Time once again for the “Lost” running diary after the jump. Spoilers ahoy, you are forewarned. A brief mention
about the clip show before the premiere. Michael Emerson could probably spend the rest of his career doing voice-overs. So very great.

9:01 – This recap would be more helpful if we hadn’t just had a clip show for an hour.
9:02 – At least we didn’t start with Jack’s eye.
9:03 – Weekly Woodsman?
9:03 – You can let go now.
9:05 – First bit of weirdness. What was Desmond reading?
9:06 – Underwater?
9:09 – Déjà vu all over again
9:10 – Kate’s Eye.
9:13 – Guest star credits reveal too much.
9:14 – I guess the favorite curse word in the Lostverse is “son of a bitch”
9:15 – Our first undead returnee.
9:17 – When did Jin’s English get so good?
9:18 – Sayid’s Choice instead of Sophie’s Choice for Jack?
9:19 – Hurley sees dead people? OR was Jacob rebooted too after the bomb?
9:22 – So, is Shannon not on this plane?
9:26 – Everyone says they’re the good guys. Even Ben did once.
9:27 – Ben’s skills at lying seem on the wane.
9:33 – Again, with the temple.
9:35 – Was Desmond reading OUR MUTUAL FRIEND?
9:36 – Chasing the Dragon is still a bad idea for Charlie.
9:39 – This might be more screen time for Cindy the Stewardess than in the first 5 seasons combined.
9:43 – Shouldn’t everyone know who is Jacob by now?
9:45 – Fat Guy = Red Shirt
9:46 – Smoke Monster coming in 5 4 3 2 1.
9;47 – There are ways around a ring of protection.
9:48 – QUESTIONS ANSWERED: 1 (sort of)
9:54 – Please let this be the beginning of Sawyer’s heel turn.
9:56 – Is that a return of Greg Grunberg as the captain over the PA?
9:57 – the return of the end-of-show montage
10:04 – Does Sawyer know Miles can talk to dead people?
10:06 – HA. Missing coffin
10:10 – The whispering is back. So has it always been “the real Others” and not, as some thought last year, the cast hearing themselves time displaced?
10:16 – Head wound same place for Edward the Federal Marshal?
10:17 – No “Freckles?”
10:20 – New characters? Look, another member of the Deadwood Alumni Association.
10:22 – That’s a big ankh.
10:23 – A trojan ankh.
10:23 – Too bad that wasn’t Ben’s List from Season 2.
10:24 – Fountain of Youth at the Temple?
10:29 – So, is that money still in Jin’s suitcase?
10:31 – The Island has a Lazarus Pit.
10:32 – I guess this is the trade-off for Ben’s dip in the pool after being shot by Sayid.
10:34 – Dead. Or “dead?”
10:39 – Something bad is going to happen to either Sayid or Nadia because of Kate.
10:42 – Or maybe Claire.
10:44 – Nothing saying enlightened Japanese guy like doing Bonsai.
10:46 – But… Rose didn’t want to leave?
10:47 – Damn creepy Terry O’Quinn there. Straight out of THE STEPFATHER.
10:48 – “Home is where you wear you hat.”
10:52 – Miles knows that he’s not dead.
10:55 – The friendliest Jack and Locke have ever been.
10:56 – Uh oh.
10:57 – Black Rock reference?
10:59 – That’s got to be leading to a Christian Shephard appearance.

Just a wee sampling:

Carmine Infantino, June Foray, and Dorf.

The caption says: From the left, Ken Krueger, Richard Butner, Barry Alfonso (kneeling), Greg Weir,Steve Stockbarger, Michelle Smith (in back), Dawn Greil, Rita Terrell, Chuck Graham (in back), ?, and Bill Lund.

Here you see people who appear to be actually lounging by the pool of the El Cortez. Jack Kirby is visible, and Neal Adams is at the center of the hubbub.

Finally, that day we’ve been waiting for all year. The season premiere of Lost. I mean, Groundhog Day. Click to see the rest of that rodent-filled cartoon by the great creator of Cul de Sac, Richard Thompson.

