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Thursday Morning Wunawound

WossWatch: Jonathan Ross has quit the BBC after thirteen years with the corporation, declining to renew his contract. Often criticised by the more reactionary elements of the British media, he canme under heavy fire last year for a radio broadcast with Russell Brand, in which they called the actor Andrew Sachs for an interview but, on reaching his answerphone, left messages alleging Brand had slept with Sachs' grand daughter. Two weeks later a newspaper noticed and began a campaign against all involved, claiming an executive scalp, the reignation of Brand and the suspension of Ross. Since then, there have been repeated attacks on the man as well as concern over the levels of BBC pay, his salary for a weekly chatshow, weely radio show and film review programme currently costing the BBC £5 million a year. Ross had offered to cut his fee by half, but it's believed by The Telegraph that the BBC wanted a further reduction. However Ross insists his decision to step down is not financially based. And this will, if nothing else, give Jonathan more time to spend writing comics. Turf, with Tommy Lee Edwards, is out from Image in May and film options have already been discussed. Before the story broke, his tweet earlier this morning was quite revelatory;

Good morning. My day is turning out to be far more interesting then I had anticipated ! See you later – have a good one.

MagazineWatch: Future Publishing are to launch a quarterly magazine about superheroes for the news stand entitled Comic Heroes. It turns out that a recent superhero special by Future's SFX magazine was one of their best-selling issues in the magazine's history. At £7.99 and 132 pages, it will be produced with heavy quality materials, along the lines of Future's World of Warcraft special, last year. The launch issue will be in March, focussed on Iron Man 2 and is edited by Future's Jez Bickham.

WebWatch: Just the other day another (okay, the other) comics gossip columnist was telling me that she dreaded the inevitable digitisation of the comics industry, in that she'd have less to write about. I pointed out that you'd have the same kind of power plays, petty politics and personality clashes that you do today, maybe even more. And so it's happening right now with webcomics host Keenspot as it changes web publishing strategies dramatically. Gary Tyrell gathered together a lot of pieces and got some answers from CEO Chris Crosby. The Scott Kurtz kicks off in the comments with;

All the facts point to this move having been one of 10 possible 2010 announcements for keenspot, 3 of which involved projecting webcomics on the moon. Thank God the poor handling of Kel MacDonald's exit forced them to pretend THIS decision has been loaded in the chamber and ready to fire for months. Because that's the RIGHT story to stick to at this point.

And it all goes to hell. Enjoy…

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