Still on our hellish fishing trip, tracking the wiley kracken through the deep as we round Cape Fear for parts unknown. Not much to say. But did you know tai chi can boost the immune system and help the elderly resist shingles? These ladies do.

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Another 300-mashup vid courtesy of DEFAMER.

At Yahoo. We are really looking forward to this!

A flickr set of SF cover art by Ron Turner :

[Link via Boing Boing, which by the way was on a rampage this week of awesomeness we could only someday hope to emulate.]

[Thanks to GF for the link.]

Word is going around that POISON ELVES artist Drew Hayes has passed away. He had apparently had several health issues over the years, but we don’t know any more than that. Hayes self-published POISON ELVES in the early 90s before moving it over to Sirius, gaining a following for its quirky storyline and detailed art that mixed fantasy with dark humor.

You can see a little bit about POISON ELVES publishing history here, and a tribute page is here. More info when we get it.

UPDATE: Since there has been no other confirmation of this, we called up the source of the news, Jeannie Savell, of The Comic Boxx in Cleburne, TX for any more information. Jeannie confirms that the news is true, reported from Bryan Chapman, a close friend of Hayes.

Our condolences to Hayes’s family and friends.

FURTHER INFO: Newsarama posts obit from Sirius:

Sirius Entertainment is saddened to report that Drew Hayes, the maverick creator of POISON ELVES, has died in his hometown of Bellingham, Washington. Drew had a heart attack while suffering from pneumonia. He is survived by his daughter, Mary and his mother, Sharon.

Drew had been hospitalized more than once over the last several years, but his return to good health had been anticipated, so the suddenness of his passing was an unexpected shock to those that knew him. Drew was 37 years old.

Tom has the complete list of Reuben Award Nominees, but until we find our own copy, we’ll just send you there for the whole thing:
We Will note that the nominees in the Comic Book category include.
Cancer Vixen by Marisa Acocella Marchetto, American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang and Chicken With Plums by Marjane Satrapi.

Following Chris Ware, Jaime Hernandez and Seth, the next strip in the New York Times Sunday Magazine will be Watergate Sue by Megan Kelso. The strip will start on April 1 and run for about six months.

Here it is! We know you have all been waiting for this huge comics-based film coming from Warner Bros. this spring. It uses a CGI techniques in ways heretofore unseen, and excitement is high…yes it is…TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES.

We don’t have much to say, because we went fishing, but we’ll post some stills for your enjoyment. Cowabunga!

No, really:

In 1950 an aspiring cartoonist who drew a comic strip for his local paper wanted to get wider distribution for his work. So he took it to a syndication service. An editor at the syndicate liked the strip but didn’t care for the name, so he changed it. To Peanuts. Charles Schulz always hated that name. In 1987 he told an interviewer, “It’s totally ridiculous, has no meaning, is simply confusing and has no dignity–and I think my humor has dignity.” Schulz’s name for his comic strip was Li’l Folks, which admittedly isn’t that much more dignified. But the point is, if Schulz started out today he wouldn’t have bothered with a syndicate. He would have taken his strip straight to the Web, and we would be watching Li’l Folks specials every year at Christmas.

Had we not decided to “go fishing” today, surely we would have reported on this story with the dramatic headlineBeheaded Garfield statue had physical flaws.
Now that is a straight line that lends itself to MANY different interpretations, but it seems a fiberglass statue of the portly feline located in Fort Wayne was desecrated, its head cruelly deposited in a roadside ditch. But this statue had other, more subtle flaws, flaws that may have condemned an innocent man:

“They had talked to the company that had constructed the Garfield and realized that the head wasn’t reinforced the way it was supposed to have been,” she said. “It was built well, but it was not reinforced like it was supposed to have been at that stress point.”

Prosecutors told a judge about the problem Thursday before Joseph Savarino, 23, of Wabash, was given a 90-day suspended sentence and ordered to perform 40 hours of community service and pay $200 in restitution.

Savarino pleaded guilty last month to misdemeanor charges of criminal mischief and criminal conversion, saying he panicked after the statue’s head came off when he hugged it.

“I’m very sorry that I did it,” he said during Thursday’s hearing. “It was not on purpose.”

One wonder just WHO would have made a Garfield statue so vulnerable to decapitation…a decapitation that was the result of A HUG. Was Savarino guilty of vandalism…or just too much love given to a shoddily made statue?

Truly, this story leaves much to ponder.

