Comics Media

GeekChicDaily, the daily nerd news email, is launching an edition for New York, and also teaming with the Tokyopop brand for a special edition spotlighting Japanese culture trends and news. The New York edition will cover the Big Apple's lively offerings in geek culture, following localized versions for LA and a national edition. GeekChicDaily also added Microsoft's Mich Mathews to its board of directors.

by Matt Demers--

The other day, The Beat covered the launch of Champion!, a new iPad-only magazine that's being staffed by a number of former Wizard personnel. As a huge fan of the latter, I decided to load up the free preview issue and give it a look.

Inside, I was treated to a number of different features, including interviews with Jim Lee and Will Friedle, spotlights on toys and t-shirts and a number of off-beat features (such as comic creators' first books) that Wizard was famous for. However, capturing the spirit of the old magazine isn't the only good thing that Champion! is managing to pull off.

Some ex-Wizard staffers have found some friends and launched an iPad magazine about pop culture

Unless you have been living under a rock, you've seen Tom Spurgeon's essay on facing a life threatening illness, an illness which led to his unexpected blogging absence earlier this summer, and which still affects him, although he's recovering. Since looking death in the face usually prompts some inventory of life, Spurgeon does just that in an astonishing essay that covers his life and his life in comics, if there is a difference. That a man fighting for his life should spend that time thinking about the Green Lantern movie is both ridiculous and awesome -- Tom's thoughts on why we chose the comics life and why we stay there speak for me about 80% of the time. It's not that we have on choice, but rather why would we WANT to leave a field that is full of such honest, unpretentious work and creative, life-loving people?

Since going on a nearly month long hiatus from blogging, Tom Spurgeon has left indie comics readers in serious withdrawal from golden age comics reprints, indie comics art dumps, old photos of cartoonists doing things, and of course, insightful commentary. Luckily as of today Tom is back to blogging today, with a San Diego preview, and a look at why it may have been time for the Xeric to go. Sadly, the elements that caused the hiatus have also prevented him from making the San Diego trip, but we're sure that he'll give better coverage from afar than most of us could do from the ground.

Douglas Wolk is blogging about Judge Dredd . The author of "Reading Comics," has presented us with several specialized comics blogs in the past -- like his amazing 52 Pickup analyzing all the metadata of DC's 52 -- but now he's wading right in to the world of the ultimate law, and one of Britain's most popular native characters:

TRIPWIRE, edited by Joel Meadow is an excellent magazine about comics and their satellites. Like most paper-based periodicals, it's found a new distribution method as a e-magazine -- but you can still order the ppaer version from Diamond. Meadows' blog has a preview and come highlights:

Did Rich Johnston get burned on one of the most outrageous stories of the month? Or is DC really afraid of Superman saving kittens?

Jamie Coville has his usual massive photo dumb for TCAF, with over 250 photos of all the great people there. That's organizer Chris Butcher and Usamaru Furuya above. Coville also recorded several panels and here they are!

It's a newish comics chat show, set at Brave New World in Santa Clarita with hosts Bryan J Daggett and Atom! Freeman with guests Mark Waid and Andy Khouri, this time out talking about digital comics. The show airs live Tuesday at 7 pm on Justin.tv's Geekweek channel, or on YouTube right this very minute. We'd definitely spend an hour listening to this crew.

What is the most uninteresting topic that The Beat covers? VOTE NOW!

It seems there is a new sheriff in DC's digital town, and she goes by the name Molly Merrell. This new member of DC Online has just delivered a smackdown on rowdy posters at DC's Source blog: