(Above: The Gulf Stream by Winslow Homer)
Well, people, in case you haven’t noticed, it is a grim time in the empire. When people ask how we’re doing, we keep thinking of the haunting story of the Essex, an 1819 whaleship sunk by an angry whale (one of the few such incidents on record) whose survivors endured a grisly two-month journey in some leaky rowboats. The ordeal included madness, cannibalism, and (ironically) several survivors keeping detailed diaries, since it was before the Internet and they couldn’t Twitter about it.

To sum up, we feel like we’re in a leaky little boat and we just ate Roger the cabin boy, but there is no land in sight.

…and there may not be for a while. Still, idylls of cannibalism and exposure are a bit extreme. After all, the free market will inevitably pull out a sextant and make for dry land, right?

Like John Carter of Mars always said when he was being pursued by some flesh-eating plants and headless Kaldanes…”I still live!” Even if there won’t be any postal delivery on Saturdays any more.

So yeah, in answer to many emails and IMs and PMs and so on, it has been a shaky week here at Stately Beat Manor, not because of anything that happened to me personally, but just the general gloom and doom. But this too shall pass.

In the spirit of survival, struggle, Barsoom references and giant apes, here’s a painting of John Carter of Mars by Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell. Because nothing says hope like half-naked people fighting.

§ As we were getting ready to go out last night we happened to catch a brief item on CNN featuring the MAD cover of “Obama’s First 100 Seconds” that we linked to yesterday, proof that despite getting cut to quarterly status, MAD has already reached adjectival status. In fact, David Sarasohn in The Oregonian takes a look at MAD’s history and lasting legacy:

Change happens to everything. For one thing, Mad is already owned by DC Comics, meaning that Alfred E. Neuman has the same employer as Superman, and it’s hard to imagine what they talk about at company picnics. But a quarterly should be something like the Great Plains Journal of Classical Philology, not a magazine whose masthead has always listed the editorial staff as “the usual gang of idiots.”

So it’s worth a farewell — or at least, since it’s going from monthly to quarterly, two-thirds of a farewell — to Mad, a truly influential and subversive publication, which assured generations that the powerful and famous existed to be mocked. Today, that sentiment can be found all over the Internet, not to mention cable television — including, of course, “Mad TV.” But there was a time, not too long ago, when it seemed an intoxicating, forbidden concept.

§ It’s hard to find just one paragraph to quote from this seminal Onion story: Obama Disappointed Cabinet Failed To Understand His Reference To ‘Savage Sword Of Conan’ #24:

“If my inner circle of advisers can’t even communicate about the most basic issues, how are we going to tackle the massive problems our nation faces?” Obama said during a press conference. “When I tell my cabinet that getting bipartisan support is exactly like the time Conan got Taurus to help him steal Yara’s jewel, they need to understand what I mean.”

After receiving no reaction from the assembled reporters, Obama added, “Because a giant spider is protecting this chamber full of precious jewels, just like Congress is protecting its…. God, how are you people not seeing this?”

§ Columnist Jeff Yang at SFGate looks at Avatar-gate:

When is an Asian cartoon not an Asian cartoon? The answer to this Zen dilemma is at the heart of the latest high-octane kerfluffle currently clogging the Net — one that’s pulled into its vortex two of the most celebrated Asian American creators in comics: Gene Yang, National Book Award finalist for his graphic novel “American Born Chinese,” and Derek Kirk Kim, whose work has won comics’ most prestigious laurels — the Xeric, Ignatz, Eisner and Harvey awards.

§ Tom Mason interviews Marc Bernardin at Comix 411 in a wide ranging talk, including how the book MONSTER ATTACK NETWORK is faring on the road to the movies:

TOM: Do you think it would have been successful if you’d just written the screenplay or pitched it around the old-fashioned way, or did having the graphic novel give you an added boost?

MARC: The graphic novel definitely makes a property more attractive to Hollywood but, ironically, it limits your involvement. Unless you’re already an established name—or are willing to say no to any deal that doesn’t include you writing or producing — a giant movie studio isn’t going to let a nobody take first crack at scripting. Especially if, as we did, you wrote the equivalent of a $200 million dollar FX-heavy tentpole action movie. So, in that regard, if we wrote this as a spec, at the very least we’d get to arbitrate for screenplay credit…but getting it on the right desks would’ve been a lot harder.

