News

A lot more information is coming out regarding the presumed murder of former comics and animation writer Stephen Perry. And it is sad and disturbing. Tampa Bay has a jailhouse interview with Perry's ex-roomie, a confirmed OxyContin addict, and the unflattering picture he paints of Perry is unconvincing.

On Monday Mark Evanier reported the death of cartooning vet Howard Post. Post had worked as a writer and artist on just about every...

The Eagle Awards, the British comics honors which are voted and chosen by the fans, have just been announced. It's a good year for...

It's been quite a long time since we checked in on Michael George, comic shop owner, convention runner and accused murderer. Convicted once of killing his wife Barbara in 1990 years ago, a judge has upheld the defense's request for a new trial and George's bond has just been reduced from from $2.5 million to $500K. With bond approved, instead of rotting in jail while waiting for a new trial, George would be forced to wear a tether and confined to specific, court-mandated areas.

It would probably be fair to say that a lot of people were snickering a bit when it was announced that Jazan Wild (real name Jason Barnes) was suing Heroes for similarities between his carnival plot and theirs:

The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, lists similarities including a carnival that can magically appear and disappear to collect protagonists, a young boy who develops special abilities, a carney or hero running through the woods chased by a mob, a circle of mirrors tied to the key plot, similarities in dialogue, and more.

As anyone who has been reading comics or watching tv for more than, oh, five minutes can attest, none of those elements are particularly novel or special. Fact: we edited a carnival story once ourselves and at least one of those elements was in it.

• Today's must read: Michael Cavna interviews Steve Tippie, Tribune Media's VP of licensing on the end of Little Orphan Annie, the comic strip: ...

We're back from our little working vacation, but sadly, we're more tired than ever! How does that happen? The Beat feels relaxed for about five seconds upon returning home, but then. the stress of catching up on everything we missed erases all progress. Plus, there is so much to see. Within five minutes of alighting at Penn Station we had already seen TWO men wearing eye bandages!

Heroes is cancelled, a surprise twist in the Siegel vs Warners legal battle and video from the Doug Wright Awards.

The fifth annual Glyph Comics Awards were handed out this weekend in Philadelphia at the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention. The big...

Jill Thompson's Scary Godnmother has become something of a Halloween classic, with two animated specials that are still shown on Caqrtoon Network, and a...

Housekeeping notes: • The OLD Beat is up at a new URL: whenmonkeysattack.com. Believe it or not we're still trying to get all the old...

Ever since the cutbacks at Viz on Monday, the online chatter has been surprisingly quiet. People close to the situation have mainly been in...