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Today at AiT/Planet Lar

January 26, 2007
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YALSA, The The Young Adult Library Services Association, has announced its 2007 recommended list of Great Graphic Novels for Teens, and Demo is on it! Not only that, but it's singled out for the 2007 Top Ten Great Graphic Novels for Teens, as well! Great job, Brian and Becky! I guess sending around those for-review copies really does work.

January 25, 2007
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Keith Beattie is the guy who set up those AiT pics on the South Pole. Click that link and read his blog, for entries like these:

I suppose now might be a good time to explain, for those who don’t already know, why I’m at the South Pole. It’s for work. I work on a project called IceCube which is “An NSF funded, international high-energy neutrino detector being installed in the clear deep ice below the South Pole“. What this means is that we drill holes 2.5km deep down into the ice here and deploy “strings” of light detectors down those holes. After the hole has frozen in, these detectors digitize what they see and send that info to the surface. Some of what they will see will be the faint light which is the result of a neutrino striking the atomic particles in the ice, hence detecting a neutrino. On the surface connected to the strings is a cluster of computers which suck all that data up from the ice and process it, filtering out noise (things other than a neutrino hit) and then send that data to tape and north over a satellite link. I work on the first layer of that software, known as the Surface DAQ (Data Acquisition) running on that cluster of computers.

Check out I'm still here for a POV video of the walk from inside the main station out to the pole, where yesterday's pics were taken.

Stay warm, Keith!

January 24, 2007
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"Hi Mimi, Check out the photos - your book made it to the pole! He left it in the 'quiet reading room library'. It's quite popular among the science buffs down there! :)"

January 23, 2007
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Comic Book Resources' Augie De Blieck, Jr. identifies the strength and weakness of being a backlist publisher: the strength, of course, being that every book we publish is a genius work of art, but there's no reason to go in on Wednesday because it'll be there for you when you're done with the latest corporate crossover event that doesn't mean anything in the scheme of things and barely entertains you with superheroes who were old when your dad read them off the newstand. The weakness, then, being that maybe it's there and maybe it's not, and if you remember to ask your retailer to order it and he actually does, and there's stock in the Diamond warehouse and it doesn't snow in Texas stopping trucks maybe you'll get it in a week or two.

Which of course is why every book we do has to be a genius work of art. No audience is going to go through all that just to get the latest fluffy event comic.

Anyway, check out this review:

"Rock Bottom is the original graphic novel from Joe Casey and Charles Adlard that appeared in numerous Best Of lists at the end of 2006, but which sat unread on my shelf until a couple of weeks ago. My bad. My very very very bad. This is a book that deserved to be read ages ago, and that I should have recommended to you when there was a better chance for a stray copy to still be left on your retailer's shelves. The book isn't out of print, though. It might not be handy to grab one on Wednesday when you pick up the rest of your books, but you can still order it through your retailer and get it in a week or two. It's worth it."

January 22, 2007
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Hollywood Reporter guns the engine: "Rogue Pictures and Intrepid Pictures have picked up the movie rights to "Couriers," a series of action graphic novels, and have set writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach to adapt."

The Couriers 01

The Couriers 02: Dirtbike Manifesto

The Couriers 03: The Ballad of Johnny Funwrecker

The Couriers 03 sample pdf

Couscous Express

January 21, 2007
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Long-time comics folks remember my stint doing promotions and marketing for world-class comic book store Comix Experience, so I always get a bit of a thrill when Savage Critic Graeme McMillan gives us the nod... but ya gotta admit this is a good one: "TRADE OF THE WEEK isn't a new book at all, but something that came out towards the end of last year - SEVEN SONS, the retelling of the seven brothers myth set in 1850s America that AiT/Planet Lar put out. It's a wonderful book, telling the story sparsely but enjoyably, with some nice art. Highly recommended, and that's before you get to the text piece at the back of the book talking about the history of the myth, which only makes the whole package all the better."

Seven Sons is available at Comix Experience and finest-kind comic shops with discerning taste, everywhere.

Find any AiT/Planet Lar publication at your nearest comic store.

Can't find it at your local retailer? Get it online at Khepri.com