§ Matt Tauber interviews comic strip reprint king Dean Mullaney, who has returned from “What ever happened to…” to being the man behind some of the most entertaining comics being published:

The 6th and final volume of ‘Terry & the Pirates’ is being released this week from the Library of American Comics. I figured it was time to get the inside scoop from series editor Dean Mullaney while the series was still fresh in our minds and hearts. I thought we should go back to the beginning and find out where the idea of reprinting ‘Terry’ began. “I originally planned to reprint ‘Terry’ in the ‘80s not long after I started Eclipse Comics,” Mullaney explains. “So the format we’re using now, which is the color Sundays followed by three dailies, three dailies and the color Sunday again, that was a format I came up with more than 25 years ago. I was going to do it then, but then NBM came out with the black and white books. We were all grateful at the time that NBM did them because that was the first time the entire Caniff series had been reprinted. Luckily I’ve lived long enough that I’ve got the chance to do it the way I’ve always wanted it to be. ‘Terry’ has always been my favorite strip, so for me to do it now is just a thrill.”

§ Misleading headline of the day? Looking at the success of Obama in comics, Fox asks: Is It Time for a Black Comic Book Superhero?, which would imply there aren’t any.

Marvel Comics, home of Spider-Man, The Hulk, Iron Man and the X-Men, is keeping up with the times. The company recently announced the untold story of the first Marvel superhero of color in the “Adam: Legend of the Blue Marvel” project. The Black Panther, another Marvel mainstay, will undergo a life-altering new storyline and will be featured in an animated series.

Whether any of these developments will mean more big screen time for black superheroes will be up to Marvel readers. “While we’re always looking to represent characters from all walks of life, at the end of the day the most important thing is crafting good stories — that’s what people are going to respond to,” said executive editor Tom Brevoort.

A sidebar asks various scholars and comics types, including Jerry Craft, Spike, Erik Larsen, and Zuri Stanback for their takes on the question, and it ends up being a thought-provoking piece:

Spike, creator of the “Templar, Arizona” series: “I think it’s a mistake to market any character, new or old, as ‘the black superhero.’ If you want to draw parallels, consider Obama. He never ran as ‘the black candidate,’ and he hasn’t got any interest in being ’the black president.’ His skin color is incidental to his identity and motivations, not the core of them.”

Zuri Stanback, creator and artist of the “Epiphany Park” series: “In general, having a black president will help continue the destruction of negative black stereotypes. There will be an increased desire to have more accurate depictions of the diversity, values and intellect that exist within our community. We are not just a collection of singers, dancers, athletes and thugs, and that will be better reflected in mainstream pop culture in the near future.”

(more…)

Via PR: Viz has announced a new line of SF/fantasy books. The initial rollout includes The Lord of the Sands of Time by Issui Ogawa, All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, ZOO by Otsuichi, and Usurper of the Sun by Housuke Nojiri. We are loathe to guess where anything Japanese is concerned, but these would seem to be “light novels” of the type that are immensely popular in Japan: books that usually feature a fantasy element aimed at teens and young adults. PR below:

VIZ Media, LLC (VIZ Media), one of the entertainment industry’s most innovative and comprehensive publishing, animation and licensing companies, has announced the launch of a brand-new imprint called Haikasoru, which will publish an array of contemporary Japanese science fiction (SF) and fantasy stories for English-speaking audiences. This is the first time an imprint with a dedicated focus on Japanese SF has launched in North America.

Haikasoru is scheduled to publish twelve books a year and launches in the summer of 2009 with four titles: The Lord of the Sands of Time by Issui Ogawa, All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, ZOO by Otsuichi, and Usurper of the Sun by Housuke Nojiri.

Haikasoru will be helmed by Nick Mamatas, a respected author of science fiction as well as an editor at VIZ Media. Mamatas is the author of two novels, which have been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award and Germany’s Kurd Lasswitz Prize.

“I’m thrilled to be a part of this new imprint,” says Mamatas. “Haikasoru is making history with the future. Finally, SF is going global.”

(more…)

Cartoonist Michael Aushenker sent us a link that provides a bit more information on the enigmatic Patrick McGoohan, who died last week. Aushenker is also a staff writer for the Palisadian-Post, the weekly community newspaper of Pacific Palisades, CA, where the McGoohans lived since the late 1970s. He got the privileged chance to write the only obit that included extensive input from Patrick McGoohan’s wife, Joan Drummond McGoohan, whom he describes as “a sweet woman with the most adorable British lilt in her voice.”

”The Prisoner’ summed up what he felt,’ Joan McGoohan continued. ‘He thought it was very contemporary. He was an independent thinker. He followed all world happenings, the Middle East. He was a brilliant mind. All sorts of people, when they met him, they listened. Where it came from, I have no idea.”

The couple were regulars around the village that forms the center of the community:

Locally, the McGoohans frequented Sam’s at the Beach restaurant in Santa Monica Canyon. In the village, they dined at Modo Mio.

