Yes, it's true. At least, partly.

This is the final post for this blog on Variety.com. The news came recently from Variety.com editor Dana Harris, who assures me it is a decision based solely on economics.

After five years of working on this blog, both as a Variety staffer and a freelancer, I will be sorry to see it go. A lot has changed since the first post in October 2003, when few people had even heard the word blog and comics were still a new part of Hollywood's vocabulary.

I'd like very much to thank all those who made this blog possible and helped out over the years: Jevon Phillips (whose idea it was in the first place), Travis Smith, Jeff Siedlik, Alex Romanelli, Erin Maxwell, David Lewis, Dana Harris and Anne Thompson.

I am still working as a freelance writer, and you can expect my stories to continue to appear in Variety, as well as other publications.

Now for the good news.

In comics death is never permanent, and this blog will continue starting now at http://bagsandboards.blogspot.com — so update your bookmarks and feed readers and head over there right now for a look ahead. My email and mail contact info remains the same, so turn the page and I'll see you on the other side ...

"Rasl: The Drift" (Cartoon Books, black and white, $13) collects the first three issues of Jeff Smith's new sci-fi series in a nice, oversize format that includes new pages. The first of three volumes, "Rasl: The Drift" is above all else a comicbook. It's not written like a move, drawn like a movie or intended to be like a movie in any way — and it's incredibly refreshing to find such a thing. But it's also good — the concept of a rough-and-tumble kid tramping through dimensions stealing artwork is executed with the kind of craft and care that makes you want to find out what's next. While it may not find the same large audience as "Bone" — this isn't an all-ages project — it's still an excellent example of what mainstream comics can be. Grade: A-

"Marvel Chronicle: A Year-by-Year History" (DK Publishing, 352 pages, color, $405) is a handsome coffee-table/gift book that breaks down the company's history by year, starting in 1939 and running all the way through 2008. The book benefits from being written by a group of experts that includes Marvel history expert Peter Sanderson, current Marvel exec editor Tom Brevoort and former Marvei editor in chief Tom DeFalco. The nature of the format means this is good for casual fans or those who need some brushing up on their Marvel history, rather than those looking for deep analysis or new revelations. The production value is on the whole quite high, though there are a few nitpicks — most notably a number of spreads featuring blown up images of comic panels that have been relettered with a rather lame looking computer font. Also, some of the image quality varies. But on the whole, this is a nice overview for especially new fans of Marvel. Grade: B+

The X-Files #1 (WildStorm, 32 pages, color $3.50) is good enough to be mistaken for a stand-alone episode from one of the long-running show's good years. Writer Frank Spotnitz — who was a writer, producer and exec producer on eight of the show's nine seasons and co-writer this summer's feature film — successfully recreates the show's classic feel even as there's no indication of when this story took place in relation to the series or the movie. The art by Brian Denham helps immeasurably with excellent likenesses and the kind of clarity in storytelling that's often missing from this kind of project. Grade: B

Batman: Cacophony #1 (DC Comics, 40 pages, color, $3.99) is pretty much exactly what you'd expect from a Batman comic written by director Kevin Smith. It's a talky tale in which the Joker and Deadshot go off on long rounds of occasionally scatalogical repartee. It's not the grand, cinematic opera of "The Dark Knight," but with good clear art from Walt Flanagan, it's also a pretty solid, entertaining comicbook. Grade: B-

"Heroes, Vol. 2" (DC Comics/WildStorm, 272 pages, color, $29.99) is the second hardcover collection of webcomics based on the popular NBC series. These are mostly short bits that fill in the blanks for some of the characters and, as such, is hardly essential reading. But the quick-hit serial nature of the whole thing is engrossing in its own way. It's almost like looking what comics would be like if they retained the kind of periodical nature of comics in the 1970s and 1980s, complete with consistent and commercial-looking coloring and lettering. The quality varies immensely, with the art in particular having more than a few rough spots, and as such may not be worth the $29.99 price tag for casual fans. A third volume is planned, though after two volumes of mini-stories, it would be a good change of pace to see what could be done with a longer story featuring the main characters in the series doing things that wouldn't work on TV. Grade: B-

Push #1 (WildStorm, 32 pages, color, $3.50) is a prequel to the upcoming feature film starring Dakota Fanning and Chris Evans. Writers Marc Bernardin and Adam Freeman weave a tale of covert missions and superpowers that in some ways defies expectations in that the story comes through despite nothing being directly explained. It's confusing at times, and I found myself wondering how much I gleaned from the comic itself and how much was left over from my attending the Comic-Con panel on the film. Either way, there's at least a few clever, videogame style kicks in here — even if the whole picture isn't crystal clear. Grade: C+

