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From Baltimore last night, the winners -- ASTERIOS POLYP, David Mazzucchelli and The Rocketeer took home three, CHEW, and THE WALKING DEAD two each in various combinations. Despite ongoing controversy over the nominations, the winners were strong selections, very close to this year's Eisner winners, at least on first glance.

If you were following our live tweets of the Harveys last night, (and those from ComixMix and JahFurry) you saw portions of Mark Waid's keynote speech transcribed. While claiming it was a "vodka-fueled rant," Waid delivered a heartfelt, if off-the-cuff, talk on the importance of the idea and the supremacy of comics as a medium of ideas. He started off with remarks on the history of copyright, stating it was a means to allow ideas to go into the public domain where they could remain powerful. "No one would say we'd be better off if Shakespeare plays weren't allowed to be read and performed in high schools," he used as an example. While not advocating piracy, his main argument seemed to be that it's already done, the genie is out of the bottle, and struggling to keep ideas protected isn't as important as finding a way to profit from those ideas.

With the slow news cycle, we've been doing some much needed maintenance around Stately Beat Manor -- trimming unread email lists, pruning RSS feeds, and so on. We've also been pondering our commenting system. We've recently put a few posters on "time out" because they were basically rude, insulting brigands, and we don't like their kind. Biting wit and a droll put-down is fine. Name calling and invective is not. Frankly, we're always amazed when we go out and meet all the smart, talented people who read the Beat daily -- we'd love to get some of those folks to comment more but it might require a complete overhaul of the commenting system. Also, it's always been our observation that the better the modding, the better the commenting, and we don't have the time it probably requires.

ICv2 has its first comprehensive interview with DC co-publishers Jim Lee and Dan DiDio since the publisher restructured in February. The interview runs in three parts. There's a hint that some of the CMX titles that weren't finished may get picked up by a different publisher, perhaps Dark Horse, and an acknowledgment of the need to keep prices down from DiDio:

Via PR, as alluded to in an earlier post, the Hero Initiative is introducing a new award to be presented at the Harveys on Saturday, Dick Giordano Humanitarian of the Year Award.

They said it couldn't be done but at Saturday's Creative Arts Emmys, Dean Haspiel was a winner in the Main Title Design category for Bored to Death, along with collaborators Tom Barham, Marci Ichimura, and Anthony Santoro. Haspiel is shown here with series creator Jonathan Ames and their Emmy. Other nerdcentric winners were Neil Patrick Harris for Glee, Robot Chicken for Outstanding Short-format Animated Program and Isaiah Mustafa for the best Commercial, The Man Your Man Could Smell Like. And of course, Betty White.

You cannot say that indicted former Illinois governor Rod Bagojevich is not a smart and pragmatic man. Although recently convicted on a single count of federal corruption, Blago, as he is known to fans, had a mistrial on 23 others, so he's still out and about. And what does a pol do while out on bail to feed the family? He takes it to the people, and makes a little spending money by signing autographs at Wizard World Chicago/Chicago Comic-Con. Blago is well aware that cashing in on celebrity is the best follow up to a political fall, and while thwarted in his attempt to appear on 'm a Celebrity... Get Me out of Here!, has been a contestant on The Apprentice. So he's gone where all reality stars go.

The nominations for the 14th annual Ignatz Awards have just been announced, with the winners to be presented at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda on Saturday, September 11, 2010 at 9:00 PM. Nominees were chosen by a panel of five judges: Anders Nilsen, David Kelly, Rob G, Joshua Cotter and Trevor Alixopoulos. Winners will be chosen by attendees. As always, it's an eclectic mix, with many lesser known gems very much worthy of your attention:

The late John Callahan -- the paraplegic cartoonist who passed away last month -- is remembered with some excerpts from one of his cartoon collections.

If the long, long battle over the rights to Superman were a DC "event" comic, we would be into the colon-bedecked spin-offs by...

A few things from hither and yon: § Archie Comics' aggressive new management team is profiled in a big story in the NY Times'...

Can you believe The Beat is on the move AGAIN? It's true! This time...it's a WEDDING.