UPDATE: Well since we didn’t have time to gve this story its due, gumshoe James Urbaniak has done the hard work putting the pieces together, and…it isn’t pretty.

BTE, if you Google “Garfield statue” you get a lot of pictures of James Garfield, our martyred 20th president.

We wish we hadn’t “gone fishin” otherwise we could report on this heartwarming story about a guy who REALLY LOVES SMURFS.

A self-confessed Smurfaholic, Billy has one of the country’s largest collections of the little blue figurines - more than 2,000 at the last count.

There are Smurfs playing football and tennis, Smurfs on the moon and, even more bizarrely, Smurfs holding golden pigs.

What is more, Billy is looking to boost his collection this weekend when he travels to Brussels for Smurf Passion, Europe’s biggest event for Smurf enthusiasts.

You can see photos from a Schtroumpf Passion, as it is factually known, in this link.

Not really. We wish it looked like that. It really looks more like this.

The “were 70s comics crap or complete total crap” meme continues to go around. Blog@ sums up all the blogospheric pressure with a post entitled If loving Killkraven is wrong, then I don’t want to be right. Not surprisingly, hate-fueled Dirk hates all 70s comics except HOWARD THE DUCK. Tom also jumps into the melee, but he, to us, deflects the point, by reducing the argument to this:

I find the first notion odd, because obviously the decade of the 1970s was important to modern superhero comics

We didn’t say the 70s were important to modern superhero comics, we said they were important to COMICS. The Marvel comics most under discussion WEREN’T superhero comics, necessarily. In the 70s, Marvel published lots of none-superhero things — horror, humor, SF, Westerns, even the last dregs of romance. Not all of them were great of course. But to say HOWARD THE DUCK was superhero is to miss the point — it was satire. KILLRAVEN was SF. MASTER OF KUNG FU was … kung fu. We’ve heard it argued that these books are superhero books because the characters wore costumes, but do do Tintin and Charlie Brown. We prefer to call them “hero” books.

Anyway, that still isn’t why the 70s mattered. It was the birth of true creator ownership. Gil Kane’s early graphic novel BLACK MARK was published in 1971. A CONTRACT WITH GOD. The Comics Journal. CEREBUS. ELFQUEST. This was something that mainstream creators like Neal Adams had been fighting for throughout the decade, and it continued to fuel the business, especially as underground comics proved that complete creative freedom could work.

If the argument is about comics quality, we think a strong one can be made for the 70s, perhaps not as the GREATEST decade ever, but not as a complete cultural wasteland. In terms of historical significance, it was as important as any other, and definitely planted the seeds of today’s industry in sometimes oblique ways.

And if you don’t believe us, here’s the definite PROOF 70s comics rocked:

and of course:

It started on Millarworld where Mark Millar declared Graeme McMillan a stalker of the most obsessive type.

Unfortunately, all creators with any profile attract obsessives. All the other name writers have one too, but I’ve never seen anything like this guy before. He just seems to eat and breathe it. Obviously, people can have creators they don’t like (I have them too), but not simply liking someone is quite different and more natural. I hate Justin Timberlake, but it would be weird for me to browse Timberlake fan sites every day and report or misreport everything the guy says. For years. And all over the Internet. It’s weird I was unaware of this guy because it seems to have gone back so, so long. The Civil War stuff was especially interesting… he started off posting about how it wasn’t a hit and then when it was the biggest hit since the speculator boom he changed tactics and said that that the delays to the books were going to cripple retailers. Then when the retailers made a lot of dough from the book he posted quotes from people who said it was shit. Etc, Etc, Etc. It’s a sight to behold and I recommend browsing back through the site and having a read. There’s barely a day goes by where he doesn’t find some way of having a dig and, like I said, this goes back YEARS.

Now we all know Millar likes to take the piss, but the thread that follows (which we haven’t had time to peruse) apparently rounds up a posse to get Graeme.

Meanwhile, Brian Hibbs plays along

How mad does he get? You really want to know? Man, Graeme gets SO mad that his hair actually starts to grow back in, JUST SO he can rip it out at the roots again, screaming “MILLAR THAT BASTARD, HE CAUSED ME TO LOSE MY HAIR!” He’s Lex Luthor to Mark Millar’s Superboy. Yes. I can’t count the number of times I’m have to physically hold Graeme back (and it took me, Lester and Brill to wrestle him to the ground this one time!) when some one mentions his name. I can even recall this time we had to restrain him when we were discussing 300, and he wigged out: “No, Frank! We’re talking about Frank Miller, man! PUT THE GUN DOWN!!!”

