Getting ready for the quickly approaching Christmas holiday, we’ve tossed together a pretty spiffy WAGON Combo Pack to get the ball rolling for all of you guys who’d like to give the game a whirl. This combo will include both the Alpha and Beta Decks of the game, a copy of our Kitten of Chaos plot device, and a copy of the special rare version of our Jenny Everywhere card.

For the holiday season we’re also trying to do our part to make Christmas a little brighter for some kiddies out there, and so a portion of every Combo Pack purchase will be donated to Child’s Play Charity, which is an awesome organization made by gamers to help give something back to the community. An awesome present for the gamer in your life AND a bit of charity for the holidays? Oh yes indeed!

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund has signed on as a special consultant to the defense of Chistopher Handley, an Iowa collector who faces up to 20 years in prison for possession of manga.

Read about it here.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

The Alpha and Beta Deck Pre-sale is now officially under way, launching the first two public card decks for the WAGON Webcomic Battle collectible cardgame. This pre-sale marks the beginning of a new innovation in webcomic advertising venues, taking comic characters and stories off of the internet and into the hands of CCG players the world over.

Each deck consists of 42 cards which includes: a standard 40 card WAGON deck, a symbol reference card, and special release Boosted Character card. Each deck also includes one of the top placing winners of the “Draw to Win” Jenny Everywhere card design contest, brought to you by The Shifter Archive Project. Pre-order Alpha and Beta now and you’ll also receive a bonus rare “Kitten of Chaos” card as well.

WAGON Webcomic Battle: Alpha and Beta decks include cards inspired by the following comics:

$100 dollars to go! But travel & expenses? Is it worth it? With WotLK around the corner, Starcraft II, and Diablo III (YAY!) in development, I would most definitely say hell yeah!!

Then cold harsh reality slaps you in the face. You don’t shit money.

I estimate, $1200 for plane & hotel accommodations, the a day or two not working,  and the ticket…

If someone would sponsor me I will go with a camera strapped on me and or dress in something with logos all over it. DO IT.

Donate through Paypal to webmaster [at] choicecomics.net.

In May of 2007, a new fan fiction archive appeared, soliciting fan fiction writers to join. This Archive was called FanLib, and was clearly fandom-for-profit. Fans did not take kindly to being used as free content generators and marketing research.

They did not like this because fans generally believe that their hobby should not be for profit, considering that fan-fiction is legally a gray area. There was also speculation that any fiction on Fanlib could technically become an episode, without credit to the fiction writer due to the fact that the TOS said:

“You hereby grant FanLib a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Submissions in connection with the Website.”

FanLib never really grew, boasting just over 18,000 registered users.

On June 4th of 2008, there was rumor that Disney, a corporation known for being quite strict with their copyright, was buying FanLib.

In July, a month later, FanLib announced it was shutting down on August 4th. The announcement was vague, with no reason why, apparently even staff were left in the dark. Although there is much speculation as to the cause of the site’s closing, one thing is for certain: They burned through their venture capital in 15 months.

What a brilliant business venture!

And yes, fans everywhere are revelling in their “We told you so’s!”

FoxNews reports:

Christian Bale on Tuesday denied allegations of assault made by his mother and sister, hours after the star of “The Dark Knight” was arrested, questioned by London police and released.

The 34-year-old actor spent four hours at a police station, but was not charged and was released on bail. British media reported that Bale’s mother and sister complained he had assaulted them at the Dorchester Hotel in London on Sunday night, a day before the European premiere of “The Dark Knight.”

Bale’s London-based law firm, Schillings said Bale, issued a statement denying that an assault took place.

I think the reason he was released is they couldn’t hold Batman. Nothing like a punch in the face to get out of a situation. Silly Joker for spreading rumors! HILARIOUS!

The SEC is reporting that Platinum Studios has purchase WOWIO. This also states that all contracts have been terminated. I can only hope that this doesn’t shake the foundation that WOWIO is based on. In a letter to publishers, William Lidwell, founder, states:

I am pleased to finally and officially announce that WOWIO has been acquired by Platinum Studios, Inc. The process took longer than any of us desired (you can make lawyers work hard, but not fast), but it is done and we are all excited to get back to the business of books. Per Kristin Ellison’s previous email to you, an amendment to the existing Publisher’s Agreement will be required to assign your agreement over and enable full use of the new capabilities. It is short and simple, and provides you with a number of new options for monetizing and distributing your content.

Kristin will be contacting publishers of books. Mike Miller will be contacting publishers of comics. You should receive an email from them before Wednesday of next week with the amendment. If you do not, please contact us and let us know. Our goal is to launch the site as quickly as possible — as early as 7/23, and no later than 8/4. The faster we get your amendments back, the faster we can launch.

Lastly, with mergers and acquisitions, there are invariably personnel changes. To this end, I am sad to report that Mike Miller will be moving on from WOWIO to pursue a new digital venture — he has kindly agreed to stay on long enough to help with the amendments. Mike has been with us from the beginning and has done a tremendous job developing the comic book side of the business. I am grateful for his hard work and dedication to the WOWIO mission, and on behalf of the WOWIO team I want to publicly recognize and thank him for his efforts.

Thank you for your support and patience during this process. We will be in touch soon.

Is there any speculation as to whether things will remain as they once were (read: free)?

I hope there wasn’t any conflict that made Mike Miller leave. I wonder what digital venture Mike is going to pursue? Will it be doing WOWIO clone his way, if there was conflict? I will wait eagerly an news on to where he ends up!