The recent news of Newsarama’s sale to TopTenReviews.com has kind of faded into the woodwork — the site seems to have just kept on going, the only change a new list of sister sites at the bottom of each page.

The change was probably for the best. It’s no secret that Newsarama’s previous owners, Imaginova, weren’t the best fit for a pop culture site. They specialize in science and space mostly, with sites like Space.com and LiveScience.com, which were also sold off. The latter is a kind of general clearinghouse for soft science stories that we long had bookmarked in our RSS feeds.

But perhaps LiveScience.com is a better stable mate for Newsarama than you might guess. Newsarama has long been known for its contentious message boards, and a random news story on Live Science we happened to read shows that animal aficianados can be just as cranky.
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Busy Kiel Phegley talks to Gary Groth, Michael Dean, and Kristy Valenti about the digital future of The Comics Journal. Among the very good news: Shaenon Garrity, Robert Clough, and the Hooded Utilitarians gang of Noah Berlatsky and Ng Suat Tong will be contributing, as will R. Fiore and Kenneth Smith. Groth has more on the overall vision:

Groth: I see this is an opportunity to create a true web version of “The Comics Journal,” to in effect combine the virtues of both the web and print as I understand them, which is to say, a single “place” where readers can come and expect a consistently intelligent, idiosyncratic, combative, and occasionally clashing conversation about comics and cartooning. Over the past few years I’ve noticed smarter critical commentary on the Net, but it’s scattered all over the place, buried in the usual mountain of frivolous, tepid, dimwitted, unreadable fanboy drivel. There’s no single website you can visit and anticipate a range of interesting sensibilities on an equal footing, so one of my goals is to distill the best criticism and journalism we can into a single site.

ALSO, Jeet Heer looks at TCJ’s better qualities:

The strength of the magazine is in presenting essays that have a depth of analysis that can’t be found elsewhere. Most writing on comics tends to suffer from a shortness of breath: small reviews and bite-size blog postings. The Journal, at its best, doesn’t settle for such small snacks but offers a full-course meal.

Among its reviewers the Journal has a contingent of solid, trust-worthy writers: Kent Worcester, Rich Kreiner, Shaenon Garrity, and Kristian Williams, but they tend to get drowned out by crankier and less-informed critics, writers who mistake abrasiveness for insight. The magazine’s review section does seem too diffuse and scattershot. I’m never quite sure why some books get reviewed and others don’t. There’s a lot of good critics on the web now – Rob Clough comes to mind right way. The most promising prospect for the next incarnation of the Journal is to recruit these writers (I know Clough has already signed on).

It seems that the Wizard Universe Message Board, home to seditious postings on bad customer service, personnel changes, joyless conventions and other, hoi polloi, topics, has been shut down, part of a total reworking of the Wizard Universe family of sites. Ex-Wizardeer Sean T. Collins has more:

The board was launched in 2006, at the start of Wizard’s often-shaky attempt to maintain a web presence in a comics-news scene increasingly dominated by online outlets. The WUMB was a priority for then-Editor-in-Chief Pat McCallum, who mandated daily posts from all editorial staffers as a way to increase the sense of community with readers of Wizard’s publications (at the time, there were four monthly magazines). McCallum and many other high-ranking editorial figures — among them, Wizard Editor Brian Cunningham, ToyFare Editors Zach Oat and Justin Aclin, VP Joe Yanarella, Anime Insider Editor Summer Mullins, WizardUniverse.com Editors Rick Marshall and Jim Gibbons, and Wizard and WizardUniverse.com Managing Editor, uh, me — posted on the board frequently, even though its hosting on an outside company’s server prevented its hits from being counted toward Wizard’s main site.

As mentioned, the move comes in the midst of many format changes and relaunches for Wizard roducts both in print and online. For instance, the long running price guide has also been dropped from the print magazine:

However, as the WUMB thread shows, many of Wizard’s most die-hard devotees saw the section as key to the magazine’s identity — a magazine about comics, as the opposed to general nerd-friendly pop culture touted by Wizard over the past few years and at Shamus’s GeekChicDaily e-newsletter. Coupled with the apparent move away from comics-focused conventions toward nerd-celeb-heavy shows that seems to be the Shamus/Wizard strategy for its Con War with Reed Exhibitions, the price guide’s elimination is another step away from the traditional Wizard brand, and a step toward some future Shamus 2.0, less dependent on the comics industry and its customers.

