We’re like, wayyyyy behind in our email linkage, so if we haven’t got to your link yet, we’re sorry. Please keep sending us tips and links. We obviously need all the help we can get. Plus. it’s like super cold and the heat isn’t reaching this part of the manor.

§ Arnold Fenner writes to tell us that the deadline for submissions to Spectrum #15 is this Friday, January 25th. Spectrum is an annual collection of the vest in fantasy cover illustration, concept art and comics.

We generally don’t get anywhere near the comics entries that we could or should (and get plenty of things that we shouldn’t). The Society of Illustrators has a “Sequential” category, but that includes art for children’s books and multiple editorial illustrations along with comics, so Spectrum is still the only annual with a purely “Comics” category.

§ Boston man hopes to open comics shop for “NPR crowd.”:

As he prepared to open Hub Comics, he put a sign in the window promising a different kind of establishment: “a comics shop for NPR listeners.”

Many people, Welborn said, still think the entire comics medium is a single genre - “men in tights.” But Hub Comics, which he hopes to open this weekend, will stock “lots of really interesting stuff that shows people there’s more of an art form there than you might expect.”

§ Brad Bird on an NPR quiz show. Talking about Dennis Kucinich. AND he answers the Ayn Rand question about THE INCREDIBLES!

Mark down this Wednesday, January 23rd if you’re in Ypsilante, MI: it’s the site of a discussion with Al Feldstein in conjunction with an art show devoted to Mad’s iconic mascot, Alfred E. Newman.

An instantly recognizable popular icon, Alfred E. Newman had his origin in the nineteenth century and was used extensively before debuting as the symbol of MAD magazine in 1954. This character’s long and varied history is the focus of “Alfred, We Hardly Knew You,” an exhibition of original art and artifacts drawn from the collection of John Hett and elsewhere, that will run from January 9th through February 9th, 2008, at the Ford Gallery on the campus of Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Used extensively as social commentary on immigrants and working class minorities in England and the United States as well as in advertising, Alfred’s face and the words “What Me Worry?” were familiar to American audiences long before being appropriated by MAD magazine. The exhibition includes examples of the character’s earlier appearances in various media as well as those in MAD that are more familiar to contemporary audiences.

In conjunction with the exhibition, John Hett, who is the editor and publisher of THE JOURNAL OF MADNESS , will give a presentation on his collection and the origins of Alfred E. Newman. In addition to Hett’s lecture, a special guest will be appearing that evening–Al Feldstein, the legendary EC Comics artist and writer who also served as the editor of MAD for almost thirty years, will discuss why the character was chosen for the magazine’s mascot and comment on his many uses there. These presentations will be held in Halle Library Auditorium on the evening of Wednesday, January 23, 2008, beginning at 7:30 p.m.

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Frequent comics critic Noah Berlatsky has launched a site called The Gay Utopia a symposium of writing and comics about a theoretical bias and inhibition-free world:

The term “the gay utopia” is at least slightly ironic; I’m too much of a pessimist to believe that sexual freedom will actually bring about the millennium. At the same time, an interest in, or use of, the gay utopia unites much of the art and thought that has meant the most to me over the past few years. So, partially out of my own ambivalence, I wanted to put together a forum in which folks with various backgrounds, perspectives, and interests could respond to the gay utopia with enthusiasm, skepticism, both, or neither.

Comics contributors include Ariel Shrag and Johnny Ryan.

§ The Emerald City Con has announced “Supergirl” as a guest. They also have a nice new poster by Alex Ross.

§ Bernie Wrightson has joined the Baltimore Comic-Con guest list.

§ Bryan Hitch has been named a GoH at the 2008 New York Comic-Con.

§ Speaking of the NYCC, Lance Fensterman, who runs NYCC, the BEa AND now the NY Anime Fest has a blog about various stuff.

§ Mark Texeira will be at the Phoenix Comic-Con

§ Greg Rucka will appear at a special comics mini-convention at the Las Vegas Clark County Library on Saturday, January 26.

The Library District ComicsFest will be held on Saturday, January 26, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Sahara West Library, 9600 W. Sahara Avenue.

Special guests include Greg Rucka writer of Checkmate and DC Comics’ 52, and creator of Whiteout and Queen and Country; Jimmy Gownley, creator of Amelia Rules; Steven Grant, writer for The Punisher; Josh Elder, creator of Mail Order Ninja; graphic novel expert MICHELE GORMAN; and local artists and other professional comics creators.

Meet representatives from Dark Horse Comics, IDW Publishing, Japanime, Tokyopop, Yen Press and many other publishers. Shop in our dealers’ room, play Nintendo Wii games such as Wii Sports and enter a drawing to win free books.

Free and open to the public. For more information, call 507-3630 or visit www.lvccld.org.

Roger Price, who has been running the Mid-Ohio con for 27 years, sent out an open letter over the weekend:

After 27 years, I must regrettably announce that the time has come for me to retire as the promoter of Mid-Ohio-Con.

The difficult decision to take this action is based solely on personal reasons, including a desire to pursue several new professional opportunities.

The show itself remains viable, and it is my sincere desire that Mid-Ohio-Con will continue under new ownership. To that end, R.A.P. Promotions will entertain offers from seriously interested parties starting immediately. Those wishing to obtain additional information and submit an offer are asked to first contact me in writing either via e-mail at < href = "mailto:info@midohiocon.com">info@midohiocon.com, or at PO Box 3831, Mansfield, Ohio 44907.

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Brian Hibbs responds to my post yesterday and everything is quite civil and everyone seems to understand where everyone is coming from, and they lived happily ever after. In response to my “Would Brian Hibbs donate $1 to keep Top Shelf, Cartoon Books or Fantagraphics alive?” query Brian responds:

Not that that is actually the point, but, yeah, when FBI and Top Shelf came to us with “please please buy stuff from us, we’re on the brink of going out of business” we OF COURSE stepped up and bought a bunch of stuff that we didn’t actually need in order to try and help keep them solvent.

There’s much more in Brian’s post (he also responds to Tom) and further along says something I agreed with:

Further, I don’t think “buzz” comes from being-on-sale-first *in and of itself*. I think Top Shelf would have sold exactly the same # of LOST GIRLS as they did, and had exactly and precisely the same amount of “buzz” and being “the book of the show” and everything else, had LOST GIRLS been in stores that same Wednesday. I’ll go so far as to say I’m absolutely positive that LOST GIRLS would have had the same national buzz, and sold the same # of copies at the con even had the book debuted a week before in the stores.

It’s hard to argue that, but as I posted elsewhere, publishers have a lot of “last minute-itis” with shows like San Diego and MoCCA — as long as it gets to the show — even if it’s Saturday instead of Thursday or Friday — YIPPEE WE MADE IT! I think THAT is a simplistic idea on publishers’ parts, and part of the cause for the problem.

All that said, retailers seem to want more information to stay informed; I suspect that some kind of system of notification when possible and limited returns when not possible (sometimes books just SHIP LATE for other reasons) may be the solution to this problem. The original paper might have been better served by suggesting this, but hey, at least every one talked about it and, in the blogosphere at least, common ground was found by some!

The clean up effort continues here at Stately Beat Manor, and we’re uncovering all kinds of forgotten wonders — a complete run of Fiz(z) magazine; a near complete run of Escape (both digest and magazine sized); a run of Drawn & Quarterly magazine, which we didn’t even remember EXISTED.

We’ve also discovered some real puzzlers. An old notebook (nearly 30 years old) disclosed a startling find — a series of charts from the years 1978-1985 notating the very young Beat’s comings buying habits. We’ve attached one of them above (click for a larger version) and what’s really startling is that we have absolutely no idea what the fuck it means.

Clearly it meant SOMETHING, as we kept identically carefully notated charts for the entire period. The effort put into this was considerable for the time — nowadays we use Excel, but in the olden days we would take a ruler and create our own charts! and we loved it — we LOVED it.

Anyway while it’s clear that the amount of Marvel we read would make us a prime candidate for the Marvel Essentials line (and in our defense, as soon as Raw showed up in the comics shop championed by the Comics Journal, we were buying it so it doesn’t show up on this chart) what it means isn’t. The “A” column is definitely for “Annual” but what do the numbers mean? At first we thought it referred to the week of release (in the olden days of the direct sales market, comics each week would have a different color strip at the top) — but then what does 5 and 6 mean? And what does “51, 62, 62 etc.” mean in the Iron Man column???? Why does the January issue of Tomb of Dracula have an arrow to February???

Seriously, we have absolutely no memory of this or why we did it. And since we had no friends at the time, there is no one else who could possibly know either.

It is a mystery for the ages. having sexweb voyeurxxx porndog cumcartoons adultbig girlsteen pantiesfat sex Map

Oh boy! Finally! After a few weeks off to relax and get acclimated, 2008 has its own brouhaha! And it’s a good one, exposing lingering animosities, nagging weaknesses in the retails system, personal sniping and the very core of where the business is now.

It all kicked off with the latest ComicsPRO position paper, whch you can read in its entirety in the jump. The jist of it is that ComicsPRO doesn’t want publishers selling comics at conventions before they are available to direct sales retailers since this practice costs retailers sales.

This issue has been around for a while. Selling at conventions has been a standard practice for all publishers except DC and Marvel — genie is way out of the bottle, but this strain of ire is aimed at the practice of selling books before they are available to the direct market. Notorious examples include Jeff Smith selling (and selling out of) his one volume Bone at San Diego; Top Shelf specifically ordering a skid or two of Lost Girls to sell with Melinda Gebbie on hand to sign it, and an earlier instance where Blankets was sold at MoCCA.

Of course, people go to cons to get books signed, but you’d think it was only a locally based problem. Nope. The ComicsPRO paper specifically states that not only is Melinda Gebbie at San Diego a problem for say, Robert Scott’s store in San Diego, but Rory Root’s store in Berkeley and Jim Hanley’s in New York because some of their customers may have travelled to San Diego to buy Lost Girls.

The oppositre argument is that most comics shops don’t support indie publishers to begin with, small publisher depend on convention sales to cover their bottom line — and generate tons of media buzz–and while ComicsPRO claims they will be stronger sales and marketing partners for publishers who don’t do this, no one seems to be able to figure out exactly what this means.

This is a battle many indy pundits have been having with retailers for a ong time now, and not surprisingly this prompted many pro-indy pundits to come out with their OWN position papers. Tom jumped out pretty fast, calling the paper “terrible”, for several reasons, one of which was that the paper doesn’t give any real evidence of the harm.

Johanna came out with more strong objections:

Asserts is the right word. Publishers tend to say, when I’ve seen this discussion before, “no it doesn’t, because we’re selling to people without stores” and “we have to, to make our budgets”. Retailers say “I’m not stocking your books, then” (if they even were in the first place) and we have a standstill, because then the publisher has even more incentive to go around the direct market. No one can conclusively prove their position, and with just-in-time ordering, retailers rarely stock ANY publication in depth at initial order. If the impact is that noticeable, I wish someone would post some figures.

Alan David Doane, himself a rather opinionated writer who once said “Die Direct Market Die!”also chided retailers for failing to acknowledge the reality of the multi-channel comics market. Dick Hyacinth and Frank Santoro also weigh in. (Doane follows up with a MUST READ on publishers response to the controvery.) And now I’m doing it too! Whoo, where to begin.

One of the problems here is that the opposing sides seem to take one example of less-than-perfect behavior on either side as a synecdoche for a lifetime of abuse. For instance, retailers will never forget that Jeff Smith sold out of the single volume Bone; likewise David Welsh’s special trip to a comic shop only to find it closed when it should have been open is a blaring symbol of everything wrong and stinky about every comic shop ever under the sun.

People in comics never forget anything, do they? I guess that’s why everyone loves continuity.,

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We can’t tell if this position paper from Comic Book Bin is a parody of the infamous ComicsPRO position paper (which we’ll be getting to in a a bit) but maybe we’re just punchy becauseit does make some great points:

If it is difficult for professionals whose job is to find source documents, one expects is harder for the average comic book reader to do the same.

There are specific aspects that are difficult to deal with at many comic book publishers’ Websites. These include solicited material, images of published books, lack of proper search engines and convoluted Website interfaces.

Actually we agree wholeheartedly, especially with our present pet peeve: PR without images. We understand not wanting to clog our inbox — a link to an image will suffice. Sending us nothing visual in a medium that thrives on it will not.

Dan Rafter at Firefox News reports on the refreshing phenomenon of a child enjoying a comic made for children, in this case Kazu Kibuishi’s Amulet.

I purchased the book, published by Scholastic, for my 9-year-old son. He, as expected, gobbled the story up, laughing out loud at some scenes, falling into engrossed silence at others.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Sun Times thinks kids will love MOUSE GUARD, but frustratingly, lacks testing in the field.

In Japan, literacy and platforms for literacy are changing radically, as novels written for cell phones dominate the charts:

Of last year’s 10 best-selling novels, five were originally cell phone novels, mostly love stories written in the short sentences characteristic of text messaging but containing little of the plotting or character development found in traditional novels. What is more, the top three spots were occupied by first-time cell phone novelists, touching off debates in the news media and blogosphere.

“Will cell phone novels kill ‘the author?’ ” a famous literary journal, Bungaku-kai, asked on the cover of its January issue.

He’s fighting for J’Onn J’Onzz’s very life, as the Martian Manhunter is rumored to be on the potential kill list for Final Crisis. Is there no one else who will fight for the life of this comic book character?

Johanna does the heavy lifting of checking out the postal statements in some Archie comics. You can see the whole list in the link, but the best seller is Archie’s Double Digest #185 with 104,056. That’s less than Archies used to sell, at least anecdotally. We would love to find the actual figures. John Jackson Miller has some 60s sales figures up which show, for instance, Archie’s Madhouse selling 209,897 copies. It’s pointless to compare 60s sales to now, however; surely someone else has been compiling those postal records over the years?

UPDATE: Well ask and ye shall receive: Johanna runs down several sources of more recent Archie sales figures via postal statements, including this marvelously titled thread from Usenet, c. 2001 reporting on figures from 1997:

Comic Books, R.I.P.?:

JUGHEAD DOUBLE DIGEST
Total Paid Circulation (average past 12 months): 106,257
Total Paid Circulation (most recent issue): 114,769

BETTY & VERONICA DOUBLE DIGEST
Total Paid Circulation (average past 12 months): 140,086
Total Paid Circulation (most recent issue): 144,000

Steve Rowe posted a more recent sales figure to Comicon.com in April
(presumably for 2000)

ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST
Total Paid Circulation (average past 12 months): 143,250
Total Paid Circulation (most recent issue): 155,437

According to the Archie website (www.archiecomics.com

During the continuing renovations here at Stately Beat Manor, we have unearthed a cache of surplus Little Lulu reprint volumes from Dark Horse. Since it is our strongly held belief that aspiring cartoonists and storytellers can learn more from the tight, inventive, character-driven plots of John Stanley and the minimal yet infinitely expressive stylings of Irving Tripp than the work of almost any other cartoonists, we are continuing a tradition of spreading the Gospel of Lulu. Thus we are offering five (5) of these books as a GIVEAWAY.

To enter the giveaway, simply email your name and address to beatgiveaway@gmail.com. Please put “LULU GIVEAWAY” in the subject. We will pick five winners at random at the end of the week — that’s Friday January 25, 2008 and each will receive a volume. Void where prohibited.

The volumes will be chosen at random by us, but because the quality is nearly uniform throughout the volumes — indeed almost too much so, like a box of chocolate truffles — you can be assured that prizes will all be of comparable value. If you have always wondered what the cult of Lulu was about — Matt Groening swears by it — here is a risk free way to find out.

In addition, we are also giving away the following extra issues of various comics-related magazines. First come, first served, one to a customer. Once again email beatgiveaway@gmail.com. Please put the name of the issue you desire in the subject. Very simple.

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Steve Rude is trying to identify this fellow from a photo taken at the 1983 Comic-con. Other present include Milton Griepp, John Davis, Rich Bruning, and Steven Grant.

Andertoons presents a Flickr set of a deck of Drink-Up Cartoon Playing Cards by a mysterious cartoonist known as Washaw.

Another set here which is, to our tastes anyway, a bit funnier.

ALSO: Harvey character playing cards.

