§ By request: Let’s flash back five years with the original Beat’s famous essay on San Diego’s Book of Invasions. Part One: Last Fan Standing. Part Two: San Diego’s Book of Invasions. (I wish the pictures were still there — they were pretty good!)

§ Rich Johnston captures a Twitter battle between Scott Kurtz and DJ Coffman. It seems Coffman drew one of Kurtz’s characters in a compromising position for a commission, and Kurtz was not pleased.

pvponline: Hey, asshole. I officially do NOT give you permission to draw the red skull fucking my character. take that shit off your website

djcoffman: Removed it

pvponline: and P.S. Since you made 2 bucks off that, you owe me two fucking dollars.

djcoffman: Ha, but i’ll give you two dollars after you give George Lucas money for the Han shot first shirt

Remember you can’t spell “Twitter” without “twit”.

§ Nikki Finke reports DARK NIGHT is going to slay:

MovieTickets.com says that, four days prior to its release, Warner Bros’ Batman: The Dark Knight has sold out 700 performances in North America and is outselling three of MovieTickets.com’s Top 10 Performing Films of All-Time. To date, the pic has hawked more than three times as many advance tickets as Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, more than twice as many as Spider-Man 3 and almost twice as many as Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers at the same point in the sales cycle. All this lends fuel to predictions that the latest Batman 152-minute installment can make $130+ million for the upcoming 3-day weekend opening because of round-the-clock showings.

§ Rocked by a plagiarism scandal, Youka Nitta is putting her career on hold.
§ E3, the big video game confab, is taking place this week, and a trailer for the DC Universe Online has debuted.