Watch how we seamlessly blend three items from last week, add a bit of comics history, and… but we’re getting ahead of things.

Last week, we had Grant Morrison talking about the new Batman & Robin series he’ll be doing with Frank Quitely, discussing (among other things) a new Robin. We also saw lnks to fan images as to whatever happened to Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes now that he’s older, with one sweet image and one… not so sweet. (Incidentally, I think the girl’s name is Berkeley. No, not Breathed.)

This puts me in mind of what happened the last time we replaced Robin. I was working in the production department at DC during the time of Batman: A Death in the Family , which took Jason Todd out. And at the time, there was a tradition in production of taking that day’s Calvin and Hobbes strip, xeroxing it larger, having Bob LeRose color it, and posting it on the bulletin board.

And Steven Bové wondered what they were going to do about the new Robin. And one idea led to another, and he drew a little something. And then it got passed around the rest of the department with everybody contributing, and a minor masterpiece was born.

So here, with pencils and inks from Steven Bové, inks by Jerry Acerno, letters by John Workman, and colors by me after the late great Bob LeRose:

This will portend some of the major changes in media this year– including the comics, newspapers and magazines you read and the TV and movies you watch.

The Nielsen Company reported today that U.S. advertising for the full year 2008 was down 2.6% compared to the full year 2007. According to preliminary figures from Nielsen, U.S. ad expenditures declined almost $3.7 billion to a total spend of $136.8 billion in 2008.

Newspapers saw the deepest cuts in 2008 with national down 9.6% and local down 10.2%.  Local Sunday supplements were down 11%. Magazines didn’t do much better, dropping 7.6% nationally and 3.7% locally. Only two categories are up: Cable TV by 7.8%, and Hispanic Cable TV by 9.6%.

Among the biggest ad spenders, Time Warner cut its spending by 23.7% last year, Chrysler spending was down by 31.2%, Ford down by 28.5%, and GM down by 14.9%. All of them are heavy advertisers on science fiction and action-adventure shows like Heroes.  Motion picture advertising dropped $3.3 billion from $3.75 billion, an -11.4% drop– and again, very likely to be advertising on genre shows. Only two of the major categories saw increases last year: Direct Response products were up by 9.2% and fast food restaurants were up by 3.8%.

Cable was the highest CPM-based revenue-generating medium with $26.6 billion in sales. Internet advertising, not including paid search, text only, paid fee services, performance-based campaigns, sponsorships, barters, in-stream ("pre-rolls") players, messenger apps, partnership advertising, email campaigns or in-house advertising activity, dropped by 6.4% in 2008– but with that much excluded, it’s a tougher number to calculate.

Lock up the kids, we’re digging out the grown up stuff with a look at the history of Erotic Comics, plus the 5 cool things in the comic shop this week, Ed Brubaker’s next move and the heroics of Steve Martin.

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For the first time, a Joss Whedon character will be appearing in a major adventure outside of the Whedonverse when Peter David and J.K. Woodward relaunch Fallen Angel this summer from IDW Publishing.

When we asked Peter how he got this crossover to happen, he said "It was actually very complicated. I went up to Joss at the San Diego Comic-Con and asked him. He said ‘Yes’. After that, it was just a case of working out the rights with Fox."

The story is set during the fifth season of Angel, right after the episode "Time Bomb" where Illyria loses much of her powers. Devastated over the loss, a member of the Hierarchy appears and offers to make Illyria all that she was again. And all she has to do is go to the city of Bete Noire, the city that runs the world, and kill the Fallen Angel.

Peter mentioned that the series is going to be an excellent point for new readers to try out the series, as he suspects there will be a lot of readers who will be introduced to the world of the Fallen Angel for the first time.

I, of course, am just wondering how many Angel puns are going to work their way in.

A copy of Action Comics #1, featuring the first appearance of Superman, was bought at auction for $317,200 on Friday, after 88 prior bids. The CGC FN: 6.0 book was sold through ComicConnect.com and its parent site, Metropolis Collectibles.

There are two neat extra tidbits to this story, according to the AP story:

1. The winning bid for the book was submitted Friday evening by John Dolmayan, drummer for the rock band System of a Down, who is also a dealer of rare comic books. (He bought it for a client.)
   
2. The man who had previously owned the book purchased it in a secondhand store in the early 1950s when he was nine years old… for 35 cents. AAAAAAAAAGH!