It was an honestly insane week of news. There’s too much to fit in one column of this size, but I will do my level best. So, let’s get straight into ten things I liked or didn’t like from the week in Comics Disassembled, with it all being led off by a cool thing created by a cool person — because it’s my column and I do what I want!

1. Extra, Extra, The Comics Courier is Here!

I wrote about this a bit before when it was announced, but given that it launched this week — to become a sensation with its fancy, high profile names! — it’s worth mentioning again. Tiffany Babb’s new comics criticism newspaper (??) The Comics Courier has now launched on Kickstarter, and it looks amazing. This actual, physical newspaper collects writing about comics from folks like Babb’s PanelxPanel pal Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, author Douglas Wolk, podcasters Brad and Lisa Gullickson, creator Dave Baker, and plenty more, and it looks like it’s going to be quite the production. It seems people agree too, as it’s annihilated its goal and is furiously marching towards further stretch goals.

It’s understandable. There’s a lot of great folks highlighted within, and it’s the type of thing no one is doing these days. It helps too that there are fun bonuses, namely prints from artists like Baker, Nicole Goux, and tha gawd that is Lee Gatlin. I normally pass on prints, but when you throw Gatlin’s work in the mix, I couldn’t resist that early bird print pack tier. If you’re interested in good writing about comics, which I imagine you are if you’ve found yourself here, then I highly recommend checking out The Comics Courier. It’s an excellent initiative from someone trying to elevate comics criticism in a real way.

2. Tiny Onion, Doing Cool Things

In objectively more notable news, the crew over at James Tynion IV’s Tiny Onion had a big week, offering a slate of developments that shows just how unconventional and unexpected they can really be. Well, mostly unexpected. I knew most of this was coming, but it’s unexpected in a broader sense.

Up first was the reveal of the company’s New York Comic Con plans, which are prolific, as you might expect. The headliner of that is the reveal of T.O.P. #1, or the first issue of Tiny Onion Press, the company’s first ever physical newspaper. Sold for only $1 at the convention, T.O.P. should be fun as heck. It will include a feature on publisher and comic shop Silver Sprocket, a conversation with artists Joshua Hixson and Tyler Boss, new Razorblades comics in comic strip form, and…what’s that…an interview with Tynion himself about the first nine months of Tiny Onion, with yours truly having done that interview a little while back. I’m slightly biased, but it’s a good one! There will be an array of other sections included within, but the point is, this should be super cool and you should definitely pick one up at NYCC. And get one for me while you’re at it!

Up next was the announcement of Tiny Onion’s Artists in Residence program, one that has a killer initial class in a pair of frequent Tynion collaborators, Aditya Bidikar and Jordie Bellaire. As the team says in the announcement, the “goal for this initiative is to build a better version of the ‘exclusive’ contract, and not only provide talent with stability and guaranteed work without all the usual red tape but to also celebrate them as multi-hyphenate creators and crucial members of the Tiny Onion ecosystem.” Which is very cool! And this apparently means that this pair will be able to create their own comics at Tiny Onion, with Bidikar sharing on Bluesky that this will allow them to create and write their own series through TO (which will be published at Image in Bidikar’s case). Very cool! This support of excellent creators to push themselves even further is an inspiring idea, and I truly love to see it.

Lastly came the biggest news, albeit news that was covered…pretty much nowhere for at least the first five or six hours after the news came out (besides Bleeding Cool). It seems Tynion and Tiny Onion have signed a 12-book deal — told across three different graphic novel series, with the first, The Most Beautiful People Who Never Loved Me, debuting in 2028 — with Inklore, the imprint of Random House Worlds that’s focused on manga, webcomics, and graphic novels for adults fitting a small selection of genres like romance, horror, and slice of life, amongst other things. If anyone wondered what Tynion was talking about when he said Tiny Onion had plans out until 2032 when he came on Off Panel last, this is that. But this is an enormous deal, one that finds maybe the direct market’s biggest name shifting some of his attention towards the book market. Obviously Tynion keeps himself busy, so the direct market will not go without comics from the scribe. But it’s a big deal, and one I’ll be very intrigued to see the comics from.

That’s all we have from Tiny Onion this week, but who knows what else they have cooking on their end. They’re always up to something, those crazy kids!