"Northlanders, Vol. 1: Sven The Returned" (DC/Vertigo, 200 pages, color, $9.99) collects the first eight issues of the viking adventure series. The most immediately notable aspect is Davide Gianfelice's art, which evokes the action and grittiness of "300" and is just pretty to look at. The script by Brian Wood tells the tale of Sven, who returns to the Norse village of Orkney in 980 A.D. to find it ruled with an iron fist by his uncle Gorm, who stole the crown from Sven's now-dead father. Sven, of course, fights to liberate the village and restore his famiy's honor even as the Saxons invade. It works pretty well on an action basis, but there's also a modern, urban vibe (Wood's normal setting) that complicates and slows down the book. It doesn't go deep enough to satisfy the brain and isn't fast enough to thrill. Grade: C+

Two major Marvel announcements hit this morning, one of which is enouraging and the other less so.

On the encouraging side is the hiring of writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely to write the screenplay for "The First Avenger: Captain America." The duo were named one of Variety's 10 Screenwriters to Watch in 2005 and have penned the acclaimed HBO biopic "The Life and Death of Peter Sellers" as well as having worked on both Narnia pics to date. Variety wrote in 2005 that the duo have a talent for making the familiar feel fresh and work in a very collaborative, craftsman-like way. That bodes well for bringing some heft and energy to the "Cap" movie, which is to be set during World War II and lead into the "Avengers" pic.

On the less-encouraging side is Fox's hiring of Josh Schwartz to write the continuation of the X-Men films (follow this link to order "Mutant Cinema," my book on the previous X-flicks) in a project called "X-Men: First Class." The idea of continuing the X-Men franchise with younger characters has been discussed since the release of "X-Men: The Last Stand" in 2006 as a way to get around the scheduling nightmares and expense of reuniting the original cast. It also lets Fox retool the franchise for a new audience — and Schwartz's hiring seems to confirm the studio wants to go younger and soapier with the next installment.

The fear for fans is that the project will deviate too much from what makes the X-Men successful and enter embarassment territory. And for a lot of fans, an X-Men pic infused too much of the soap and comedy that makes "O.C." "Chuck" and "Gossip Girl" work as TV shows will be at the very best a second-tier version of a first-class concept.

This is something that Marvel's many X-Men comicbook spinoffs have faced over the years as well. While I am a big fan of the early run of "The New Mutants" — especially the Bill Sienkiewicz issues — the concept has for the most part resulted in second-tier comics for die-hard fans only, from "Generation X," to "New X-Men: Academy X" and the current "Young X-Men." While Schwartz has his own comicbook cred — Adam Brody's character Seth on "The O.C." was a huge comic nerd, though much of that at the time was attributed to writer and one-time comics scribe Allen Heinberg — I expect there's almost zero crossover between the fanbases for X-Men and "Gossip Girl." A pic that tries to graft too much in the way of relationships and romance onto the gravitas and superheroics of the X-Men concept invites the kind of fan backlash that studios prefer to avoid.

Admittedly, this conclusion involves a good amount of speculation. Fox has release no details on the pic and reports conflict as to which mutant characters the film may feature.

Marvel does publish a comic called "X-Men: First Class" that features a more modern and all-ages take on the original X-Men team from the 1960s: Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Beast, Iceman and Angel.But other reports (including Variety's) suggest a pic focused on younger characters from previous pics such as Iceman, Kitty Pryde, Colossus and Rogue. The former would require a complete reboot as the original characters were all of differing ages in the original X-Men trilogy and two of the five (Cyclops and Jean) are dead. It's always made sense to keep one or two original trilogy characters (even if you have to recast) and add in any of the dozens of other mutants featured in the comics. Just off the top of my head are: Gambit, Cannonball, Psylocke, Dazzler, Havok, Polaris, Banshee, and Forge. For villains, we never got to really see the Sentinels, or the Hellfire Club.

Regardless of the cast of characters, keeping the film true to the tone of the best X-Men comics and the original film trilogy is perhaps the most important key to keeping the franchise on track. Deviating too much from what is known to work in this genre almost never works — as Marvel's pre-Avi Arad history in Hollywood will attest.

