Alan Moore Turns Yellow

It’s the lull before the holiday week, as we recover from being jam-packed and roasted at The NYC National convention. Most of the table talk in The Big Apple centered on how life was or will be affected by the WGA strike. Still, we managed to dig up a few nuggets of interest:

Former Marvel Comics editor Andy Schmidt (Annihilation) had launched Comics Experience here – a new full-service comic book creating school and career consulting service, which will be begin classes soon. Courses will include: Introduction to Comics Writing, Advanced Comics Writing, Introduction to Comic Book Art and Advanced Comic Book Art. Future guest lecturers will include Peter David and Dan Slott.

TV Guide in canceling its live Online Video Awards ceremony in lieu of the labor dispute between the WGA and AMPTP. The awards will continue online here, with winners of 18 separate categories to be announced on November 26. More than 1.6 million votes have been cast so far, according to TV Guide.

And speaking of the strike, isn’t it ironic that one of the bigger disputes is over compensation for "new media" (i.e. TV shows on line) while NBC.com kicked off its download service here. They are offering free ad-supported episodes of shows such as The Office, Heroes, Life, Bionic Woman, 30 Rock and Friday Night Lights. The NBC Direct player can be set to schedule weekly downloads of shows, but the videos can only be viewed on the computer that downloaded them. So far the service supports only Windows PCs running the latest Internet Explorer browser.

Meanwhile, ABC.com has started streaming webisodes of Lost here.  These 2-3 minute features were originally intended to debut on Verizon Wireless. The "Missing Pieces," penned by Lost writers under a separate arrangement before the strike began, will reveal previously unknown backstories of the survivors of flight 815. The bigger screen version of Lost is still scheduled to begin its eight episode fourth season in February.

MySpace’s first original series Quarterlife has debuted here. All in all, there will be 36 8-minute episodes that will premiere every Sunday and Thursday night. The series, about a group of twentysomethings trying to figure out what to do with their lives a few years out of college, has its roots as an ABC TV pilot co-written and directed by Marshall Herkovitz called 1/4life that failed to get picked up in 2005.

Don’t forget that Alan Moore turns up on tonight’s episode of The Simpsons, 8pm Eastern on most Fox stations! Beyond that, the biggest week in retail should mean a great line up of new comics & DVDs to enjoy after your Thanksgiving dinner and ComicMix Radio will run those down for you in a couple of days, plus we head to Mid Ohio Con and take you along – AND we introduce you to one of Canada’s longest running comic book friendly TV shows that are now going to be available to viewers here in the U.S.