Joan McGoohan enjoyed a laugh at the notion that, in a sense, No. 6 never left ‘the village.’

‘He would get up at the crack of dawn, get the New York Times, and get some coffee at Mort’s or Starbucks,’ she said. ‘He wrote. Always, always.’

Oh yeah, how could we forget — live thrills and laughs tonight as The Beat and Dan Slott guest at the Comic Book Club, the weekly live comics talk show,

COMIC BOOK CLUB
A Live Weekly Talk Show about Comic Books

Hosted by Justin Tyler, Pete LePage, and Alex Zalben

Tuesday, January 27 @ 8:00 PM

Featuring:
Dan Slott & Heidi MacDonald

Tickets: $5
Online: ThePIT-NYC.com
Phone: 1-800-838-3006
Questions? 212-563-7488

The Peoples Improv Theater
154 West 29th Street, 2nd Floor
Between 6th and 7th Aves.

See y’all there!

Okay! Finally some good news! IDW is planning to add Alex Raymond’s gorgeous Rip Kirby to its deluxe comic strip reprint series, with the first Dean Mullaney-edited volume due in September:

Following the Eisner-award winning Terry and the Pirates, IDW’s Library of American Comics will present Alex Raymond’s modernist classic Rip Kirby in a definitive five-volume archival hardcover series.

Edited and designed by Dean Mullaney, Rip Kirby will contain every daily from the strip’s inception in 1946 through Alex Raymond’s tragic death in 1956. “It’s going to look gorgeous,” Mullaney says. “We are reproducing the strips from pristine syndicate proofs that will allow readers to see, for the first time, the full luxurious detail of Raymond’s brushwork.”

Rip Kirby was the first hip and cool detective in newspaper comics. Created by Alex Raymond when he was deactivated from the Marines after World War II, it was a fresh approach to the genre, a departure from the prevailing hard-boiled style of detective fiction. Rip Kirby was urbane and cerebral, and used scientific methods as often as he used his fists when solving crimes and mysteries. But there was still plenty of action — Kirby was an All-American athlete and decorated war hero.

Co-written with Ward Greene, Rip Kirby often addressed contemporary issues, including trafficking in black market babies and the attempt to limit the proliferation of atomic and biological weapons. The supporting cast was comprised of Rip’s valet and assistant, Desmond, and plenty of breathtaking women, particularly Rip’s girlfriend, Honey Dorian, and the raven-haired and aptly-named Pagan Lee. Highly conscious of the fashions of the day, Raymond brought post-war and early-50s chic and fashion to the comics page, dressing his female characters in ultra-chic clothes obviously inspired by Dior’s “New Look.”

The strip also signified a grand departure, both thematically and artistically, from Raymond’s first major creation, Flash Gordon. With Rip Kirby, Raymond wedded his incomparable brushwork to a sweeping approach to storytelling and camera movement that was missing in the more static Flash. He promulgated a new art style — one of cinematic photo-realism — that influenced such artists to follow as Stan Drake, Leonard Starr, Al Williamson, and Neal Adams.

Biographical and historic essays will be written by Brian Walker, author of the best-selling Comics Before 1945 and Comics After 1945. The first volume will have an introduction by Raymond biographer and authority Tom Roberts.

Famed novelist John Updike has died at age 76. Besides winning awards and being one of the best prose stylists of recent American letters, Updike was a friend of comics, having planned to be a cartoonist in his youth, and studied painting for quite a while. Or as Jeet Heer wrote:

Years ago while doing some research at Boston University on the papers of the cartoonist Harold Gray, the creator of the Little Orphan Annie, I came across a fan letter that was unusually eloquent. When I looked at the name of the bottom right hand corner of the type-written page it all became clear: it was a missive sent in 1948 by John Updike, then an aspiring cartoonist, when he was 15 years old. As I got to know Updike’s writing I started to realize that the letter was a simply one thread in a large and comfy biographical quilt. Like almost all American kids of his generation, Updike consumed comics even before he could read, so they were intertwined with his earliest experiences of art. Cartooning appealed to him as a potential vocation and he composed his first fledgling fan letters around 1942, when he was ten. After Updike settled on a literary career, he often returned to comics as a way of giving visual and mnemonic potency to his prose. His most recent writing on cartooning was his review earlier this year in The New Yorker of a much-disputed Charles Schulz biography. (For more on Updike and comics, see the articles I’ve written for the Boston Globe and the Guardian).

§ Cartoonist MK Reed shakes her fist at doom with a resource-filled post that includes alternative distributors and other places where you can sell comics besides Diamond. Recommended.