Platinum Studios has announced it has teamed up with IM Global to finance, produce and distribute a TV series based on the comicbook "Hero By Night." This seemingly innocuous announcement has a major train-wreck context, however, given that "Hero By Night" creator DJ Coffman — who won Platinum's Comic Book Challenge and was one of the company's staunchest defenders — has since been fired from his own creation and was not even notified by Platinum that the series was in the works. This is the peril of work-for-hire in the comics biz and a lesson that all creators should learn, whether it's from this example or those of Siegel and Shuster or Jack Kirby.

Variety's Contenders issue came out Monday — you can read here what I wrote about the chances for "The Dark Knight" in this year's race. I also wrote about the animated feature race for the Eye on the Oscars: Animation special here.

The LA Times chats with DC exec editor Dan Didio about what's going on in the Superman and Batman comics — even as reports come out from Rich Johnston of problems, including rewrites on the last issue of "Final Crisis" and a dispute that reportedly lead writer James Robinson to quit writing "Superman" only a few months into the gig.

The National Endowment for the Arts is giving a National Medal of the Arts to Stan Lee.

Imagi Studios has licensed the rights to "Astro Boy" to IDW, which will publish comics and graphic novels based on the character in advances of the October 2009 release of a new feature animated film.

UK site "Den of Geek" has a useful page up listing 75 comicbooks being made into films.

"Batman" and "The Spirit" producer Michael Uslan, superstar DC artist Jim Lee and DC writer Geoff Johns are all guests of honor at the New York Comic-Con. Also appearing is Venture Bros. creators Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer.

"Wonder Woman," the next in the line of DC Universe animated DVD features, is due out Feb. 3 in single- and double-disc DVD and Blu-Ray editions.

Colin Trevorrow has been tapped to adapt Scott Christian Sava's "Pet Robots" into a feature animated film for Disney.

The very worthy Hero Initiative is selling a limited hardcover of its "Hulk 100" project through Arizona retailer Atomic Comics and at cons. The book includes all the original sketch covers done for the project, plus a few extras not available in the regular softcover edition.

The Hero Initiative also is holding a benefit signing with artist Tim Sale, whose work has appeared on "Heroes," from 2-5 p.m. Nov. 22 at Comic Book Ink in Tacoma, Wash. Fans can bid on a chance to win lunch with the artist and a sketch via an eBay auction that ends Friday.

"Lost" fans should be heading tomorrow night to Meltdown Comics in Hollywood for a party celebrating the release of BE@RBRICK and KUBRICK toys based on the show. Appearing to sign the toys are "Lost" co-creators and executive producers J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof, and executive producers Bryan Burk, Jack Bender, Edward Kitsis, Adam Horowitz and Carlton Cuse.  Also scheduled to attend are writers Elizabeth Sarnoff, Paul Zbyszewski, Melinda Hsu Taylor, Kyle Pennington, and Brian K. Vaughan.

Thursday night sees a launch party at Golden Apple Comics for the new Nerdcore 2009 calendar. The theme of this year's "adults only" calendar is Sci Fi. Saturday, the store will host a Wonder Woman Day from 2-5 p.m., and also has a signing set for "Black Friday" with Gerard Way, writer of "Umbrella Academy" and lead singer of My Chemical Romance.

Here's the new trailer to "Watchmen," released this evening at Yahoo! Movies.

I wish it showed a little bit more than what was seen in the previous trailers, but at least there's some dialog and a slightly better sense of how it's going to play.

Joe Johnston has signed on to direct "The First Avenger: Captain America" for Marvel Studios. Johnston is a solid choice for this — he's a former VFX artist who worked on the original "Star Wars" trilogy. He also directed "The Rocketeer," an underrated adaptation of Dave Stevens' excellent comicbook, as well as "Jurassic Park III," "October Sky," "Hidalgo" and "Jumanji." He's currently finishing up "The Wolf-Man," starring Benicio del Toro. (The image at right is the cover to the rare comics adaptation of the low-budget 1990 "Captain America" movie that was only released on video.)

In other comics/screen news:

* Djimon Hounsou will voice The Black Panther in the upcoming BET animated series based on the Marvel comic.

* Sylvain White is set to direct "The Losers," based on the Vertigo revamp of the classic DC war comic. This version, created by writer Andy Diggle and artist Jock, is about a group of black-ops commandos, with James Vanderbilt writing the script. White's also working on an adaptation of Frank Miller's "Ronin."

