Who is the biggest villain in comics today?

The recently revamped by Matt Fraction MANDARIN? The revitalized under Paul Cornell LEX LUTHOR? Or … this guy?

Jocks and nerds mix so well together

As you may know, in recent years, the Padres are scheduled to be on the road during Comic-Con, to alleviate congestion down by the Convention Center and probably so studios can rent out Petco Park for promotional events, like the 300 screening a few years ago. However, as it turns out, the Padres are having “Comic-Con [...]

Jackie Chan Miyagi

Things That Should Not Be? or The March of Progress? [via Jackie Chan ]

PREVIEW: Jim Rugg’s RAMBO 3.5

Jim Rugg writes to tell us he'll be debuting a new mini comic at SPACE tomorrow, and -- as befits one of our most POPULAR categories here on The Beat -- gave us an exclusive peek:

Play Ball ~!

Hooray. It’s Opening Day (we’ll ignore the 4+ hour slugfest on TV last night). Spring is really here.

One wrestler finds life outside the ring extremely geeky

Life outside the wrestling ring is often as harsh as life inside it. One has only to look at the long list of dead wrestlers to see that the occupation takes a brutal toll on its practitioners-- not just drugs but injuries, car crashes, violence and the general wear and tear of a 300-days-a-year schedule of very real physical exertion. But the men and women who chose this lifestyle do it because they love it, and giving up the hyper-intensity of the wrestling life is a difficult transition for nearly everyone in the show -- especially considering that most wrestlers don't sock away their money and have no pension plan and lots of medical bills and might not really know what else to do.

Disturbing photos: The portly in spandex

While we’re all digesting and gossiping about today’s news, here’s some truly disturbing photos, via Interbent. A few are Photoshop jobs. Most, God help us, are not.

We’re not here to cause no trouble …

The Beat tweets: My billion dollar idea for the day: Peanuts special that airs every year on SB Sunday Eve called “The Day Charlie Brown Kicked the Football” Enjoy the game (or the commercials) if you watch.

Watchmen sequels to be limited to the page?

While the comics world is still reeling from the idea of “more Watchmen”, Nikki Finke helpfully smacked down the idea of more WATCHMEN films — after all, the first one was generally considered a big disappointment: But a well-placed insider tells me: “There is no truth to anything related to a movie sequel. Not a [...]

Spotlight on: Putting things that explode near your junk

With underpants bombs making headline everywhere, a look at similar comics themes of groinal aggression have hit a few blogs. Comics Alliance examines a Punisher action figure from Toy Biz who is so glad to see you, he’s going to blow you to kingdom come with a giant ground to air missile launcher emerging [...]

In a similar vein

Faster than a speeding linebacker…

An interesting story up at SPORTS ILLUSTRATED’S web site. Comics were made as recruitment tools by the University of Oregon to try and land highly valued prospects and they have reprinted one in its entirety on the site. This is the second conjunction of sports and comics thanks to SI. There was, of course, the cover [...]

Things we're sick of

§ Name calling. Seriously, if you don’t like what someone is doing on a comic book you should feel free to make your feelings known, but calling the editor of the book an ass or telling the writer to suck your Dockers is cretinous behavior. As mentioned before, it is now grounds for banning. § Uninformed [...]

Mystery of the day

We’re not exactly sure what this is, but during World War II it would have been treason.

Today!