I have a short piece in the WSJ about how President Obama has overrun the comic book industry. Of particular interest is a bit of art which didn’t fit on the page, the cover of the first issue of a new independent book, Barack the Barbarian:

Of much more importance was the decision handed down on Wednesday by Judge Stephen “Dredd” Larson (who’s a total IP stud) on the damages in the fight between the heirs of Jerry Siegel and DC Comics (meaning Time-Warner). (You can find the background on the original suit here. I had written it originally for the Philadelphia Inquirer, but my three years of columns for them have been disappeared from their archives.)

Anyway, the latest Larson decision is marginally a victory for Time-Warner because it limits the moneys the Siegel heirs are entitled to to simply profits from the Superman comic-book business. But the lawyer for the estate is making ominous noises about Superman’s future with DC:

“To put this in further perspective, the entire accounting action pales in comparison to the fact that in 2013, the Siegels, along with the estate of Joe Shuster, will own the entire original copyright to Superman, and neither DC Comics nor Warner Bros. will be able to exploit any new Superman works without a license from the Siegels and Shusters.”

At that point, we could conceivably see Superman imported to, say the Marvel universe. Which would cause spontaneous combustion among the continuity obsessives.

Galley Brother B.J. sends us this awesome story of image control from The Chosen One (Basketball Division). Here’s the story from CBS:

You want to see video of Xavier’s Jordan Crawford dunking on LeBron James?

If so, too bad.

Because you’re not going to see it.

Thanks to Nike.

Turns out, there were at least two cameras rolling Monday night when Crawford dunked on James during a pick-up game here at the LeBron James Skills Academy. It was a two-handed jam, the kind that would’ve circulated quickly on YouTube. But Nike officials eliminated that possibility shortly after the dunk happened by allegedly confiscating tapes from various cameramen.

Freelance photographer Ryan Miller was one of the cameramen shooting the game.

He told CBSSports.com that Nike Basketball Senior Director Lynn Merritt took his tape.

“He just said, ‘We have to take your tape,'” Miller said. “They took it from other guys, too.”

Worth noting is that there is no policy against filming at the LeBron James Skills Academy, and Miller said he had been filming all day without incident. Nobody ever told him to stop. Nobody ever said there was a problem … until after Crawford dunked on James.

“LeBron called Lynn over and told him something,” Miller said. “That’s how I knew his name was Lynn. LeBron said, ‘Hey, Lynn. Come here.'”

Minutes later, Miller said Merritt demanded his tape.

Maybe it was the Puppet LeBron who got posterized?

Nearly as brilliant as Fake Michael Bay. Fake Steve Jobs is pissed about the Google OS:

What the fuck is going on inside Google? How much more out of control and undisciplined can this place get? How many new goddamn operating systems are they going to create? They’ve already got Android, and nobody wants it. Now they’re going to make yet another operating system, this time out of a browser that nobody wants. What’s next? A Gmail-based operating system? A YouTube-based operating system? Honestly, Google, is there anyone in charge over there? Is there anyone who knows how to criticize anything in that fucked up little Montessori preschool of yours? I mean I guess it’s nice that you all get to spend 20 percent of your time dreaming up useless shit, and I guess you have to use the Montessori method and tell everyone that whatever little piece of shit they’ve created is just so wonderful and perfect and beautiful — but really, as I’ve told Eric before, that doesn’t mean you have to release everything these bozos dream up. There’s a word for this. It’s called “no.” Have you heard of it? I mean, fine, let them fuck around with stuff. Engineers like to tinker. So let them tinker. Then when they bring you whatever it is they’ve made, first you say you’re too busy to meet with them. Then you say you’ve changed your mind and you will meet with them after all. Then you wait until they’re all in the conference room with everything set up, and you send Katie down to tell them that you’re going to be a little bit late. You make them wait an hour. Then two hours. Then, at six in the afternoon, you send Katie down to tell them that you’ve changed your mind again and now you can’t make it. Then, finally, you set up another appointment and this time you do meet with them — but before they can even speak you just look at whatever it is they’ve made and you say, I’m sorry, that’s a piece of shit, and you walk out. Trust me, engineers love this. They’re all masochists. That’s why they became engineers in the first place. . . .

