Gaming

Diamond has signed with Rovio, maker of the game sensation Angry Birds, to distribute their growing line of books -- presumably by launching them from a slingshot through the windows of comics shops, bookstores and mass market retailers around the world. A worldwide sensation, the Angry Birds game has been downloaded over 400 million times. Angry Birds costumes were the top pick for this Halloween, and their merch is showing up everywhere. The book line thus far includes doodle books, and a cookbook for -- what else? -- eggs. There's been a lot of talk over when Angry Birds would enter the comics market -- one of the creators of the game is a former webcartoonist -- so far they have a webcomic based on the recent Harvest Moon game online.

As if we needed more proof that superheroes in any medium other than their original one sell more units, BATMAN: ARKHAM CITY, the new video game featuring you-know-who has sold 4.6 million units in its first week, WB Interactive has announced.

Do you even NEED to go inside the convention hall any more? Besides Tr!ckster, the comic book pavilion, Cirque Du Soleil, a South Park carnival and all the other hoohah, video games are setting up camp on the streets of San Diego big time, Forbes reports:

In case you missed the memo, offsite events are a fast-growing aspect of the Comic-Con experience. This year the creator-focused Tr!ckster event joined the line-up but there's also a video-game focused event, Gam3rCon running July 19-24th at the 10th Street Theatre in downtown. A ticket is $5 for the day or $10 for the week but you can also register for a free one day pass. Events includes gaming -- both tabletop and video, panels, rooftop parties and a Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog.

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: WAR IN THE NORTH is a new video game for multiple platforms which, as we've excitedly mentioned before, covers the war in the north between the various races of Middle Earth. They'll be marking a major presence Comic-Con with a big event Saturday night in the Gaslamp district.

It's a new style of pimping. Instead of selling their bodies, or busting their backs digging ditches, some Chinese prisoners are forced to play World of Warcraft and pass the winnings on to cruel prison guards.

Back when they were signing and selling licensed comics, Tokyopop put out some World of Warcraft manga-sized graphic novels. Unlike other material lost in the diaspora of the company (which is officially closing down next week) these comics are still owned by Blizzard, and are being released digitally by Cryptozoic, the newish entertainment company headed up by Cory Jones, formerly of Blizzard, and John Nee, formerly of DC. Two Warcraft GNs and one Starcraft GN are available on Cryptozoic's app for free for right now.

It's international Women's Day, yo. To celebrate, let's watch this video of Judi Dench (M) interrogating Daniel Craig (uh, James Bond) who appears in drag. "We're equals, aren't we, 007?" asks Dame Dench. Let's also look at the day in nerd gender relations. There was much tweeting yesterday about the new TCJ.com and the number of lady contributors. Melinda Beasi at Manga Bookshelf sums up the whole thing, and the comments have it out and then everyone sat down and ate a hearty lunch.

No surprise at these licenses: Telltale Games, the innovative downloadable video game company, has signed on to produce games for both THE WALKING DEAD and FABLES, joining BACK TO THE FUTURE and JURASSIC PARK on their slate.

Hard to believe it's been a decade since this, one of the very earliest of internerd memes. Someone set us up the bomb. Then this was piquant and fresh. Now it's Tosh.0. Luckily the internet is being used for more useful things, like toppling dictators. UPDATE: As pointed out in the comments, the original flash was made by BadCRC of Tribalwar.com.

Despite the fact that popular apps on iPhones can read our private data and sell them to the highest bidder, we just can't get enough of such time-voids as Angry Birds. And now we can look upon them in Lego form and feel even more sated.

Cross-over everywhere: cartoonists Karl Kerschl and Cameron Stewart talk about how they created a comic that expands the universe of the wildly popular video game, Assassin's Creed. In keeping with all the transmedia stuff you're always hearing about, they were given quite a bit of latitude to create their own characters and give the spin-off their own spin. ASSASSIN'S CREED: THE FALL will run three issues and be published by Ubisoft.