Random linkblogging #24560041

The Beat corrects an earlier report on a lawsuit filed by the descendants of Bob Montana against Diamond owner Steve Geppi.  The lawsuit is over 2000 pieces of artwork sold to Geppi’s Diamond International Galleries for $1 million; the plaintiffs are asking for $500,000 (the remaining balance), not $500 million as was previously reported.  Unless there is a fudging of facts, this case seems pretty cut and dry.

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Manga Curmudgeon has the latest episode of Who’s Not Honoring Us Now… The Los Angeles Times and Japan Expo, to be specific.  But other manga do get a nod, including Taiyo Matsumoto’s GoGo Monsters, published by Viz.

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According to this news item on the National Central Library in Taiwan, 90% of its 10,000+ comics collection is Japanese in origin.  Domestic authors are understandably a little upset by that figure.

Makes you wonder what library circulation statistics for comics are like in the US…

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Apparently, this dude wrote a screen adaptation of Jubei Ninpucho aka Ninja Scroll.

Incidentally, my own made-for-Hollywood treatment involves a white suburban highschooler with a douchey haircut being caught in a dimensional rift and ending up in ancient Edo, where he must save a village of helpless Japanese peasants from evil ninja.  The movie will only be 10 minutes in when the kid suffocates on his own tongue, grotesquely swollen by the stings of a hundred hornets.

Now, if the movie resembles my story in any way, I’m going to sue you for plagiarism, Hollywood.  So it had better not be anything like that.  You’ve been warned.

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TechCrunch reports that Apple has changed its policy on the eve of iPad’s launch to be even more restrictive on risque content, and argues that this is a very dangerous precedent as hardware manufacturers have slowly morphed into content gatekeepers.

Is it going to be Beta versus VHS all over again?  I kind of hope so…