Is there really a feud or was this all make- pretend? We’d say the latter without hesitation, although Graeme never really picked up the ball and ran with it for whatever reason. Anyway, somewhere (we told you we were busy) we read that this had all been sorted out behind the scenes. It was funny while it lasted. Why can’t The Beat and Whitney mix it up like this?

Here’s another entertaining internet feud that we sadly don’t have time to jump into, but Johanna has the short version. Basically, writer Dan Slott goes on the Demonoid message board and asks people to stop downloading his comics. (Demonoid is a popular bitorrent tracker site.) Slott’s own 3 gigs of DOWNLOADS from Demonoid is then held against him, and a lengthy thread at Johanna’s site begins with Slott chiming in regularly.

Like we said, we haven’t read anything but Johanna’s first post so we won’t chime in except to say that we only download comics when we have an emergency research situation, because WE DETEST READING COMICS ON SCREEN. You people who do like it are foreign to us, and we have finally found the line that makes us old geezers.

Derek McCulloch and Shepherd Hendrix are hitting the road in support of their Glyph Award-nominated STAGGER LEE, and The Beat is even joining in at one of the stops!
Derek McCulloch and Shepherd Hendrix, creators of the critically-acclaimed graphic novel Stagger Lee, are taking their Stagger Lee 101 tour on the road for a series of East Coast dates. Here’s where they’ll be:

On Tuesday, March 27, 3 p.m.-6 p.m. EST, they will be appearing on Bill Wax’s Bluesville show on XM Radio. Bill will be playing every version of Stagger Lee he can lay his hands on and Derek and Shepherd will be discussing the history and myth of Stagger Lee.

On Wednesday, March 28, 2 p.m.-4 p.m., they will be signing at Big Planet Comics, 4908 Fairmont Avenue, Bethesda, MD.

On Thursday, March 29, 11:20 a.m.–12:40 p.m., they will be doing their Stagger Lee slide show for the students of Prof. Bill Foster’s class on Graphic Novels as Literature at Naugatuck Valley Community College in Waterbury, Connecticut. Visitors welcome! 750 Chase Parkway, Ekstrom Hall, Room E440.

On Friday, March 30, 7 p.m.– 8 p.m., they will do the slide show again at Barnes & Noble Chelsea, 675 6th Avenue, New York, NY 10010. The Q&A will be moderated by world-renowned diva of comics, Heidi MacDonald.

As always on the Stagger Lee 101 tour: wear a Stetson hat, win a prize!
Stagger Lee has earned raves from publications including Entertainment Weekly, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, The Miami Herald, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and in February was nominated for six Glyph awards, including Story of the Year, Best Writer, and Best Artist.

A distinguished panel of librarian experts puts together a top ten list for the ALA:

1. Kampung Boy
2. The Legend of Hong Kil Dong : The Robin Hood of Korea
3. Missouri Boy
4. Girl Stories
5. Kristy’s Great Idea
6. Bumperboy and the Loud, Loud Mountain
7. To Dance : A Ballerina’s Graphic Novel
8. Castle Waiting
9. American Born Chinese
10. Oddly Normal : v.1

Commentary in link.

YesButNoButYes wraps up all the old favorites, like the Joker’s boner, and “Robin– what have I done?!?” but adds some new ones, like Wonder Woman’s eyelash crisis.

The Gigantic Comics crew are making a special appearance tonight at 7:00 at the McNally Robinson comics shop in Manhattan. Tell ‘em The Beat sent ya.

What:
Gigantic Graphic Novels/ Teenagers From Mars, Dead West, Hellcity,
Rotting In Dirtville
and The Pirates of Coney Island

Who:
Rick Spears - Vasilis Lolos - Macon Blair - Joe Flood

Where:
McNally Robinson Booksellers
52 Prince St.
(between Lafayette and Mulberry)
New York, NY
(212) 274-1160
http://www.mcnallyrobinsonnyc.com/

E&P has A write-up on the Reuben Awards nominees, presneted each year to fine cartoonsits by the National Cartoonists Society, but we can’t find the actual list online anywhere. Anyone have a link. Anyway, here are the top categories via E&P:

The creators of “FoxTrot,” “Speed Bump,” and “Bizarro” are this year’s nominees for the National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben Award as cartoonist of the year.

