We just don’t have time or inclination to summarize all the comics-related PR we get each and every day, but in deference to our publicist pals, every once in a while something jumps out that must be pondered. For instance here’s a good one from Archie:

IT’S CELEBRITIES AND SUPER-MODELS AS BETTY & VERONICA DIVE HEAD-FIRST INTO THE WORLD OF POP CULTURE!

What could that mean? Are they starting a website or something?

Archie Comics and pop culture have gone together forever. Singing sensations, hit TV shows, popular movies, hot fashions, the latest toys and gadgets – one look through any ARCHIE AMERICANA trade paperback is all it takes to realize all have had a featured place in the pages of Archie Comics throughout the years. Now, Betty and Veronica take pop culture to new heights of hilarity in a pair of star-struck issues shipping this July.

The razzle-dazzle fun begins in BETTY & VERONICA SPECTACULAR #90. This celebrity-packed issue offers readers a chance to see more stars than there are in solar system! In “Star Struck,” it’s a boy band brouhaha, as Betty and Veronica get jobs as reporters for Ginger Lopez’s “Glitz Magazine” and have a controversial run-in with The Juneau Brothers! Then, in “Paparazzi Problem,” “rumor” has it that the girls grapple with the age old dilemma: to gossip or not to gossip! Finally, in “Sign Me Up” Mr. Lodge reveals a sensational secret from his past: he once dated a celebrity! All this, plus pop-culture extras like a Hollywood quiz, celebrity fashions, and more!

The pop culture comedy continues in BETTY #181, with a spoof of one of the most popular movies of recent years. In “The Diva Wore Yada,” a summer internship at “Harmon’s Bazzar” fashion magazine brings Betty face-to-face with a demanding diva of a boss. Imagine Betty’s surprise when the boss demands she model for the magazine’s spring fashion spectacular! Celebrity news columnist Hal Lifson brings his fashionable first-hand perspective to this “tongue-in-chic” tale!

Could this “pop culture comedy” become a trend? Developing.

Meanwhile, Marvel informs us of a more tragic tale:

The Hulk Faces Off Against His Son

There’s one thing we’ve said a million times and that’s if it’s good enough for Turgenev, Homer and Arthur Miller, it must be good enough for the Hulk.

What will happen when these two green giants, bound by blood, collide in this savage showdown? One thing’s for sure—Skaar is coming and there will be smashing & slashing!

Will smashing and slashing become as big a trend as pop culture comedy or shirtless Hugh Jackman? We’ll remain vigilant.

§ A 30 DAYS OF NIGHT sequel is in the works, but it will probably be direct to DVD. Cinematical has deets, Actually this is a pick up from a Splash Page interview with Niles that ran last week:

According to [creators Steve] Niles, a script has already been submitted, and he is hard at work on the project with Ben Ketai (director of the 30 Days webisodes). The sequel will be based on the comic book follow-up Dark Days, and the story centers on “the character of Stella Olemaun [who] heads to Los Angeles after surviving the vampire attack in Barrow, Alaska. She intentionally attracts the attention of the local vampire population in order to avenge the death of her husband, Eben, during the Barrow incident.”

§ Megan Fox has been spotted on the JONAH HEX set. So it’s set in ancient Roman times?

BTW, it’s been scientifically proven that running pictures of Megan Fox every day will boost web traffic exponentially, but we’re trying to resist.

§ BUT Salma Hayek…that, we can get totally behind. As her young child grows, she gets even more Luba-esque! Hayek recently tied the knot and we’ll try to dig up some wedding photos…pronto.

Very much Not Comics, but we were tooling around and found this blog called If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There’d Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats, which has a feature called “When Legends Gather,” and you will probably spend a lot of time looking at it. As you might guess, it’s photos of famous people together you never thought you would see together. The archeological data on fashions and fame alone will occupy hours. A sampling:

Famed silent film star Harold Lloyd and baseball star Babe Ruth. Gosh, people were funny-looking back in the day. (PS: If you’ve never seen a Harold Lloyd movie, you need to remedy that.)

