It’s that time of year again. A time to dust off the storm trooper costume and see if you still fit into it. A time to craft a business card that will stand out from the 10,000 other business cards that editor you’re courting will get from random shmoes. A time to make lists of all the variant cover single issues you still need to buy.

Yes, it’s time for the San Diego ComicCon.

And we’re all going to be there! Jason! Brian(s)! Josh! Jeff! Cliff! ME! (Jock, are you coming?) Here’s where you can listen to us spill our guts:

Thursday, July 23rd
6:00 -7:00 Vertigo New Ongoing Series/Crime Line
It’s a new beginning for Vertigo with the launch of new ongoing titles such as The Unwritten, Greek Street & Sweet Tooth. In addition to these titles we will be launching the highly anticipated Vertigo Crime Line with some of the top talents in the industry. Hosted by Senior VP - Executive Editor, Vertigo, Karen Berger and Senior Editor Will Dennis, this panel is not to be missed, especially considering the talent present: Peter Gross (Unwritten), Jeff Lemire (Sweet Tooth, The Nobody), Jason Starr, Chris Gage, Gabriel Ba, Fabio Moon and others! Room 5AB

Friday, July 24th
5:30-6:30 — Vertigo: View of the Future
Vertigo, DC’s edgiest and most provocative imprint, returns to San Diego! Come and discover what’s going on at the imprint that birthed The Sandman, Preacher, Y: The Last Man, Fables and more? Wait ’til you hear about what new projects the Vertigo team is going to thrill us with next! Hosted by Senior VP - Executive Editor, Vertigo, Karen Berger, Group Editor Shelly Bond, and Senior Editor Will Dennis, with Jason Aaron (Scalped), Mike Allred, Mark Buckingham (Fables), Josh Dysart (Unknown Soldier), Peter Gross (Unwritten), Amy Hadley (Madame Xanadu), Jeff Lemire (The Nobody), Chris Roberson, Matt Sturges (House of Mystery), Matt Wagner (Madame Xanadu), Bill Willingham (Fables, House of Mystery), G. Willow Wilson (Air), Brian Wood (DMZ, Northlanders), and others! Room 5AB

Saturday, July 25th
4:45-5:45 Vertigo Voices: The Fables Forum
It’s the Fables Forum – San Diego style! Come armed with your best questions and find out everything you want to know about Fables. Featuring the creators behind Fables, Jack of Fables, and House of Mystery: Vertigo Group Editor Shelly Bond is joined by Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham, Matthew Sturges, Steve Leialoha, Lee Loughridge, Shawn McManus, Andrew Pepoy, Chris Roberson, Chrissie Zullo and Todd Klein. Room 6DE

Sunday, July 26th
12:00-1:00 Spotlight on Bill Willingham
Both a master storyteller and an incredible artist, Bill Willingham has created a huge following for his best-selling books. His credits range from the DCU’s Justice Society of America, Salvation Run and Robin- to the already- classic Vertigo titles Fables and Jack of Fables and the new House of Mystery. Hosted by Vertigo Group Editor, Shelly Bond with Fables co-horts Mark Buckingham and Steve Leialoha. Room 2

Don’t have your tickets yet for the 100 BULLETS wrap party scheduled for Saturday, July 11 at Meltdown Comics in L.A.?  Here’s what you’re gonna miss out on.

VIP tickets entitle you to:
• Programming with writer Brian Azzarello and cover artist Dave Johnson
• Access to the 100 Bullets art gallery
• Free food!
• Valet parking
• Open bar!
• Commemorative T-shirt
• Live music from the incomparable Nina Storey!
• A chance to hang-and-bang with the beautiful people from L.A.’s comics, artistic and literary communities.

And don’t forget the custom made shot glass seen above, featuring art by Dave Johnson. And of course the most important part is the chance to support our friends at the Hero Initiative.

Get your tickets today!

The second chapter of the “Easy Kill” story line is not about how the reluctant American spy, Jack Lee Howl, fared on the night the ants came to eat him from the inside out. Nor is it about his constant struggle to stay out of the way of his own all-consuming past. It’s not about Moses setting out with a plan firmly in place to assassinate one of the most visible celebrities in the world. And it’s certainly not about how one bullet can move a mountain if it’s aimed in the right direction. In fact issue #9 is not about a lot of things.

Unknown Soldier… it’s not about violence being the answer.

As an added bonus, Superpouvoir has the first three pages of B.P.R.D 1947 up, and they look great!

Click here for a map of key DMZ locations seen throughout the series.

This is a work in progress.

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Vertigo has launched a new blog “Graphic Content” and they have posted a four page preview of my upcoming monthly series SWEET TOOTH!

settlement_map, originally uploaded by brianwood.

I whipped this up for artist Leandro Fernandez, who is taking on the next long Northlanders story “The Plague Widow” (#21-28). It was far easier to give him this than put it into words.

This is something I’ve not done yet in the book - set a story in what is basically a city, complete with blocks, plazas, alleyways, slums, and a police force.

-brian w

“Essex County is a tremendous achievement … This heartfelt piece of graphic literature surpasses its form to stand as an enduring example of the finest in Canadian literature.” – from the introduction by Darwyn Cooke

“The subtle inter-weaving of Jeff Lemire’s Essex County Trilogy is brilliant and constantly surprising. The cumulative impact left a lump in my throat.” – Jeff Smith, creator of Bone and RASL

“This is the comics medium at its best.” — Booklist (from one of three starred reviews)

• Winner of the 2008 Joe Shuster Award for Outstanding Canadian Comic Book Cartoonist
• Winner of the 2008 Doug Wright Award for Best Emerging Talent
• Winner of the 2008 American Library Association’s Alex Award (For Adult Books with Teen Appeal)
• Nominated for the 2007 Ignatz Awards, the 2008 Harvey Awards, and two 2008 Eisner Awards

Where does a young boy turn when his whole world suddenly disappears? What could change two brothers from an unstoppable team into a pair of bitterly estranged loners? How does the work of one middle-aged nurse reveal the scars of an entire community, and can anything heal the wounds caused by a century of deception?

