In what could be a major blow to illegal downloading, Swedish authorities today charged four operators of The Pirate Bay, the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker, with “promoting other people’s infringements of copyright laws.”

If found guilty, the four men — Hans Fredrik Neij, Per Svartholm Warg, Peter Kolmisoppi and Carl Lundstroem — face a year in jail.

Sweden, which has some of the loosest copyright protections in Europe, has been considered a haven for torrent trackers. (When ComicSearch ran afoul of Marvel in December, the site’s administrator pledged, “I’m now looking at moving my hosting to Sweden.”)

Prosecutors say The Pirate Bay generates about $4.5 million in annual revenue through advertising.

One way or another, Keith Giffen was going to influence this post.

I had originally planned to look at Mr. Giffen’s recent thoughts on continuity in the context of two fan-shattering events: Sunday’s flashback episode of “The Simpsons,” and the Star Trek trailer implying that the Enterprise was (horror!) built on Earth. The more I got into those topics, though, the more I felt mired in a futile debate. It was looking like mutually assured destruction, and while it might have garnered a lot of comments, in the end I doubt it would have been that productive.

Thankfully, though, yesterday brought the official announcement of Mr. Giffen’s new Ambush Bug miniseries, reuniting him with scripter Robert Loren Fleming in order to lead the Bug through DC’s last few big events. I eagerly switched topics, from the traps of continuity to the giddy anarchy of parody. If I’m going to be unproductive, I might as well have fun.

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Brian K. Vaughan Week continues with a nice profile in The Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Vaughan’s stories often stem from a single “what if” scenario. “What if your parents were super-villains?” asks the teen comic “Runaways.” “Ex Machina” imagines what would happen if a superhero ran for public office.

Dialogue in Mr. Vaughan’s comics is typically crisp and witty. His page turns are pregnant pauses — cliffhangers like the devastating “after these messages” of Sunday morning cartoons. “He understands how to use the medium to exploit its abilities in ways that other writers don’t get,” says Diana Schutz, an executive editor at Dark Horse Comics. “Comics don’t work like novels or movies.”

When he was pitching “Y: The Last Man,” Mr. Vaughan plotted out a five-year story arc at the request of Vertigo chief Karen Berger. She was impressed that Mr. Vaughan could reinvent the clichéd idea of an apocalypse. “We joked that on paper it sounded like a B-movie,” she says. “But he quickly figured it out in terms of plotting. He understands the dramatic beats.”

Related: Los Angeles CityBeat on the “Y: The Last Party” CBLDF benefit

On his Livejournal, Cold Cut’s Matt High reveals the “unofficial news” that the comics distributor closed before Christmas, and will re-open next month in Illinois under new ownership.

The small, 13-year-old company, based in Salinas, Calif., was put up for sale in July. It’s the only remaining direct-market competitor to Diamond.

Heidi MacDonald offers a little context and commentary.

(First link via Tom Spurgeon)

Augie DeBlieck, Jr., isn’t that much of an optimist when considering the Marvel/Soleil deal:

merican publishers traditionally screw this up. The only hope Eurocomics have come from British publishers. (See ASTERIX, LUCKY LUKE, MELUSINE, et. al.) If Marvel or DC got the rights to ASTERIX, I’m sure they’d split each story into a three part mini-series at digest size, recolor it, and letter it in the stiffest computer font they could find… French albums are oversized. They’re glorious. The pages are bigger so they can pack more beautiful lush art onto every page. Publishing these comics at standard American comic book size will seriously undermine the reading experience. The DC/Humanoids production, by the end, had figured out a way to reproduce Francois Schuiten’s art so that nobody would want to look at it. That takes a lot.

Kevin Huxford wonders who knew what, and when, when it comes to Spider-Man’s unmasking:

It had been Marvel’s public position that Spider-Man was being unmasked to stay unmasked for a very long time. Joe Quesada was adamant about that in his New Joe Fridays interviews. But they were already planning the Spidey relaunch at the end of Civil War? So…they already knew they’d have a magic fix ready for it, when Joe said there was no magic fix ready for it. Mind you…they may not have been sure they were going to do it, but they knew were ready to do away with this aspect that had so much potential for great stories, according to editorial.

THEY.

LIE.

FREQUENTLY.

I’ve been wondering about this myself - Do you think that “One More Day” was the great story potential they talked about when they unmasked Spider-Man…?