§ Speaking of other channels, Rik Offenberger talks to Haven’s Lance Stahlberg about the other game in town:

NRAMA: If a publisher finds they can’t meet the new benchmarks, can you help?

LS: That’s exactly why we’re here. Part of our mission is to help bring independent comics to the market. We give deserving titles a chance when Diamond won’t. We still have a submission and approval process, and you may get taken on consignment, but we boast a wide range of titles that cater to many tastes. Every new book we offer is treated the same.

We’ve been in business for a year now since we acquired and re-branded Cold Cut. In that year we’ve more than tripled our warehouse space, our inventory, and our active orders. Haven is definitely a viable alternative distribution channel, especially for newer stores just getting into the market who haven’t been conditioned to think of Previews as their only source for product.

Haven is going to try to step into the breach for comics that can’t make Diamond’s numbers, and will even start taking advance orders, which is a huge step.

§ Richard Bruton has a big overview and commentary.

§ Even The New York Times covered Diamond’s move.

§ Red 5’s Brian Clevinger also looks at the picture, but shows fighting spirit:

Let me put it plainly.

The basic model of getting new independent comics into shops is dead. Oh, it’ll do fine for Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, IDW, and maybe one or two others. But everyone else? Everyone out there working on a new project for publication right now? The old model no longer applies.

The good news is that this isn’t bad news.

• And then there’s MAD going quarterly. As the above shows, we still need MAD Magazine.

Mark Evanier points out that MAD is one of the most recognized brand names in comics and is unlikely to disappear:

Being a lover of its heritage, I’d be the first to trash Ficarra if the current MAD was unworthy of its name. It absolutely is not. But this kind of decline is very common in the periodical business. Playboy, this year, will only publish eleven issues and it isn’t because the public is losing its interest in gorgeous nude women. Even before we all began living on the Internet and doing 90% of our reading there, magazines were on the way out. And since everyone got a computer, it’s only become worse and worse. MAD has evolved to survive, adding color and advertising when that was necessary…but it can’t escape the fact that people just don’t read things on paper these days.

MAD will not go away. It’s too valuable a brand name to ever disappear. (National Lampoon is still around. It just hasn’t been a magazine since around 1988.) Today’s announcement probably translates as follows: “We need to keep the name alive and to keep key staffers and contributors in the family. But it’s losing money and we’re going to scale it back and minimize those losses while we figure out what to do with it.” Its new configuration is not a long-range plan…and maybe that long-range plan, whenever they arrive at it, will restore MAD to its former glory in some venue.

§ Contributor Tom Richmond comments:

MAD’s real problem is one they cannot avoid… they are a magazine. Name me a single magazine, outside tabloid trash peddlers, that isn’t struggling badly right now. I suppose that’s all about content also, right? TV Guide used to sell over 20 million copies a WEEK, and now they sell about 3 million copies… I suppose the quality of their TV schedules has badly declined. Playboy used to sell over 7 million copies an issue and today they are at 3 million copies…. of course we all know the quality of naked women has decreased dramatically since the 70’s.

§ As does Evan Dorkin:

This wasn’t just bad news because of our possibly losing a client or work, I feel really bad about the troubles the magazine, as well as the publishing world, is going through, and this just brought it home. I know that Diamond’s recently released policy changes will affect us more, SLG relies heavily on re-lists, and the small press will be crippled, further, by the new minimums, but the comic industry has always been, as Dan Vado put it, “built on jelly”, and I’ve been here for almost 20 years making minimal to moderate comic book money, so this comes as little surprise. But I wasn’t aware of how bad magazine distribution has become, and a venerable magazine like Mad, a comic but in some ways never thought of as a comic, well, seeing it take a gutshot like this shakes one up. Or at least me. There are people who live off their Mad income, we’re not one of those, and I can see this affecting a lot of freelancers who relied on 12 issues of material for their income. There’s going to be less room for folks like us, who came to the party late, and have less of a track record, but hopefully we’ll still pick up a gig here and there. I hope the new plan works out alright and Mad can stay on the shelves for a good while longer, there’s still a large fan base there, but publishing is just so squeezed. Jeez.

§ BTW, if you want to play along at home, you can see MAD’s yearly circ at this chart. It’s a pretty typical picture of erosion, with the huge problems at newsstands in the late ’70s that led to the creation of the direct market clearly shown, but also some odd RISES in circ, including one from ‘06 to ‘07. But then an even bigger decline for ‘08.