As for Lost, yes, the recap/discussion thread will return tomorrow for this last season of nerdville’s favorite television program.

posted by Mark Coale

The roll-out for the Bendis/Romita Jr. AVENGERS continues, with Spider-Woman!

Pixar’s UP became only the second animated feature ever to be nominated for Best Picture (BEAUTY AND THE BEAST got the nod in 1991) but it comes in the year of the “Expanded Best Picture” nods — the Academy decided to have 10 Best Pictures nominees instead of the usual 5, leading to things like UP and DISTRICT 9 getting kudos they would never have received in the old system–not that UP didn’t richly deserve the honor.

The Best Animated feature nominees include CORALINE, FANTASTIC MR. FOX, THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG, UP, and a surprise — THE SECRET OF KELLS, an Irish-Belgian animated film with the voices of Brendan Gleeson and Mick Lally that won’t be out in the US until spring.

Complete list of noms in the jump, including a shameful nomination for TRANSFORMERS:

Nominees for the 82nd annual Academy Awards

Best picture

“Avatar”
“The Blind Side”
“District 9″
“An Education”
“The Hurt Locker”
“Inglourious Basterds”
“Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”
“A Serious Man”
“Up”
“Up in the Air”

Best actor

Jeff Bridges, “Crazy Heart”
George Clooney, “Up in the Air”
Colin Firth, “A Single Man”
Morgan Freeman, “Invictus”
Jeremy Renner, “The Hurt Locker

Best actress

Sandra Bullock, “The Blind Side”
Helen Mirren, “The Last Station”
Carey Mulligan, “An Education”
Gabourey Sidibe, “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”
Meryl Streep, “Julie & Julia”

Best supporting actor

Matt Damon, “Invictus”
Woody Harrelson, “The Messenger”
Christopher Plummer, “The Last Station”
Stanley Tucci, “The Lovely Bones”
Christoph Waltz, “Inglourious Basterds”

Best supporting actress

Penelope Cruz, “Nine”
Vera Farmiga, “Up in the Air”
Maggie Gyllenhaal, “Crazy Heart”
Anna Kendrick, “Up in the Air”
Mo’Nique, “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”

Best director

James Cameron, “Avatar”
Kathryn Bigelow, “The Hurt Locker”
Lee Daniels, “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”
Quentin Tarantino, “Inglourious Basterds”
Jason Reitman, “Up in the Air”

Best animated feature

“Coraline”
“Fantastic Mr Fox”
“The Princess and the Frog”
“The Secret of Kells”
“Up”

Best foreign language film

“Ajami” (Israel)
“El Secreto de Sus Ojos” (Argentina)
“The Milk of Sorrow” (Peru)
“The Prophet” (France)
“The White Ribbon” (Germany)

Best screenplay (original)

“The Hurt Locker,” written by Mark Boal
“Inglourious Basterds,” written by Quentin Tarantino
“The Messenger,” written by Alessandro Camon and Oren Moverman
“A Serious Man,” written by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
“Up,” screenplay by Bob Peterson, Pete Docter; story by Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, Tom McCarthy

Best screenplay (adapted)

“District 9,” written by Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell
“An Education,” screenplay by Nick Hornby
“In the Loop,” screenplay by Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche
“Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire,” screenplay by Geoffrey Fletcher
“Up in the Air,” screenplay by Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner

Best music (original score)

“Avatar” James Horner
“Fantastic Mr. Fox” Alexandre Desplat
“The Hurt Locker” Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders
“Sherlock Holmes” Hans Zimmer
“Up” Michael Giacchino

Best music (original song)

“Almost There” from “The Princess and the Frog,” music and lyrics by Randy Newman
“Down in New Orleans” from “The Princess and the Frog,” music and lyrics by Randy Newman
“Loin de Paname” from “Paris 36,” music by Reinhardt Wagner and lyrics by Frank Thomas
“Take It All” from “Nine,” music and lyrics by Maury Yeston
“The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)” from “Crazy Heart,” music and lyrics by Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett

Best art direction

“Avatar” art direction: Rick Carter and Robert Stromberg; set decoration: Kim Sinclair
“The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” art direction: Dave Warren and Anastasia Masaro; set decoration: Caroline Smith
“Nine” art direction: John Myhre; set decoration: Gordon Sim
“Sherlock Holmes” art direction: Sarah Greenwood; set decoration: Katie Spencer
“The Young Victoria” art direction: Patrice Vermette; set decoration: Maggie Gray

Best cinematography

“Avatar” Mauro Fiore
“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” Bruno Delbonnel
“The Hurt Locker” Barry Ackroyd
“Inglourious Basterds” Robert Richardson
“The White Ribbon” Christian Berger

Best costume design

“Bright Star” Janet Patterson
“Coco before Chanel” Catherine Leterrier
“The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” Monique Prudhomme
“Nine” Colleen Atwood
“The Young Victoria” Sandy Powell

Best documentary (feature)

“Burma VJ” Anders Østergaard and Lise Lense-Møller
“The Cove” Nominees to be determined
“Food, Inc.” Robert Kenner and Elise Pearlstein
“The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers” Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith
“Which Way Home” Rebecca Cammisa

Best documentary (short subject)

“China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province” Jon Alpert and Matthew O’Neill
“The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner” Daniel Junge and Henry Ansbacher
“The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant” Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert
“Music by Prudence” Roger Ross Williams and Elinor Burkett
“Rabbit à la Berlin” Bartek Konopka and Anna Wydra

Best film editing

“Avatar” Stephen Rivkin, John Refoua and James Cameron
“District 9″ Julian Clarke
“The Hurt Locker” Bob Murawski and Chris Innis
“Inglourious Basterds” Sally Menke
“Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” Joe Klotz

Best makeup

“Il Divo” Aldo Signoretti and Vittorio Sodano
“Star Trek” Barney Burman, Mindy Hall and Joel Harlow
“The Young Victoria” Jon Henry Gordon and Jenny Shircore

Best short film (animated)

“French Roast” Fabrice O. Joubert
“Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty” Nicky Phelan and Darragh O’Connell
“The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte)” Javier Recio Gracia
“Logorama” Nicolas Schmerkin
“A Matter of Loaf and Death” Nick Park

Best short film (live action)

“The Door” Juanita Wilson and James Flynn
“Instead of Abracadabra” Patrik Eklund and Mathias Fjellström
“Kavi” Gregg Helvey
“Miracle Fish” Luke Doolan and Drew Bailey
“The New Tenants” Joachim Back and Tivi Magnusson

Best sound editing

“Avatar” Christopher Boyes and Gwendolyn Yates Whittle
“The Hurt Locker” Paul N.J. Ottosson
“Inglourious Basterds” Wylie Stateman
“Star Trek” Mark Stoeckinger and Alan Rankin
“Up” Michael Silvers and Tom Myers

Best sound mixing

“Avatar” Christopher Boyes, Gary Summers, Andy Nelson and Tony Johnson
“The Hurt Locker” Paul N.J. Ottosson and Ray Beckett
“Inglourious Basterds” Michael Minkler, Tony Lamberti and Mark Ulano
“Star Trek” Anna Behlmer, Andy Nelson and Peter J. Devlin
“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” Greg P. Russell, Gary Summers and Geoffrey Patterson

Best visual effects

“Avatar” Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham and Andrew R. Jones
“District 9″ Dan Kaufman, Peter Muyzers, Robert Habros and Matt Aitken
“Star Trek” Roger Guyett, Russell Earl, Paul Kavanagh and Burt Dalton

While the usual suspects — POCAHONTAS, DANCES WITH WOLVES, FERNGULLY — have been well annotated, Rich Johnston digs up yet another old comic that featured bluish flying peoples.

And Heavy.com continues its investigation of Avatargate in which the all-time money maker movie is based on an obscure 2000 A.D. strip.

