Displaced Persons Update, CBT, PopGun, Mystery Train &c

* As mentioned in the last update, Displaced Persons IS coming out but is very late.  The cause for the delay is artist Rantz Hoseley's unanticipatedly huge workload putting together Comic Book Tattoo, the anthology of comics stories based on songs by Tori Amos.  CBT is done and out now, and Rantz is back at work drawing Displaced Persons.  His last report is that the art is about 2/3 complete.  We're aiming now to debut the book at the New York Comicon in February 2009.  Further updates as events warrant.

* Yes, Comic Book Tattoo is out. It's a huge hit...the #2 bestseller on Buy.com, the #15 GN bestseller on Amazon, and the #35 bestseller on Bookscan.  Big big numbers.  From my own personal experience a few weeks ago at Comicon in San Diego, I can attest that the entire Comicon allotment sold out in roughly 24 hours.  Get yourself a copy now.  In addition to the story I did with Colleen Doran, it has work from something like 80 writers and artists, as thorough a cross-section as you could hope for of the best and brightest of today's comics industry.

* Also debuting at Comicon was PopGun #2, featuring the story Nixon's the One! by my ownself and my boyhood pal Ron Turner.  This book is another huge slab of comic art and you should grab yourself a copy posthaste.

* Comicon was swell, by the way.  I stayed with my good friend and future collaborator Jimmie Robinson in a hotel in the distant enclave of Coronado.  I was bummed when I couldn't get a hotel any closer to the convention centre, but it turned out to be the home of the world's best bacon, so it ended up being kind of a tradeoff.  I hung out mostly at the CBT table during the convention, and managed to make it to both the Tori/CBT panel and a subsequent meet and greet event for Tori and the CBT creators to say hi to each other.  By the time I was introduced to Tori she was getting ready to take off for an MTV interview and I was getting ready to take off to catch my plane home, so there wasn't time for much more than a hello...but I did take the opportunity to ask her to tell Rantz that it was time for him to work on my book, and she dutifully turned around and repeated the message to him.

* Lastly, the news that is, to my mind, the biggest of all.  The fifth revised edition of Mystery Train, Greil Marcus' classic book on music and pop culture, has been released.  If you get yourself a copy and flip to page 288, you'll find a reference to "Derek McCulloch and Shepherd Hendrix's irresistible graphic novel Stagger Lee."  So there, it's official.  I have made a contribution to the fabric of American pop culture and I can prove it because I'm in the index of the main textbook.