Number cruncher John Jackson Miller looks at Diamond’s yearend figures and concludes that in 2008, the industry moved sideways:

Now, to 2008: As noted, the industry didn’t so much grow or slip as move sideways. Top 300 Comics Unit and Dollar Sales were down 5% and 3% respectively, and the top 100 trades were up 4%. The overall figure is up 1.5% in my aggregated month-by month calculations, a process explained here (along with the caveats it entails).

That would make this the eighth straight year with an overall increase, but I am approaching this observation with some caution given statements out of Diamond that sales were off last year — three different sources there have stated sales declined slightly, with one referring to a 4% drop.

There’s a lot more to digest at Jackson’s site, but we’re too shell-shocked this week to absorb the numbers.

One thing that has emerged from a number of conversations we’ve had over the last few days: In 2008, comics slipped only a few percentage points, but this year, publishers expect to slip a little bit more. It’s just that margin that is killing everyone.

Yesterday, cartoonist Tom Tomorrow revealed the dire news that his strip, This Modern World, and all other weekly cartoons were being canceled by Village Voice Media, publisher of the Village Voice, the LA Weekly, and 13 other newsweeklies.

This still leaves me with eighty-odd papers, as well as Salon and Credo, so it’s not a fatal blow. And believe me, I wasn’t so naive as to imagine I was going to get through this economic mess without taking some hits. Nonetheless it’s a serious chunk of major cities to lose in one fell swoop (don’t get me started on the joys of consolidation this morning). Anyway, if you live in one of those cities and think this is a bad decision, you might want to share those feelings with the local editor. Politely, it should go without saying. And keep in mind: it’s not just my cartoon, it’s all of them, so put in a kind word for my compatriots while you’re at it. The only thing any of us have going for us in a situation like this is reader support.

The Minnesota Independent confirmed the cuts. We’re too bummed to get dressed and run to the corner to get a copy of the Voice to see which other strips were running. Their comics page mentioned only Tomorrow and Mr. Fish, but there were others.

Today, Tomorrow has updated the situation and runs a quote from Derf who says it’s doom-time:

OK. This is it. We’ve reached the apocalyptic final struggle for the future of cartoons.

Village Voice Media is the largest group of weekly newspapers in the biz. It is suffering from the ills that have befallen the rest of the newspaper industry: dwindling revenues and withering readership. Their corporate response, which was delivered to me Monday, is to “suspend” all cartoons across the chain, said suspension to last at least through the rest of the first quarter, and quite possibly beyond. That’s right. NO more cartoons. None. This is very probably a fatal blow to me. Not only is it a significant income hit, but these are six of the largest and finest papers in the weekly industry. I’ve been in the pages of some of these publications for years. The Riverfront TImes was one of my first papers. I started run- ning there in 1991! This isn’t about me “sucking ” either. Since I won the Robert F. Kennedy Award in 2006, one of the highest honors bestowed on a cartoonist, I’ve been losing papers steadily. The reason cited is always budget cuts. Always.

Jen Sorensen was also cut from the Voice, and puts it into more economic context:

Now, cartoons are cheap content that keep a certain number of readers habitually picking up the paper week after week. Those readers might not take the time to write the editor if they disappear; they’ll just stop picking up the paper. Or they’ll write us to complain. I do understand that low ad revenue means low page counts, which means space is at a premium. (Space is a mysteriously complex issue even in “normal” times.) But it seems to me that the few crumbs — and I do mean crumbs — these papers save by axing cartoons is self-defeating. Heaven help us if the cost of cartoons makes or breaks the industry.

Emphasis mine. Derf and Tomorrow urge readers to write to their local alt. weekly editors and complain about the cartoon cuts. It would seem counterintuitive in an era when everyone just pops onto craigslist to get an apartment or a used dresser to cut original content that readers might actually, y’know, enjoy, but we’re living in an economy of nickels and dimes.

Somebody better figure out a way to make money off the Internet…pronto.

If you’re a lawyer, everything surrounding the strange history of Stan Lee Media is a fountain of endless, cool, refreshing litigation. Now “legendary” lawyer Martin Garbus is representing Stan Lee Media shareholders in a suit against Stan Lee, Ike Perlmutter, Avi Arad, and Marvel, alleging the shareholders are owed some $750 million in profits from Marvel’s movies based on Lee’s characters.

The shareholders of Stan Lee Media Inc claim in a lawsuit to be filed in New York that Lee, creator of Spider Man, Ironman and Incredible Hulk, transferred all his interest in Marvel characters to SLMI. That entity was placed into bankruptcy by Stan Lee in 2001 and re-emerged in November 2006 with new shareholders, who claim they are owed as much as $750 million.

