Publishers

Oni has just announced the promotion of Jill Beaton and Charlie Chu to full editors. “For the last year both Jill and Charlie have given their all to Oni Press as associate editors and integral parts of our editorial team,” editor in chief James Lucas Jones said in a statement. “They each have taken on added responsibility, working with established Oni creators on stellar books and reaching out to bring new creators into the Oni fold.”

Following up on yesterday's new about Tokyopop laying off at least three editors, the scuttlebutt has continued to flow. Some sources are telling us that there are only 7 people left on staff, including founder Stuart Levy and president Mike Kiley -- the rest of the duties of getting out a line of manga being assigned to freelancers. Brigid Alverson is about as calm and rational a person as we have ever met, so tosee her unload as she does in this post about Tpop's history is a fearsome thing. The layoffs, the OEL rights disasters, the silly detours into movies and Web-TV, and over it all the seeming cluelessness of Levy -- Brigid nails it all:

Word is going around that LA manga publisherToykopop has laid off several more people -- including editors Lillian Diaz-Przybyl and Troy Lewter. The staff is now reduced to a mere handful of people -- including owner Stu Levy and publisher Mike Kiley. EDIT: Editor Asako Suzuki has also been laid off.

Two new posters for X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, the young mutants film opening this June, proving that before they grew up to become arch rivals, Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender) liked to stand around experimenting with Photoshop color filters.

It's the first ever Peanuts graphic novel, Charlie Brown! Last week people were speculating over the announcement that kaboom! -- BOOM! Studios' new all-ages comics imprint -- would be publishing something Peanuts-related. Was it strips reprints? Comic book reprints? What? The reality is that it's an ALL NEW adaptation of a new Peanuts animated movie, Happiness Is a Warm Blanket Charlie Brown, which Warners Home Video is releasing in March.

...unless you read old comic strips. Fantagraphics' Floyd Gottfredson reprint project was a big news item at last year's San Diego, and you can bet that the book (due on April 15th) will get people talking some more. FBI released a pdf of the promo materials and here's a sneak peek.

Oji Suzuki is the latest in D&Q's gekiga projects, and Tom Devlin explains why:

Legendary Archie artist Stan Goldberg started his career in the Golden Age coloring countless covers for Atlas, but in the Silver Age he was as a colorist for Marvel, working on such things as the cover to the very first issue of The Fantastic Four and desinging the color schemes for much of the seminal line. So it's fitting that he's been tagged to draw a variant cover for the new FF #1 featuring the new line-up, which features Spider-Man. The interiors are by Jonathan Hickman and Steve Epting while other variant covers are by Daniel Acuna, Gerard Parel and Marko Djurdjevic.

Here's the lineup:

There are some well-sourced rumblings out there that DC is ending its First Wave line. The First Wave books centered around several pulp heroes, including Doc Savage, The Spirit, the Blackhawks, and Rima the Jungle Girl. The reason isn't entirely clear, but the stand alone DOC SAVAGE and SPIRIT books were selling below 10K copies, which is well into the danger zone on today's comics.

Just to forestall a heart attack by Mike Richardson, I'll spoil the answer right here: YES. The reason the question even came up is some dissension following Dark Horse's win in the Diamond Awards for "Best Manga Publisher," which, given the wide ranging publisher programs of Viz, Yen and TokyoPop was surprising, to say the least, as Johanna explained:

What is the great Italian cartoonist up to?