Mark Millar passes along a message from Tommy Lee Edwards, about how you can do your bit for charity and get a nice piece of art for your troubles:

I wondered if you’d be willing to help me spread the word about my Ride for Kids charity by posting something about it on your forums.

This year, Lucasfilm has offered to sponsor me by helping me create a limited-edition (300) run of Star Wars lithographs. (see attachment)
I’ve set-up a website for this endeavor. With every $30 donated on this website, people will get this exclusive Star Wars print sent to them, and know that their money (thru ride for kids) is going DIRECTLY to the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation.

Sticking with the theme at hand, I’ve created an all-new exclusive illustration of speeder-bike troopers for this one-time exclusive print.
It measures 30″ x 15″, and is printed on a high-quality 80# coated stock.

I was able to bring-in a couple grand for last year’s ride. I plan on smashing last year’s total by offering-up this incentive that will hopefully catch the attention of my fans, comics fans, star wars fans, and people who just want to help some families suffering with brain tumors.

You can find out more by going here.

Over at his blog, Steven Stwalley has been scanning and posting classic turn of the century comic strips under the (all-too accurate) heading Crumbling Paper. Most of these strips — Barney Google, The Katzenjammer Kids and Happy Hooligan to name just a few — have never been published since their initial newspaper run, so catch them now before they literally turn to dust.

Hat tip: Drawn

ABC Family has picked up The Middleman, the TV adaptation of the Viper Comics series by Javier Grillo-Marxuach and Les McClaine.

The pilot for the show, which stars Matt Keeslar and Natalie Morales, was optioned in September. The Middleman centers on Wendy Watson, a struggling young artist who’s recruited by a secret agency to fight evil.

Photos from the set of the pilot can be seen here.

Pin-ups this time. Courtesy of Andertoons.

Ron Perlman, as Hellboy, graces the cover of the latest Empire magazine, promoting Hellboy II: The Golden Army. Curiously, or perhaps somewhat disturbingly, the blurb to his left reads “40 Movies That Will Get You Sex!”

Hellboy II opens July 11.

In his latest blog post, Tom Brevoort talks about retailers who, it seems, don’t want to sell the comics they’ve already paid for:

The poster in question had witnessed the following behavior at his local comic shop: a customer was buying an issue of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, and the guy behind the counter openly mocked him for it, telling him that he’d given himself AIDS simply by looking at it, so terrible was it.*

Now, I certainly don’t have a problem with somebody expressing their opinion. But in this case, I really have to question the logic of it. The store in question bought their copies of AMAZING on a non-returnable basis; they paid for them, and that money is still going to be gone whether or not the books fly off the shelves. So actively berating a customer for buying a item that you’ve already sunk money into is just shooting yourself in the foot.

Tom goes on to say that maybe this was a shop employee who simply needed a lesson in customer service. But I know one shop employee who was trying to recommend Brand New Day at her shop, but the manager wouldn’t let her:

Before my shift was over at the store, they took my front counter pick away and replaced it with something else. The manager said it was because I was going to be off work soon, but this was the first time any of my suggestions had been taken away from their cozy nook at the registers for that last minute buy and/or sell while I was still in the room and in front of me. I wanted to fold a little flag and march it to its final resting place after being so brave and bold.

I think a point was being made pretty clearly to me by my co-workers, one that’s been made for the past week or so by a heft of fans at large.

You see, my pick was Amazing Spider-Man #546. I liked Brand New Day.

–snip–

He was polite about it, but the book was stank of what had come before, trapped in a world it didn’t create. Customers have come into the store with pitchforks and torches in their eyes and the staff have commiserated on what a ’slap in the face’ this all is, effectively continuing the hype of ‘the Worst. Storyline. EVER.’ I don’t think it’s a stretch of the imagination to think that the man in charge today simply didn’t like the book. But when I take Messiah CompleX to task for not exactly being clear on the stakes of the story, I get in trouble because I’m talking down a sale. I find my front counter pick politely escorted off the counter. Oh, the politics of fandom.

*Just for the record, you can’t actually get AIDS by reading a comic book.

Remember that New Yorker contest I mentioned a few weeks ago? Well, the magazine now has a Flickr set of entries up now for folks to peruse.

