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§ Nice Art: Concept art for The Mandalorian by Christian Alzmann, Nick Gindraux, Ryan Church, Jama Jurabaev, and Doug Chiang has been released and it’s all very nice. Above is a piece by Nick Gindraux that captures the mood about right. Show runner Jon Favreau tweeted the Baby Yoda art everyone is swooning over, but did not credit the artist – for shame, Jon Favreau!

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§ And to answer everyone’s burning question – Baby Yoda merchandise is on its way! Thank the maker, what with Life Day coming up so soon. Variety has some of the scoop, with Amazon, Kohls, Target, Macys, Hot Topic, BoxLunch, and Zazzle all expected to be carrying the goodies. According to reports, no licenses were allowed ahead of time because Favreau and director Nick Filoni wanted to keep Baby Yoda (known as “The Child” in the show’s publicity materials) under wraps.

But now the world is thirsting for more cuteness from this 50-years-young Force-using youngling. And we will be getting it, oh we will. Disney will not leave that money sitting there. There are already two Baby Yoda t-shirts up on Amazon right now, and as you read this there could even be more things to spend money on.

BTW, enough with calling Baby Yoda “he” – we don’t know what gender it has. We know there is a female alien of the Yoda species – the much missed Yaddle – and so who knows where The Child will end up on the gender spectrum.

(Disclosure: If you buy something via our affiliate links, The Beat may earn commission.)

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§ As long as we’re selling things here, there are already Mandalorian toys, including, amazingly, a Funko Pop!

 

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§ At Screen Rant, Thomas Bacon makes the case for Heroes Reborn – the much maligned 1996 reboot of the top Marvel characters by the escaped Image creators, including, infamously, Rob LIefeld. This “reboot” led the way for the more successful Ultimate Universe, its suggested.

Marvel learned some important lessons from the popular and critical failure of “Heroes Reborn.” In the year 2000, Marvel made a second attempt at a modernized relaunch, the Ultimate Universe. This time, they wisely decided to make it an alt-universe, meaning the old books continued. As a result, readers could go for one or both of the different iterations, and it turned out there was pretty much no competition between them. The Ultimate Universe is essentially the foundation for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which lifts arcs and concepts from popular runs of Ultimate Iron Man, Ultimate Captain America, and The Ultimates.

§ Lynda Barry’s love of ‘The Family Circus’ is always a delight, and NPR has the interview.

In this installment of our Guilty Pleasures series, Barry explains how she found deliverance in “The Family Circus” as a small child, before she even knew how to read. The circular panel in the newspaper comics page offered an alternative to her own troubled family life. “I used to just love to look within that circle,” she says. “And within that circle there was a family that just looked like they were having a really happy life. And it was sort of the opposite life that I was having in my home.”

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§ A copy of Marvel Comics #1 from 29139 has sold for a record $1.26 million at Heritage Auctions. The famed issue – published by Marvel predecessor Timely Comics – include the debuts of the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner, with art by Carl Burgos and Bill Everett. Rated at an incredible 9.4 out of 10 for condition, the copy was originally purchased for the 10¢ cover price by a Pennsylvania mailman.

§ While DC Universe’s streaming Titans and Doom Patrol shows have found favor with audiences (and the Beat staff), Swamp Thing didn’t make it past Season One. However, showrunner Gary Dauberman has revealed a little of where he would have liked Season Two to go

“Season one is very much like a movie in that it has a beginning, middle, and end, and is one story told over the course of ten episodes and what I liked a lot about the comics is that there’s like werewolf in a hospital and things like that, so we would have had episodes like an anthology with standalone stories. The swamp is very much the kitchen sink of supernatural terror and, as you know, you can go into different subgenres of horror with that and I was really looking forward to exploring that in season two and getting into some of the more twisted horror tales from the later comics. It just would have got weirder. For people who don’t know the character, season one was telling people what Swamp-Thing was all about but season two was going to be more about getting into the deeper, twisted, weirder, and gross ideas.”

More in link.

§ Noting who followed, blocked and liked whom on Instagram is a staple of celebrity gossip sheets and the Bravo-verse, but now we can play along two – and to add to the fun, it’s all about #ReleaseTheSnyderCut! The Release the Snyder Cut fan Instagram account caught that the HBO Max Instagram Account has liked one of their posts! Surely this bolsters the idea that the Snyder Cut will be apeparing on HBO Max in a jiffy.

It seems things are moving in the right direction if you read the tea leaves, or in this case, the follows of Instagram, as the Release the Snyder Cut account noticed a post from them was liked by the official HBO Max Instagram account. That same account is now following Snyder’s official account on the service, and if you put those together, well, it certainly is interesting.

That seems to be a definitive answer to whether we will ever see this masterpiece. As we always say, look to the likes for the truth.