On Tuesday the beleaguered website, which for the past six years had indexed torrents to facilitate often-illegal file-sharing, pulled the plug on its tracker -- something operators say is no longer needed because of advances in peer-to-peer technology.

However, Wired.com's Threat Level blog reports the Motion Picture Association, which lobbies for Hollywood overseas, claims The Pirate Bay tracker is simply operating under a new name: OpenBitTorrent, a site originally registered to Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij. (A commenter on Robot 6 pointed out the connection last month.)

For its part, OpenBitTorrent denies that it's The Pirate Bay tracker, with a message on the website chalking up the confusion, in part, to the two using the same hosting company at one point.

The MPA isn't buying that explanation, and has gone to court to force OpenBitTorrent's current Internet host to stop servicing the site.

Established in November 2003 in Sweden, The Pirate Bay tracked and indexed torrents, allowing users to search for and download comics, music, video games and movies uploaded (often illegally) by others. Within five years the site announced it had reached more than 25 million users.

But with new peer-to-peer technology like Distributed Hash Table (DHT) and Peer Exchange (PEX), users to longer need to access a central server to find the files they're looking for.

“Now that the decentralized system for finding peers is so well developed, TPB has decided that there is no need to run a tracker anymore, so it will remain down!” operators wrote Tuesday on The Pirate Bay's blog. “It’s the end of an era.”

However, it's hardly the end of The Pirate Bay story.

While the tracker is gone, the site will continue to index torrents. Then there's the matter of the four Pirate Bay founders, who still face a year in prison and a combined $4.4 million in damages to movie studios and record labels for facilitating copyright infringement.

And in a delightfully absurd aside, Wired.com's Threat Level blog reports that Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde has objected to a plan by a Swedish retailer to register the site's iconic sailing-ship logo -- it's been adrift in the public domain since its creation -- and use it to sell USB drives.

Yes, he intended to pirate the pirates. And the pirate didn't like it one bit.

After Sunde complained to Sweden’s Patent and Registration Office, the retailer withdrew his registration.

Nicolas Cage in "Ghost Rider"

Remember back in 2002 when actor Nicolas Cage auctioned off his comic collection for a cool $1.6 million but never said why? Well, now we may know.

Last month the star of Ghost Rider and the upcoming Kick-Ass sued his former business manager for $20 million, blaming him for financial problems that include more than $6 million in tax liens. However, in a countersuit filed last week, Samuel J. Levin claims that by the time the actor hired him in 2001 Cage "had already squandered tens of millions of dollars he had earned as a movie star."

Levin asserts that he advised Cage he would need to earn more than $30 million to maintain his lifestyle, and persuaded him to sell a dozen automobiles and his comic-book collection, which included copies of Action Comics #1, Detective Comics #1 and All-Star Comics #3.

But by the time Ghost Rider was released in 2007, Cage reportedly had fallen back into his old habits: Levin contends that in that year alone the actor purchased three homes worth more than $33 million, 22 cars, 12 pieces of expensive jewelry and 47 pieces of artwork. Within a year, Cage's tally of homes had reached 15. He also owned an island in the Bahamas, four yachts and a Gulfstream jet.

No wonder he's so eager for another Ghost Rider movie.

One of the "Zits" strips in question

You have to hand it to readers of the incredibly shrinking comics section: Many of them have a clear vision for those pages, even if most newspaper editors don't.

The funnies largely go ignored in newsrooms, at least until word comes down that pages must be axed or, else, there's a once-in-a-blue-moon announcement that a cartoonist or syndicate is ending a strip. But those readers who turn to Cathy or Hagar or Rex Morgan each day know exactly what they want (usually that's for the page to look the same as it always has).

Take, for instance, Ted Trump of Orleans, Massachusetts. When he opens the Cape Cod Times, he expects to be entertained by Zits -- not to be confronted with the type of scandalous nudity that's been the trademark of Love Is ... for the past four decades.

As best as I can tell, the reader was offended by this three-day run (SFW!) of Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman's Zits, a nod to the long-running, single-panel comic originated by Kim Grove. If you're somehow unfamiliar with Love Is ..., it's an often-difficult-to-stomach ode to, well, love, that stars two characters who, despite their nudity, display no secondary sexual features. Except for their hair and eyelashes, they're indistinguishable from each other.

