A couple more Flight 3 reviews of note:

- A capsule review of Flight 3 by The A.V. Club
- Static Multimedia’s review
- Silver Bullet Comics’ review

Congratulations to Doug Holgate for winning ‘Best Artist’ as well as ‘Best Short Story’ for his Flight 2 story, “Laika”, in the 2006 Ledger Awards! An award for excellence in Australian comic arts and publishing, Flight Volume 2 also received a Ledger Award for ‘Favourite Foreign Comic Book or Graphic Novel of the Year’ as selected by the public vote.

The full list of nominees and recipients can be viewed here. Congratulations to all the winners!

A whole slew of Flight Con reports have been surfacing. Here are reports by:

Johane Matte
Jen Wang
Amy Kim Ganter
Jeff Smith
Steve Hamaker
Dave Roman
Joey Weiser
Sonny Liew

Thanks to Walter Graham at the Confabulators, the audio from the Comic-Con Flight panel this past Saturday is now available in its entirety on the web, featuring Jen Wang, Scott McCloud, Reagan Lodge, Phil Craven, Kean Soo, Jeff Smith, Steve Hamaker, Azad Injejikian, Amy Kim Ganter, Bill Plympton, and me.

Listen to the audio here.

You Ain’t No Dancer Vol. 2 is now available to order through Previews! From the New Reliable Press website:

Featuring a wrap-around painted cover by Jeffrey Brown, You Ain’t No Dancer Vol. 2 contains 23 new stories from indy-comic favourites and up-and-comers.

96 pages
6.75″x5″ perfect bound
Cover Price: $8.95 US
Diamond Order Code: AUG063478 (Previews page 323)
In stores October 18th.

Volume Two contributors include Hope Larson and Neil Babra, alongside artists like Jeffrey Brown and Jeff Rowland.

More information and the full contributor list can be found at the New Reliable Press website.

Matt Forsythe has a busy weekend planned.

First off, he’s scheduled to be a guest on CBC Montreal’s Saturday morning program, All in a Weekend, to talk about his comics. A weekly arts and literature program, it runs from 6-9 am, and you can catch the live show online.

After that, he’ll be at the Just for Laughs: Bandes Dessinées tent with publisher 400 Coups from 1-3 pm, promoting the anthology Plan Cartésien, which features one of his short stories, “Kim & Bap.”

And on the opposite coast, Matt’s Ojingogo will also be in contention for an Eisner Award on Friday night!

For the full details on his appearances, hit him up at his website.

In the flurry of all the Comic-Con posts, there are a couple more news items worth mentioning:

• Congratulations to Kazu on winning a Web Cartoonists’ Choice Award for ‘Outstanding Environment Design’ for his work on Copper!
• Flight Volume 3 gets a good grade in the Washington Post’s Sunday Source from a couple of weeks ago.

Quite a few Flight artists are also on several panels during this year’s Comic-Con. You may want to check some of them out, so here they are:

THURSDAY, July 20

6:00-7:00 Random House Publishing Group Graphic Novels— The Random House Publishing Group are the publishers of Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor and Flight 3, edited by Kazu Kibuishi. Two of the company’s newest titles are the critically acclaimed Elk’s Run and the highly anticipated Dark Wraith of Shannara. Join Kazu Kibuishi and Joshua Hale Fialkov, as well as the RHPG editors, to hear more about these books as well as Random House’s graphic novel plans for the future. Room 7B

FRIDAY, July 21

12:00-1:00 Scott McCloud’s Making Comics— Scott McCloud (Zot!, Understanding Comics) unveils his new book, Making Comics, in this fast-paced visual presentation. Scott and his whole family will be on hand to discuss one of the most ambitious promotional tours in comics history, the year-long Making Comics 50 State Tour beginning in September! Room 8

12:30-1:30 Vital Vertigo— From the start, Vertigo has been at the forefront of cutting-edge comics and graphic novels for mature readers. Learn what smart and edgy projects are in store for you in this slide-show presentation. Hosted by VP/ executive editor, Vertigo, Karen Berger, with group editor Shelly Bond, editor Jonathan Vankin, writers Bill Willingham (Fables), Douglas Rushkoff (Testament), and Steven Seagle (American Virgin); artists Becky Cloonan (American Virgin) and Mark Buckingham (Fables); writer/artist David Lapham; and others! Room 5AB

3:30-4:30 Nickelodeon Magazine Carousel— See interactive cartoon slide shows hosted by editors Chris Duffy and Dave Roman and featuring comic strip makers Sam Henderson (Magic Whistle), James Kochalka (Monkey vs. Robot), R. Sikoryak (RAW), and more! You can expect plenty of gags, goofiness, and audience participation. Definitely for kids and alt-comics-loving adults. Room 1B