* Singer-actress Beyonce tells the L.A. Times she wants to star in a Wonder Woman movie. It's an interesting idea only fueled by another rumor from IESB that McG, who once was set to direct a Superman pic, is being considered to helm a WW pic.

* Does President-elect Barack Obama still collect comics?  That's the question fans are asking in the wake of this report that states "he collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics." In the Marvel Universe, at least, Obama eked out an electoral college win over Stephen Colbert, who won the popular vote. The flood of political comics continues, with Bluewater Productions announcing a Michelle Obama comic due out in April.

* Lauren Shuler Donner talks to Empire Online about the long-in-development "Magneto" movie. Empire also talks to Sam Mendes about "Preacher," which is in need of a script.

* The CW has nixed "The Graysons," a "Smallville"-style TV series about the pre-Batman life of Robin the Boy Wonder.

* Paul Pope's "Battling Boy" has been optioned by Par for Brad Pitt's Plan B outfit to produce.

* Image's "Liberty Comics" benefit anthology comicbook has raised nearly $27,000 for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and is going to press.

* IDW Publishing is clearing out its warehouse with a special one-day sale at its San Diego headquarters on Dec. 6 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. New comics will sell for $1, trades for $5 and everything else will be 80 percent off. The sale will be held in the parking lot at the company's offices, 5080 Santa Fe St., San Diego, CA 92109.

* George Perez and J. Michael Straczynski have been named guests of honor at the New York Comic-Con, set for Feb. 6-8. Other guests include Colleen Doran, Bob Layton, David Peterson, Ivan Reis, Joe Sinnott, Herb Trimpe and Leinil Francis Yu.

WB has released six new banners for "Watchmen," each featuring one of the main characters. Click to the jump to see them all!

Plus, Zack Snyder chats with Dark Horizons about the state of the film (nearly finished), the new trailer appearing with "Quantum of Solace" this week, the plans for multiple editions, and confirms some speculation about whether the film sticks to the ending used in the book.

The entire world has Batman on the brain as "The Dark Knight" gets ready for its DVD coming out and a full-throttle awards season campaign.

But nothing is as strange as the news that the city of Batman, Turkey, is suing Warner Bros. for using its name without permission. Seriously. I'm no attorney, but good luck getting that one to stick.

Meanwhile, Chip Kidd is taking a lot of flack from folks upset that Jiro Kuwata's name did not appear on the cover of Kidd's new book "Bat-Manga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan." A large part of the book is reproductions of rare Batman manga Kuwata created in the mid-1960s, when Batmania was in full swing, thanks to the Adam West TV show. Kidd's response is here.

Kidd will appear at Meltdown Comics in Hollywood tonight to promote the book.

Meanwhile, WB has made the full script for "The Dark Knight" available in PDF format as part of its awards push for the pic.

Jackie Estrada, administrator of the Will Eisner Comic Book Industry Awards, has announced this year's judges. They are:

* Amanda Emmert, owner of Muse Comics & Games in Missoula, Mont.

* Mike Pawuk, a teen-services public librarian for the Cuyahoga County Public

* John Shableski works for Diamond Book Distributors as a sales manager with a focus on the independent bookstore market and on public and school libraries. 

* Ben Towle, a cartoonist and educator living in Winston-Salem, N.C.

* Andrew Wheeler, a marketing manager at the 200-year old publishing firm John Wiley & Sons, who reviews comics and manga for ComicMix.com. 

More details on the judges and the process at the Comic-Con site or in the full press release, after the jump.

I find it hard to believe it's been 20 years since Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman" debuted as a comicbook series, but it's true — the first issue had a cover date of January 1989 and was on stands in November of '88.

To celebrate, there's a couple of events in New York City this weekend, including a dramatic reading of the stories from the series at the Helen Mills Theater on Saturday, Nov. 8, at 7:30 p.m. The reading will be lead by a cast that includes voice actor Tom Wayland, and Gaiman will be there, too. Only 100 tickets are available for this event, and can be obtained by making a $50 donation to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Here's the link; if you want to go, better buy tickets now.

On Sunday night, Gaiman will be interviewed about "The Sandman" at the 92nd Street Y by author and graphic designer Chip Kidd. Again, the event starts at 7:30 p.m. and tickets, which cost $27, can be obtained here.

For those of us who can't make it to New York on such short notice, there's plenty of L.A.-based comics events (non-Sandman, unfortunately) in the next week or so: