Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates, Run Around | Tagged: Comics, ronnie corbett

Thursday Runaround – The Fantastic Ronnie

MediaWatch: The mass media finally notice the planned death in Fantastic Four as Marvel kick their PR into gear.

MoneyWatch: Beano and Dandy publisher DC Thompson is hitting the skids, finances-wise. And the Financial Times blames the comics;

TV licensing deals for Dennis the Menace, one of the publisher's most famous characters, still left the children's comics division dealing with "difficult market conditions," according to its annual accounts, which were signed off at the end of November and issued this week.

Sales of The Beano, the weekly title whose circulation peaked at 2m in the 1950s, now stands at just 47,000 a week while sister title The Dandy, the fortnightly comic featuring guest columnist and TV comedian Harry Hill, also sells an average of 47,000 per edition.

The private company, though, noted that sales of comic annuals, a traditional staple of children's Christmas stocking fillers before the digital era, had "held up particularly well as they represented good value gifts during this continued period of economic recession".

A number of higher-priced issues and promotion of BeanoMax, aimed at slightly older children, also helped bolster revenues.

RonnieWatch: Ronnie Corbett in The One Ronnie on BBC2, Christmas Day

LegalWatch: The Law And The Multiverse looks at Superman's immigration status.

Immigration creates a whole new set of problems for superhero characters, and a character that wants to stay on the right side of the law is going to need to figure out how to make this work. Fortunately, there appears to be an existing path to admittance and even citizenship for super powered characters in the form of the priority E1 visa. Other situations will probably require some degree of subterfuge if not outright forgery.

PoliticsWatch:The first minister of Wales, Carwyn Jones, has handed out comics to children at school to encourage parents to help children to read.

ListWatch: USAToday finds essential graphic novels for Christmas presents.

JournalistaWatch: Dirk Deppey gives me a nice sign off, as he signs off.

Let's get the important stuff out of the way first. The three best sources for comics-related news are The Comics Reporter, Robot 6 and Bleeding Cool. They span the funnybook spectrum, with Spurgeon the least concerned with Wednesday Crowd comics, Johnston the most concerned, and Robot 6 somewhere in the middle.

This is The Bleeding Cool ComicChron Robot speaking. I come for your women. But for now I merely collate comic-related bits and pieces online. One day I will rule. Until that day, read on.

2011 is bringing a death to the 'Fantastic Four' family – CNN.com

"This wasn't a case where we started with, 'Let's kill a character,' " Brevoort said.

Storm ID and DC Thomson celebrate the successful re-launch of The Beano comic's website | Benzinga.com

The Beano, Britain's brightest comic, has just launched it's brand new site http://www.beano.com. It features all the favourite Beano characters from Dennis and Gnasher to Minnie the Minx and aims to become a vibrant community

Invincible Iron Man #500 variant cover by Joe Quesada | Marvel.com

Shiny.

Marvel super heroes swooping into N.M. | Albuquerque, N.M. | KRQE News 13

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) – Comic book super heroes will gather in New Mexico next spring when Marvel Productions begins shooting what is described as the largest feature film ever made in the state, the governor's office announced Wednesday. Iron Man, The Hulk, Captain America and Thor, already familiar to Marvel readers of "The Avengers" series, are scheduled to display their powers for the cameras at Albuquerque Studios from April through September.

Karen Traviss, New York Times best-selling author: Another comics update

The first of my Gears of War comics for DC is out in a few days on the 29th, but as I said in my last entry, it's not the one you're expecting. You'll be getting a few Pendulum Wars tales before we start on the six DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS stories, because the third Gears of War game will now be on sale later than originally planned (as the world and his dog knows by now) and DLS is Spoiler Central for that.

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