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There was some floor chatter at BEA about Barnes & Noble yesterday -- although we all know Borders is not long for this world, some are suggesting that all the book chains are going to be bye-bye within two years. This despite the recent $1 billion purchase bid for Barnes &Noble by John Malone's Liberty Media. But is Malone's bid really about brick and mortar stores?

The first day of exhibits at this year's BEA kicked off with a smaller floor space, and, as opposed to years past when the Diamond booth was the place to be for comics, found comics publishers scattered all over the floor -- Archaia being the latest to move out, over to PGW. But wherever they were, comics seemed comfortable to be there.

Archaia is making some moves, both with a new distributor -- PGW -- and its first illustrated novel, strong>Conspiracy of the Planet of the Apes. Buried in a PR on the Ape book is the news that Archaia is leaving Diamond for PGW, which already distributes Cartoon Books. PGW distributes over 100 independent publishers, so picking up a few GN publishers makes sense. And Archaia's new books-only plan is also a good bit for a books-only distributor.

Borders' woes continued in April as their losses mounted, PW reports.

Lettering lord Todd Klein has not only won more awards for lettering than any other living human, he's created six striking limited edition prints in collaboration with Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Alex Ross, J.H. Williams III, Mark Buckingham and Bill WIllingham all of which are available on his site. . All the prints feature Klein's masterful lettering with original words or art by his collaborators, each with a rough alphabetical theme. He's just announced a SEVENTH print, this time in conjunction with Steve Rude, entitled "Hope" and depicting Pandora.

WARNING: EXTREMELY NERDY MAC CONTENT -- proceed at your own risk. As you know, I've been complaining about computer problems for a few months now, with tedious frequency -- but not as tedious as seeing a spinning beach ball is to me. Basically, every morning when I started up my iMac to get to work on The Beat it would take anywhere from 5 minutes to half an hour for the beachball to stop spinning and all the programs to start responding. Unbearable, right? You bet!

The 2011 Glyph Award winners, recognizing the best in comics made by, for, and about people of color from the preceding calendar year, were presented yesterday at the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention in Philadelphia. Fist Stick Knife Gun won three, Unknown Soldier won two, and Keith Knight won a record setting fifth award for Best Comic Strip or Webcomic for his strip The K Chronicles. The complete list of winners:

The war between cars and wrestlers has claimed another victim. Randall "Randy Savage" Poffo, who thrilled the wrestling world with his hysterical rumblings and grumblings as Macho Man, died in a car crash this morning at age 58. He reportedly suffered a heart attack while behind the wheel, and veered across traffic into a tree. His wife of one year was also in the vehicle but was not seriously injured.

Jeffrey Catherine Jones, the fantasy artist who helped introduce fine art and illustration influences to comics in the '70s and beyond, has died of complications from emphysema and bronchitis, according to numerous reports. She was 67.

Every once in a while, we have to clean out some spam comments that have wormed their way past the Wordpress interface, and sometimes cleaning them out is a difficult task, because, more than any other group, spammers seem to really GET what we're trying to do here. For instance, Kidney Disease wrote:

It's to benefit the CBLDF -- a giant piece of art created by Molly Crabapple at Stumptown. Measuring 8 feet by 7 feet, you need a giant home to display it properly, but it will be a nice conversation starter:

With no buyer found, creditors unwilling to float more cash, and a $24.3 million loss posted in March, Borders is struggling to find a way out of its troubles, according to a story in the Detroit Free Press, which quotes numerous shadowy insiders. No one has stepped forward to buy the chain outright.