WUMB spin-off Panels on Pages has its own eulogy by Jason Kerouac.

Finally, in other Wizard-related news, Comic Foundry makes a zombie return from the dead with Last-minute Halloween Costume! Be the SCARIEST CHARACTER IN COMICS! MEEEEEow.

Starting with a letter to subscribers which Tom Spurgeon unveiled, today’s it’s being announced that The Comics Journal, which is about to release its gala 300th print edition, is going to change its presentation drastically, with fewer, bigger biannual print editions and an increased online component. Dirk Deppey, has more:

The expanded, full-service TCJ.com will deliver everything readers love — in-depth interviews, smart columns, sharp criticism, real journalism — on a daily basis. And not only will readers get the traditional Comics Journal content faster, but they will also be able to access features beyond the reach of print magazines: videos, slide shows, audio files, original-art galleries and an army of both new and established Journal-caliber bloggers filtering the comics world through their unique perspectives. In short, it is the dawning of a Comics Journal that knows no bounds.

Focusing on what print does best, The Comics Journal magazine will be more beautiful than ever, an elegant combination of criticism, journalism and objet d’art. Uniquely sized and formatted, evocatively visual and tactile, each issue will be an event. Readers will get their first look at the direction The Comics Journal will be moving in with issue #300.

Spurgeon follows up with a brief interview with TCJ’s Gary Groth on the change

“It was always a strain to assemble eight commercially viable issues that were also aesthetically pleasing — balancing that fine line — every year. I feel much more comfortable concentrating our resources on fewer print editions each year and spending some of those resources on our web presence. It’s no secret that newspapers and magazines are suffering because so much of what they’ve traditionally done can be done on the web, faster and cheaper. We decided therefore to redesign the editorial and physical format of the magazine to take advantage of what print’s best at — upscale production values, longer prose, more permanent content — and bring the Journal’s mandate for criticism and commentary to the web with a vengeance.

Coming, as it does, on the heels of the sale of the once-preeminent online comics news source Newsarama, it’s clearly another step in the evolution on online comics journalism. A beefed up TCJ online, with perhaps a return to some of its take-no-prisoners investigative reporting would be much-needed electric cattle prod to the hindquarters for everyone.

At the same time, the rules are changing so fast and quick. Newsarama’s sale comes at a time when its position as the must-do news source has almost completely eroded. Everyone seems to use their own outlets for breaking news, and there are so many other choices. It’s notable that when Monday’s news of a new Stephen King comic at Vertigo came out, it was announced at Vertigo’s own blog and the first, presumably embargoed, interviews were at the NYT, the Daily Beast and AOL’s comics blog, Comics Alliance. Comics news is now big enough that it doesn’t even get broken on comics news sites any more — with a variety of “mainstream” news outlets covering comics on a regular basis, news can reach a (one hopes) even wider audience.

On a more personal note, the main thing all this reminded us of is a panel at San Diego in 1996 or 7 or so that included The Beat, Gary Groth, and other folks on “The Future of Online,” or some such, where we predicted a “bigger, stronger, faster” model for Online, and Gary said something along the lies of “I like holding things in my hands.” Sometimes it only takes 15 years for dreams to die. (Pretty sure this panel was written up in an issue of the Comics Journal? Maybe one of our helper monkeys can dig it up, because if there’s one thing that’s certain it’s that my memory really sucks these days.)

Newsarama, the long-running comics news site, has been purchased by TopTenReviews, a content aggregation site out of Ogden. UT, it was announced today. The site, along with Space.com, and LiveScience, were sold by Imaginova, a science news web publisher which purchased Newsarama in 2007.

Although Imaginova purchased Newsarama with an eye to beefing up their consumer offerings, it was not always a great fit, editorially, with reader complaints about formats and technological issues along the way.

More information, via PR, in the jump.