So for three days last week, Scott and Borgman adapted two of their characters to that visual style for a series of gags titled "Love Isn't ..." Harmless enough, right? Wrong.

Trump writes that he found the strips "to be inappropriate and offensive," and goes on to suggest the Times' editors "get to work monitoring such comic strip authors by not accepting this sort of deviation from enjoyable and proper comics."

What's more -- and you knew there would be more -- he asserts the cartoonists "should be penalized for submitting such inappropriate and offensive material in the future by a substantial monetary withholding."

That's right, dock their pay!

While the editors of the Cape Cod Times calculate how many pennies to deduct under Trump's plan, I'll be busy filing for reparations for a lifetime of exposure to Love Is ...

Stuck in the Middle

Libraries | There's still more follow-up to the removal this week of Stuck in the Middle: Seventeen Comics from an Unpleasant Age from two middle-school libraries in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Teachers still have access to the anthology -- it depicts language and sexual reference that at least one parent found objectionable -- and may use it in class.

An editorial in the Argus Leader calls the school board's decision "a reasonable approach that balances the need to provide suitable guidance for kids when dealing with sensitive topics without falling prey to censorship." CBS affiliate KELO, meanwhile, continues its coverage of the story with a look at how books are selected for libraries. Tom Spurgeon also has reaction from two of the anthology's contributors. [Argus Leader, KELOLAND.com]

Creators | Jeet Heer digs up writings by a young Dave Sim expressing, in no uncertain terms, his disdain for the work of Jack Kirby. [Comics Comics]

Creators | Cartoonist Jeff Keane discusses the evolution of The Family Circus, IDW Publishing's new archival collection, and the future of newspapers. [ICv2.com]

Batman and Robin, by Frank Quitely

Creators | Thought Bubble interviews artists Frank Quitely and Charlie Adlard. "When you work on a title or character that everyone knows loads of people say 'I hate his Wolverine' or 'I hate his Superman' or whatever," Quitely says, "because it jars with their own favourite versions of the characters -- no one ever says 'I hate his We3 animals' because they didn’t start reading it with any preconceptions or prejudices. From that point of view it’s always easier to work on new stuff, or your own stuff, but I enjoy the challenge of getting to do well-known characters and I generally don’t really care if some folk don’t like what I do, it’s personal taste, and I’ve got a pretty thick skin." [via ArtPatient]

Creators | Collaborators Martin Conaghan and Will Pickering talk at length about their historical graphic novel Burke and Hare. [Forbidden Planet International]

Creators | Warren Ellis offers for download his scripts for issues of Fell, Desolation Jones and Ministry of Space. [Warren Ellis]

Webcomics | El Santo spotlights a handful of politically conservative webcomics. [The Webcomic Overlook]

Comics | The Son of Satan is back, baby! [The Cool Kids Table]

My favorite's the Man-Wolf van (or is that the Van-Wolf?), but I also enjoyed the always welcome Thor/"Immigrant Song" gag and the description of Doctor Strange as "the lava lamp of superheroes." They're funny because they're true!

Google

Legal | Google and a group of authors and publishers have until Friday to revise a proposed settlement over the Internet giant's plans to make millions of out-of-print books available online. They originally were given a deadline of Nov. 9. DC Comics is among the parties that objected to the terms of the agreement -- -- $125 million and a registry to identify and compensate copyright holders -- arguing that it violates international copyright law. [Bloomberg News, Media Decoder]

Legal | The sentencing of Christopher Handley, the 39-year-old Iowa man who in May pleaded guilty to possessing manga depicting children in sexual situations, is scheduled for Jan. 25. He faces up to 15 years in prison, a maximum fine of $250,000 and three years of supervised release. [ICv2.com]

Dick Tracy

Legal | A federal judge has ruled that actor Warren Beatty may proceed with his lawsuit against bankrupt Tribune Media Co. over ownership of the movie and TV rights to the Dick Tracy comic strip. [Reuters]

Comics | A study by marketing-research company Simba Information contends that one in 10 adult book buyers in the United States read comics. [press release]

Conventions | Miami New Times previews this weekend's Miami Book Fair International with a brief Q&A with Dan Goldman. Graphic Novel Reporter breaks out the comics programming, which includes panels and workshops featuring James Sturm, Carol Tyler, Harry Bliss, Josh Neufeld, Sid Jacobson, Brian Fries, Neil Kleid, Marisa Marchetto and Kurt Hassler. [Miami Book Fair International]

