Independent publisher Top Shelf announced a companion to Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's From Hell, showed footage from the Superf*ckers cartoon based on the comics series by Eisner-award-winning cartoonist James Kochalka and discussed a flurry of other comic projects at its San Diego Comic-Con panel Saturday. Take in the full report after the cut.The panel, moderated by marketing director Leigh Walton, kicked off with an update from Top Shelf Digital's Chris Ross, who announced a slate of new initiatives for the digital, including the announcement that the publisher would be partnering with Amazon to offer the first three Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neil's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen volumes, with more offerings rolling out throughout the year. Ross also mentioned the "wonderful response" to the Cannon "Brothers" Double Barrel, the two-creator anthology that features 50+ pages monthly for less than $2, and showed off the third cover of the series. Ross also announced more comics set in the world of Robert Vendetti's The Surrogates with Case Files #1 being published digitally this month.

Ed Piskor was on hand to discuss his graphic novel, Wizzywig, a "social history of hacking." Piskor showed thumbnails and early pages of the graphic novel.

Walton then introduced Eddie Campbell (From Hell, Alec), who spoke briefly about his latest graphic novel, The Lovely Horrible Stuff, a look at the history and consequences of money. Campbell then showed off footage from an aborted TV series pitch that looked not dissimilar to his autobiographical comics.

Cartoonist Nate Powell then discussed his latest projects, the already-released Any Empire and March, a memoir of the Civil Rights struggle written by Congressman John Lewis and co-writer Andrew Aydin, a staffer at the congressman's Washington office who was on hand to introduce pages from the book.

Walton then showed pages from Jeff Lemire's The Underwater Welder, which debuted at the convention. Described by the publisher as, a book about "fathers and sons, birth and death, memory and reality, and the treasures we all bury deep below the surface," the pages looked lush with the detail and emotion fans have come to expect from his work on books like Essex County and Sweet Tooth.


Walton then introduced newly-minted Eisner-award-winner James Kochalka, whose Dragon Puncher Island won the night before in the "Best Publication For Early Readers" category. Kochalka then quickly moved on to his latest project, a cartoon adaptation of his Top Shelf series, SuperF*ckers. Produced by Frederator -- who also produces Cartoon Network's Adventure Time -- the animated series is set to debut on the soon-to-be-launched Cartoon Hangover YouTube channel along with Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward's Bravest Warriors. The audience was treated to a 3-minute clip of the show that involved main character Jack Crack's sentient feces, lots of Grotus slime and a fair amount of super-vomit. You can watch a very NSFW clip below:


Also announced were digital collections of Kochalka's autobiography strip, American Elf, which will release a year's worth of strips for $1.99.

Lastly, Walton teased some preview pages from the companion book to Alan Moore's recent spoken-word special, Unearthing. The book features photography and design by Mitch Jenkins. It is expected to see print in December of 2012.

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