The first thing to remember is Marvel’s top movie-licensed characters are locked into long-term contracts for other studios. Disney won’t get to make a Spider-Man or X-Men movie for a while.

The second thing to remember is Marvel’s characters currently appear on several rides and attractions at the Universal theme parks; a suddenly bizarre setup that will require its own set of negotiations.

The third thing to remember is none of the articles about the transaction (at least none of the articles I could find) described Marvel as a publisher of magazines and books, only as the holder of trademark characters for exploitation in more lucrative milieux. (Update: Paul Constant’s commentary about the deal does mention the comics, and claims their current bland suckiness may be a reason why Disney wanted them.)

Referendum 71, the drive to put Washington’s new domestic-partner benefits up to a public vote, has qualified for the November ballot.

Now we’ve gotta go back to all the people we asked not to sign when R-71 was in the petition phase, and tell ’em all to vote for the thing.

…they’re simply too much! What with all that confounded texting and tweeting and book-facing they’re always up to, they’re actually writing a lot more than their immediate elders, and not just for schoolwork either!

Why, this could mean a generation of g-damned literates!

How are we old people going to snort about our obvious superiority to that?

…of WaMu’s fatal gambling bug: Todd Rundgren.

A week ago, I teased my Facebook correspondents with hints of a big book deal.

Actually, I’m working on two big book deals.

One of them I’m ready to announce.

Loser: The Real Seattle Music Story will be reissued next year by its original publisher, Feral House.

This fifteenth-anniversary updated version will contain all the text and images of the 1995 original, plus new chapters about more recent local rock/pop acts, “whatever-happened-to” listings, and an updated discography.

I’ll revamp the Loser section of this site as I revamp the entire site.

But for now, I ask all of you out in digi-land to name your favorite Seattle-area bands of the past 15 years. The top 100 (at least) will make it into the new edition. The new site will have comment threads, but for now you can email your picks to me.

(Jenna Nand in the Weekly, reviewing Annex Theater’s Emerald and the Love Song of the Dead Fishermen): “Though the plot’s scattered among multiple states of being, the narrative remains sympathetic and the actors bloom like bioluminescent algae, particularly Emerald’s agoraphobic mother. (Female agoraphobes are starting to become downright trendy in local theater, aren’t they?)”

Some British engineers say they’ve got the sophisticated, albeit costly, way to get excess carbon dioxide out of the air—fake trees!

“Augmented Reality.”

For a year, everyone knew this would happen. Nobody, including the Kennedy family, expected the time of mourning would coincide with the looming Senate showdown on his great issue, health care reform.

Will his sudden, high-profile absence make more impact on that debate than his diminished presence had been?

Who’s America’s biggest magazine publisher? Would you believe, JPMorgan Chase? Thanks to debt defaults, Chase now holds controlling stakes in Reader’s Digest, American Media (The National Enquirer, et al.), and Source Interlink Media (Motor Trend, Soap Opera Digest et al.). And it’s got a huge role in the Tribune Co. (LA Times, KCPQ, et al.) bankruptcy proceedings.

Terry Teachout writes in the Wall St. Journal that today’s new media/old media transition is a lot like the switch six decades ago from network radio to network TV.

Eh, not really.

Teachout mentions a few of radio’s many stars who didn’t make it in the new medium, for one reason or another. Yes, the likes of Fred Allen and Fibber McGee and Molly star Jim Jordan basically found their careers over and done. But the business model of U.S. network broadcasting moved almost seamlessly to the video arena. CBS and NBC remained in control, with ABC a distant third, with independents and noncommercial broadcasters as budget-challenged also-rans.

The three-network system survived the ’70s rise of PBS, and accommodated the mid-’80s debut of Fox. But as cable channels began competitive original programming in the ’90s, the old networks began to lose their massive economies of scale.

Then, TV as a whole was challenged by DVDs, video games, and assorted online entertainments. It’s hard-to-impossible to make money in these new media under an old-media business model. Indeed, for a lot of content categories (including news), everybody’s still trying to figure out how to make money.

No, 2009’s media transition isn’t like 1949’s. It’s much bigger, and much more disruptive.

…wasn’t a natural blonde.

Barring an unexpected shift in the remaining mail ballots, Seattle’s getting a new mayor.

First thought: The lure of power can be really strong, to drive so many candidates toward such a thankless office. (The next mayor’s first job: imposing massive budget cuts. The next mayor’s probable second job: imposing further massive budget cuts.)

Second thought: Greg Nickels’ Friday morning press conference was jovial and fatalistic, if unapologetic. Nickels essentially stood by everything he’d done in the past eight years, presumably including the sweetheart deals with real-estate developers and the botched response to Snowstorm 2008.

Third thought: What will Nickels do now? Somebody’s probably cycling out of the Obama Executive Branch next year, leaving an opening somewhere for another Northwest “corporate progressive.”

Fourth thought: So now we’ve got Mallahan vs. McGinn, an M&M race. I’ll leave it for you to decide which is the “plain” candidate and which is the “peanut.”

Meanwhile, Gene Stout wonders what the new guy will do with Nickels’ “City of Music” initiatives. McGinn made more overtures to the music community during the primary season, but that doesn’t mean Mallahan doesn’t care.

…from their Amazon-generated keywords?

Sound Magazine (nee Seattle (Sound)), the free slick magazine with a $4.99 cover price that’s officially about Northwest music but also finds plenty of room for fashion and restaurants, disappears in September as a stand-alone entity.

But it won’t vanish altogether. Rather, it’s merging with City Arts, another freemag that has a lot fewer ad pages than Sound but better distribution.

Will Sound’s relatively hefty ad volume prop up CityArts’ thin but eclectic coverage of visual and performing arts?

Will CityArts’ more numerous street distro boxes bring Sound’s music coverage to more readers?

Or will the blended product resemble an awkward clash-O-cultures, rather than a lovingly made mixtape?