Conventions | Alan Gardner rounds up comics-related coverage from last weekend's Chicago Humanities Festival. [The Daily Cartoonist]

King Con Brooklyn

Conventions | Becky Cloonan posts her report from last weekend's inaugural King Con Brooklyn. [Ink and Thunder]

Libraries | Joseph P. Smith spotlights graphic-novel collections in a few New Jersey libraries. [The Daily Journal]

Creators | Craig Yoe discusses comics, his career and growing up in Akron, Ohio. [Akron Beacon Journal]

Creators | Brian Heater launches a four-part interview with Jerry Moriarty. [The Daily Cross Hatch]

Creators | Is Dave Gibbons working on a new version of the freeware video game Minesweeper? [GamePro]

Comics | This blog is in the middle of a series that highlights what it considers the best comic books of the decade. [Berkeley Place]

Comics | Matt Wilson counts down the five best and five worst villains introduced in the post-"Brand New Day" Amazing Spider-Man. [Topless Robot]

Fandom | Show us these superhero tattoos in another couple of decades. On second thought, don't. [Great White Snark]

Female Force: Princess Diana

Publishing | Just days after one U.K. newspaper devoted a lot of ink to a preview of Female Force: Princess Diana, another reports that the Bluewater Productions biography has been labeled as "disgusting" by a co-founder of a group dedicated to preserving Diana's memory. “Comic means something to laugh at," says Margaret Funnell of Diana Circle UK. "I don’t find it at all comical and I wish they hadn’t done it. Anyone with half a brain who had a love for Diana will hate it.” [Daily Express]

Publishing | Following the success of its adaptation of James Patterson's Maximum Ride, Yen Press has announced it will tackle the author's bestselling young-adult series Daniel X. The first volume will be released in summer 2010. [About.com]

Education | It seems like every year around this time an article makes the rounds about comic books improving early literacy. Here's the 2009 edition, courtesy of University of Illinois professor Carol L. Tilley, whose research on the subject was recently published in School Library Monthly. [News Bureau, Canwest News Service]

Genghis Con

Conventions | The Genghis Con small-press comic convention will debut on Nov. 28 in Cleveland, sliding into the Thanksgiving weekend slot long held by Mid-Ohio Con. The guest list so far includes Derf, Abhay Khosla, Andy MacDonald and Tom Williams. [Plain Dealer]

Creators | Moebius expresses his love for the work of Naoki Urasawa (Pluto, 20th Century Boys). [The Eastern Edge]

Creators | Eddie Campbell discusses Alec: "The Years Have Pants," blogging and process. [Library Journal]

Creators | Christopher Borelli covers a panel at the Chicago Humanities Festival featuring a conversation between longtime friends Lynda Barry and Matt Groening. [Chicago Tribune]

Creators | Here's another profile of Frank Beddor, author of The Looking Glass Wars fantasy novels and writer of the spin-off Hatter M comics. [Star-Tribune]

Creators | J. Torres chats briefly about writing Wall-E for BOOM! Studios' line of Disney/Pixar comics. [GeekDad]

Creators | Victoria Grabner profiles brothers Joshua and Jacob Hicks of Henderson, Kentucky, who have launched a line of Christian-themed comics. [The Gleaner]

New X-Men #114

Comics | David Brothers details how Grant Morrison ruined the X-Men: "Grant Morrison made the X-Men grown-up. He eschewed stereotypical supervillain stories until the tail end of his run, and even those stories were layered with a depth of character and nuance that kept them above generic megalomania. When Magneto nearly destroys New York as the culmination of his big plan, he’s forced to confront the fact that the personality he created to further his plan, the healer Xorn, is better liked and more effective than he could ever be. No one wants Magneto any more. Magneto is old and busted, Xorn is the new hotness." [4thletter!]

