"To fight the unbeatable foe ..." At Newsarama, Brian Hibbs gives us a grim-and-gritty version of "The Comic Pimp" in which he questions Diamond's monthly sales charts, defends direct market retailers and takes a few jabs at Marvel's controversial no-overprint policy:

"See, the key number-one thing to remember when you're dealing with the Direct Market retailer is that retailers are the publisher's customer. Books live and die on our commitment, and our ability to bring the book to market. If the retailers have no faith in a project (your Reign of the Zodiac, or your Tsunami books, or your Rocket Comics, or whatever), then those projects won't get any traction in the market - regardless of how good or bad they are, regardless of the talent involved, regardless of almost anything.

"Because we buy non-returnable."