Tag: Image Select Retailer Award

Quick Hits | Nirvana Comics in Knoxville wins the first Image Select Retailer Award

Plus: News on Rob Liefeld, Scout Comics, G. Willow Wilson and the Robert E. Howard awards.

Nirvana Comics in Knoxville, Tennessee has won Image Comics’ inaugural Image Select Retailer Award. The winner was announced this weekend at the Emerald City Comic Con during an event hosted by Lunar Distribution.

Images Comics announced the award last month as a way to recognize retailers “that are going above and beyond to serve their customers, expand readership and grow a healthier marketplace.” Customers were able to vote for their favorite store via an online form.

“This is such a huge honor,” said Grant and Jasmine Mitchell, co-owners of the store. “Thank you Image Comics for all you’ve done to help the comic shop industry. Thank you to all our customers who nominated us. Your support and friendship is why we do this everyday. The best is yet to come!”

According to Image, the shop was in the top tier of most nominations by sheer volume from “happy customers eager to pay it forward to the store they love.” They’ll receive several prizes from Image, including a commemorative medallion and their choice of a comic with a gold foil exclusive variant cover branded with their store logo.

“The response to this award was phenomenal with thousands of nominations submitted in just a few days,” said Alex Cox, director of direct market sales at Image Comics. “Reading that many testimonials from people praising their local comic shops was a great reminder of how amazing the comics community can be, and Nirvana Comics stood out as a prime example of a store that truly values their customers, and makes new fans every day.”

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Quick Hits | Whatever happened to ‘Tales from the Quarantine’?

Plus: A ‘Doonesbury’ controversy (maybe?), Image launches a retailer award, and a Seattle comic shop’s staff unionizes.

Crowdfunding | Broken Frontier has a lengthy article up where they talk with many of the creators involved with Tales from the Quarantine, a project spearheaded by Frazer Brown of Red Cabin Comics that was funded in the early days of the pandemic and was meant to raise money for the Hero Initiative and other charities. The anthology was supposed to feature comics by a long list of creators, including Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, Rachael Stott, Charlie Adlard, Jim Zub and Max Dunbar, among others. Almost four years after being funded, the anthology has yet to materialize in print, with many angry backers wanting to know what happened and creators left with little answers themselves.

“It was a damaging situation for our individual reputations,” said one of the anthology’s contributors, Lucy Sullivan. “The way the project was marketed suggested we were all complicit in its concept and production rather than, the reality, that we all gave our time and expertise for free in aid of charity. The only recourse was to publicly state this. Of course that put me on the blocked list, off the contributors’ emails and potentially amongst those threatened with police investigation. It was really quite stressful.”

Visit Broken Frontier to read more.

Comic strips | A former Iowa State Representative went to social media to question why this Sunday’s Doonesbury strip didn’t appear in any Gannett papers over the weekend. The strip in question featured a Florida teacher sharing facts about the Civil War, while one student questions if it is still legal for her to do so — a very real issue in the state.

But did Gannett actually remove the strip because of the content, as Cracked.com suggests? The Daily Cartoonist says another factor may be in play here — Gannett previously announced plans to limit the comic strips offered to their papers to a set 34, and Doonesbury isn’t on the list.

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