Via Bryan Talbot’s website:

As mentioned before in this news column, last year Bryan took on the responsibility of being the sole agent for Veronique Tanaka and to find a publisher for her innovative graphic novel METRONOME, an experimental and erotically-charged “visual poem”. Well the book is published this month by the New York company NBM. You can buy the book at www.nbmpub.com

There is also made available a 17 minute animated version of the book at http://metronome.shadowgallery.co.uk/

It’s quite amazing - frame-by-frame at one second a frame, the book works equally well as an animation, though the experience is very different. In the animation, you can’t see the subliminal shapes that the panels make on the page. NBM are offering a free 3 minute excerpt on their site as the animation is usually pay-to-view but we can offer you unlimited access for the limited time of one month. Just go to the site and put in this free access code: 04545

We were one of the five people not invited to a CLOVERFIELD sneak so we’ll have to rely on Len Wein for a review:

Just got back from seeing an early show of the new monster movie Cloverfield with my good buddy, Bob Skir. The picture is everything the advertising promises; thrilling, frightening, frenetic. It’s also, if you happen to suffer — as I sometimes do — from a little motion sickness, a pretty good way to help you heave your cookies. The entire film is supposedly shot on someone’s handheld camcorder and the constant, relentless jangling motion not only makes the action sometimes hard to follow, but is also ultimately quite nauseating. By the time I was two thirds of the way through the film, I found I could not look at the screen without becoming lightheaded, dizzy, and downright queasy. I spent several minutes looking down at my feet while listening to the action so as not to spew my breakfast all over my buddy Bob.

Oddly enough a cup of tea on an empty stomach has the same effect on The Beat !

We don’t have what we’d call a commanding grasp on the Quebecor story, but after talking to a few people yesterday the pieces are beginning to come together. The short version is that Quebecor, the Canadian printers who manufacture most of the comics from (at least) DC, Image and Marvel is in a financial crisis after years of mismanagement, and needs to either re-finance or file for bankruptcy. Matt Brady runs down the story and concludes that the impact on comics will be minimal:

Despite the rough seas it’s currently navigating, Quebecor is a huge, multinational corporation, and while what’s going on in regards to its finances isn’t ideal, desirable or even normal, it’s not unprecedented or a direct route to the end of the business. At the end of the day, Quebecor World will refinance its debt and move on (albeit with a limp, most likely) or it will further weaken, and be bought out by a competitor who will work to keep its accounts. Now, if that happens, there is a question about pricing pressure due to reduced competition, but even that’s still a far way off if it ever comes to pass.

While this is a sensible and level headed conclusion, folks we spoke to are certainly looking into their printing issues this week, and the company’s uncertain future is causing headaches at the very least.

Quebecor is part of Quebecor World, a multi billion dollar international conglomerate that employs some 28,000 people around the world. A series of bad investments and poor business decisions over the years have left it saddled with debt and unable to make its loan payments. Its stock has been delisted on the NYSE.

Quebecor spokesmen insist the presses will keep rolling, although there are many rumours regarding potential stoppages floating around — none of them sound very credible at this point.

One thing that did strike us as we spoke to people in various ends of the business yesterday was how suddenly this hit the comics industry. Quebecor has been struggling for a bailout for a year, and yet “I’ve talked more about Quebecor this week than I did in the previous year,” one printing industry insider told us. While comics publishers may not need alternative means of printing, its a sure bet that they are still looking into other printers, including Transcontinental and the Chinese printers who are increasingly taking over trade paperback publishing. Based on the number of complaints about production mistakes at Quebecor, some people will be happy to make a move.

While many comments on this story have pointed to the weak American dollar as part of the problem, it seems to be secondary to Quebecor’s ongoing bad business decisions. Should the printer declare bankruptcy or be acquired by another printer, contracts may need to be renegotiated — and the puny dollar leaves the potential for rising costs there.

So the word for now is no one knows how this will affect the cover price of comics; but the likelihood of a disruption in the timely flow of weekly floppies appears minuscule.

For more on the history of Quebecor’s financial problemsthis story from the Globe and Mail paints a colorful picture including father son conflicts and a riot by laid-off workers at a French plant. It’s a real how the mighty have fallen tale:

How did a company once held up by provincial premiers as an example of Quebec Inc.’s global clout get to this perilous point?

Quebecor World, which in 2002 laid claim to being the world’s biggest commercial printer, is now a penny stock with a market capitalization of barely $25-million. It is threatened with being delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange. That is, if it manages to stay out bankruptcy court and remain a going concern.

The road since 2002 is littered with missed opportunities, poor decisions and enough internal bile to make the case study stacks at Harvard Business School - which happens to be the alma matter of Wes Lucas, 45, who suddenly quit as Quebecor World CEO last month on the heels of a couple of particularly fateful stumbles.

