Via blogger Mike Sterling comes word that Weekly World News, chronicler of Bat Boy, Elvis Presley sightings and countless cryptids, is shutting down after 27 years of publication.
As Sterling points out, the mock tabloid has several comics-industry connections: former DC Comics editors Bob Greenberger and Paul Kupperberg edit WWN, and writer Andy Mangels is a contributor. In 2004, cartoonist Peter Bagge launched the Adventures of Bat Boy weekly comic strip that passed to Danielle Corsetto in 2006.
On his blog, Greenberger recounts the surprise announcement, which came during a staff meeting on Friday: “The reasons given make no sense. We’re stunned and shell-shocked. We’re to stay on through August 3, finishing the reprint issues and then we’re done. A glorious, funny, odd publication, born in 1979, will go out with a whimper and all I can think is that something’s going on that they’re not telling us because it just doesn’t make sense.”
Weekly World News is owned by Florida-based American Media Inc., the parent company of such publications as The National Enquirer, Men’s Fitness, Muscle & Fitness and Globe.
July 23rd, 2007 at 1:44 pm
This sucks! Love this publication, though it was getting harder and harder to find.