Publishers

MYSTERY CREATIVE TEAM ALERT.

The man who wrote the words "Oh, you, pretty chitty bang bang, chitty chitty bang bang, I love you," is dead. Well, he wrote half of the words. Robert B. Sherman, (above, far right) one of the Sherman Brothers songwriting team (along with Richard, who is still alive) has died at age 86. He also co-wrote "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," and "Bare Necessities," and "Chim Chim Cheree," and..."It's a Small World After All."

DC has updated their website design. Their Source blog doesn't seem to have any March content on it yet, figure that will be taken care of soon and this week will be reloaded. It also has a subscription page link that seems a bit more visible to me.

Over at Newsarama, James Robinson is finally talking -- sort of -- about Earth 2. But more dramatically, the cover for the second issue of Earth 2, featuring the redesigned Jay Garrick Flash is revealed.

Here's today's Valiant cover preview!

Valiant is releasing some teaser images for its relaunch this summer, and here's X-O MANOWAR.

This interview with Young Justice Lead Character Designer Phil Bourassa has a few clues if you want to connect the dots. Early in he explains his intro to the world of animation:

Just to finish our "digital news Monday," Marvel's recently teased "Infinite" something-or-other will be revealed this Saturday as part of SXSWi's Screenburn video game conference. Despite the gaming setting, it's expected this will have something to do with digital comics, as indicated by the panel description:

Twin press releases today that Dark Horse's digital comics offering are coming to B&N's Nook and the Kobo Vox, a lesser known but respected platform. Popular titles like MASS EFFECT,HELLBOY, STAR WARS, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, SERENITY, and SIN CITY will all be available for both platforms. DH was already on their own store and via various Apple platforms.

While they haven't reached Marvel's level of reformatting their trades, DC does release a dizzying array of formats for their classics, from the Absolutes to the omnibus to the deluxe and...even more. (We're actually starting a column on reprints this week to make some sense of it all.) But it seems an upcoming new edition of BATMAN: YEAR ONE, the Frank Miller/David Mazzucchelli classic, isn't the one you should be giving permanent home to on your shelf. The Comics Journal has the scoop.

The DCU is getting a new look for Shazam, and the New York Post has the first glimpse. Once known as Captain Marvel and The Big Red Cheese, he's now officially Shazam, and a backup strip in JUSTICE LEAGUE by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank debuts in JL #7 later this month. Based on the new art and focus, this Shazam seems to be trading in his old crew of a talking tiger and cute bunny for a different crowd—say, Hellblazer and the Phantom Stranger.

According to this posting on the Source, DC collections are adding LoC information and will be added to the library's holdings. The Library of Congress has a few other comics connections of late, including an SPX collection, so the place of comics in the nation's greatest library is clearly growing.