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Short version, the last remaining book retail giant plans to close as many as a third of its stores over a 10-year period—although that may be an optimistic projection, as well. Slowed by the rise of digital and a lack of new malls, B&N oipened only two stores in the last fiscal year, and it's end of year profits were well below what was expected. While the Nook ereaders has been a bright spot, sales there have slowed as well. So a leaner meaner BN seems to be in the cards.

The 90s are out there, and Scully and Mulder are determined to find them. IDW will be relaunching the X-files franchise in comics form. The plan includes reprints of the original series that ran from 1995-2009, and a new series launching in June.

If there's one trend we've noticed growing over the years its the use of graphic novels as teaching tools—on the must basic level, comics are now recognized as a way to get reluctant readers to get started reading. On a larger level, comics are being used as a general teaching tool. Josh Elder's Reading with Pictures organization has been promoting this idea and cataloging the use of comics in the classroom. It's not just the visceral appeal of colorful pictures that puts comics over—some think that the verbal-visual blend is the future of literacy, and comics could potentially be on the forefront of that.

It's not that they weren't go before, but now they ‘but now they even have a whole name: Marvel’s Phase Three, as Marvel studio head Kevin Feige told MTV:

By now, it seems a lot of people have taken advantage of Kyle Baker's decision to put his stellar body of graphic novels up for free online. While it's a windfall for readers, at Robot 6, Corey Blake asked "Does ‘free’ devalue comics?" While free sampling is a staple of marketing, it also has drawbacks:

Marvel seem to be making a proper investment in their female characters in 2013, with a number of new books launching and several of...

Art comix publisher PictureBox has announced a new line: Ten Cent Manga, which will be curated by manga exert Ryan Holmberg (you can read some of his insightful manga writing at The Comics Journal.) We're told the line will include "famous titles by superstars, as well as single-artist volumes and anthologies of comics by forgotten geniuses."

Okay, it’s not a comic. But it is a lavishly illustrated and pleasingly offbeat childrens’ book by the great comics and prose writer Neil...

This year's MoCCA Festival is being eagerly awaited to see how changes made under the new Society of Illustrators management will affect a...

You may have noticed a few trailers for OBLIVION, a new Tom Cruise SF film that seems to fuse the themes of I am Legend, Mission Impossible, War of the Worlds and Minority Report into one handy epic. (It also destroys New York, just as all futuristic movies must.) The film comes out in April and in addition to Cruise it stars Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko, Melissa Leo, Zoe Bell and Andrea Riseborough. The director is TRON: UPRISING's Joseph Kosinski, and he's also the source of this film's tenuous but fascinating "graphic novel" connection.

A few months ago Dark Horse announced they were publishing The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia an authorized art book of the storied video game franchise. Such was the excitement for this book that it knocked off Shades of grey from the Amazon best seller list for a while week, and money from The Beat's Amazon affiliate link paid for all our Christmas presents.

Ron Perazza has been at the forefront of new digital comic projects for years, with his work at Zuda and ComiXology helping to pave...