If you can’t beat ‘em, make a deal that emulates ‘em, so you’re not forced to join ‘em.

It’s mega-publisher season, apparently, as News Corp announced their acquisition of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s books and media segment, following recent protests by News Corp’s Chief Executive, Robert Thompson, who slated Penguin Random House/Simon & Schuster’s proposed merger as displaying “anti-market logic” after News Corp missed out on acquiring S&S themselves.

Following last weekend’s virtual event, Comic Con International announced that this year’s (theoretically) in-person November San Diego event will be called Comic-Con Special Edition, and will take place over Thanksgiving weekend 2021, which creators weren’t particularly overjoyed about, so now we get a double-threat SDCC event with people complaining about not getting in and not wanting to get in.

Guaranteed 100% free of April Fools stories… This week’s news.

There was a whole bunch of April’s Foolsing going on yesterday across the comics internet, but none of that will be covered here - this is a serious business for serious people, as can be seen in This Week's Links, below. We’re headed into a holiday weekend, so I’ll keep this brief and then head off on my merry way to eat my body-weight in cheap chocolate, in order to celebrate a religious festival in the manner in which it was intended.

Features Let’s Make The Water Turn Black – This Week’s Links

14 Nights, Vol. 1 by Kristina Stipetic