Diamond Retailer Summit Report #2

Wow. What a whirlwind of great stuff and cool people. What can I say? The last two days were spent hobnobbing with industry professionals, suppliers, distributors and creators, all with the goal of improving our business and also the comic book industry as a whole. Did we succeed? We'll see, I guess.

Anyway, much fun was had by me, Ned, Jared and Joe... and here's what we learned:

DARK HORSE COMICS:

• A SERENITY comic series is coming
• There will be HELLBOY hardcover "archives" and a HELLBOY Free Comic Book Day book in 2008
• Following the current 40-issue BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER run, there will be a BUFFY "Season Nine" series

MARVEL COMICS:

• For Free Comic Book Day 2008, there will be all-new MARVEL ADVENTURES IRON MAN and X-MEN comics to give out
• We got a sneak peeks at the "October Zombie Month" covers that will be coming out soon for IRON FIST, SHE-HULK, MS MARVEL, HOWARD THE DUCK, SPIDER-GIRL, PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL and more
• We saw a bit of the SPIDER-MAN "One More Day" storyline stuff, that contains a major revelation in the third part (first part is in the stores right now, by the way)
• The big upcoming X-Men hoo-hah is called X-MEN DISASSEMBLED, which almost made Jared pass out from excitement
  
• There will be a big juicy Bendis/Malev DAREDEVIL Omnibus in the future
• There will be no more X-MEN
• There will be a new DARK TOWER series called DARK TOWER: THE LONG ROAD HOME (with a possible Midnight Release Party!)
• THERE ARE SKRULLS EVERYWHERE! SERIOUSLY! RUN! IT'S A SECRET INVASION! (Coming in April 2008 by Bendis and Yu)
• The INCREDIBLE HULK turns red (maybe because he's SUPER DUPER MAD?)
• The new IRON MAN trailer looked incredibly cool

DC COMICS:

• FINAL CRISIS looms on the horizon
• There will be a new LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES, written by Jim Shooter!
• KILLING JOKE by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland will be getting the deluxe hardcover treatment with lots of extras for $14.95 (if I recall correctly)
• The SUPER FRIENDS return in a new series, plus the TINY TITANS debuts
• Mike Kunkle will be doing a new Billy Batson/SHAZAM book
• BAT LASH, a cherished DC Western character returns, written by Sergio Aragones and drawn by John Severin... oh and Sergio will be writing THE SPIRIT too
  
• Brian Wood will write NORTHLANDERS, a story of the Vikings
• ABSOLUTE SANDMAN Volume 3 will arrive in the Spring of 2008
• There will be a WORLD OF WARCRAFT comic book, to which Ned says "WOW." (Get it?)
  

There was a lot more from many different publishers, which I will be covering here shortly. Plus I will be posting pictures of Jared's Reverse Chuck Taylors (for a very good reason.)

All of us came back pumped up and excited by what the publishers have in store... these Diamond Summits are very rejuvenating.

Stay tuned.