(PR) Today, Joey Manley and I signed Letters of Intent to merge our various properties into a single corporate entity. When the dust settles, ComicSpace, Webcomics Nation, TalkAboutComics, and OnlineComics.net will be rolled up into one big happy super site. The super site will be called ComicSpace.

I realized several months ago that my days were numbered as a one-man operation. ComicSpace and OnlineComics.net simply require more resources than I have to give (both financially and personally). Thanks to ComicSpace's fast and furious launch late last year, I've fielded several offers to partner, merge, even sell ComicSpace. But none of those offers felt right. Some of them felt very, very wrong.

Enter Joey Manley. For those of you unfamiliar with Joey, he's the guy behind webcomicsnation.com, talkaboutcomics.com, moderntales.com, serializer.net, girlamatic.com... *pause for breath*... graphicsmash.com, graphicnovelreview.com and a few others.

A couple months ago, Joey and I started talking. Okay okay, Joey did most of the talking and I grunted and nodded my head from time to time. But by the end of the conversation we had pretty much decided to merge our properties into a single cohesive super site.

We were excited. We were pumped. Then we remembered we didn't have any money.

Enter E-Line Ventures, a New Jersey-based ‘double bottom line’ early-stage investment firm (they look at both the financial and social impact of their investments). We like these guys a lot. They're smart. They take us out to dinner. And they have lots of money they want to throw at us. We plan to use that money to facilitate the merger, hire programmers and develop wicked (Maine lingo) new features for readers and creators.

No one panic! Nothing's going to change today, or tomorrow, or even next week. This process is still in its beginning stages, but we're hoping to have the new site up and running within a couple months. The new site will retain all of the functionality of the existing sites, so you'll be able to do everything you can do now, plus a whole lot more.

Read Joey's announcement about the merger (which is a lot more informative) at http://www.talkaboutcomics.com/blog/?p=1278.

Questions? Concerns? Send them to josh at comicspace.com.