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DON’T MISS

This once in a

lifetime opportunity

to see

The Beat

Douglas Wolk

Aaron McQuade & Evie Nagy

Thursday, Oct. 1, 7 p.m. 2009
The Comics Press: a panel discussion
Admission: $5 | Free for MoCCA Members

MoCCA invite you to join us for a conversation about the comics press. What is the role of comic reportage today? What gets covered and why? Find out at this discussion with comics critics and reporters Heidi MacDonald, Aaron McQuade and Evie Nagy and Douglas Wolk and find out the answers.

Heidi MacDonald has edited award-winning comics for Disney, Warner Bros., and Fox. She is currently the editor and main writer for The Beat, a blog covering comics as they relate to pop culture. It was named one of the “100 Greatest Websites” by Entertainment Weekly.

Aaron McQuade and Evie Nagy are husband and wife co-hosts of the weekly podcast and pseudo-awards show Awesomed By Comics. In addition to writing about comics for Publishers Weekly and other publications, Evie is a music journalist and editor at Billboard Magazine; Aaron can be heard hourly as a radio news anchor and producer on Sirius XM.

Douglas Wolk writes about comics for the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, the Washington Post, the Believer and elsewhere. He’s the author of the Eisner- and Harvey-winning “Reading Comics,” as well as “Live at the Apollo.” He lives in Portland, Oregon.

No sooner has Rich Johnston noted that much-loved and admired Amanda Conner was the first woman to make Wizard Magazine Top 10 artists list—to much huzzahing and rejoicing—than it was noted, via CB Cebulski’s Twitter, that the SAME issue of Wizard contained THIS:

Boobs!

Did you know that “a boob” means:

1 : a stupid awkward person : simpleton
2 : boor, philistine

So, perhaps the Wizard staff was engaging in a rare moment of self reflection?? Let’s all help them in their admirable goal of self-examination and give them some more feedback. A “trust” exercise, if you will.

Sometime in the night, the marvelous Gail Simone went on Twitter and spoke thusly: Do We Need Tabloid And Gossip Comics Journalism? which Rich Johnston picked up at the above link. Simone is no stranger to the message board, so the debate continues in the link and its very own Twitter topic.

Now, I haven’t read all of the forum replies at Bleeding Cool, but I did read Simone’s first response and she writes:

And when you ask him about it, he always points to two or three helpful stories he’s posted (like Josh Hoopes) then goes right back to the gossip. It’s weird how Rich can say anything he likes about a comics pro, but if someone dares raise the question, without malice, of whether or not this stuff is worthwhile, that is somehow being ‘butthurt’ or some other dumbass accusation.

Oh my god! Erik Larsen has a disagreement with Neil Gaiman! Really? Mark Waid had a disagreement with a friend…really? I wonder who cares, but even more, I wonder why anyone who can actually write would waste their time pimping that drivel. And Rich CAN write.

Rich is one part of a big dumb cycle of gossip, of fake ‘celebrity’ news, but it is far from the only such practitioner, he’s just the one most visible and the one most desperate to make himself part of the story. The same rules apply, guys. If you laugh at the idiots who read the Enquirer and follow Perez Hilton, but love petty comics gossip, you are in the glassest of glass houses. It’s the same exact useless crap.

As much as I ADORE Gail, I find this awfully thin-skinned and lacking in a sense of the bigger picture.

Can anyone REALLY equate what Rich writes to Perez Hilton? I MEAN, COME ON NOW. I could spend 10 minutes googling around to people’s public Facebook photo pages and find more personal gossip, embarrassing photos, and scuttlebutt than Rich has posted in an entire year.

Erik Larsen posted some trash talk about Gaiman ON A MESSAGE BOARD IN PUBLIC VIEW. People were emailing and IMing that link within a few minutes…is that really “gossip”?

It’s a far cry from paparazzi stalking people getting lattes at Starbucks and personal gossip about who’s banging the babysitter that “real” celebrities are subjected to. Since even people on reality shows are now considered celebrities, comics folks are just lucky they haven’t come in for any level of scrutiny.
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Newsarama co-founder Matt Brady has announced he’s leaving the site. In his statement, he says it’s of his own choice. Newsarama, which was acquired by Imaginova a few years back, will continue under the guidance of co-founder Michael Doran and frequent contributor Lucas Siegel, husband of DC assistant editor Janelle Siegel.

