Don McPherson and Randy Lander, the Roeper and Ebert of comics critics, are ending The Fourth Rail, their long running review site, after five years. You can read their tearful farewell in the link.

However, fear not, for both have plans to continue reviewing. Lander is joining up with David Farabee of AICN some other critical types to launch Comic Pants, a new review and commentary blog.

Joining Lander and Farabee in this endeavor are Nick Budd and David Martindale. Martindale also serves as lead designer and technician for the new site. All four writers work at Dragon’s Lair Comics in Round Rock, Texas.

Comic Pants is anchored by “Wednesday Number Ones”, a weekly feature updating every Wednesday morning that will provide commentary on every first issue coming to comic shops that day. In addition, the site will feature regularly updated reviews from all four contributors, Lander’s popular Previews forecast column “Down the Line” and more.

Comic Pants is a serious review site with a sense of humor, as indicated by the unusual name, which was suggested by Dave Farabee during a brainstorming session.

“We wanted something that would stick in peoples’ minds,” said Lander. “And hey, you’ll remember Comic Pants, right?”

In addition to reviews and other text-based content, the Comic Pants team expects to begin providing podcasts as of mid-to-late September.

Indeed, once heard, Pants are hard to forget. While review and commentary blogs are proliferating faster than nuclear weapons, given its pedigree, this one should be worth checking out.