News

As we point out every year, picking the big categories at the Oscars is easy -- sentiment and other awards and past voting practices make for a formula that is easy to call, even when it changes over Awards season -- see: THE KING'S SPEECH. So to truly ace your Oscar picks and win the big prize, you've got to master the obscure categories like Best Documentary Short and Best Animated Short. We don't handicap the first caegory -- although you can't go wrong picking anything about horrible genocide topics like AIDS, Rwanda, the Holocaust and so on.

Sorry about the server outages today. Basically, I pushed the wrong button and sent my server into a fit as it tried to run that demon image resizing script. The poor thing got so flustered that I had to upgrade the memory, but even that was too little too late and it's still trying to resolve itself.

Chinese artist Xiao Bai was just presented with the Gold Award in the International Manga Awards. The prize, founded by Japan's former otaku-loving prime minister Taro Aso are presented to recognize international achievements in the manga style. Bai won for “So Far, So Close,” a time travel story about a woman who meets her own son.

The tributes are still coming in -- When Fangirls Attack and Tom Spurgeon have missive link collections.

Eisner judges have selected four automatic inductees into the Hall of Fame instead of the usual two because, in the words of administrator Jackie Estrada, "The judges felt that some significant contributors to comics' history were being consistently overlooked by the regular voters. Choosing only two creators to induct was proving too difficult this year. The solution they chose was to single out individuals from four aspects of the medium."

United Media, the syndicate behind such beloved comic strips as Pearls Before Swine and Get Fuzzy (above) and scores of other great strips of the past, is outsourcing its comics syndication business to Universal Uclick, according to a press release. In syndication terms, this is as if DC suddenly outsourced its publishing to Marvel. New York-based United and the similarly named but Kansas City-based Universal uClick -- which is owned by publisher Andrews McMeel, were long two of the three biggest comics syndicates -- King Features is the third -- and oversaw the immensely lucrative and popular icons of the comics pages for decades.

Japanese publishing giant Kodansha and Dai Nippon Printing have joined up to purchase Vertical, Inc., the American publishing company that specializes in Engilsh-language versions of Japanese literature, including manga by Tezuka, Kou Yaginuma, and Felipe Smith, among others. The companies each purchased about 46 percent of the company, which has about $930,000 in capitalization.

There are some well-sourced rumblings out there that DC is ending its First Wave line. The First Wave books centered around several pulp heroes, including Doc Savage, The Spirit, the Blackhawks, and Rima the Jungle Girl. The reason isn't entirely clear, but the stand alone DOC SAVAGE and SPIRIT books were selling below 10K copies, which is well into the danger zone on today's comics.

Following the shock at his death, a well-justfied outpouring a remembrances of Dwayne McDuffie flowed out yesterday. A few words kept appearing over and over: respect and honesty. In a business where pettiness and jealousy are motivations far more than we'd like to admit, McDuffie seemed to rise above all that.

Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America annually presents the Nebula Awards to the best in those genres. The complete list of nominations is here but we'll mentioned two. Barry Deutsch's HEREVILLE: HOW MIRKA GOT HER SWORD is nominated in the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy category. And SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD was nominated for the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation.

Speaking of literary awards, the LA Times Book Awards announced their finalists yesterday and the new graphic novel category yielded the following honorees:

CBR is reporting the tragic news that creator Dwayne McDuffie has died of unknown causes. In addition to co-creating the Milestone Universe and its signature character, Static, McDuffie had a long career as writer, editor and producer, story editing the popular Justice League of America cartoon and most recently writing the All-Star Superman movie. As CBR reports, he was in full stride as a creator: