We haven’t had a good, depressing, "the economy sucks and it’s even affecting my comics!" story in a while, but here’s a doozy: ICV2 reports that British company Entertainment Rights, which owns the video rights for Gumby, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Felix the Cat, She-Ra, Ghostbusters, The Lone Ranger, Lassie, Mr. Magoo, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Veggie Tales and a host of other characters, as well as the Filmation archives and the Turok video game, is running out of time to find new investment or an acquirer to avoid going out of business– and like everybody else, is scrambling. The company loaded up with debt when it bought Classic Media in 2006 and ran into loan trouble last year.

Among options being considered are hitting up existing stockholders for additional investment, a sale of the company, or new loans. It received an infusion of 13 million pounds from its main lender in December, which will carry the company through February. Expenses are also being cut, with a third of the company’s employees let go. Bad debt from the failure of British retailer Woolworths is also weighing on the company.

No word how this would affect the numerous movie deals in place with a number of their characters, including the Masters of the Universe film, or any other licensing deals in place.

Bottomless Belly Button
By Dash Shaw
Fantagraphics, June 2008, $29.99

Wrapped up inside [[[Bottomless Belly Button]]] is the realistically-depicted story of a family – aged parents, three grown children, and few others – coming all together for one last time as the parents divorce after forty years of marriage. But Dash Shaw is in no hurry to tell that story; he wraps the three sections of this graphic novel in metaphor and metafiction, graphically depicting the Looney family and their world in various forms – as water, as sand, as maps, as diagrams and lists. Shaw takes the time and space to tell his story slowly, to circle around it from all sides, and to focus on each member of the Looney family in turn.

David Looney is the patriarch: his word has always been law. We see the least of him in Bottomless Belly Button, but he’s clearly diminished from the authoritarian, demanding man we see in flashbacks – he’s no longer in charge. The divorce probably isn’t his idea.

Dennis Looney, the older son – the good son. Married, with a baby. Somewhere in his mid ‘30s. Dennis can’t accept the divorce – in the Looney’s view of the world, families always stick together, because families are the core building blocks of the world. Something must be wrong – something he can fix. So he gets angry inappropriately, takes long runs on the beach to think through things, roams restlessly through the house, looking for clues and reasons for something he can’t accept.

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Today’s installment of comic-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest…

* Producers Frank Marshall, Kathleen Kennedy and Pixar’s John Lasseter are working to guarantee a huge success for this summer’s release of Hayao Miyazaki’s new animated movie, Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, according to Variety.  Their aim is to increase the number of movie screens where Ponyo will open here, and thus the box office receipts, from Studio Ghibli’s previous US record for Spirited Away, which earned $10.1 million on 714 screens according to Box Office Mojo.  The English voiceover cast for Ponyo will feature Matt Damon, Tina Fey, Cate Blanchett, Liam Neeson, Betty White, Lily Tomlin and Cloris Leachman.  Ponyo was Japan’s biggest movie of 2008, grossing $165 million.

* Kyle Baker reviews The Spirit.

* Dan Goldman is telling the story of the 2008 election, and has a twenty page preview available as a PDF. I won’t spoil the ending for you.

* Happy Public Domain Day for the rest of the world. We won’t have any new entries here for a few years.

* I nominate this as the top anime fansub of 2008. Do I have a second to the motion?

Anything else? Consider this an open thread.