malley, Raina Telgemeier, and Dave Roman.

I don’t want to disrupt Kazu’s previous post about the absolutely gorgeous early copies of Flight 3 (go look at them right now!), but I thought I’d mention that the MoCCA art festival is going to be held this weekend (June 10-11), and there will once again be a small Flight table there this year. Johane Matte, Ryan Sias and I will be at the table (table C4) with our own comics, as well as the first two volumes of Flight. Also attending the festival with their own tables will be the usual cast of our friends: Becky Cloonan and Vasilis Lolos, Hope Larson and Bryan Lee O’Malley, Dave Roman and Raina Telgemeier, Andy Runton, Debbie Huey, Lark Pien, John Green, the Dumbrella gang… the list goes on and on. Hope to see you there!

[Edit]: There has been a last minute change in plans, and the Flight table will now be located in the main room, at table A27.

I have seen Flight 3 and it is beautiful. Sitting in my living room with the warm afternoon glow, I had a nice time reading through the book in its paper form for the very first time. I had read all of the stories many, many times already in their digital form, but I was surprised at how different they all felt reading them like this. It was great. I had so much fun.

I’m so proud of everyone involved in this project, and I have to thank the fine folks at Ballantine Books for their dedication to the book, and for really opening my eyes to the level of professionalism afforded by the big trade book publishers. We already have ten times as many pre-orders for Flight 3 than we did for either 1 or 2, and the quality of the production is impeccable.

The first thing Amy and I noticed was that the satin finish of the cover felt really, REALLY good. It’s the kind of finish that you feel on really nice trade books. The second thing we noticed was that despite being 80 pages shorter, Flight 3 was actually THICKER than Flight 2, because of the nicer paper stock. In any case, the book is a very nice package, and its contents continues the high quality set by the first two volumes.

Reading through this volume, even I’m pretty amazed by the development of this project- from its scrappy beginnings as a potential photocopied Kinko’s production for the Alternative Press Expo, to seeing the “Ballantine Books – New York” logo on the front page of a book that is about to be in thousands of bookstores across America. It’s been several hours now, and I’ve just been holding this book like a new baby.

Here’s a cute comic comparing the X-Men movies to the comics that inspired them, written and penciled by Mike Russell, inked by Flight 1′s Bill Mudron.

Link via Dave Roman