Film stars Yul Brynner and Gene Kelly yuk it up.

And another silent film star, Charlie Chaplin, chowing down with playwright George Bernard Shaw. What do you think they are talking about? Brussels sprouts?

Much, much more in the link.

We have failed to properly mark the passing of Bea Arthur, but must now remedy that. As our pal Zena pointed out, there are now as many surviving Golden Girls as Beatles. As we probably noted when Estelle Getty passed away, our step-dad produced Golden Girls for a few years, so we know all about that and still have our Golden Girls cast jacket, even if it is too hot to ever wear it again.

Arthur, always a fierce, witty presence, made her great contribution to nerd culture playing the manager of the Cantina in the Star Wars Holiday Special. You can see her crooning, serving up drinks, dealing with Rodians AND Harvey Corman in the above clip. It’s pretty amazing.

As you watch it, you realize there was never a character in the whole Star Wars canon any tougher than Bea Arthur. RIP.

Via the First Second blog:

Derek Kirk Kim, Sarah Oleksyk, and Jesse Reklaw read from their latest works at Powell’s Books this coming Monday, April 27th. Kim will debut his latest graphic novel, “The Eternal Smile” (in collaboration with writer Gene Luen Yang) from First Second Books, Oleksyk will read from a brand new chapter in her “Ivy” series, and Reklaw will read from his recently released “The Night of Your Life” from Dark Horse Comics. A Q+A and signing will follow the reading.

We meant to comment on this piece by Lucas Siegel from Blog@Newsarama for days, but never got around to it; the title was “My Opinion Is Right: Comics Press is Crippled Like No Other Industry” but despite that bold statement, the offending incident came from Marvel’s very active staff Twitter community

There has been a bit of an uproar on Twitter in the last 24 hours, primarily instigated by three big names at Marvel Comics complaining about tweets, posts on the microblogging social network, being reposted on websites such as this one, CBR, and many others. The contention by Tom Brevoort, Brian Michael Bendis, and Joe Quesada is that this shouldn’t be done without permission or even payment to the person who made the original 140 character or less post.

This was really a tempest in a teapot — Joe Q, in particular complaining about people reposting his Tweets — let alone PAYING to do it — was odd, since he’s one of the most media-savvy comics personalities out there. It seems that the agita — if it wasn’t all a big put-on — on Marvel’s part was over Twitter aggregations like this gathering up CB Cebulski’s advice on how to break into comics.

Setting aside the fact that apparently Cebulski actually GAVE permission for Blog@ to collect his thoughts, the main thing it made US wonder was…why on earth would ANYONE post any information of any real value on Twitter?

As our colleague Calvin Reid observed to us the other night, Twitter is like a 24-hour rolling cocktail party. There really isn’t enough time in the day to read EVERY Twitter in your feed, and why would anyone want to? CB went to the trouble of typing out some very sound information on breaking in to comics — and then it rolled on. Back to CB’s daily culinary adventures, Wil Wheaton’s making dinner for his kids, Themediaisdying posting about some magazine closing, Wossy making a TV show, and a thousand complaints about computer problems.

Has Twitter crested yet, please God? Well, Techcrunch reports the dual assault of Ashton Kutcher and Oprah has overrun the levees:

Twitter’s march towards world domination continues apace. This morning comScore released its global numbers for March, 2009. Worldwide visitors to Twitter.com increased 95 percent in the month of March from 9.8 million to 19.1 million, according to its estimates. This compares to 9.3 million visitors in the U.S. alone.

What really amuses us is the Internet’s supposed “march of progress”. Six or seven years ago, when blogging was just getting started, we remember countless web articles on how you needed to blog to extend and market your brand. Now we are reading countless blogs about how to use Twitter to extend and market your brand. What’s next? We predict some kind of rolling symbol site — like in the Matrix — where folks just type in little pictures to say how they’re feeling — the bad news is that everyone will need a Chinese computer keyboard to participate.

And what’s a “brand” anyway? Is it the same thing as, gasp, content?

