News

We've mentioned a few times here a lawsuit for copyright infringement by DC against an outfit called Gotham Garage, which sells replica Batmobiles—based on the '60s Batman TV show in particular—as well as other vehicles based on famed fantasy cars, like the Mach Five. If you were thinking of buying one, better hurry, because a judge has ruled that the Batmobile is subject to copyright.

Yes, The Beat is two years old today as its own standalone website. Woot. And we're celebrating just as we always do --slaving away into the wee hours of the day so you have something to read with your coffee. Oh yeah, we also changed the background just for the day—yes, it's awful, but it's our blog and we'll be tacky if we want to.

You knew you couldn't go much more than two weeks without DC shuffling creative teams on the not-as-new 52. This time, it really is more of a shuffle than wholesale replacements, though, as three books get a new writer and DC's announcing things a little further out.

Neil Gaiman took his victory lap after the settlement in his lawsuit against Todd McFarlane with comments to the Washington Post's Michael Cavna, talking about the copyright precedents set by all the various rulings over the years.

An epic battle of two of comicdom's most successful figures that lasted more than 10 years has ended, not even with a whimper but a settlement, as Neil Gaiman and Todd McFarlane have at long last agreed on how to share the rights to characters and stories Gaiman created for McFarlane's Spawn comic.

Last week's Angoulême festival extravaganza wrapped up with the presentation of the Grand Prix to Jean-Claude Denis, whose career goes back to the '70s but is perhaps best known in France for Luc Leroi. The Grand Prix is presented for a lifetime body of work—Denis is perhaps less well-known than some other winners, at least in the US. He was presented with the award by last year's winner, Art Spiegelman, as shown in the above video.

Very sad news out of Florida, where Mike Pandel, employee at A Comic Shop and co-host of the store's video blog A Comic Show and The Nerdy Podcast, is in a coma after a car accident and not expected to pull through.

Once again, a creator loses a copyright battle against a major comics publisher with a major motion picture soon to screen. The artist is living in poverty, has health problems, and is forgotten by the general public. Sound familiar? Read on... it gets worse.

While we all contemplate the various issues regarding revenue for comics and where it will come from, let's look at where we all assume it will be going: some variant of streaming content. With Apple—and the rest of the market —doing everything they can to kill off the DVD and "the cloud' becoming the place from whence all jollies will emerge, it is still not a great source of revenue for the big players like Netflix and Spotify.

The newly resurgent Valiant Entertainment is taking action to get the retail community on it side, hiring former retailer Atom! Freeman to the position of Sales Manager and starting a campaign to contact all the 2500 retailers in the US. This kind of goodwill tour should pay off quite a bit—in our experience, all it really takes to befriend a retailer is to listen and then maybe learn.

The ugly legal battle between Archie Comics co-CEO's Jon Goldwater and Nancy Silberkleit has escalated in recent weeks with new legal filings. And now a judge has banned Silberkleit from going anywhere near Archie's offices or contacting any of the employees.

This year's Eisner nominating panel has made their choices for automatic inclusion in the Hall of Fame: Rudolph Dirks, who pioneered the newspaper comic strip with The Katzenjammer Kids, and Harry Lucey, a long time Archie artist credited with co-creating the characters. In addition, the judges selected 14 more nominees for the general ballot, from which four will be selected for inclusion into the Hall of Fame: Bill Blackbeard, Howard Chaykin, Richard Corben, Carlos Ezquerra, Lee Falk, Bob Fujitani, Jesse Marsh, Tarpé Mills, Mort Meskin, Dennis O'Neil, Dan O'Neill, Katsuhiro Otomo, Trina Robbins, and Gilbert Shelton.