But if that’s your big goal in life, the chance to maybe put a stick in Microsoft’s spokes — well, we’ve come a long way from the days of Sergey and Larry with stars in their eyes, wanting to make the world a better place. If that’s really what gets these guys up in the morning, well, friends, I will pray for your soul. Here at Apple we have better things to do. Like creating new devices that nobody else has ever created before, and restoring a sense of childlike wonder to people’s lives. Or inventing whole new multi-billion-dollar markets that didn’t exist before.

If only BSG had been set in LA, by way of Lady in the Water . . .

I kid. The trailer for Day One looks pretty neat.

Why didn’t I think of this?

What is the status of the Transformers at the beginning of the film?
The Autobots have joined the military to hunt down the Decepticons. We’re told the Decepticons are “doing things,” but they appear to be hiding peacefully when the Autobots show up and brutally murder them.

What?
Yeah. The Decepticons aren’t apparently doing anything, then the Autobots show up, the Decepticons run for their goddamn lives, and the Autobots hunt them down and brutally murder them. It’s kind of weird.

This FAQ is DuPont-worthy in its awesomeness, by the way. More samples of excellence:

Can you explain Megan Fox’s appeal?
Yes. She looks like a porn star and has the same acting talent as one, yet for some reason she makes mainstream movies. This tonal disconnect is what’s so appealing about her.

If you had to pick a single scene that exemplifies Michael Bay’s utter disdain for story and continuity, what would it be?
When five Decepticons sink to the bottom of the ocean to retrieve Megatron’s corpse. A submarine tracks five “subjects” going down, and when they get there, one of the Decepticons is killed to give parts to Megatron. 5 -1 +1 = 5, right? No, because the sub somehow tracks “six” subjects coming up. Not only is this very basic math, this is the simplest of script errors. It could not possibly have been more than one page apart in the script. And yet Michael Bay either didn’t care to notice or didn’t give a fuck. “Math? Math is for pussies. My movies are about shit blowing up, man.”

I’m not an expert on Italian literature and but I’m pretty sure that none of these scenes from the video game version of Dante’s Inferno were in the actual book.

Galley Wife S.L. will have to weigh in.

After we get the game, that is.

I just caught up with Brian Azzarello’s Joker and if you missed it, like I did, you might want to grab a copy. Chris Nolan and Heath Ledger must have been leaning on this pretty heavily for Dark Knight (either that, or they came to surprisingly similar interpretations of the character on their own) and it’s great stuff. First-rank comic book writing.

On a different plane is Chris Caldwell’s Reflections on the Revolution in Europe which is a stunningly smart, and detailed, look at the intersection of Europe, immigration, and Islam. I can’t say enough about the book. Total hotness on every page.

Update: For those who don’t understand how the comic book world works, a long graphic novel has an enormous lead time, often years. DC’s parent company rode herd over both properties. And while I was trying to be polite, here’s Azzarello talking less politely about the similarities between Joker and The Dark Knight:

Wizard: I know you and Lee came up with this almost out of Lex Luthor: Man of Steel, now that’s way before “The Dark Knight” movie, and yet, this Joker that you’ve crafted and the story, fits so seamlessly into that “Dark Knight” interpretation. It’s kind of eerie. What do you think of that?

AZZARELLO: Gosh, I don’t know. You think someone might have saw the script or Lee’s art? I don’t know. Look, it’s Batman. I can’t be proprietary about that stuff. It’s happened to me before. It seems like whenever I touch these company-owned characters, for some reason something that I do ends up somewhere else. It’s the nature of the beast.

It’s unclear whether or not this story has any merit. But I’m interested to know what the legal ramifications would be if it were true.

The contention is that UFC, which is kind of like the WWE of ultimate fighting (not in the sense that it’s bogus, but in that it’s the dominant company and it’s run by a single owner), is telling fighters that if they sign deals with a mixed-martial arts videogame, they will be excluded from the UFC for life.

Again, who knows if this is true? But if it was, would the UFC be running afoul of any anti-trust laws, or would they be within their rights?