SATURDAY, JULY 22

9:00-11:00 The Animation Show featuring Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt (first screening)— Mike Judge (Beavis and Butt-Head, Office Space, King of the Hill) and Don Hertzfeldt (Rejected, Billy’s Balloon) have picked their favorite animated shorts from previous Animation Show tours with a sneak peak of the new upcoming theatrical program. Mike and Don will be on hand with special guests for a Q&A and big announcements regarding the new tour! (first screening) Room 6CDEF

11:00-1:00 The Animation Show featuring Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt (second screening)— Mike Judge (Beavis and Butt-Head, Office Space, King of the Hill) and Don Hertzfeldt (Rejected, Billy’s Balloon) have picked their favorite animated shorts from previous Animation Show tours with a sneak peak of the new upcoming theatrical program. Mike and Don will be on hand with special guests for a Q&A and big announcements regarding the new tour! (second screening) Room 6CDEF

12:30-1:30 Flight: A New Kind of Comics Anthology— The critically acclaimed Flight anthology has begun paving the way for a new vision in comics. Flight artists Kazu Kibuishi (Daisy Kutter), Phil Craven, Kean Soo (Jellaby), Jeff Smith (Bone), Steve Hamaker, and special guest Scott McCloud (Understanding Comics, Making Comics) talk about creating comics for a new generation of readers and artists. Room 9

Well, this year’s San Diego Comic-Con is almost upon us once again! There are quite a few Flight artists in attendance this year, so here’s a brief rundown on where you’ll be able to find some of us on the con floor:

Flight Comics (booth #1131)
- Kazu Kibuishi
- Amy Kim Ganter
- Johane Matte
- Azad Injejikian
- Kean Soo
- Jen Wang
- Neil Babra
- Khang Le
- Chris Appelhans
- Rad Sechrist
- Phil Craven
- Rodolphe Guenoden
- Enrico Casarosa
- Reagan Lodge
- Chuck BB
- Joey Weiser
- Steve Hamaker
- Jeff Smith

The Those Guys (booth #1132)
- Justin Ridge
- Israel Sanchez
- Richard Pose

Douglas R. TenNapel, Inc. (booth #1218)
- Doug TenNapel

Slave Labor Graphics (booth #1815)
- Sonny Liew

AiT/Planet Lar (booth #2001)
- Becky Cloonan

Gagne International (booth #2003)
- Michel Gagné

Image Comics Pavilion (booth #2647)
- Paul Harmon

Bill Plympton/The Animation Show (booth #5496)
- Bill Plympton
- Don Hertzfeldt

Cryptic Press/Take Out Comics (small press table #R2)
- Dave Roman

Also, Scott McCloud and his family will no doubt be roaming the con floor, so keep an eye out for them as well!

As before, we’ll be sharing our space with the folks from Nucleus, and we’ll have plenty of copies of Flight on hand as well as original work by the individual artists — graphic novels, prints, sketchbooks, minicomics and, well, Bone!

For all of us not fortunate enough to be in the Los Angeles area, the Flight 3 art exhibition is now online at the Nucleus website. You can actually purchase the art through their website, and there are quite a few great original pieces still up for grabs.

For the past little while now, Chris Appelhans has been working on a little animated movie called Monster House, providing production and character designs for the film. Well, now Chris has gone and posted some of his gorgeous paintings to his website.

Monster House will be opening at a theatre near you this weekend, so go check it out! Sez Chris: “My name will be in the credits. Hootclap like monkeys!”

So everyone is all abuzz about the pilot episode of The Amazing Screw-On Head that is online in its entirety over at SciFi.com. Based on the Mike Mignola comic, it captures that bizarre, almost screwball comedy aesthetic, and when you throw in vampires, monkeys with machine guns, a turnip containing a parallel universe, and characters like Abraham Lincoln and Emperor Zombie (with a wonderful delivery by David Hyde Pierce), it all adds up to a great show that simply must be seen.

It’s also worth noting that the gang at Titmouse had a hand in the production of this pilot, and Flight’s very own Richard Pose provided art for the title sequence! Neat.

There’s an interview with Kazu up at Publishers Weekly, where he talks about the process and the amount of work involved in putting together graphic novels like Flight and Amulet. Well worth the read.

While I’m talking about Publishers Weekly, be sure to check out The Beat at its new home on the PW website. It’s an essential stop for your comics-related news, and for the occasional picture of Clive Owen (or Gerard Butler, as the case may be).

For all the French readers in our audience, Bedeka.org has an interview with Johane Matte on her numerous comic projects, including her work on Flight 3 and Horus, just to name a few.

I should point out though that Johane’s statement, “J’aide un peu lors des conventions” is quite a bit of an understatement on her part. She is most definitely the one person that keeps the Flight tables running in any kind of order during those conventions.

Andrew Speers of Old Man Musings has photos and a report from this past weekend’s Flight 3 book signing and gallery show. See the Flight crew in action!

UPDATE: More photos here!