News

Over at Warren Ellis's blog, a preview of HALF MOON, a new collaboration with Michael Avon Oeming that will feature a space girl:

Awards season is really shifting into high gear. The Doug Wright awards, honoring the best in English-language comics (or translations of French) by Canadians living at home and abroad, will be presented May 7th at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. In addition to the three main prizes, David Boswell, creator of Reid Fleming, World's Toughest Milkman, has been inducted into The Giants of the North, the Canadian Cartoonists Hall of Fame -- only recently we were discussing with someone far better informed than us how Boswell is a legend of the Canadian comics scene, so it's a fitting honor for him. The rest of the finalists reflect a strong slate that has been much honored in other recent awards -- the Canadian scene is kicking it!

Holy shit, James Jean. His latest show of paintings is up at the Martha Otero gallery in Hollywood and it runs until April 30. We're jealous of those who get to see it in person. Jean has also just released this limited edition silk scarf which you can buy at the link. ALL PROCEEDS WILL GO TO THE RED CROSS. THe scarf retails for $385. Only 50 were made. There is a B&W version as well, same price, same run.

A few weeks ago we were ragging on Tokyopop CEO Stu Levy for insensitive tweeting, and business mistakes, but now he's in Sendai, helping with relief efforts, tweeting about it:

WOW, The Beat is so far behind in everything. If you've emailed or called or anything we apologize for being in radio silence. There is just not enough time in the day. But even so, we'll be headed to C2E2 tomorrow, first for the Diamond retail event and then the regular show. Good times! We'll have a who's where later -- please send links and party poop. BTW, were the editors of TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED obsessed with the color green? That WAS unexpected.

Nominations for the Stumptown Awards, held in conjunction with the Stumptown Comics Festival in Portland, OR on April 16-17th have been announced. Nominees were selected by a judging panel which consisted of Michael Allred (Madman), Brandon Graham (King City), Laura Hudson (Editor, ComicsAlliance.com), Michael Ring (Owner, Bridge City Comics), and Jason Leivian (Owner, Floating World Comics) and will be presented at the show.

The Eagle Awards, the long running British comics awards, have announced the 2011 nominees. Winners will be announced at the London MCM Expo in May. Online voting is now open at the above link.

Two new positions, one a new face, one a familiar one.

Via PR, the official launch of the Wizard World "digi-zine" and also news that they have officially changed their stock ticker symbol to WIZD -- when Wizard went public, it did so by buying out the failed energy company Go Energy, which had the ticker symbol GOEE. Luckily, you can now find all your Wizard SEC filings right here. In recent news, nothing too exciting, aside from switching accountants:

A little catch-up here on a potentially groundbreaking legal story that we don't have time to completely break out, but basically early Betty Boop cartoons are now in the public domain, despite Fleischer Studios still owning the trademark and licensing out contemporary versions of Betty Boop (which you see all over the place on purses, Ts and so on.)

Is there anything new under the spinner rack? Only yesterday, Chris Irving quoted the late, great Dwayne McDuffie on the difficulty of launching anything new in comics:

“I look at the new Blue Beetle, which was really well done and really entertaining, even though it didn’t sell at all. The new things in the universe are pretty much impossible, and new things out of the universe are pretty unlikely, because people won’t try new things. I hope I’m wrong and there’s some wonderful new thing. Maybe we’ll get lucky and Static will break, but I don’t think people will try it, or that people at comics stores will even care. That book should have come out in 2002 when it was the #2 cartoon on television, and not 2010 when it was in reruns on Disney XD.”

Exciting news: a huge one-volume edition of the full color BONE (long teased) will be available later this year. The book will come in three editions, two of them extremely limited.