News

Warner Bros is doing the happy dance in the Superman legal tangle after what was called a unanimous and extremely significant ruling from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Heard before Alex Kozinski, Chief Judge, Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain and N. Randy Smith, Circuit Judges, the Opinion (see link below) was written by Judge O’Scannlain.

POLITICO's Matt Wuerker has wonthis year's Pulitzer Prize for cartooning, an award presented for "his consistently fresh, funny cartoons, especially memorable for lampooning the partisan conflict that engulfed Washington."

By now you know a lot of the wacky details: "Penis! Penis! Penis!", the restraining orders, the menacing muscle who was only a friend, and so on—but this account adds some dog poop.

If you've been meaning to get those nominations in, the Harvey Awards nomination deadline is April 16th. That's tomorrow.

Anders Nilsen's acclaimed BIG QUESTIONS has won the second Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize. The award recognizes the best graphic novel, fiction or non-fiction, by a living American and is sponsored by Penn State University Libraries and administered by the Pennsylvania Center for the Book, an affiliate of the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress.

Dirk Wood has earned a promotion to VP of Marketing at IDW. That means we'll be hearing his gravelly-voiced uttering for a long longer. Many congrats to Mr. Wood!

Indie comics publisher About Comics is no publisher manqué: the company has published books by Gail Simone and Charles Schulz. But it's also a small indie comics company in a world where the margins for that are getting tinier and tinier. To that end publisher Nat Gertler—who marks inventing 24 Hour Comics Day among his other achievements—has formulated a new publishing plan. Although About has a strong slate for the year with never before reprinted comics by Schulz and a new comic by MEN IN BLACK creators Lowell Cunningham, Gertler is no longer going to offer new products to the direct market. Instead About's offerings will be available via print on demand...and of course electronically.

We really don't link to our comics coverage over at PW Comics World as much as we should, so we are here to remedy that, especially when an issue as jammed as this month's comes out. Some highlights:

Classic parody video gone; e-re-issues continue; what are Fraction and Aja cooking up? And more.

Marvel's Junior Art Director Rich Ginter -- the man responsible for many of their ad campaigns and advertising materials, such as this stylish Defenders campaign, is moving to Disney in California, Twitter tell us. There he'll be a Digital Designer, where he'll be "working on their comic/magazine apps & designing stuff for that and new apps."

If you're a student of comics history the phrase "National Comics" conjures an image of Jack Liebowitz chomping on a cigar while urging teenaged creators to sign contracts...but if you're not, it means a new edgy anthology from DC Comics which will launch in July and run "pilot stories" based on some of the DCU's more "off beat" characters, like Kid Eternity, Madame X, and so on. First up, Eternity, above. Creative teams below:

We're getting word this afternoon that a little shake-up at the DCU editorial staff has taken place. Senior Editor Bobbie Chase has been promoted to Editorial Director and current Executive Editor Eddie Berganza has been moved to a different position.