It’s a busy time in Comicsland, it seems. The success of 300 has ratcheted up Hollywood’s interest in comics to even greater heights, the bookstore/manga revolution is moving along, and big doin’s are brewing everywhere we look. News is scarce for the moment, but there is a lot of activity behind the scenes. We can’t even keep UP with it all any more. We find The Beat’s focus drifting away from comics a great deal, and we know we need to bring it back, even as ripples from other fields continue to make waves in our world and vice versa. We feel ourselves gearing up for a few essays before we hit the road to Barcelona next week — that is, if we can get off the treadmill of the news cycle for a few minutes.