Brady has seen a lot in his nearly 20 years of covering the industry, and his farewell should be read in its entirety, but this one bit should be highlighted:

Over the years, I’ve seen this industry change from a niche that we were all convinced was on life support to a thriving, vibrant, legitimate and accepted form of media whose characters are now virtually in every household, theater, and store. I’ve ridden its ups and downs and reported on just about everything that could be reported on. I’ve covered what looked to be its mortal wounds, and celebrated new directions that pioneered new ground. I’ve made tons of friends over the years, laughing and crying with them over good news and bad. Paul Levitz says we’re a “tribe” – something that has its own social and community connotations, and I remember one year at some show or something, telling Jimmy Palmiotti that I see him more than I see most of my family. It was something that I think Charles Brownstein commented on too – calling the now year-long convention schedule a never-ending summer camp.

On a personal note, Matt and I were friends and competitors at various times over the years, and had a few dust-ups, but there is no question but that he pioneered online coverage of comics, and was absolutely one of the best at it. He commands my lasting respect and best wishes in whatever direction he chooses to take.

Tripwire has had some setbacks lately — Diamond isn’t carrying the latest issue (yet another sign that magazines about comics are not exactly a booming business). But you can pick it up at San Diego, and the content looks as good as past issues. AND…great cover. Seriously, paper…it’s not just for old timers!

Tripwire Magazine continues its yearly Comic-Con tradition premiering its third Tripwire Annual at the world’s best-known genre media convention. A stunning Jeff Carlisle full colour original Nick Fury cover sets the tone for the amazing content inside: We have exclusive interviews with Stan Lee, Joe Kubert, Bill Morrison of Bongo Comics, painter Phil Hale, storyboard artist Trevor Goring and many more. There are features on Tintin, the 70th anniversaries of both Marvel Comics and Batman, the 30th anniversary of Alien, Wednesday Comics from DC, Solomon Kane from Dark Horse and a dozen others. Company profiles include Euro-comics publisher Cinebook, art book impresario Flesk Publications and Book Palace. And of course there are over 20 pages of original strips from Roger Langridge, Kev Mullins, Declan Shalvey, Josh Fialkov & Kody Chamberlain and others. In all, it is by far the biggest and best issue Tripwire has published to date.

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Damn it! It’s not enough that Kurt Busiek has to win every internet argument he ever enters…now he got his own website, Busiek.com to spout even MORE of his level-headed, even-handed views and informed, intelligent commentary. Damn it!

With luck, this’ll be a good place for news, information, previews of upcoming projects, announcements of convention appearances, and things like that. I’ve already started putting some articles, interviews and stories in the “Read” section and there’s a near-complete bibliography in the “About” section. We have a message board—have had it for a few years, actually, since it’s been the board we set up to go with my other site, AstroCity.us—and we’ll be reworking and redesigning it, to cover all my work, not just Astro City.

Above, the early fruits of some downtime when Busiek worked in Marvel’s marketing dept.

One of the Wizard-related announcements at WWPh was the debut of FunFare, a new magazine which is owned by Wizard publisher Gareb Shamus but published via Wizard. You can read the PR in the jump but it will be a kind of family service magazine, with product reviews and recommendations, especially toys. The concept spins out of the “Hot Dozen Toys” event that Wizard and ToyFare have been promoting for years. It’s also a bit reminiscent of Family Fun, a magazine published by Disney for a while back in the ’90s.

UPDATE: Several people have reminded me that this is an update of Toy Wishes, a similarly-themed but more limited in scope magazine.

AND PLUS, two more staffers have apparently left Wizard, including the managing editor of Toy Wishes.

While the magazine industry is still in shell shock, FunFare is certainly a decent idea for a launch. The debut issue will come out in conjunction with the October Big Apple Con.
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So if you’ve been following along with the CAP #600/REBORN #1 news, you know that CAPTAIN AMERICA #600 goes on sale TODAY, not Wednesday, because Marvel has been planning a big news release that, hopefully, will turn into major media coverage and people flooding into stores to see what it’s all about. So what’s the deal? A Google news search for Captain America as of this moment reveals such headlines as:

Sikhs ask U.S. Army to drop ban on turbans, beards

I can’t survive without Test cricket: Tendulkar

Soldier’s $7 book purchase may bring huge windfall

Ah, wait here we go!

•CNN International: Captain America, thought dead, comes back to life

•NY Times: Captain America Back From the Dead

• And what seems to be the main story from the Daily News: Captain America is coming back to life in a comic near you.

So….let’s say the news is spreading fast.
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Continuing the ever-growing exodus from MySpace, the popular Cup O’Joe feature — in which Marvel Editor in Chief Joe Quesada answers a wide range of questions — has moved from that sputtering social networking site over to CBR, with Jonah Weiland and Kiel Phegley taking over the questioning duties from Jim McLauchlin. Early topics include the impending resurrection of Captain America, price increases and so on. Bonus: a chibi version of Joe heads each column!

Rich Johnston’s new Bleeding Cool site, sponsored in subdued fashion by Avatar, has debuted. Congrats to Rich! We’re quite jealous of their already lively forum, too!

It was a big day in comics media news, or at least a “mini-large” day. Rich Johnston announced that yesterday’s Lying in the Gutters would be the very last. LitG is, of couse, the long running “gossip” column that also functions as the last vestige of independent reporting for the comics media, with such news as publishers who are stiffing artists, the Fake Art Adams, swipe files, and lots of snarky gossip from behind the scenes at the Big Two. The final column included a lengthy dialog between Johnston and CBR honcho Jonah Weiland that explained some of the move, reminisced over olden days and alluded to a “big contributor” who would be coming, in an unrelated move, to CBR.

As if to prove the maxim, “where one falls, another shall rise,” on the very same day Valerie D’Orazio debuted her new “Comics-Op” column for Comixology:

Welcome to the first edition of Comics-Op, comics from a semi-insider perspective. What “semi-insider” means basically is that sometimes I’m just as shocked as you are with the latest comic book developments, and sometimes I just sit on big news with my mouth shut and a Kool-Aid smile on my face for months. My hope is that Comics-Op will be the mid-point between these two extremes, taking you along for the ride.

While the first column was a bit light on the gossip, who knows where it will go?

Meanwhile, via Twitter and the Whitechapel forum, Johnston revealed his new gig: a daily blog called Bleeding Cool, which will be hosted and funded by Avatar Press, publishing of Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis and so on.

Yesterday was the last Lying In The Gutters. But a good gossipmonger never dies. He just goes from a weekly column to a daily blogsite.

Bleeding Cool will feature everything you love and hate about Lying In The Gutters, but every day, reacting to topical news and featuring a host of columns, features, interviews, reviews, previews and…. let’s go with familiar names. Expect real innovation.

It’s funded by Avatar Press, who have promised a hands-off editorial process, but whom I’ll give an Avatar Plug Of The Week to to keep them happy.

Over on his blog, Ellis announced he would be contributing to the new blog.

So…a weekly column goes daily, a former daily blogger goes weekly, a proto blogger author comes back…and Avatar gets into the news business. All in a day.

As the countdown clock on BleedingCool reminds us, the new site will debut in four days…aka Monday,

Broken Frontier, the long-running “some news and reviews” site, has officially relaunched with some new ideas for content. You can read the PR below, but the site is a nice looking aggregation of the usual news, some previews, and reviews. Site head honcho Frederik Hautain and the rest of the crew have been at this a long time, through some real ups and downs, so it will be nice to see them up and running again.

Premier comic book website Broken Frontier is proud to unveil its new look and features. Broken Frontier is going back to its roots, while at the same time making the big bold leap into web 2.0. In addition to its own blog, Broken Frontier will launch several production blogs where readers get inside information on the development of a selected number of comics projects, straight from the creative team’s mouth. And of course, the regular wave of articles, interviews, columns and reviews will keep on coming.  The most innovative feature in this regard is Post Your News Now!, a unique and user-friendly tool that allows all of BF’s registered members to post news, rumors and scoops directly to the front page. “I think this will be a great feature for smaller companies and self-publishers to put their projects in the spotlight,” adds Broken Frontier Editor, Frederik Hautain. “But at the same time, it’s a great opportunity for our members to grab their chance and do some comics reporting of their own.

