My hometown of Bellingham, WA is having its second annual comic convention this Saturday, September 27th from 10am to 5pm. I’m inviting everyone who visits this blog and lives in the Pacific Northwest to come and check it out.

Last year, the convention took everyone by surprise by exceeding attendance expectations with people from Vancouver, Seattle and Portland, showing in numbers for the event.

I will have a table on the show floor and will be available to sign and chat. Although I will have all my books and comics on hand, I do not have any copies of Flight available. If you already own copies of Flight, bring them in and I’ll be happy to sign them and do a little doodle of Rex.

Bellcon 2008 will be located at: Whatcom Community College, 237 W. Kellogg Rd, Bellingham, WA 98226. Tickets for the full day are $7.00 for adults, $5.00 for kids under 12 and students with ID. Parking is free. There will be live music throughout the day and hourly drawings for cool stuff. Directions are available here.

Last July, I announced that Diamond had decided to no longer distribute my series ZED to comics retailers due to pre-orders falling below the 1500 copies minimum. This left me with no outlet to get ZED into stores. Since then, I’ve managed to strike a new distribution deal in order to make my cute sci-fi series available to retailers once again.

I’m happy to report that Haven Distributors, previously known as Cold Cut Distribution, a company that specializes in making independent comics available to comics store retailers, have added ZED, as well as all my other books, to their catalog.

I’m inviting retailers to take a look at the broad spectrum of indie titles Haven Distributors are offering. Diamond is fine for mainstream comics but can be ruthless for independents. We need alternative distribution for the indie scene and Haven can hopefully help fill that gap.

Sonny Liew has been consistently creating some of the best comics in the industry, and his Flight stories always manage to be among my favorites every time he contributes. Now Sonny has put together an anthology featuring work by his fellow artists in Southeast Asia. This looks like a really promising new collection, and with Sonny at the helm, I anticipate it will be a quality book.

Here’s a link to a Newsarama interview with Sonny, and click here to check out a preview of the book.

A new Graham Annable short!

Scott McCloud has written and drawn a comic for the launch of Google’s new open source web browser, Google Chrome!

From a comics perspective, once again, Scott is doing what he does best — taking a rather complex set of ideas and distilling them down into very clear concepts that everyone can understand. Check it out!

Enrico Casarosa’s print collection of his Venice Chronicles comics is in this month’s Previews! This is great news indeed. From the AdHouse Books website:

Take a stroll through the side streets and canals of Venice in this colorful graphic novel, meeting at the intersection between Carnet De Voyage and Love Story.

Details: 4C cover, 144 4C pages, 6.25″ x 8.25″ HC
$19.95 US funds, ISBN 978-0-9818455-0-0
Shipping November 2008
Diamond Order Number: SEP08 3685

You can download a preview PDF of the book here. Ask your local comic retailer to order you a copy today!