Bill Amend does the “FoxTrot” comic strip for Universal Press Syndicate, Dave Coverly does the “Speed Bump” comic panel for Creators Syndicate, and Dan Piraro does the “Bizarro” comic panel for King Features Syndicate.

The winner will be named May 26 — during the May 25-28 Reuben weekend in Orlando, Fla. At the awards dinner, winners will also be named in 12 categories.

Nominees for best comic strip cartoonist are Bill Griffith (”Zippy the Pinhead”/King), Stephan Pastis (”Pearls Before Swine”/United Media), and Mark Tatulli (”Lio”/Universal).

Just what IS going on in the Indian comics business anyway? We’re always picking up stories about comics in India in our Google feed, but we never hear about any fans. Anyway here’s yet another mysterious story this one focusing on how two popular movie character — Minna and Circuit — are to become comics characters.

“And why just comic books? We’ve a large number of offers to turn Munna and Circuit’s adventures into animation films, cartoon strips, you name it,” Hirani said.

In fact, the blueprint for the comic strips has already been made.

“We’ve drawn some sketches for Munna and Circuit which would hopefully serve as illustrations in a series of adventures, and we like what we see. If things go well we’ll soon be putting out Circuit-Munna comic books for public consumption,” said Hirani.

The comic books and the proposed animation films will be marketed by Vidhu Vinod Chopra Productions, which had produced the two films as well.

Arshad is delighted by the idea. “Wow! To actually feature in comic books, like Superman or Spiderman! Imagine what my son Zeke will have to tell his friends in school. ‘My father the superhero!’

IESB has lots of new stills from the STARDUST movie.

Much more and bigger in the link.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been watching LOST on DVD and on “video tapes my friends made for me on their antique VHS equipment,” if you take my meaning. I watched the first few episodes of the show when it debuted in 2004, and enjoyed it quite a bit, but didn’t want to commit to a relationship with a TV show, even one as good as this. However, as LOST references have been creeping into the nerd vocabulary with increasing frequency I soon came to realize that unless I took swift action and watched LOST I was going to miss out on understanding what everyone was going on about. I did that with BUFFY and I’ve regretted it ever since. I had managed to avoid reading about it excessively but a few things — the numbers, the deaths of certain characters — had slid by. Still I was pretty fresh coming into the 50-odd existing episodes of the show.

I’ve now watched them all, and watched last nights episode “live” for the first time since 2004. So here are my thoughts on LOST, and it’s place in our nerd firmament, and there are many spoilers if you haven’t watched it yet, so it’s all in the jump.

(more…)

Yesterday a titanic scandal emerged in the world of manga when manga publisher Libre posted on its website in English that CPM was publishing unauthorized English versions of their books:

Thank you very much for your continued interest in our publications.
Please note that we also offer copyright licensing service for translations of our own publications to foreign publishers. These are commissioned by each of the cartoonists and authors.
Recently, it has come to our attention that some translations of our publications have been published and some are to be published by Central Park Media (Label: Be Beautiful) in the United States. We wish to make it known that these publications are considered illegal because they have not been authorized by us. It should also be known that the cartoonists and authors are being victimized by this illegal act, and they are very annoyed by it.
We strongly protest this illegal infringement of our property and issuing a strong order for CPM to cease their illegal acts. We also wish our faithful readers to refrain from purchasing, loaning, or sharing any and all of these illegal publications. Thank you.
Libre Publishing Co.,Ltd.

CPM’s John O’Donnell has responded to all inquiries with “We do not comment publicly on licensor issues.”

However, manga websites just about went berserk over this story. MangaCast had a look:

Anyway you look at this, this is huge!! Since CPM started making noise about resuming publication back before YaoiCon 2006, the companies foundation was firmly on their BL titles. They confirmed that a number of those properties would continue in 2007 and they even signed a distribution deal with Consortium to get those books out. At NYCC, the publisher repeated those claims and began to reveal which titles were going to re/start in the up-coming months. Diamond Previews has the publisher listed for a number of books this spring and online stores like the Right Stuf and Amazon have books listed through early summer. If a cease and desist order is sent out the majority of those books will not likely ship at all. And what will happen to existing releases like Cage in the Finder or Kizuna #1-5 (currently in stock in a few stores)?

Much more astonishment in that link and Simon at Icarus has a thorough link round-up.