Neil Kleid posted an open letter to the New York Comic-Con on his LiveJournal about the dates they chose to hold it this year, which conflict with the first few nights of Passover:

For the past two years, the New York Comic-Con took place in February. While winter in New York wasn’t the most agreeable time for con-goers, the timing was perfect in that the convention took place in a dead time - no conflicting conventions, no conflicting holidays. It was the perfect time because nothing else was happening. this year, the convention planners at Reed Exhibitions have decided to move the event to April, possibly in order to take advantage of a warmer time of year, possibly for better rates on the Javits Center - I don’t know the details. What I do know is that this year the good people at Reed Exhibitions have decided to hold the New York Comic-Con on the first few nights of Passover, a major Jewish holiday, one which Jews the world over— and definitely in the New York area (observant or not)— observe ritually and diligently with friends and families, attending nightly seders and for some, treat in the manner of our Sabbath.

Now, I’m a realist and I understand that the majority far outweighs the minority here. Holding the convention on Passover won’t really affect con attendance one way or another. The number of Jewish attendees who will choose to forgo NYCC this year won’t even make a dent in the turnout. But as a Jewish cartoonist/creator, I have to admit to being a bit annoyed that the folks at Reed didn’t even take the holiday into account. I could understand if they’d scheduled it for the following week, the second days of Passover which are less religiously observed… but the first two days of Passover, the Seder nights, are almost like… Christmas Eve. But with more guilt. And matzah.

The New York Comic-Con is scheduled for April 18-20. Passover will start at sunset on Saturday, April 19.

Eric Reynolds took photos at the opening at the Frye Museum in Seattle.

MySpace Comic Books kicks off “Criminal Week,” devoted to Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ noirish crime series. The spotlight begins with the full first issue available online, and continues today with the initial chapter of the second storyline.

–MTV had a couple of Watchmen-related items yesterday; first, Carla Gugino talks about playing the Silk Spectre:

“It was really one of the craziest, most fun roles I’ve ever gotten to play,” marveled the “Sin City” star, cast as the burlesque dancer who proves to be the most PR-savvy of the complex superheroes. “I start at 25 years old in the 1940s, and I age to 67 years old with full prosthetics in the 1980s. [Sally] is a larger-than-life character. She’s a costumed crime fighter, but her idea of a costume is very Bettie Page-meets-[Alberto] Vargas.”

And Watchmen director Zack Snyder wrote a guest column for the site … about Cheese:

At the moment, I’m in the final weeks of shooting “Watchmen,” in Vancouver, British Columbia. Since “Watchmen” is a dissection of the superhero genre and forces it to take a long, hard look into the pop-culture mirror, it only makes sense that it’s where my head is at these days. With that in mind, I started thinking about music and whether there were any parallels that could be drawn. Enter Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine. Although tonally they are vastly different in many ways, the film and the Cheese-y music share an in-your-face look at the world, calling bullsh– on pop culture in an unapologetic way.

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Fables cover artist James Jean has pictures up from XOXO, the postcard art book he’s doing through Chronicle.

According to James:

“There is some nice foil stamping on the cover and on the little tab that will keep the cover in place, and all the images will be printed stochastically, just like in Process Recess vol. 2. As you can see, there will be some new and never-before- published images in the book, in addition to some old favorites.”

XOXO should be in stores either late summer or fall of 2008.

The Hero Initiative has added a couple of T-shirts to their online store to help raise money for the cause. The first features Dawn by Joseph Michael Linsner:

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Decimation, Extinction Agenda, Messiah Complex… and here we are.

What an event it was! Full of fights and drama and twists and turns and hey, it’s our old friend, Mutant Dystopian Future! It was indeed like the days of yore, of Fall of the Mutants and X-Tinction Agenda, of fights that move from one book to the next, of characters that don’t seem to be doing anything suddenly front and center by chapter eight, of small details you have to remember from chapter to chapter like lost socks looking for a mate… well, let’s just say that these kinds of crossovers have their good points and bad points. In any case, it’s a great big dose of nostalgia for Yours Truly, one of those big, messy events that leaves us holding a moment in X-Men History.

At the end of it all, with his cast and crew around him, Scott uttered very shocking and soon-to-be famous words around the body of a dead man, words that will last us until Uncanny X-Men #500 when a clear vision of the X-Men will show itself to the True Believers. These words?

“No more mutants X-Men!”

But if you come to think about it, have there really been X-Men recently?

WARNING: Messiah Complex spoilers. For that one guy who hasn’t read it yet. You know who you are.
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