If you're having trouble gettting your retailer to order you up some of that AiT/Planet Lar goodness, here're a couple pdfs of our current frontlist and backlist that you can print out or link to or host on your own website.

From the latest Booklist: "As in the world of prose novels, so in that of graphic novels, small presses put out much of the stuff that stretches conventions of style, content, and accessibility... Superficially, CODEFLESH is just another masked crime-fighter saga. Bail bondsman Cameron Daltry's clients are either big as trucks or 'gifted,' so that when they skip their court dates, they require special attention (e.g., a scruffy teenager with telekinetic capability has to be knocked out and taken in). Daltry retrieves his own no-shows but, having been court-ordered not to, dons a full head mask with a bar code on the face for the nonce. Unfortunately, his bondsman days and bounty hunter nights tick off his exotic-dancer girlfriend. The book bounces between pounding sessions with the baddies and fence-mending with her. The whole thing resembles a string of TV cop-show episodes, but few TV shows' visuals are anywhere near as impressive as Adlard's artwork. Adlard has the high-contrast, deep-focus look of the best film-noir down pat, now and then effectively steering the occasional panel, especially in fight scenes, toward almost 'unreadable' abstraction. He draws the way Elmore Leonard and James Ellroy scenarios ought to look."

If you're checking in here, you've probably already read Alan David Doane's Five Questions with me this morning. I answer so many of these things in email interviews, it sure was nice to get questions I hadn't really been asked before, and to have my answers to those particular ones out in the world. Thanks, Alan!

Ryan finished lettering Planet of the Capes and I'm tweaking it for publication. I have to say, sometimes I miss lettering, and sometimes I don't.

I read journalista this morning and discovered this little gem about rejections and writers and slush piles. Now, this may not be immediately apparent to those checking in here for the latest AiT news, but allow me to shock you: although we don't exactly make a secret of the fact that we don't accept submissions, ol' Ryan and I still get a whole lot of packages, manuscripts, proposals, and query emails during the day.

And I get that, I really do; honestly, I know the fact that Bill Harms' Abel showed up on the doorstep one day and I didn't know Bill or Mark or had seen any of their work before and we published it still fans the embers of dying hope across the country in comic shop and dorm room and cloistered... well, cloister. I know. And I sympathize.

But I really urge folks who pitch us stuff to read that link, above, first, and take away this from it: the unspoken message of that page is that yes, while those of us who get submitted to understand that you are offering us your sweat and blood and toil, it really is incumbent upon you to realize that you are not offering your babies to Ogre Generals in the Armies of Might.

We're dudes, just like you. Us telling you we're not going to publish your comic doesn't mean you are a bad person, that you suck, that you're crazy, or drunk on your own issues, or not fit to walk the same Earth as us. Nor does it mean that we are bad people, or that we suck, or that we are crazy, or drunk on our own issues, or not fit to walk the same Earth as you.

It just means we aren't going to publish your comic.

Alan David Doane says this about Demo #3 -- "Probably the best issue yet, and with the added storytelling challenge that most of the issue is a conversation between two people sitting in a car. Samantha Hurley is a young woman who hasn't seen her father or half-brother in years, and the story begins at the father's funeral, as she reflects on her family's disastrous history. Writer Brian Wood surprises with the concept at the core of this issue, and startles with the way he lets us in on it. Artist Becky Cloonan delivers artwork that, like The Walking Dead actually benefits from being in black and white. The sense of place and mood she brings, especially to some key moments, is impressive when you realize she's doing it all with a few splashes of india ink -- and a boatload of growing talent. So far every issue of Demo has left me wanting to learn more about the characters and their futures -- and looking forward to the next issue."