News

Legendary Filipino creator Tony DeZuniga recently had a severe stroke, and he is currently in critical condition. And his family does not have health insurance—yeah, this stuff happens in the Philippines, too. HIs wife Tina wrote of the details in the link below.

The LA Times handed out its book prizes at the LA Times Festival of Books this weekend, and the winner in the Graphic Novel category was Carla Speed McNeil for FINDER: VOICE. The other nominees were:

As expected, today's firing of Disney Studio head Rich Ross has Tinsel Town buzzing, and a picture of a Mouse House in disarray is emerging. Marvel Studio head Kevin Feige has been named several times as a potential replacement, but Nikki Finke's must-read analysis also confirms what we wrote about last year: legendary skinflint Ike Perlmutter is very much in the mix at Disney, and his personal dislike of Ross certainly didn't help matters. (Ross was also on the outs with Pixar's John Lasseter, according to Finke.) But even Disney chairman Bob Iger is feeling the Ike pinch:

Rich Ross, the head of Disney Studios since October 2009, has just been removed from his post. We can't hope to know what it means—although lots of theories will be floated very soon—but flops like MARS NEEDS MOMS and JOHN CARTER are probably part of it. "Mars killed Rich Ross." Even the impending mega-colossal worldwide superhit AVENGERS didn't help Ross.

In my last post, we looked at the attorney-client privilege question addressed by yesterday's Ninth Circuit ruling in favor of DC. But does a clear victory for DC in a this rather technical legal issue signal a greater loss for the Siegel and Shuster heirs?

Hawkeye is an odd character, if you look at his publishing history. He's been a staple of the Avengers since the title's earliest days. In fact, you could probably argue that the core of the Avengers were the Vision and Hawkeye. Characters that you read in Avengers and not solo books. When they wanted to spin-off West Coast Avengers, Hawkeye was the centerpiece of the spin-off. When they launched Solo Avengers, Hawkeye was the regular feature. You had Hawkeye mini-series in '83, '94 and '03. More recently, you had Hawkeye & Mockingbird and Hawkeye: Blindspot. You even had an Ultimate Hawkeye mini-series. Hawkeye is similar to Doctor Strange. Whereas Doctor Strange limped along in a lower selling cult title for several years, with occasional team book stops (usually variations on The Defenders, Hawkeye has been a staple of several popular team books (Avengers, West Coast Avengers, Secret Avengers... and an early stop over in The Defenders), but his solo efforts just haven't gotten much traction.

DC Entertainment has confirmed that VP of Publicity David Hyde is leaving that job at the end of the week.

Pop culture writer John Tebbel passed away yesterday. An occasional contributor to ComicMix and frequent commenter here and at other comics sites, John was probably most familiar to the comics world as the husband of Martha Thomases, herself a comics writer and DC's publicity manager for most of the '90s. He was also an expert on animation and you can find some of his articles on the subject scattered about the internet. He and Martha also co-founded Comedy Magazine.

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.