Botanist Hendrick Larsen arrives on the planet Gennyo-Leil, to live among the native Kesheen and explore the world – home to the Firekind, huge dragons full of miracle drugs that make humans young and virile again. Larsen needs to wear something called a Filter:Mask at all times, since the atmosphere of Gennyo-Leil kills humans. After watching the Kesheen have weird, unsettling alien sex practices, Larsen is blamed for several massacres and cast out, to die alone. What happens next is the weird drugs in the atmosphere re-wire Larsen’s brain, letting him join a tribe of outcast natives (outcast for having kinky sex, in case you needed to know) and share in their psychic link. Pretty soon a band of sadistic mercenaries show up (having framed Larsen for the earlier atrocities, intent on killing all the Kesheen and stealing their dragon-drugs. Backed into a corner, Larsen has no choice but to summon the destructive all-god of the planet, turning wildlife and a massive colossus against the human fleet and turning his back on his own species.

With all due respect to these tireless investigators, we’re with Graeme McMillan on this one: Yes, Yes, We Get It: Avatar Is Unoriginal.

We’re not saying that James Cameron didn’t, necessarily, rip off these comics – although it’s unlikely – or any number of other sources, but we’re surprised by how many of these claims are being made. Is it because the movie is so unoriginal, or just so successful? And can everyone stop with the accusations before we start feeling sorry for James Cameron?

Perhaps part of the reason the story in AVATAR sounds so familiar is that James Cameron was channeling the pulp milieu with the kind of simple story — stranger in a strange land — that was a staple in SF from ERB to John W. Campbell and beyond. And Roger Dean, whom so many have compared the film’s look to, was following in the footsteps –with airbrush — of Frazetta, Virgil Finlay, Kelly Freas, and so on.

Now, it is true that Cameron’s pulp homage with future-making movie effects is still more on the nose than say, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, which similarly mines pulp tropes but with fresher characters and dialog. A word of warning, King of the World: when you spend years looking into a monitor, it’s quite possible you just lose that ear for dialog.

§ Matthias Wivvel has his wrapup of Angoulême 2010 including an appreciation of Baru:

In this context, it seems auspicious that the Grand Prix winner (for his life’s work) is Baru (aka. Hervé Baruléa, b. 1947), in that he is one of the great proponents of a working class and immigrant perspective in Francophone comics. Best know to American readers for the gorgeous but comparatively minor Road to America (1995-97, Drawn and Quarterly ed. 2002), his first major work, Quéquette Blues (1984-1986) pretty much established the blueprint for his work — a gripping tale of youthful enthusiasm and rebelliousness set in a working class suburb. It remains an energetically humanist portrayal of youth with a strong socio-political undercurrent. The masterpiece is L’Autoroute du soleil (1996), first serialized in the early 90s in the Japanese weekly Morning, which adapts the expansive storytelling techniques and page count of manga to tell a road story of two young working class men on the run from a neo-Nazi group. It is simultaneously a portrait of post-industrial France and a moving coming-of-age-story. Of late, Baru has tended toward self-repetition to diminishing returns, but he is still a major voice in Francophone comics, presenting an important, rarely-seen point of view.

§ Geek-o-system has several of their geek-oriented Power Grid rankings, including Top 30 Geeky Writers, which includes many of the folks you’d think it would include.

§ USA Today blogger Whitney Matheson went to the SNL-powered fundraiser for the stage version of Phoebe Gloeckner’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl

Marielle Heller is adapting Gloeckner’s 2002 book as a play. It follows a teen girl in ’70s San Francisco who, among other things, has a sexual relationship with her mother’s boyfriend. It’s a pretty intense story but worth reading and beautifully drawn. (You can preview several pages on Amazon.)

§ Some people have been puzzled — REALLY– by the iPad’s adaptation of the golden mean screen 4:3 ratio but this mystical size is juuuuuust riiiiight for some magical, mystical objects:

Take a look at any newsstand. Most magazines you’ll find are in roughly 4:3 format. This is true not only for the US, but I measured some French and British magazines as well, and it’s close to being an industry standard. Newspapers will also be more readable in 4:3 than widescreen. And look at books: most hardcovers are around 4.5:3, as are most trade paperbacks.

One of the selling points for the iPad is its use as an e-book reader, using Apple’s iBooks software, and Jason Snell sees the iPad as a great device for displaying comics, saying, “the iPad’s 1024-by-768-pixel display, while in the unfashionable 4:3 aspect ratio, is just about the right shape for a comic-book page.”

§ Jimmy Callaway at PopMatters looks at The Grim Superheroics of Rick Veitch

§ Chris Butcher says the Beguiling, one of Toronto’s most prominent comics stores, will no longer be carrying Bluewater comics.

§ Return with us to the ’90s for the story of whatever happened to BoHoS and Maggie Whorf, teen comics scribe:

With all the talk of women in comics and comics for women that has gone on over the past few years, I’m always surprised that very few people brings up BoHoS. Unlike most comics aimed at teenage girls, this was actually written by one.

§ #Gailhateswomen: The Twitter Meme ….gimme a break.

§ Craig Thompson is still alive!

§ Blogging is hard!

Or so says a new Marvel teaser campaign. First poster above. So Cap has got a gun for good now? So it goes.

EDIT: You know I forgot to mention that the book is written by Brian Michael Bendis with art by John Romita Jr.

It’s all part of a larger pricing battle — while in general, it’s hard not to be sympathetic with the book publishing’s desire to survive, charging for the cost of a nice trade paperback for a few bits and bytes is kinda ridiculous. The NY Times writes:

For more than a year, publishers have been fretting about the price of digital books, which Amazon, as the dominant player in the fast-growing market, had effectively been able to set.

Last Thursday, Mr. Sargent flew to Seattle to explain the pricing and new sales model to Amazon. He said Amazon could continue to buy e-books on the same terms it does now — allowing the retailer to set consumer prices — but that the publisher would delay the release of all digital editions by several months after the hardcover publication.

Amazon buys and resells e-books in the same way it handles printed books, by paying publishers a wholesale price that is generally equivalent to half the list price of a print edition. Because Amazon has discounted the price of most new and popular e-books on its Kindle e-reader to $9.99, it loses money on most of those sales.

There’s much more commentary on the net about all of this, as one might imagine Tom Spurgeon weighs in here. Cory Doctorow has a long piece at Boing Boing that paints a clear picture of the obvious. The reader is gonna be the biggest loser in all these e-wars:

And if one of the five titans that control almost all of publishing gets into a scrap with one of the four or five titans that control almost all ebook publishing, or the one company that rules the audiobook market, the collateral damage is that you will have to choose to eschew a gigantic slice of all the literature ever made in order to hang on to your library, or abandon your library in order to get access to that publisher’s work. Or fill your shoulderbag with a half-dozen tablets and readers, one for each permutation of which corporate elephant is trying to crush another.

Readers became friends with your characters, so understandably, they grieved — and are still grieving — when the strip ended. What would you like to tell them?

This isn’t as hard to understand as people try to make it. By the end of 10 years, I’d said pretty much everything I had come there to say.

It’s always better to leave the party early. If I had rolled along with the strip’s popularity and repeated myself for another five, 10 or 20 years, the people now “grieving” for “Calvin and Hobbes” would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I’d be agreeing with them.

I think some of the reason “Calvin and Hobbes” still finds an audience today is because I chose not to run the wheels off it.

I’ve never regretted stopping when I did.

via

The Wizard North American tour comprises 10 different shows and the schedule stands as follows:
Wizard World Comic Con Tour:
March 26-28, 2010, Toronto Comic Con, Direct Energy Centre
April 16-18, 2010, Anaheim Comic Con, Anaheim Convention Center
June 11-13, 2010, Philadelphia Comic Con, Philadelphia Convention Center
August 19-22, 2010, Chicago Comic Con, Donald E. Stephens (Rosemont) Convention Center
October 7-10, 2010, Big Apple Comic Con, Pier 94
October 15-17, 2010, New Jersey Comic Con, New Jersey Convention and Expo Center
November 12-14, 2010, Austin Comic Con, Austin Convention Center
Atlanta Comic Con, TBD
Cincinnati Comic Con, TBD
New England Comic Con, TBD

With three cons to be scheduled, the obvious openings are May and July — what show gets to go against mighty San Diego? Word on the grapevine is that Shamus hopes to run a show a month, and he’s well on his way to that goal.

Gareb Shamus, CEO of New York based Wizard Entertainment, today announced the acquisition of  the Cincinnati Comic & Anime Show in Ohio which is now Cincinnati Comic Con Wizard World Convention.
 
“What Marc accomplished in his first year of the Cincinnati show inspired us,” said Shamus. “We’re excited to have fans experience our Comic Con for the very first time. We promise to bring an event filled with artists, writers, creators, celebrities and so much more.”  
 
Shamus bought the Cincinnati Comic & Anime Show from Marc Ballard, convention producer and owner of ComicCityTN. Ballard will advise and consult on the show to provide insight on local customs and traditions.  
 
“To be able to partner with Wizard to expand this show is so exciting; for me, for the fans and for the local business owners,” said Ballard.
 
Attendees can anticipate the strong caliber lineup of stars and exhibitors that fans across the nation have come to expect.
 
New dates, venue and ticket on-sales will be announced soon.  
 
For information on all Comic Con tour stops visit www.wizardworld.com.

The Comics Reporter has the rest of the prize winners here. Winners include Riad Sattouf and Joe Daly, but please go check out the entire list before we spoil it for you.

More from the fest:

§ Matthias Wivel for the The Comics Journal:

Today’s program included an appearance by R. Crumb who was here to talk about Genesis to a packed lecture hall at the comics center. Sadly, the interviewer was badly prepared and asked only uninspiring questions that Crumb could evade with his trademark self-irony. Badly informed and prepared interviewers, unfortunately, have long been a problem of the festival programming and although steps have been taken to rectify it in recent years, it still far from a solved problem. When you have Crumb in front of you and the Bible as your subject, you shouldn’t waste time talking about Fritz the Cat, sexual obsessions, or the other cliches of Crumb’s career, and you sure shouldn’t allow the man to get away with his “I have no answer for you, I just did it that way”, especially not when there are openings to talk about his thoughts on faith or history as presented in the Old Testament.

§ Bart Beaty’s report suggests it was a hell of a show:

Here are the arguments of the “Yes” side: First, to put a festival on the last weekend of January is to defy the gods of weather — you should expect a little snow, and, besides, it always cleared up in the afternoon. Second, there were so many excellent books on display it is crazy to criticize the Festival on these grounds. Put it this way: Robert Crumb and Joe Sacco were here promoting two of the best books of recent memory and their offerings simply blended in. Comics are raising the bar so high that we risk becoming jaded to the presence of exceptional works in our midst. Third, it is true that none of the shows will be rhapsodized about at future events with a “you shoulda been here when…” tone, but the great exhibitions were thick on the ground: Neaud, Gerner, FRMK, Lecroart (comics made out of wood!), Fabio, did we mention Blutch? If you didn’t like this show, you were blind.

§ Bleeding Cool finds photographic evidence.

Geoff Boucher at the LA Times, has an interview with director Sylvain White:

Wizard has HTM booked for 7 events this year and WWE had only 1 event for HTM. HTM would have suffered a serious negative cash flow by taking the WWE booking since they want a “no compete” clause over several months after the HOF. HTM would have been handcuffed with no way to provide income for his family during the “no compete’ months. The dollar figure from WWE for the one event was less than HTM could make in one weekend at Wizard World. Therefore HTM decided 7 dates with Wizard would mean 10 times the money WWE was offering and Wizard does not have a “no compete” clause.

Or a futuristic alien from Click n’ Drag circa 1996:

The Black Eyed Peas went full-on comic book.

Is that Judge Fergie I spy?

And doom.i.am?

Beyonce came out with a full battalion of some kind of death troopers behind her, but we couldn’t find a picture of it. and courtesy of io9’s own futistic Grammy galery, here’s a look at her Imperial Guard retainers:

Luckily. The Jonas Brothers came as characters from a Gilbert Hernandez comic:

And while you can rejoice that there will always be a fat guy in a knit cap…

The sad reality is that some poor victim is always going to have to sit behind Lady Gaga’s headpiece and miss ALL the action.

