Visited the comics shop today -- where, lo and behold, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic #4 awaited.

I'm thrilled with how this issue turned out -- it's quite my favorite one to date. Kudos to Brian Ching and Michael Atiyeh for their work on this one. 

Update: The "behind the scenes" page is now online here -- and your responses to the issue are welcome to this blog entry. I also can announce at that very comics shop in a week and a half I'll be doing a Free Comic Book Day event from 1-3 p.m., Saturday, May 6. That's at Galaxy Hobby, 2626 Post Rd., Plover, Wisconsin. See you there!

Readers familiar with my interest in comic-book circulation history (a lot of which is in the Standard Catalog of Comic Books) now have a place on the web to find more of my research. After months of clean-up work and posting, all of my estimates for comics sold by Diamond Comics Distributors since Marvel's return to Diamond in April 1997 are now online at the CBGXtra website.

Amounting to nine years of reports, preorders or final orders are available for more than 32,000 comic books and 4,200 trade paperbacks; also available are market shares and my estimates of average prices and overall market size. This amounts to the largest resource for circulation data ever online.

Topps Comics, Acclaim, Awesome, Marvel's "minus-one issues" - these names from the past and more can be found in the earliest sales charts posted.

All trade paperbacks for which Diamond has ever released indexed sales reports now appear. (The first indexed sales chart of any kind released by Diamond for TPBs was a Top 10 list in February 1998 simply labeled "Books," which also included a couple of price guides!) But even before then, CBG's reports include a rough estimate of trade paperback preorders based on a statistic Diamond did provide - the ratios of dollar preorders represented each month both by comics and by trade paperbacks.

All of Diamond's "Final Order" market shares appear now, going back to October 1997, when the distributor first released that calcluation. Prior to that point, CBG provides dollar market shares based on the Top 300 comics for which Diamond provided indexed sales figures.

The next mission ahead will be the posting of data from the period in which Heroes World was Marvel's exclusive distributor - a period that ended in March 1997. CBG has much of this data from the defunct distributor - it appears in the Standard Catalog of Comic Books but the reporting will be a little more complicated given that the data are from two different sources.

There are times you don't want life to imitate art -- especially when you're the passenger on a C-5 Galaxy, and the art is the climax of my "Best Defense" storyline, from Iron Man #78.

Readers of that issue may remember Iron Man's mid-air rescue of a C-5 Galaxy military transport, bringing it down it in one piece in the reflecting pool on the Mall in Washington, D.C. That scene seemed nearly unimaginable -- until yesterday, when a C-5 landed in three pieces in nearby Dover -- and everyone lived!

Check out the AP story here, where former pilots credit the design for the survival of the occupants. I came to agree with them as I dug into the design specs for the C-5 quite a bit in working out that arc -- the "Operation Babylift" disaster, mentioned in #77, was a real-life event worked into the background of the story. I knew the plane could take a lot of punishment -- just not quite this much!

At any rate, I'm glad everyone aboard yesterday's flight made it -- and props (no pun intended) to Lockheed. That's amazing...

Finally back from Midsouthcon 24, and as usual it was full of surprises. I've been going to the con since the fourth or fifth one, and attending this year as the comics guest of honor was a real, well, honor!

A cool extra this year came from Dark Horse, which, working wth programming coordinator Carlin Stuart, provided enough copies of the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic/Rebellion special for everyone in the show.

The panels were exceptionaly well attended this year -- quite a contrast to that strange year when the Transportation Security Administration took over the hotel and we all wound up meeting in the hotel restaurant. Friday night's comics-writing panel with Rich Burlew of Order of the Stick and webcomics creator Orion generated a lot of great questions -- I'll be looking at adding some kind of seminar for the educational track next time out. Saturday's Knights of the Old Republic panel was a lot of fun, too. And thanks to the brave attendees who made that 9 a.m. Sunday morning panel -- where we all decided not to turn the lights on in the panel room because it was waaaaay too early...

It was also great to meet author David Weber, a fellow Horatio Hornblower fanatic -- as well as all of this year's guests.

I must say there was a sense of deja vu in watching the University of Memphis playing in the NCAA tournament at the con -- we were doing the same thing at the con back in the mid-1980s, back when it was still called Memphis State. Sorry to see the Tigers lose, but at least I came out OK in the office pool in spite of that. I can quit now...

Event news! I'll be appearing as the comics guest of honor at Midsouthcon 24, March 24-26, in Memphis, Tenn., at the Airport Holiday Inn. I'll be on panels each day, including one where I'll be talking about the new Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic series. I'll also be available to sign copies in the main room and talk about the series as long as my voice lasts.

X-Wing Rogue Squadron artist Jim Hall will also be there -- and Dark Horse has helped provide the convention with a special bonus for attendees while they last! Find out more at Midsouthcon -- I'll see you there!

Also in Memphis, on March 29, I have a Knights of the Old Republic #3 release-day signing at Comics & Collectibles on Poplar -- I think it starts at 3 p.m., but check my website for updates as I have them. (In fact, all events are tentative, depending on whether something heavy falls on me on the way to the airport. Should that happen, check my website for updates from my next of kin.)

Pretty busy getting scripts out in advance of my convention appearance later this month -- more in a while on that -- but I now have some production notes up for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic #2 and #0, the Rebellion flip-book. Click to read more about #2 -- and to find out how to buy the issue -- and here to read more about #0!

As many readers know, I have been developing an archives for comic-book sales figures throughout history for many years. My latest report, covering comics for the month of January 2006 sold by Diamond Comic Distributors, can be found here. My comments also appear on Newsarama here.

With Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic #1 gong on sale today, I figured it was time for a redesign of the website -- plus the obligatory blog. I first used the Faraway Looks subtitle back on a 1992 comic strip -- before reusing it as a column title in Comics Buyer's Guide from 1996-2000 -- and exporting it back to my own comics for the Faraway Looks small press title I did in 2002. (And I may use it yet again. Because -- because, well, it's too darn hard to keep coming up with new titles, all right?) No, actually, I originally got the phrase from Carl Barks' Uncle Scrooge story, "Back to the Klondike" -- which is as good a source as any. There will be more ramblings here as time goes on, theoretically. I shall endeavor to entertain -- or, at least, not to give you less than you paid to see when you got in here...