Lee denies the allegations and has filed his own $50 million lawsuit against SLMI claiming the company has hijacked his name and image and is thwarting his effort to develop such properties as “The Accuser” and “The Drifter” and others via his first-look deals with Disney and Virgin Comics.

We may not be a lawyer, but if Garbus is going to try to prove that Stan Lee had any rights to his characters to ASSIGN to shareholders, we imagine he must also be having a mighty fine sale on bridges, as well. Stan long ago gave up any claim to Marvel characters, although it would be interesting to read the filings.

Other Stan Lee Media legal wranglings involve a previous attempt to sue Marvel for $5 billion, bankruptcy, an SEC suit against former CEO Peter Paul for stock manipulation during the last dotcom boom/bust, and many, many more murky matters, including a Hillary Clinton fundraiser that remains a cornerstone of Clinton-era conspiracy theorists. In fact, on his blog, Paul insists, as he long has, that this case will be a lid ripper of epic proportions:

The suit on behalf of Stan Lee Media, to be filed in Manhattan Federal Court shortly, will expose an array of corporate corruption, government misconduct, cover-ups and obstructions of justice involving former President Bill Clinton, Senator Hillary Clinton, federal Judge Howard Matz appointed by Clinton, the creator of Spider Man, Stan Lee, the Chairman and billion dollar shareholder of Marvel Entertainment, Isaak Perlmutter, and a major Wall Street Law Firm, among others.

This suit, and the reputation and skill of the legendary American lawyer who is bringing it, on behalf of shareholders of a dot com that has been at the center of the 2000-2005 Galagate scandal that caused Hillary Clinton’s finance director to be indicted and tried in 2005 for election law fraud, and finally cost Hillary Clinton the White House, should vindicate former Hollywood “mogul” Peter Paul’s efforts to blow the whistle on the corporate, political and judicial corruption he witnessed and documented since his Hollywood internet studio with pop culture icon Stan Lee, ran out of funds during the dot com melt down of December, 2000.

Yes, it never ends.

Update: Per the comments, I corrected the link to Stan Lee’s 1998 Marvel contract (also the basis of Stan’s 2002 lawsuit against Marvel.) The other link was to Stan’s 1998 agreement with Stan Lee Entertainment Inc, just one of dozens and dozens of lengthy legal documents you can read, that have, we’d guess, been uploaded by the current Stan Lee Media team as they seek to prove their claims of nefarious deeds.

In our very brief rundown of the legal shenanigans involving Stan Lee Media, we forgot Stan’s OWN suit against them. And probably a lot of other stuff. As much as we wish we could draw a pot of tea and spend the whole day digging into this, alas, we have other pressing matters, and we’ll leave you with this Barron’s article to bring you up to speed. We’ll note that someone is going around the web (and our own comments) to hint at further Stan/Pow! mischief.

AND ONE FINAL NOTE: We’ve been covering Stan Lee legal wrangling since 2002, and while we were researching this story, we were sad to find so much previous reporting (including our own) long scrubbed, In some ways, print is more eternal than the Web, boys and girls, and don’t you forget it.

§ At last, we have our mocap Tintin and it is Jamie Bell, who starred in BILLY ELLIOT, JUMPER and…oh yeah, he was that Jimmy kid in KING KONG, so we should have seen that coming. (Peter Jackson is co-producing the proposed TINTIN trilogy.) If you are thinking Bell is too old, as we mentioned before, it’s going to be motion capture to cgi. In addition, Daniel Craig has been cast as Red Rackham! Gad Elmaleh, Toby Jones and Mackenzie Crook have also been cast. The screenplay is by Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish (variously, Dr. WHO, SHAUN OF THE DEAD), which bodes well.

§ People are asking: Is Seth Rogen’s GREEN HORNET Dead? after rumors at Sundance.

§ People are also asking: Has Production on ASTROBOY Shut Down?

Sadly, they’re now reporting that production on Imagi’s Astroboy movie appears to have shut down. This comes just days after I last reported on the film, on how it appears to have just scraped through its troubles with the recession. They have no official word on the matter, just information from those that have been working on the film.

§ This story on fiscal caution at movie studios reveals that Marvel Studios offered $250,000 to Mickey Rourke to play a villain in Iron Man 2, meaning they are being quite thrifty (or cheap, depending on how you look at it.)

§ A new comic-book based movie! It seems that Kevin Monroe (TMNT and WAR MONKEYS) will direct El Zombo Fantasma which ws based on his own comic for Dark Horse.

Published in 2005, the film is being pitched as a “Latino Hellboy”. The story follows “the mysterious murder of the world’s most notorious Mexican wrestler who bargains his way out of an eternity of fiery damnation by returning to Los Angeles to play guardian angel to a troublesome teen, Belisa Montoya. He soon discovers that the teen is not what she seems and that their fates have been intertwined for centuries.” LatinoReview’s Kellvin Chavez and IESB’s Robert Santchez are among the film’s producers.

If this movie gets made, it will be one of the VERY VERY few comic books created by a director/actor/nerdlebrity to actually go to the screen.

§ A video interview with manga horror master Junji Ito (Uzumaki, Museum of Terror) from the SAME HAT! SAME HAT! guys:

Highlights from this fantastic and casual look into Junji Ito’s life & work include:

* Ito-san showing off his original script outlines and rough panel layouts, with descriptions of his process when creating manga.

* A long discussion of the influence of urban legends on Ito’s manga, how he got the idea and visual inspiration for Tomie, and how he became a manga artist.

* A tour of Junji Ito’s studio and art desk, process using mirrors and photo-references in his work, and much more!

§ Jeff Parker ponders reactions to the just-released MYSTERIUS THE UNFATHOMABLE #1 by Parker and Tom Fowler:

Yet, in the midst of all the high marks, I keep seeing comments and discussion as to WHY this book is being done at Wildstorm. The short answer is “because Senior Editor Ben Abernathy asked Tom and I what we would like to do.” But I don’t know how to address people who feel WS is supposed to do only post-Watchmen superhero stories. Maybe… they’d like to try other things? I think that’s it’s a question that doesn’t demand being asked- a publisher wants to expand their base beyond superheroes into other genres. Should we look a gift horse in the mouth or give it some carrots and encourage it to keep pulling?

I guess what I want to say here is- let’s stop putting everyone in boxes and be glad something like Mysterius can find a home (that provides nice coated paper stock to show off Dave McCaig colors).

§ Mangacast’s manga report cards continue with Dark Horse, which gets high marks:

Dark Horse was my pick for Publisher of the Year for 2008. Like Del Rey and Viz in the past, DH took care of business in 2008 by releasing great titles with good production values. By reinforcing their foundation of high quality seinen manga, DH not only did a fine job maintaining its core audience, with new A-level properties they reached out to new readers at a time when other pubs were struggling to find readers for their catalogs. Best of all DH continues to bring out challenging and unique titles to a market that needs to see more diversity.

A few links that we may have missed: Bandai Entertainment and BLU Manga.

§ Tim O’Shea interviews Mike Dawson on ACE-FACE and FREDDIE & ME:

O’Shea: How hard is it to try to promote a project as unique as Ace-Face when the sequential art marketplace seems to be redefining itself in many ways on a daily basis?

Dawson: Yeesh, I’m not sure… everything feels a bit out of sorts at the moment. I guess I’m going to find out how well things go. I’m really, really excited to be doing this book with Chris Pitzer at AdHouse. My Freddie & Me experience was great, but since Bloomsbury isn’t traditionally a comics publisher, I sometimes felt a little disconnected from the comics scene. I am really happy to have my book be a part of a full line of great comics and graphic novels this time around.

The next time some dope complains about the wrestling coverage on THE BEAT, whether it’s about Rey Mysterio wearing a Flash costume on pay-per-view or CHIKARA’s latest comic book-themed cover, we’ll just point them to this picture. (The match was from a show Sunday at Arena San Juan Pantitlan. Thanks for the tip to the lucha libre expert known as The Cubs Fan.)

Evan, if you’re out there reading this, sadly, their opponents were not Los X-Men.

Posted by Mark Coale

THE BEAT has a lot in the queue to be posted, but we’ve been delayed by what one might term “affairs in the world of men.” We’ll be back as events allow.

UPDATE: Well, as the book blogosphere has been reporting, PW’s Editor-in-Chief Sara Nelson was laid off this morning, along with three other staffers. Since their names haven’t been made public yet, I’ll refrain from naming them. And to answer many emails coming in, this hasn’t directly affected The Beat or me, as of yet.

I will say that Sara has been hugely supportive of comics, The Beat and me, and I’m truly saddened to see her leaving. Sara isn’t a comics nut, like Calvin and me, but she greatly supported increasing our coverage of the category as it grew; she’s that uncommon (in my experience) head who saw the value in things even when they weren’t “her” thing, among her many other virtues. I’m sure she’ll land on her feet.

As for The Beat, we’ll just keep on doing what we do best until they tell us to stop or the universe suffers heat death, whichever comes first.

Kevin Huizenga has announced that OR ELSE, his periodical comic from D&Q, will not have a sixth issue:

I’ve decided that Or Else (the series) is done. It doesn’t make sense to do it this way anymore. Drawn and Quarterly have been great and I want to thank them. For sure I will still be putting out a lot of books and zines, forever, so save your pennies, and watch this space for more news as it becomes available. Thanks for reading.

In a subsequent post, he mentions a new 28-page mini-comic, RUMBLING CHAPTER 2. that will be available at USSCATASTROPHE. THe new comic has the same cover as the proposed OR ELSE #6, so one might guess some of the material will appear there.

Huizenga has declined further comment on the move. It’s easy to speculate that ending a low-selling — if critically acclaimed — indie periodical might be part of the fallout of Diamond’s recent moves, but let’s not jump to any conclusions.

Via Bill K.

Word via email and Twitter that Neil Gaiman’s THE GRAVEYARD BOOK has won the ultra-prestigious Newbery Award for children’s literature.

The awards are being presented at the winter ALA. According to The Beat’s reporter on the scene, Toon Books also won a Geisel Honor for Stinky by Eleanor Davis.

We’ll have official word as it’s released. Here’s Gaiman’s blog post on the matter. Congrats to Neil. We’re sure that of all the many honors he has won in his career, this must be one of the most treasured.

UPDATE: Complete list of winners here.

This week’s events include workshops and a Linda Medley appearance at the Seattle Public Library, a birthday signing for Mike Oeming, and a new opera by Harvey Pekar! There’s also an event on Tuesday that should be of special interest to BEAT readers…

Tuesday, January 27

New York, NY, 8 PM – Dan Slott and Heidi MacDonald at Comic Book Club

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN writer Dan Slott and The BEAT’s own Heidi MacDonald will share the stage at this week’s installment of New York’s regular live comic book talk show at the People’s Improv Theatre! Admission is $5.

Check out the rest of the week’s events under the cut!

(more…)

(AP Photo by Thibault Camus)

As previously reported, Paris’s famed Louvre museum is now housing an exhibition featuring comic books by some of the world’s best cartoonists, another signpost on comics’ Road to Global Domination.

The Louvre rarely showcases modern art. That fact alone makes this exhibition worth noting, and since this exhibition is as modern as it gets — the artwork on display is from original books commissioned by the museum. The artists were given essentially free rein, as long as their work included the exhibition’s Theme Ingredient: the Louvre itself.

BoDoi has a look at some pages by the European contributors.

Both Nicolas De Crécy and Marc-Antoine Mathieu have had their contribution to the project published on this side of the Atlantic by NBM Press. De Crécy’s GLACIAL PERIOD was nominated for a 2007 Eisner Award, and Mathieu’s MUSEUM VAULTS achieved similar fame upon its release last January.

The next Louvre book to be published should be Éric Liberge’s ODD HOURS, followed by ROHAN AT THE LOUVRE by Japan’s Hirohiko Araki, and a book by Belgium’s Bernard Yslaire which was created digitally — it seems that the Louvre showed his work on video monitors rather than in frames.

GLACIAL PERIOD was originally published in France in 2005, which testifies to how long this project has been in process, and we’re still years off from seeing all the books published stateside, since Araki and Yslaire have yet to finish their contributions. The exhibition is on display through April 13. Anyone been there yet?

Posted by Aaron Humphrey.

One comics genre that only old-timers talk about is “funny animals,” and it concerns the foibles and fantasies of humans beings thrown into relief by a cast of anthropomorphized creatures, often cute or endearing. Children like funny-animal comics (and cartoons — Bugs Bunny, Tom and Jerry), but a few of the comics greats were of this genre — Krazy Kat being the best known example — and it was very popular in the ’50s. Crumb’s Fritz the Cat was the jazzed up, “Funny animals aren’t just for kids anymore” version, and Gerber’s Howard the Duck continued that tradition.

It is also, of course, the staple of Disney and the great Carl Barks, and perhaps because of its corporate/childish origins, it hasn’t been much in fashion among US cartoonists for more than 20 years. In Northern Europe, however, where Disney comics reign supreme, you’ll still find artists working in the funny animal genre, notably the peerless Jason, but also the Swedish Martin Kellerman with Rocky, a very funny strip about the mishaps of Gen Xers/Milennials. Fantagraphics has published two ROCKY collections, but luckily you can also read it online. Rocky himself is a cartoon dog whose bad luck gets him into trouble and raging neurosis keeps him there. His friends are good-natured slackers with an equal lack of survival skills, and the universal situations, along with Kellerman’s wit — which comes across even in translation — makes for a very enjoyable reading experience.

We should note that Onstad’s ACHEWOOD is another strip in the funny animal tradition, and perhaps the most progressive example of the genre.