To answer the question many had, no, the Beat archives will NOT be hosted here any more. They will be moved to the new site. Unfortunately, getting the old posts moved was beyond my own limited WordPress skills since THIS blog is hosted on such an old version of WP that none of the export functions work. *Sigh.*

Thanks for blowing our minds all these years.

In his next tweet he hinted:

ps. DINOSAUR is coming next week.

Frank Miller rides again!

In the end, she argues, the iPad is more of a dedicated device, as opposed to the amazing Tricorder: lacking multitasking, like a TV, it tunes into one function at a time. In that regard it is certainly not the be-all and end-all.

The mood is more hopeful among Big Media types, probably because they are fucking desperate for a white knight at this point. They want someone –anyone — to rescue themselves from the black hole they have gotten into.

Hope that paywalls — increasingly erected by such newspapers as the WSJ, with the NY Times following suit eventually — would be a solution were firmly dashed by the horrifying results of the Newsday experiment. The “fourth” daily in the New York Area, Newsday is known as the daily paper of Long Island. After putting their content behind a paywall for three months, the total number of paid subscribers at $5 a pop?

35.

35.

You can bet that number is haunting a lot of people. You could literally have made more money with a dinky display ad for a week. Of course there is a caveat:

The reason for this awful performance, according to Newsday, is that the website’s offered for free to “Millions of Cablevision customers in the New York tri-state area and 75 percent of Long Island households, including all Newsday home delivery subscribers, now have exclusive access to newsday.com at no additional charge,” Newsday said in a statement reported at Paid Content.

Watching the listed reasons why Newsday got only 35 people in three months is totally funny, and shows to what lengths people will go to protect a dumb idea. All of the points made miss a common fact of Internet life: people pay to be entertained, not informed. It’s easy to click from one site to the other to get what the user considers is the same information.

While Apple seems eager to be the middle for saving Old Media, despair over these kinds of figures isn’t helping any.

I, for one, am not champing at the bit to get an iPad — a feeling I’m sure will change once I actually see one, but for now, I’m happy with my wee little iPhone. And, perhaps oddly, I see the lack of multitasking as more of a benefit for the iPad/iPhone appliance. If this is the gadget that will save books, why the hell would I WANT to be doing 20 things at once? The appeal of “Curling up with a good book” is part of why e-readers have comfy cozy “K sound” names: Kindle, Nook. I do not want to read Wuthering Heights, answer my email, retweet, look at the temperature, write a a blog post, edit ringtones and play Zelda all at the same time. I do enough of that on my computer as it is….and it’s psychologically taxing! I think we need a little bit MORE attention focus, not less. A lot of us would love to snuggle up with something that doubles our attention economy.

Anyway, do you really think the Tricorder could really analyze alien blood samples and look up hailing frequencies on Wikipedia at the same time?

Brownfield’s argument is that it takes so long to create a comic book – or God knows, an event — that such things can’t quickly be set in motion. Which makes sense as far as it goes. But then how do you explain this:

and this:

So you’re telling me that the new Avengers featuring Gorilla Man and the JLA featuring Congorilla is sheer coincidence? YOU expect me to believe that comic book writers love giant apes? Come on now. Next, you’ll be telling me they like Dr. Who.

Robot 6 had some good thoughts on the Heroic Age image by the way.

MacPherson points out that there are exceptions– Kevin Smith and Gerard Way, f’r instance. And that said, the above cover by Jeffrey Spokes is very sharp.

§ Bart Beaty’s Angoulême adventures continue.

§ Chris Mautner looks at Scholastic’s 2010 plans

§ Daniel Craig is taking over the lead role in COWBOYS AND ALIENS.

§ Charlie Jane Anders looks at The Worst Superhero Film Of All Time

§ Wired points out yet another example of a poorly named comic.

§ AND….we all know that AVATAR ripped off DANCES WITH WOLVES, POCAHONTAS, and FERNGULLY, but did it also rip off an obscure British comic?