The Twitter fad is notable in that everyone PREDICTS it’s a fad and not a new means of communication, even while they’re trying to make use of this new means of communication. What really worries us is that so much on the web is far less lasting than that moldy, uninteractive print. In its own way the closing of GeoCities is a massive loss of information. If you want to see the Web as it existed ten years ago just find any webpage hosted on GeoCities. And yet, these were mostly pages written by people who were driven by passion. They were also trailblazers of web info, scanning and writing and posting information that has since been disseminated in Wikipedia and the other pro sites that come up whenever you Google anything. They were the frigging pioneers!

Yahoo is closing it GeoCities site this year.

Yahoo bought GeoCities for more than $2.9 billion in dot-com-priced stock in 1999, when GeoCities had more than 1.1 million users. However, while the idea of having a personal presence on the Internet has caught on, GeoCities turned out to be a backwater, not the mainstream.

“We will be closing GeoCities later this year,” Yahoo said in a note on the site. “We’ll provide more details about closing GeoCities and how to save your site data this summer.”

For perspective, Harry McCracken does a “Where are they now” for the top 15 websites and brands of April, 1999 and it’s not pretty.

And now, it looks like the entire publishing world might go the way of GeoCities.
(more…)

Some random personnel moves that have crossed our paths of late.

• Former Comics Foundry Senior Editor Laura Hudson has been teasing a new blogging gig on her Twitter, but no announcement yet.

• Likewise, former Wizard staffer Kiel Phegley has an unnamed new gig, as well, and will cease writing for Marvel.com.

• Editor Nicole Boose has left Marvel to become a full-time mom.

• DC’s Senior Coordinating Editor, Jann Jones, has left the company.

• VAMPIRELLA publisher Jonathan Rheingold has stepped down as Publisher at Harris Publications.

• Gene Luen Yang, who was nominated for a National Book Award for American Born Chinese, will serve as a judge for the 2009 National Book Awards.

• And it’s not really a coming or going, but best wishes to Jim Lee and Carla Michelle, who became engaged this weekend!

¶ An article in the email newsletter Publishers Lunch rounds up signs of book industry contraction via a lowered number of exhibitors and attendees at this year’s BookExpo America. According to the piece, organizers expect roughly 20 percent fewer exhibitors and about 15 percent fewer attendees. Among those not exhibiting, according to the piece, Tokyopop and “(a) victim of the success of Reed’s comic-cons, DC Comics is staying away, too.”

Limited to a meeting room is MacMillan — the publisher is the home of comics imprints FIrst Second and Hill & Wang and distributes Drawn & Quarterly and Papercutz — although their distribution client Bloomsbury/Walker will hold their spot on the floor. It’s unknown if the graphic novel imprints will be there. (DC could be part of the booth for their distributor, Random House, but RH has cut their space quite a bit, too.) Comic-cons are having an increasing influence on the book business, at least according to Lance Fensterman, who runs BEA, New York Anime Fest, NYCC and the upcoming C2E2:

Inspired in part by the dynamic atmosphere on the floor at the fast-growing comic cons he runs for Reed, Fensterman has been trying to “get exhibitors to think about their presence differently.” Some of the booth space not taken by exhibitors is being given over to high-profile Author Stages, one of which will host Capt. Chesley Sullenberger, and show management has encouraged publishers to create their own more dynamic in-booth events.

Developing. It is certainly a sign of the times that consumer shows like comics conventions have continued to capture the fancy of the public, while trade-only events like BEA and other book shows are languishing. The turnout of authors at BEA is always formidable, but the writers get far less media exposure at the show.

We wouldn’t take this piece as official confirmation that any of the named companies aren’t going to be at BEA, btw, so consider this developing.

¶ On his blog Kazu Kibuishi has some news and sales figures:

According to my latest royalty statement, Amulet 1 has sold 180,000 copies in its first year. While I know we can do better, and I have high hopes for what Amulet 2 will bring to the series, we seem to be off to a great start.