§ Paul Dini explains the “animation feature template”:

Your primary objective as a modern animation feature storyteller is to get the audience members emotionally charged (i.e., distracted from logic gaps and not thinking too much) so they will be ready for your big finale. This usually consists of the hero defeating the villain (almost always by some initial violent action of the villain that the hero has “cleverly” used to boomerang back on the bad guy; real heroes never being allowed to slay dragons on their own these days) and the villain falling to their death from a great height, the only acceptable way for a baddie to meet their end in a cartoon (Gaston, Frollo, the bear in “The Fox & The Hound,” Scar, the poacher in “Rescuers II”, anyone notice a trend here?). If the villain can trip over the edge while trying to get in one last cowardly stab at the hero, so much the better. The demise of the bad guy puts everyone in a good mood, so the sidekicks fire up the juke box, or strike up the band, or simply break into song, and while the hero and heroine share a modest kiss, everyone rocks out over the end credits.

By the way, when we worked at Disney we called this “Death by topple.” It is lethal to bad guys.

§Josh Neufeld talks about working with Harvey Pekar:

Way back, when I did my very first Splendor story, I got Harvey to send me reference photos of one of the other characters in the piece. But as the years went by, I just began winging it, or swiping characters and interiors from previous issues of American Splendor. The only “reference” I use now are some shots of Harvey I cobbled together from the Internet, the work of other artists, or — horrors! — popping in the DVD of the film and using that. And even though I’ve drawn many stories set in his house, I tend to be dissatisfied with what I’ve done before and usually do something different each time. In essence, every time I draw a new A.S. story, Harvey’s pad undergoes an extreme makeover (sans Ty Pennington)! The only consistencies are the books, magazines, and newspapers piled everywhere, and the general air of post-bohemian shabbiness.

§ Rediscovered hot cartoonist Frank Santoro is interviewed at Blog @ and remembers the 90s:

There was no Giant Robot. They had just started actually. APE had just started. I went to the first couple of APEs. Everything was positive, it was cool, but it was just … I got a call from Mike Richardson in ‘96. Mike Richardson at Dark Horse called me. “Loved the story. It was a great book. Let us know what you’re up to.” I felt like this was great, I have an open door whenever. Then, when I knock on their door a year and a half later with whatever I was working on, the industry was falling apart. Heroes World and all this shit with the distributors was going on. I had a conversation with Gary Groth a couple of years ago, he found a letter from me and a sample from 1998. He had never opened it until 2004. Those guys were busy worrying about whether their companies were going to survive more so than putting out new work.

§ We never remember seeing an in-depth interview with with IDW Publisher Chris Ryall before:

Well, it’s safe to say that “Transformers” outsells books like “Supermarket” or “Smoke,” but as far as attracting attention goes, I’d say that that varies on the buyer. What I mean is, to the “Smoke” or “Supermarket” buyer, those are the kinds of books we publish. They’re maybe not as likely to also be reading “Transformers” comics. People that like our horror comics probably feel the same way. So all these books attract their own types of attention, and don’t really take away from one another. I think the sheer array of books you cited above shows a nice balance, just in the types of material we make available. We used to be primarily seen as a horror publisher, but now we offer so many different types of books to different audiences. I’m really proud of that fact.

AND: § Walt and Weezie Simonson profiled
§ Watchmen extra spills guts
§ There are many interviews with Marjane Satrapi floating around. Here is one of them.

It’s film festival time as Sundance and Slamdance kick off very very soon. Sundance has little comics crossover, but Slamdance is debuting TRAILER PARK OF TERROR, based on the comics from tiny Imperium Comics.

“If you’ve been lamenting the almost total absence of smoking hot, faceless trailer-trash chicks in modern cinema, then this is the movie for you. It’s got it all - drugs, sex, rock and roll; the devil; a religious fundamentalist with a weakness for boobies; a mouthy, sexy, goth-chick heroine; a morbidly obese maniac cannibal; amputation comedy; and mother-daughter amateur porn shoot-outs. By the time the spooky-ass Asian hottie in a chinadoll kabuki mask massage-walks the spine right out the back of a horny teenage fucktard, you’ll know cinema has been saved. Needless to say, if you care about things like good taste, human decency or your soul, you should go see Under the Snow instead.”

Well, that sounds uplifting.

According to Variety, the movie is on the buzz list:

Programming director Sarah Diamond adds to the buzz list with competition feature “Fix,” a darkly comic road picture by first-time helmer Tao Ruspoli. Another feature Diamond predicts could break out is “Trailer Park of Terror.” “It’s one of our Twilight films, and I think it’s going to be a big hit.”

According to Brian Vaughan, the Y The Last Man wrap party tickets sold out speedily:

Well, never doubt the CBLDF, apparently. All 70 $100 VIP tickets sold out in about an hour this morning! Holy crap. Still, there will be some $25 “standing room only” tix available the day of the event, so bust out your tents and get in line today, True Believers! Just heard about some unbelievable “guest stars” who will be in attendance, and they should make all my fellow geeks’ heads explode.

With the Justice League movie on hold due to the writer’s strike, can anyone HONESTLY TRUTHFULLY SAY they were DYING to see a movie with Armie Hammer playing Batman?

A man for whom this is the ONLY extant picture on the internet?

Vulture had it best with their post ‘Justice League’ Movie on Indefinite Hold; Crappy Cast to Sit Tight for a While. Would audiences have accepted this Friday Night Tights cast of youthful nobodies?

And take supermodel Megan Gale as Wonder Woman. There are LOTS of pictures of Megan Gale on the internet, as she is quite famous in Australia and Italy and had a role in STEALTH. Some of these pictures are even safe for work:

At least she’s put on a little meat since then, and at least she’s tall.

Not that we have anything against unknown young actors getting a big break. But come on now. Turning the Justice League into a teeny bopper pic is not a good idea.

The story of researcher’s attempts to get monkeys to move robotic arms was one of the very first things we ever blogged here on the Beat V 1.1, in a post now long lost, and they are still at it! Last a week a monkey in South Carolina made a robot in Japan (where else) walk using only its brain waves. Scientists hailed the experiment as a breakthrough.

Another expert, Nicho Hatsopoulos, a professor at the University of Chicago, said that the experiment was “an exciting development. And the use of an exoskeleton could be quite fruitful.”

A brain machine interface is any system that allows people or animals to use their brain activity to control an external device. But until ways are found to safely implant electrodes into human brains, most research will remain focused on animals.

There are a couple of ways we see this playing out.

#1: Helper monkeys are trained to operate their master’s exo-skeletons with their little monkey brainwaves.

#2: Monkeys become resentful, use brain waves to control army of murderous robots which rampage across Japan, resulting in amazing mecha- battle. Love robots come to the rescue, order restored.

Now which outcome do YOU prefer?

5. The Spitting Man from MOME #10. The story has been done before but it is done so well here.

4. Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares — there is something about seeing this guy berate pretentious pub owners, lackluster chefs and incompetent 17-year-old soup cooks that is sooooo satisfying. And when there’s redemption, the payoff is worth it.

3. Broccoli

2. This video. Thanks, Trish!

1. “Fennemore’s Lied” by Kurt Weill as sung by Ute Lemper.
1a. Heck, Kurt Weill, in general. For a quick download, we recommend this. A little operatic, but the required dramatic thread stays strong.

The CBLDF, MySpace and Meltdown comics are teaming up for a wrap party for Y THE LAST MAN. Creators Brian Vaughan and Pia Guerra will be there, and Joss Whedon will deliver homilies. There will be speeches and exclusive prints. Attndence is limited to 140; VIP tickets for the event are $100; standing room only $25. We will be there in spirit only, alas. Details below.

On January 30, 2008, one of the most acclaimed comic book series of the last decade, Y THE LAST MAN, concludes with issue sixty. The series and its co-creators, writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Pia Guerra, have received widespread acclaim, in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Salon and Entertainment Weekly and on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.” To celebrate the end of the series, MySpace Comic Books (http://www.myspace.com/comicbooks), the comic community of the world’s most popular social network, and Meltdown Comics, the renowned Los Angeles-based comic book shop, today announced a first-of-its-kind event for the comic book industry: Y: THE LAST PARTY.

Taking place on February 8th at Meltdown, the party is a benefit for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and a celebration of the internationally acclaimed comic book series. Joss Whedon will appear in person to toast Y: The Last Man co-creators Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra. All proceeds from this once-in-a-lifetime event will benefit the First Amendment work of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF). Since 1986, the CBLDF has defended the Free Expression rights of comics booksellers, artists, and educators throughout the United States by funding top legal counsel in criminal cases and leading important education initiatives.

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