§ This is more news, but CO2 comics, the new outfit launched by Gerry Giovinco and Co. is reliving the ’80s in style with a web-reprint of THE WORLD OF GINGER FOX by Mike Baron and Mitch O’Connell.

The World of Ginger Fox by Mike Baron and Mitch O’Connell, originally published by Comico in 1986 as a 64-page graphic novel, is nothing short of stylish eye candy derived from the exciting nineteen eighties’ era of high hair, shoulder pads, and excesses of wealth. Ginger Fox is presented anew beginning this week on the web pages of CO2 Comics produced by former Comico publishers Bill Cucinotta and Gerry Giovinco. The tale of romance, adventure and intrigue, set in the Hollywood of the mid-eighties featuring the smart, sexy and savvy Ginger Fox and a cast of strippers, martial artists, hit men, drug addicts, gat-toting bodyguards and celebrity cameos will be released in weekly installments and is available without fee or subscription as are all comics currently available at www.co2comics.com.

Understandably, I hope, I’m going to be a little busy with the migration and figuring a lot of things out (been “learning” CSS on the fly, after a fashion) at least for the next few days. The new site should roll out pretty quickly, although it’s going to keep evolving. So The Beat will be a little quiet for a while…although if one particular story we’ve heard brewing is true, we’re going to need to jump into action pretty damned fast! And on that tantalizing note…

The move is a combination of many things, but mainly the fact that PW is focusing on its B-to-B business plan, and The Beat, for better or worse, is really a consumer site. With PW’s move to a new web platform and impending ownership change at some point, it just didn’t make as much sense to continue to partner up.

I want to stress that the move is completely amicable, and everyone here at PW — Brian Kenney, Cevin Bryerman, Ron Shank, Dan Blank, and departed folks such as Sara Nelson and David Nudo — have always been incredibly supportive and appreciative of my efforts here. And of course Calvin Reid is the best boss/partner in crime anyone could ever ask for and has helped me out in innumerable ways and, I’m sure, will continue to do so. The current team has been incredibly helpful with the move, and they have my deepest thanks and appreciation. And I will be continuing in my non-Beat PW work, such as editing PW Comics Week and the graphic novel review section.

The move will be taking place over the next few weeks, but it’s been brewing for a while, leading to some distraction for your humble blogger, meaning I haven’t been as on top of some big stories as I should have been. The good news is that with a new site, The Beat will have more resources and flexibility than ever, and hopefully will be moving full steam ahead in the weird world of the future, or at least be iPad compliant.

We’ll have more ad placements in the new home, so anyone interested should shoot me a line. The Beat is also looking at some interesting partnerships which will also roll out in due time.

I started The Beat at Comicon.com in June 2004, meaning that at 5 1/2 years, I have probably been blogging every day about comics for longer than anyone else out there. (Dirk started before me, but he took a long break to edit the Journal.) When I started, the blogosphere was still a youngling at Jedi school, and I was making things up as I went along. As I watch the explosion of nerdcentric blogs (see previous item) it’s fascinating to track their evolution. The one-person shop pioneered by Dirk, Tom and myself has given way to corporate sponsored teams in the Gawker mold, or mini online magazines as I like to think of them. As more and more outlets emerge, link blogging becomes huger and huger, and original content becomes even more time consuming — and yet even more important. Blogging has evolved in so many ways, from mere curation to the trusted source to driving the media narrative of politics and social change.

The Beat will continue to evolve with all of this. Where exactly it will end up, I’m not exactly certain. But I will enjoy the journey, and hope you do, too.

GeekWeek launched not ago, a sort of Huffington Post for topics ranging from nerd news to music to sports. It’s spearheaded by Jeff Katz of American Originals with many other contributors.

Mediaite, Dan Abram’s media site has just launched Geekosystem, another geek-o-centric blog with such pieces as 30 Gloriously Geeky Actors and Directors on its Power Grid ranking system.

Even as geek literacy expands on the net, Geek Monthly magazine a quaint paper-based system of providing text and photographs has closed, leaving some contributors unpaid. iPad, save us!