Comics | Graeme McMillan spotlights five genre comics that people should be reading. [io9.com]

Music | Art Brut frontman Eddie Argos talks about, among other things, the song "DC Comics and Milkshakes": "... I was reading a Booster Gold comic drinking a chocolate milkshake on a bus listening to the Replacements when I thought up that song. I had this wave of euphoria, like, 'DC Comics are so amazing.' I've read them all my life, and no matter what's going on -- if I had a bad breakup or a [expletive] job -- they always cheer me up. And they're cheap. They're only like 2 pounds, and a milkshake is 50 pence. So as long as I've got 2-pounds-50 on me, I'm kind of invincible." [Star-Tribune]

Full-scale warfare between convention promoters isn't universal, believe it or not -- some are giving peace a chance. In addition to the recent arrangement worked out by Heroes Con and Supercon to avoid a date conflict, Emerald City ComiCon's Jim Demonakos tells Robot 6 that following an unavoidable conflict with Orlando's MegaCon the weekend of March 13, 2010, he and MegaCon's Beth Widera collaborated on choosing dates for 2011 so that future overlap could be avoided. "We ended up on the same dates for 2010 and neither of us could move, but we've talked and coordinated and our mutual 2011 dates will not be on each other's dates at all," says Demonakos. "Con planning, always an adventure."

Indeed. While it's not quite "all quiet on the Con War front" in terms of open hostilities between the nebulous Gareb Shamus/Wizard Entertainment empire and Reed Exhibitions, things have at least died down to a dull roar at the moment. Shamus remains silent, Reed insists it's business as usual regardless of Shamus's confrontational scheduling moves, and about the closest you can get to one-on-one antagonism between the two rival convention promoters is a do-it-yourself comparison of their pre- and post-Halloween guest announcements: Hellboy creator Mike Mignola will be a guest of honor at Reed's C2E2, while Batman TV star Burt Ward will be appearing at Shamus's Anaheim Comic Con that same weekend.

But the lack of direct conflict doesn't mean a few verbal grenades haven't been lobbed Wizard/Shamus's way over the past week by other parties, ranging from former employees to a pair of recent Wiz sparring partners, cartoonist Scott Kurtz and Marvel's C.B. Cebulski.

One such explosion took place at the message board of Panels on Pages, a site founded by now-ex-Wizard Universe Message Board users-cum-Wizard website/magazine writers. With the shutdown of the WUMB last week, PoP has become increasingly required reading for dedicated Wizard watchers. Case in point: PoP message board user Foxy recounted a story of how earlier this year, Wizard employees Brett White and Adam Tracey used the WUMB to search for fan-owned Michael Turner sketches the company could publish in an expanded version of its Turner tribute hardcover. The staffers announced that a portion of the proceeds would be donated to the Sam Loeb Foundation, set up by comics superstar (and Turner's friend) Jeph Loeb in honor of his late son, who like Turner died (too young) of cancer. But after White was fired, Tracey unceremoniously quit, and the book finally came out, Foxy and other WUMBers discovered that the promised donation was never made. The WUMB thread announcing the search for sketches and chronicling the subsequent demand for answers as to what happened to the charitable donation never received an official response and disappeared (as did two similar threads) with the WUMB itself -- but not before PoP member Solstrom preserved and reposted it on PoP's board.

The outcry attracted the attention of Rich Johnston, who since his Wizard-funded trip to the Big Apple Comic Con has emerged as the only writer able to get Wizard staffers to comment on the record (outside of press releases and the now-defunct WUMB). Writing both on the PoP board and his own Bleeding Cool site, Johnston said he got in touch with Wizard VP of Business Development Stephen Shamus (brother of owner and CEO Gareb Shamus), who blamed the disappearing donation on a communication breakdown caused by staff turnover, and said that now that they'd been made aware of the problem, the company would contact the Sam Loeb Foundation to make the donation -- and to see if they'd be interested in setting up a donation drive at future Shamus conventions.

However, Shamus's explanation, and Johnston's subsequent statement that "it's possible the right people did not read the right thread," didn't fly with the PoPsters, who point out that threads about the Turner book, customer service issues, and other problems went on for months with the clear knowledge of Wizard staffers. Indeed, the frequent intervention of Wizard higher-ups in ordering the deletion and banning of threads and users critical of the company appear to indicate that if anything, this sort of thread received extra attention from decision-makers within the Shamus organization.

Elsewhere on PoP, former Wizard staff writer, frequent WUMB pot-stirrer, and Political Power: Barack Obama author Chris Ward was a guest on the site's weekly podcast. (Discussion of Wizard and the death of the WUMB begins at 1:04:20; Ward's appearance begins at 1:09:38.) Ward minces no words for his former company, which he calls "totally mismanaged."

