Well, we got some answers tonight. There can probably never be enough answers given to satisfy some of the nerds out there watching, but we will always take what Lindelof and Cuse will give us on any given week.

Let’s discuss those after the jump.

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* Did Dr. Manhattan shoot his load the first weekend?

Depending on whom you talked to this week, the opening weekend box office for WATCHMEN was great or underwhelming. Things look a little clearer after the first night of weekend number two.

From Variety:

Warner Bros./Paramount’s comic book epic “Watchmen” fell 78% from its opening day landing third Friday with an estimated $5.4 million from 3,611 theaters. Pic’s eight-day cume currently stands at $73.3 million.

Did all the fanboys decide they didn’t need a second viewing? Was word-of-mouth outside the nerd bubble not great? Were people scared off by Dr. Manhattan’s package?

* In other nerd news

Time.com’s Nerdworld blog interviews annotator extraordinaire Jess Nevins. (Disclaimer: Jess and I went to grad school together and his work has appeared in my magazine.)

9. Have you, as an annotator, ever gone down in defeat? Are there things in the LoEG books that you just can’t solve?

Oh, heavens, yes. When Moore & O’Neill get into areas which I don’t know anything about and which are ill-represented online and in print–1950s British comic book science fiction, for example–I’m at a complete loss, and some of their references stump even the collective brains of the people who contribute to the annotations. In the Black Dossier, for example, Kevin O’Neill drew in spaceships from various British Fifties sf comics, and if he hadn’t identified them for the print version of the annotations, they would have remained a mystery to us all.

Moore sometimes jokes about trying to stump me. I feel a pain in my head when he says that, because if/when he ever tries to do that, I’m not just stumped, I’m uprooted and thrown into a woodchipper.

*Since there was no Lost column this week…

A week without a new Lost means an extra week for people to scrutinize the most recent episode looking for clues about the statue or how to put all the various time traveling threads together. The coolest thing I read (don’t remember where) was that the hieroglyphs that showed up on the countdown clock are on the Ajira airline tickets.

*A non-comic note for all you people who hate non-comics news here.

Sad news this morning for the pro wrestling business as word broke that Andrew Martin passed away at the age of 33. For those who watched during the “Attitude Era,” Martin worked for the WWE as Test, a beefy mid-carder best remembered for being coupled with a young Stephanie McMahon and feuding with her brother Shane. While not the best in-ring performer, many people raved about the match between Test and McMahon at Summerslam 1999. Once removed from the McMahon family soap opera, he slowly drifted down the card until being released a few years ago from the WWE after failing a drug test. Recently, he had been working on shows in Europe and Japan.

Posted by Mark Coale

New characters. Births. Deaths. Time travel. Dharma Merlot. Beards (or lack thereof).

All can be found in tonight’s episode, “La Fleur,” but what people should really want to talk about is ….
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I think, given the events of tonight’s show, I have finally found a way to encapsulate the Benjamin Linus vs. Charles Widmore struggle.

More after the jump.
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Let’s get this out of the way. I missed the original airing of 316 tonight and am playing catch-up like the little tomato in Mia Wallace’s joke. To get tonight’s column done in the most expeditious way possible, it’s another “real time diary.” I hear this week’s show is a doozy, so let’s get on with it.

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Looks like the episode title, “This Place is Death,” was no idle threat.

Discussion of death, life and everything after the jump. SPOILERS AHOY.

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If you’re one of the folks traipsing out to your local comics store to get the first part of the Neil Gaiman-written, Andy Kubert-drawn BATMAN issue, you may want to know that the second half of the story will be late.

Gaiman updated everyone on the new date via Twitter:

Just saw that Detective 853 is already pushed back to March 18. http://bit.ly/ZwPf. I think Andy may bring it in on time for that.

The more you know.

If you’re not attending the NYCC, don’t forget about the weekend’s other semi-comics-related event, the opening weekend of the CORALINE motion picture.

According to Box Office Mojo, the picture finished third on Friday, behind that movie with Drew Barrymore and Scarlett Johansson and the Liam Neeson revenge thriler.

Over on his blog, Neil Gaiman seems happy with that result, since it appears the movie was projected to finish fourth or fifth this weekend. And if there’s more news to be had about the picture over the weekend, Gaiman will likely be talking about it on his website’s journal.

If you’ve not heard, there’s quite the voice cast for the picture, full of nerd favorites, including a former Lois Lane (Teri Hatcher), a Daily Show correspondent and author (John Hodgman), the oh-so-delightful French and Saunders (bup a dooie ooo) and Al Swearengen (Ian McShane).

It’s also showing in 3-D in many theaters across the country, so if you didn’t get your fill during the Super Bowl, there’s another reason to go see it.

Sunday update: Looking like CORALINE will finish 3rd for the weekend, grossing around $16.3 million.

Posted by Mark Coale

Is it just me, or do Jack and Kate become more unlikeable every episode where they are spotlighted?

Let’s talk about them and some swerves from “The Little Prince” after the jump. There will be SPOILERS, so if you don’t want to know what happened tonight or you live some place where they don’t show the episode Wednesday night, read at your own peril. Thanks.

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So, I hear there is a big game today and I don’t mean Liverpool-Chelsea or the Tyne-Wear Derby. Contrary to popular opinion, there are comics nerds who like sports.

Then again, maybe you’re only watching for the commercials. There are a number of nerd-friendly ads tonight, including trailers for movies like ANGELS & DEMONS, ALIENS VS MONSTERS (Did you get your 3D glasses? Hopefully, you can use the ones that came with SUPERMAN BEYOND.), LAND OF THE LOST, RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN and Pixar’s UP. There’s also the GI JOE ad, which is supposed to debut tonight during the game, but it’s not listed on the list of all the ads in Friday’s USA TODAY. I guess we will see if it is shown or not.

There are now sites devoted to analyzing the ads, so you don’t have to wait until the Monday McPaper to read what people thought of the new Budweiser spots.

Posted by Mark Coale

Looks like we have a new mystery on our hands.

That and so much more after the jump….

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The next time some dope complains about the wrestling coverage on THE BEAT, whether it’s about Rey Mysterio wearing a Flash costume on pay-per-view or CHIKARA’s latest comic book-themed cover, we’ll just point them to this picture. (The match was from a show Sunday at Arena San Juan Pantitlan. Thanks for the tip to the lucha libre expert known as The Cubs Fan.)

Evan, if you’re out there reading this, sadly, their opponents were not Los X-Men.

Posted by Mark Coale