In October of 2002, the site launched with the baseline ‘Where Fans Come First!’. In those days, before the existence of blogs and ready-made websites, Broken Frontier gave its readers an opportunity to submit their own articles, making it possible for the average comics fan to contribute to comics criticism.  Now, a little over 6 years later, Broken Frontier is making its community as much of a focal point as its comics coverage. “BF has made a name for itself by way of the diversity of our coverage,” Hautain explained. “While we’ll continue to explore every corner of the comics universe, the new BF was built with the clear intention of putting the community back at the heart of the site.”

  Looking beyond the new design and improved site technology, the biggest improvements have been made on the community end. Previously limited to nothing but a forum, the community is now keyed on on-site reader interaction by placing each individual member at the center of its site experience.   Hautain commented, “I hope everyone will get a good vibe when they visit the new and improved Broken Frontier. Everyone on our staff is psyched now that we’ve started the engine of our new rocket ship. Full speed ahead!”

Well, the source of Comic Foundry senior editor Laura Hudson’s Twitter glee over blogging has been revealed: AOL has relaunched its Comics Alliance blog and Hudson is the blogger on the bubble. RSS feed added — check!

Welcome to my world, girl! My #1 blogging tip is to remember to stand up and walk around the room at least once every day.

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.

The one lesson we have learned above all else from New York Comic-Con 2009 is to go find that funny little cable that came with our computer that we had no idea what to do with! Our two panels yesterday went awesomely but would have been enhanced by our slide selections…had we only known that that funny little cable was our gateway to the world of AV, things would have been so different.

Not that the Javits tech folks weren’t helpful. They actually pulled out BAGS full of Mac connector cables…however, none of them fit the modern popular Macs. It seemed all of those had been given away already.

Or, as one of them said as I moaned over the loss, “Yep, a lot of people forget that cable once…but they never forget it again.”

Tim Leong has provided The Beat with the debut of the cover to Comic Foundry #5, featuring Bryan Lee O’Malley.

This fifth issue will be the last one of the magazine, but it looks to be going out with a bang.

As we noted recently, the Pulse and Comicon.com, granddaddy of all mega-comics sites, has had a makeover recently, and the message baords have been given a state-of-the-art update. One of the interesting things about it is that you can now see page views, even though they are just from the update, which was a month or so ago. We were curious to see which had the highest page views, and were touched to see a few of them were ours from way back in the day. Like this story from October 2003: “MARVEL: THE JEMAS YEARS” ENDS ITS RUN. Holy crap! We’d never get away with writing a news story like this today!

It appears that another chapter in Marvel’s always tumultuous history has come to an end with the finale to Bill Jemas’ run at the top. Sources tell the Pulse that Jemas, Marvel’s President of Publishing & New Media, has been removed from any input on editorial, moved to a smaller office when he isn’t working out of his home, and is expected to be leaving when his contract expires in January.

Wow, where are all those “insiders” who used to love to talk to us five years ago? Either we’ve gotten lazy or all our sources have retired.

Even more nostalgic was this February ‘03 interview with Dan DiDio:

THE PULSE: One of the things the Ultimates line does address is the difficulty for new readers to break into reading the comics.

DIDIO: You know what? Go back to Jim and Jeph’s BATMAN. For those people who were out there reading BATMAN we found a way to get back to the core of the characters and give them the stories they wanted to see. It’s very hard to achieve that level of success and there’s not that many characters you could do it with, but that goes back to your question about Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. These are the characters we should be doing it with.

See, the All-Star line was a-brewin’ then.

Coincidentally, Val also had fun with an old DiDio interview recently.

Via PR, another print magazine about comics is going to the great newsstand in the sky, as Write Now!, edited by Danny Fingeroth and published by TwoMorrows, will end with its 20th issue.

“Write Now! has had an amazing run, and I’m incredibly proud of what editor Danny Fingeroth has accomplished with it,” offered TwoMorrows’ publisher John Morrow. “Danny has shaped it into the preeminent publication catering to anyone with an interest in the nuts and bolts of writing for the comics medium. If you’ve read every issue, you’ve likely acquired the equivalent of a higher education degree in the intricacies of scripting. But while our readership has been fanatically loyal during its run, both Danny and I feel the magazine has reached a point where the economy is taking a toll on its circulation, and the increasing amount of time involved in its production might be spent more productively elsewhere. So we’ve jointly decided that #20 will be the last issue.”

“Producing Write Now! For TwoMorrows has been one of the highlights of my career,” said editor Danny Fingeroth. “The art and craft of writing comics is something that is often neglected due to the higher visibility of comics art. Write Now gave me the chance to share what I’ve learned about writing over the years with people who are passionate about expanding their writing knowledge and skills. I got to meet and speak with many great creators of all eras during the magazine’s run, getting them to speak about what they do in ways that had seldom been touched on before. And, of course, working with the great John Morrow the rest of the TwoMorrows crew was always a pleasure. I look forward to continuing my relationship with this important publishing entity.”

The last issue will ship in late February. Subscribers will be given several options, including a refund, or applying their balance toward another TwoMorrows book or magazine. Digital and print back issues are available on the TwoMorrows website.

On the official Comic Foundry blog this morning, publisher and founder Tim Leong announces the fifth issue of the comics magazine will be the last one.

When we launched Comic Foundry Magazine it was a breath of fresh air to the industry and introduced a variety of coverage in types of stories never seen before in the comics press. We found praise and a fanbase that had a deep passion for the content we created. Together, my team helped changed the game. Comic Foundry means the world to me, which is why it saddens me to an unexplainable extent to say that our next issue will be our last. I’m sorry to admit that I’ve reached the unfortunate point where my career no longer allows enough time to do the magazine. “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well,” my high school journalism teacher used to say. In this case, I’d rather cease publication than put out issues we don’t have time to devote to fully — less than 100 percent is not an option.

Leong also has a fulltime job as an art director at Complex Magazine, and we always wondered how on earth he had time to put out a glossy, ad-supported men’s magazine AND a glossy, feature-jammed magazine about comics. Apparently, he no longer has the time, which is a shame.

While Comic Foundry hadn’t achieved complete magazine satori, it was fresh, funny and informative. Its absence means that the print side of the comics magazine equation is left to Wizard, TCJ, CBG, Comic Book Artist, and the occasional TwoMorrows periodical. (We know there are some other print attempts out there, but none of them has made enough of an impression for us to remember them.) Certainly none of these magazines is what we’d call a “journalistic” enterprise. (And yes, we still think The Comics Journal is the best magazine about comics out there, but it gave up the news section long ago.) Does anyone really want comics journalism? Evidently not.

We’re sad to see Tim and his right-hand woman, Laura Hudson, leaving Comic Foundry behind, but we’re certain they aren’t leaving us behind entirely. It was fun while it lasted. Now on to the next thing.

UPDATE: Laura Hudson weighs in:

I’ve always been a bit of a hopeless idealist, and there are few things that make me as happy as devoting myself to something that I believe in — and for me, that was Comic Foundry. I looked at the comics world and didn’t see the comic book magazine I’d always wanted, so I got to make it. I can honestly say that every issue of CF was better and stronger than the one that came before it, and I feel incredibly proud of the work that I did there with Tim and our contributors. As Tim quoted in his post: “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.” Comic Foundry was worth doing. And we did it well.

Oh boy, more to read! This newsletter launches later this month, part of the Book Report Network of newsletters and websites.

The Book Report Network is pleased to announce the upcoming launch of its newest website, GraphicNovelReporter.com.

GraphicNovelReporter.com will give readers of graphic novels what they’ve been waiting for — a fresh, in-depth look at these books and their creators. It’s a website designed for those who love the many genres within the format — and those who are curious as to what the excitement of these titles is all about.

Scheduled to launch later this month, GraphicNovelReporter.com will capitalize on the exploding format of graphic novels, including manga and the serious literary consideration this format is receiving at this time. The website will include reviews and interviews as well as news, opinions, blogs, bestseller and “Best Of” lists, and Books Into Movies and Books Into Movies on DVD features, all written with the voice and tone that have become the signature of The Book Report Network and its flagship website, Bookreporter.com.

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