"These guys literally have no fucking idea what they're doing... They have neither the skills nor the insight to keep up, and the people that had that, they fired," Ward says of Wizard's upper echelon. [Full disclosure: I don't know from skills or insight, but I was one of the people the company fired.] Though he does praise managing editor Andy Serwin, Ward also reveals that he's been blacklisted from the magazine for making a joke about a freelance check bouncing, tells tales out of school about the work environment, and takes some pretty vicious shots at Stephen Shamus (and, in passing, Rich Johnston). For their part, hosts Lee Rodriguez, Jason Kerouac, Tripper McGee, and Jason Knize describe the experience of being plucked from the WUMB to write for Wizard proper, only to watch their gigs disappear as the editors who hired them got laid off one after another.

But it's not just ex-Wizard writers who have a bone to pick with the company. Fresh off his Twitter tirade against the company, PvP writer-artist Scott Kurtz really let loose after receiving a letter from Sales Manager Larry Ernst, addressed to "Kurt," encouraging him to attend the Anaheim Comic Con, apparently sent without knowing that Kurtz had already made his feelings about Gareb Shamus's conventions abundantly clear. In an open letter to Ernst and Wizard, Kurtz writes "Your conventions are total horseshit" and gets angrier from there, reserving his most undiluted fury for what he describes as the magazine's ignoring of late artist Mike Wieringo, then its public about-face upon Wieringo's passing. Kurtz's sentiments echo those of Wieringo himself, as expressed in this impassioned defense of Heroes Con and attack on Gareb Shamus, written by 'Ringo during Heroes Con's initial scheduling conflict with Shamus's never-realized Wizard World Atlanta. (Ironically, a gallery of Wieringo's Wizard covers, which might offer proof that the magazine did indeed pay attention to the artist, has disappeared along with the bulk of Wizard's website.)

Reactions to Kurtz's post have varied. Marvel talent liaison C.B. Cebulski, himself no stranger to public disputes with Wizard, tweeted a link to the open letter in seemingly supportive fashion, indicating that a recent high-level meeting between Cebulski and Wizard editorial either didn't produce a rapprochement or was subsequently undermined by the Big Apple/NYCC battle. Comics Alliance's Laura Hudson's defense of current and former Wizard employees against Kurtz's blanket statements (coupled with a few shots at Kurtz's self-described status as "a pioneer in my field" and "'tastemaker'") met with vehement comment-thread opposition from Kurtz's fans (UPDATE: and from Kurtz himself), and with considerably more polite dissent from Tom Spurgeon, who argues that getting yelled at from time to time is the price of working for a company with divisive policies. And on his own blog, Chris Ward returned with the inside story of the incident Kurtz says turned him against Wizard -- a "convention horror story" involving Kurtz, Ward, Ethan Van Sciver, a deaf fan, and "the world's shittiest band."

As Shamus/Wizard higher-ups continue to strategically distance themselves from the comics industry (even as seemingly contradictory moves are rumored behind-the-scenes); as decision time approaches for guests of the conflicting Reed and Shamus shows; and as sharper contrasts are drawn between the tactics used by Shamus and those employed by Reed and by regional con organizations like Emerald City and MegaCon, we may see more and more professionals and Wizard alums become comfortable publicly taking aim at the house that Gareb built.

("Con War" graphic courtesy of Jason Erwin)

I've meant to link to this a few times -- three, to be exact -- but haven't, for one reason or another: It's The Variants, the web comedy series created by Richard Neal, owner of Zeus Comics in Dallas, and produced by Neal, Joe Cucinotti and Ken Lowery.

If you haven't caught any of the three monthly previous episodes, The Variants is set, unsurprisingly, in a comic-book store, and focuses on the frequently dysfunctional staff and customers. What's pleasantly surprising perhaps, given the sheer number of people with access to a video-recording device and access to YouTube (but who shouldn't be allowed near either), the writing, acting and production are pretty good. (I'm a fan of the smoking, snippy, customer-unfriendly Barry.)

The fourth episode ("Passholes"), which features a zombie-like horde of customers lining up for free movie passes, just went live. You can get caught up on the previous episodes here.