The Copper book and Flight 6 are pretty much wrapped up, which means Amulet 3 is now officially underway. The initial draft of the synopsis is done and I will be moving onto the thumbnails in the next few days. The story is shaping up to be really good, so I’m excited to get cranking on this book!

¶ We haven’t really mentioned the demise of the movie studio Fox Atomic here. The film press covered the shutdown of the boutique widely but didn’t ask about the studio’s comics division — a pact with BOOM! to produce 28 DAYS LATER comics was recently announced — and as readers may recall, over the last few years, we were hired by FA to freelance edit a number of graphic novels for them. As far as we know, the fate of the BOOM! deal has not been decided yet. However, the end of Fox Atomic gets a wider look in this piece in Variety, which points out that aside from Screen Gems at Sony, small, genre studios have been ditched by studios:

One by one, the six majors have divested themselves of the profitable but low-reward divisions that crank out horror, teen and urban fare. Before Atomic’s implosion, Universal Pictures was the most recent studio to get out of the dedicated genre game, selling its Rogue Pictures to Relativity Media in October for $150 million.
[snip]
One longtime player in the genre world explains that the death of the studio’s genre divisions mirrors what’s happening in general in Hollywood. The conglomerate-owned majors are increasingly focusing their efforts on tentpoles and sequels.

“Fox would rather make ‘Wolverine’ than a Fox Atomic film,” the executive says. “They don’t need a $50 million earner. It’s not worth their time.”

See, it all ends up being connected.

Just for the record, it was a lot of fun while it lasted, working with FA’s R. Eric Lieb was always a joy, and we put out some books with a quality level we were very proud of so… no regrets anywhere.

Worth a click: A number of artists have contributed drawings of the X-Men character Kitty Pryde as part of a benefit for the Oregon Hemophilia Treatment Center at OHSU. The results can be seen online here, but can in viewed in person at an exhibit on Thursday May 7:

WHO: Over 70 artists including: Bryan Lee O’Malley, Farel Dalrymple, Nathan Fox, Vasilis Lolos, Jeffrey Brown, Tom Neely, Brandon Graham, Corey Lewis, Zack Soto and more!

WHAT: Kitty Pryde tribute show, fundraiser for Oregon Hemophilia Treatment Center

WHEN: Thursday, May 7th, 6-10pm

WHERE: Floating World Comics, 20 NW 5th Ave #101

Let’s start out with two excellent essays.

§ Dan Nadel looks at Brush with Passion: The Art and Life of Dave Stevens and uses it as a springboard to examine the frustrations shared by several generations of artists:

So let’s back up for a moment. There was this thing that happened in the 1960s: Incredibly skilled, visually ambitious artists like Wood, Manning Toth, et al — men who were raised on pulp imagery and the classic American illustrators like Wyeth and Pyle — decided they wanted to do something “sophisticated”. They realized that despite the still-somewhat plentiful outlets (fewer than in the ‘20s and ‘30s, but still a few) for their work, they were never going to be free of the “juvenile” implications of their subject matter. These were guys who wanted to draw comics, but, given the circumstances (generational, financial, etc.) had nowhere else to go. They were, in essence, the last true work-a-day fantasy artists of the 20th century — still basically working for the pulps, at a high level for low pay.

§ And at The Walrus, Sean Rogers examines Seth, the cartoonist and the designer:

Make no mistake: this is Seth’s Peanuts more than Schulz’s. One of the drawbacks of Seth’s omnivorous approach to cartooning is that his admiration for his peers often compels him to incorporate their innovations into his own practice. Not so with his work as a designer, which remains sui generis: his take on Peanuts is the one through which most future readers will understand the strip, and with which future critics will have to wrestle. It is, in other words, authoritative. And that he presents us with a version of Peanuts that looks so brazenly unfamiliar should come as no surprise when we consider how ready he is, elsewhere, to discard, tweak, or wholly invent broad swaths of cartooning history.

§Seduction of the Indifferent rounds up Woolly Mammoth Covers and to the surprise of, perhaps, few, most of them involve woolly mammoths trampling ordnance of some kind.

§ News brief: According to numerous Twitter and blog posts, the Calgary Expo was very well attended on Saturday; guests were awoken that night by a fire alarm, and Sunday, it snowed.

§ Richard Krauss went to Stumpton 09, took lots of pictures of ‘tooners, and posted it all with tons of news and information.

§ For you old-timers out there: WEHT to Chris Ulm, an architect of the pre-Image comics scene.

§ At the Daily Cross Hatch, comic Timmy Williams on nerdlebrity comics:

I think there should be a publisher called Celebrity Comics and every famous person that comes up with some horse-shit comic series has to print it under there, so we can all be warded off by the logo, which should look like a big cancel sign or will maybe just be a big capital “NO!.” Maybe I’ll take a week some time and read this, Rosario Dawson’s comic, the one Nic Cage wrote with his son, and the one that guy from Heroes made, then shoot myself in the face.

§ Spurge posts a pretty sound The Top Ten All Time Best Comics Series.

§
The Swedish SPX just wrapped up, and Top Shelf attended with guest Jeffrey Brown, who got interviewed on a popular Swedish morning show called Nyhetsmorgon. You will learn much from this clip, including what Swedish morning TV hosts wear, and that you can show cartoons of people having sex on Swedish morning TV.

Author and comics scribe Neil Gaiman (SANDMAN) makes an appearance in Chestertown, MD, tonight at 7:30 at Washington College’s Cain Auditorium as part of the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature. Gaiman will be talking about his literary inspiration with Washington College’s Joshua Wolf Shenk. Admission is free and open to the public. No reservations are required, and seating is on a first come, first served basis. PEN has more info.

Well, here’s a comics double play — the new DC referencing song from Art Brut in a homemade vid that shows Jeff Lemire’s cover for the new album. Enjoy.

The annual event, focused on children’s graphic book material and organized by Alex Simmons, comes to the Bronx tomorrow:

The KIDS COMIC CON 2009 is set for April 25th at Bronx Community College (181st Street & University Avenue, Bronx, NY 10453). And yep, even though the economy is struggling like Superman surrounded by Kryptonite, the KIDS COMIC CON 2009 is still FREE for children 17 and under (and hey, Mom and Dad, its just $5 for you — making the KIDS COMIC CON one of the best entertainment values around).

The guest/exhibitor roster, which includes Archie Comics, Ponent Mon, Fillmore creator Scott Gimple and many more, can be found here. Take the whole family!

Since we’re not posting much today, you should spend all your time reading Todd Klein’s blog. It’s like sitting around rapping with the Socrates of comics logo design — and there’ no hemlock at the end. Klein has a three-part examination of the logos of AMALGAM COMICS which looks at how back in the late ’90s, Marvel and Dc came together to mix up their characters…and their logos.

Since all the titles and characters were essentially “new,” all 24 books needed new logos. This called for a lot of design work, especially considering they’d most likely be used only once each, but then the same could be said for the art in each title. The two companies approached the logo design issue a little differently, but both ended up with mostly the same solution: work with the guy who’d designed many of the logos being referenced to create the mash-ups…namely, me! In the beginning, though, several of the Marvel logos were designed by JG Roshell of Comicraft, and at DC the logos were overseen and sometimes designed or assembled by Curtis King on staff.

Not only does Klein identify the designers of most of the best known logos of the ’90s, but his comments on how they work together are fascinating reading. Go on to Part Two and then Part Three.

For an even greater contribution to humanity’s legacy, Klein looks at just why Comics Sans causes strong men to weep and women to turn gray overnight. He even does a side-by-side comparison (above) of the fonts by Dave GIbbons and John Costanza that supposedly “influenced” Comics Sans, and why the result is inferior:

Keep in mind that the first two columns are many times removed from the actual original hand-lettering, and are further reduced in quality by my scanning it at a low enough resolution to use here. That said, I see much more style and consistency in both Dave and John’s letterforms than in Comic Sans, the result of many years of practice. Add in the fact that Connare created his letters by drawing them with a mouse on a computer screen, a notoriously difficult way to draw anything, and you can understand why they look the way they do. You can sit anyone down in front of a printed alphabet and ask them to copy it, but the result isn’t likely to look nearly as good as the original. Make them draw with clumsy tools, and the result will be even worse.

Must reading as always.

As always, WATCHMEN and NARUTO top this week’s Graphic Books Best Seller List. Tatsumi’s epic A DRIFTING LIFE debuts at #3 on the paperback list, reflecting the surge from the huge article in the New York Times last week.

The list has definitely calmed down now, and resembles way more closely what you would see on BookScan or Amazon. The makers are obviously refining their methodology as they go along…it’s kind of sad to not see all the oddball items on there, but hardly unexpected.

Hm. Check out this video we found for what looks like a demo of a Comics Shop Locator app for the iPhone. In the demo, the demonstrator uses both GPS and typing in a zip code to find nearby stores. The poster is listed as Diamond Comics, so you can probably figure out who’s behind it.

Definitely handy.

We’re a little under the weather today, so it’s late and light, but we had to make mention of this Not Comics obit: The legendary cinematographer Jack Cardiff has died at age 94:

An Oscar winner for Black Narcissus, in 1948, Cardiff’s career as cinematographer spanned an astonishing eight decades, with his career in films going all the way back to an 1918 acting job.

Cardiff will be best remembered for his long collaboration with directors Powell & Pressburger on films like A Matter of Life & Death and The Red Shoes, but he also worked on classics like The African Queen for John Huston, The Barefoot Contessa for Joseph L. Mankiewicz and King Vidor’s War and Peace.

And CONAN THE DESTROYER and RAMBO, of all things. Cardiff was still working even a few years ago, and directed several films himself, including SONS AND LOVERS.

The Powell/Pressburger films remain one of the great treasures of film, and Cardiff’s unbelievable photography on BLACK NARCISSUS — a delirious story of repressed nuns in the febrile Himalayas — remains a singular cinematic achievement of beauty and psychological expression. Under Cardiff, even a potboiler like THE VIKINGS looked great. Truly, one of the masters.

The first of three adaptations of Richard Stark’s Parker novels by Darwyn Cooke is coming out this summer, and IDW has a preview of THE HUNTER. As you might expect, given that it’s Darwyn Cooke, there should be no surprise that it looks…delicious. Click the link for the whole thing.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and First Second Books are pleased to present a unique exhibit featuring photos and illustrations from the graphic novel The Photographer.

This exhibit offers a sample of the book that combines the late photojournalist Didier Lefèvre’s dramatic images and Emmanuel Guibert’s stunning artwork to bear witness to the hardships endured by the Afghan people throughout this conflict—and to the present day.

Location:
VII Gallery
28 Jay Street
Dumbo, Brooklyn, NY
Three blocks west of the York St. F-Train subway station.

Reception:
There will be an opening reception April 23 at 6:00pm.

Dates:
April 23 - May 19, 2009

Hours:
Monday - Friday
10am-6pm
Saturday & Sunday 12pm-6pm

Sean Kleefield does all a favor by rounding up the full slate of Earth Day Comics from our dying newspapers’ funny pages. Since we hadn’t looked at a newspaper comic strip page in…many a moon, it was a nice way to relax. Of course, we know there are only two you care about…

Mark Trail!

and Mary Worth!

Wait a minute…now we all know newspapers are dying, and comic strips are one of the few things that people care about in the papers any more, but maybe it was an off day or something, but are these two strips supposed to be about zombies? Because we’ve rarely seen such lifeless artwork. If it isn’t the inert way everyone is standing around in the last panel of Mark Trail, it’s creepy stoned-eyed Mary Worth! At least the ducks look okay. If this is what comic strips look like nowadays, no wonder people watch Superjail.

But you can’t take the comics away from the people, no sir. Look what happened when the Washington Post tried to quietly remove the Judge Parker comic strip and hush up the crime.

When the Washington Post killed its Sunday Book Review section, some readers complained. When the Post folded the Business section into the A section, there were a few murmurs. When the daily decapitated the Judge Parker comic strip, readers revolted. “We received hundreds of passionate e-mails,” a top Post editor told The Washingtonian. “The readership may not be that high, but what we underestimated was the intensity.”

But take a look at Judge Parker by Woody Wilson and Eduardo Barretto. Damn, that is some dope shit! Pow! Sock! That top Post editor had no idea of the intensity whirlwind he was going to reap, given this combustible fuel! See, that’s what people like, not that “Hey Mary Worth! It’s 4:20!” stuff.

Even as they are celebrating their 25th anniversary in a gala New York drive-in pizza party, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are coming back to the screen in a live-action film planned for 2011, it’s has just been announced.

The new movie will be a Batman Begins-style reboot, showing the origins of the team of crime-fighting mutant turtles. Legendary Pictures will be producing the film, and co-creator Peter Laird is on board as executive producer. Laird says that the new movie “will remain true to the spirit of the original comic books. ” Laird mentions that the new movie might also use a new face replacement technology, which would allow the turtles to be much more expressive. Unless I’m reading the statement wrong, I think this also may confirm that the turtles won’t be completely computer generated.

Created by two “aspiring comics creators” in 1984, TMNT remains probably the must successful self-published, creator-owned comics property of all time from a licensing standpoint, with periodic reboots keeping the franchise alive for new kidlet audiences, it would seem.

BTW, if you are in the New York area tonight, there will be a free screening of the first Turtles film.

We forgot to pot this news, but everyone else did, but it’s still too good not to pass along: SALT WATER TAFFY, Matt Loux’s charming series about youthful adventurers, is going to run as a webcomic in addition to the regular printed versions:

“When I was working on THE TRUTH ABOUT DR.TRUE, SALT WATER TAFFY V3, Jack and Benny kept wanting to go on side trips, and I realized they would make great comic strip characters,” said Loux. “The Salt Water Taffy website creates a place for me to tell more of their adventures in a new format.”

Loux will premier a new comic strip online every other week until the launch of SALT WATER TAFFY VOLUME 3: THE TRUTH ABOUT DR. TRUE. The Salt Water Taffy website will also keep fans-up to-date on news, reviews, and events, and give a sneak peek of the new book.

Well now, despite some hearty protestations when the story first surfaced, it seems that Dimension/the Weinsteins have indeed lost the rights to make a SIN CITY sequel.

The sequel rights to “Sin City,” Frank Miller’s popular noir comic, are being shopped around Hollywood, in what appears to be a sign that Dimension Films has lost rights to the property.

The Weinstein Co./Dimension continue to maintain that they hold the rights to any sequel for the Robert Rodriguez film, which grossed $159 million worldwide when it came out in 2005.

But producers say they have been shopped the rights by reps for Miller’s estate, who they say are seeking a new place to set up a potential follow-up.

Whoa…what do you mean “Miller estate”? FRANK MILLER IS ALIVE, ALIVE, I TELL YOU! Aside from that creepy typo, it would seem that the Weinsteins just sat around on the rights for too long and they lapsed. According to the article in THR, it is unknown if Robert Rodriguez would be involved, or anyone else, really. Although the whole SIN CITY look has become a bit of a cliche since the movie burst upon people’s eyeballs, we’d still hit that for old times’ sake, anyway.

It seems that we have never officially given this its own item, but a movie based on DYLAN DOG, the long running supernatural Italian comic, is being made, and it has a Production Blog and everything. The movie is being directed by Kevin Munroe down in New Orleans and it stars Brandon Routh as Dylan Dog, and co-stars Taye Diggs, Anita Briem, and Sam Huntington. And it’s called DEAD OF NIGHT.

The original comic is by writer Tiziano Sclavi, and artist Claudio Villa; since debuting in 1990, it’s been published in many other countries, including, in the US, by Dark Horse.

…get that spam offering to sell email addresses of Freemasons?

Weird. Paging Rex Mundi.