Critically-acclaimed cartoonist Jeff Lemire pays tribute to his roots with Essex County, an award-winning trilogy of graphic novels set in an imaginary version of the Ontario county where he was born. In Essex County, Lemire crafts an intimate study of one community through the years, and a tender meditation on family, memory, grief, secrets, and reconciliation. With the lush, expressive inking of a young artist at the height of his powers, Lemire draws us in and sets us free.

This new edition collects the complete Essex County trilogy (Tales from the Farm, Ghost Stories, and The Country Nurse) in one deluxe volume! Also included are over 50 pages of previously unpublished material, including sketches, promotional art, and two new stories. — A Softcover Graphic Novel with French Flaps, 512 pages, 6 1/2″ x 9″, Young Adult (13+), Diamond: JUN091069, ISBN 978-1-60309-038-4, $29.95

Also available this summer, a special hardcover edition of The Complete Essex County. — Deluxe Hardcover, 512 pages, 7″ x 10 1/2″, Young Adult (13+), Diamond: JUN091068, ISBN 978-1-60309-046-9

CLICK HERE FOR ORDERING INFO AND DETAILS.

#29 of SCALPED came out this week, which is the final part of the “High Lonesome” arc, an arc that was really just a collection of character-driven stand-alone issues that loosely tied together. Up next is “The Gnawing,” which is very much a plot-driven arc. Lots of big happenings in that arc. Some of our various long-running plot threads finally start to come together. Folks die. Relationships change. By the end of “The Gnawing,” a lot of the characters will be in very different places, setting the stage for everything that’s to come in the next couple years of the series. As a sort of palate cleanser between arcs, here are some little-known or never-revealed facts about SCALPED for you to ponder.

–Chief Red Crow was originally called Chief Crow Dog, and before the reservation was the Prairie Rose Rez, it was called Jumping Bull.

–In the original pitch, Dash Bad Horse was not the undercover FBI agent on the rez.  He was the same sort of disgruntled rebel-without-a-cause, but he came back to the rez only after his mother’s murder, looking to collect whatever money she’d left him in her will.  The undercover fed was a completely different character, and it was editor Will Dennis’ idea to combine the two. I won’t say much about that other character, since I may still bring him into the series, though in a different role.

–Looking back over my original emails with Will from 2004, when we first started bouncing the idea around, our main reference points for how we wanted the book to feel were Michael Mann’s “Crime Story” series and the Phil Joanou film STATE OF GRACE. At the time, I hadn’t yet started watching “The Wire,” which of course turned out to be a major influence on what I wanted to do with SCALPED.

–When I first conceived of SCALPED, it was going to be a relaunch of the old DC western hero Scalphunter. I can’t find the document now, but if I remember correctly, the book would’ve been split between stories set in the Old West, utilizing the original Scalphunter character, and stories set in the present, focusing on Scalphunter’s descendant, who was caught up with a crime boss running a casino on an Indian rez. Not sure how I would’ve ever made that work, but I would still love to write some straight-up western stories set within the world of SCALPED. And I know Guera would love to draw them.

The man, the myth, the machine, author of UNKNOWN SOLDIER and (with SA veteran Cliff Chiang) the upcoming ogn GREENDALE.

Welcome to Standard Attrition, otherwise known as Jason Aaron’s playpen of unwashed degenerates.

The trailer for my upcoming Vertigo Graphic Novel THE NOBODY has been posted here, check it out.

Couple of sketches for a Batman cover - he’s feeling the pinch, in the cold —

Off to the Oslo Comics Expo this week, flying out of New York on Wednesday with an early morning layover in Reykjavik before landing in Oslo.  I had a choice, actually, between Reyk and Paris for layover, but I have quickly learned to fly Icelandair whenever possible.  I need to sell a few more Northlanders before I can afford to travel “Saga Class”, though.

Might be writing a column for a news site about the whole experience - the festival, Oslo, and my Northlanders research - and I’ll keep you all posted on that.

bri

VIXEN: RETURN OF THE LION, the miniseries written by moi and drawn by the obscenely talented Cafu, has won the Glyph Fan Award for Best Comic. It’s the first time a DC title has won in this category. So a big thank you to all the fans who voted for us!

Congrats also to the creators of BAYOU, which swept every category in which it was nominated. A Zuda success story. If you’re not reading it online, start; it’s also coming out in print late this year.

From the press release: The Glyph Comics Awards recognize the best in comics made by, for, and about people of color from the preceding calendar year. While it is not exclusive to black creators, it does strive to honor those who have made the greatest contributions to the comics medium in terms of both critical and commercial impact. By doing so, the goal is to encourage more diverse and high quality work across the board and to inspire new creators to add their voices to the field.

last minute packing before heading up to the Bristol Comic Expo this weekend…

i’m signing saturday from 2-3pm (the signings this year are in the bar - genius!) before the Vertigo panel at 3pm. i’ll have some art to sell, as well as concept art for the new DUNE movie to check out.

see you there?

here’s the website, but careful, it’ll hurt your eyes —-

http://www.fantasyevents.org/index2.html