Liquid Comics — whose URL leads to Virgin Comics' old site — is made up of the Virgin Comics management team of Gotham Chopra, Sharad Devarajan and Suresh Seetharaman, and the company's press release about the buyout makes it remarkably clear that Virgin Comics' "closure" came about as much due to the disinterest of Virgin Group as anything else: Devarajan is quoted as saying the Liquid "remain[s] fully committed to continuing our mission to provide a home for innovative creators and storytellers across the world," while Virgin senior VP of corporate development Dan Porter talks about Virgin choosing to "[focus] on its core activities in North America," instead.

Judging from what little has been publicly announced by Liquid about their intentions, there is still a question mark over their future. The comic industry's reaction to Virgin's closure was less surprise than a metaphorical shrugging of shoulders and discussion of the low sales of their comics - Can the new/old publisher survive without the deep pockets of Virgin? The answer may come in Variety's take on the situation:

Liquid didn't comment on plans to actually continue publishing comic books, instead opting to focus on digital versions of its various characters. The new owners are the publisher's founding management team: Gotham Chopra, Sharad Devarajan and Suresh Seetharaman.

"We're looking at different syndication systems and so forth,'' Devarajan said. "We're trying a lot of different approaches to packaging and pricing.''

Will Liquid Comics be focusing entirely on online serialization, with potential for print publication upon completion? They wouldn't be the first publishers to do it - that would be Carla Speed McNeil's Lightspeed Press, I believe - nor the most high-profile (Warren Ellis' Freakangels was recently trumped by Marvel's announcement of their online sequels to the Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk movies, both of which will see print in December this year). It's hard to see whether this model would be financially profitable for the company, but that may not necessarily be their goal — with the amount of attention that Virgin had put on getting movie and television development deals for their characters, it's very possible that all they're looking for is a cheap and easy way of keeping the characters alive enough to keep Hollywood interested.

We'll see whether Liquid Comics stays liquid enough to actually produce any comics in the months to come.

Virgin Comics now Liquid Comics [Variety]

Virgin totally caved, canceling all development of their own series. Which means we may never get to see the comics writing debut of Lisa Klink, who wrote so many of Star Trek: Voyager's least memorable episodes. It also means the Sci Fi Channel no longer has a new replacement for Eureka in the pipeline. Kubinski, who's been self-publishing Superbia on his own Evigen Invasion press, was hoping Virgin would give him some kind of credit in their project. Alternatively, Virgin could have changed the name of their comic and altered it enough that it no longer resembled Kubinski's. Instead, Virgin decided to pull the plug. Maybe it's because they read Graeme's open letter? [Geek To Me]

Time Bandits II initially started as something for Gilliam to do after directing 12 Monkeys, with the two drafts of an initial script written during 1996, but both versions failed to find favor with studios. Gilliam himself seemed to lose interest in the project, moving onto the movie version of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, but when his directing career again went quiet, he went back to the idea of revisiting his 1981 classic — this time, as a TV show.

In late 2001, Gilliam announced that Time Bandits was set to go again, as a series of TV movies on the Hallmark Channel:

Actually, we've written Time Bandits for television. Charles McKeown and I have just finished the story (pause, with trepidation), 'cause Hallmark has bought Time Bandits... I've agreed to be in creative control of this thing. So we wrote Time Bandits, these two, two-hour specials. Kevin is now in his middle-thirties and he's got a couple kids. And life has never been as exciting as it was then. And that's where it starts.

Hallmark confirmed the project the following year, describing it as a four-hour miniseries... and then nothing was heard of it ever again.

Gilliam first talked about working with Virgin Comics in 2006, but Monday's Lying In The Gutters column from Johnston was the first mention of Time Bandits II being amongst the properties that he was working on for the publisher, just in time for the company to go under.

So where do the Time Bandits go from here? There are probably numerous companies who would love to publish a Time Bandits II comic (Boom! Studios, IDW and Oni all spring to mind as potentials), but it all depends on whether Gilliam wants to try to bring the story back to life for a fourth time. Perhaps this was just an idea whose time never came.

I love when Gotham Chopra says he wants to make the west realize that India is a "source of creativity," not just "a place for outsourcing." Damn straight. Check out more Virgin Comics.

Don't get me wrong, I know what you're trying to do. Everyone seems to like those superhero comics - Only a handful of titles in the March 2008 top 100 comics aren't superhero books, after all - and you're just like everyone else: You just want to be loved. But announcing two new superhero projects within days of each other only feels good right now. When the sales figures come in, you'll see: All that attention? They're just being polite. No-one really wants to read your superhero books.

Now, now. Don't cry. I'm saying this for your own good. Look at that top 100 list again for a second. Sure, it's superheroes up the wazoo, but only four of those superhero titles come from a company that doesn't have the words "Marvel" or "DC" in their name. The third most popular comic publisher of last month didn't get that not-as-impressive-as-you'd-want-it-to-be title with men in tights; Dark Horse got there by paying ridiculous amounts of money to Joss Whedon and George Lucas, respectively, for their Buffy, Serenity and Star Wars comics (The third most popular superhero publisher is Image, with a massive 3.86% of the market).

It's not as if other publishers haven't tried to break Marvel and DC's stranglehold on the superhero market in the past — Image did a very good job in the '90s - but those attempts tend to be successful only when there's some kind of name recognition, and that's something that Virgin is pretty much completely lacking (Well, outside of Jenna Jameson and Ed Burns, but that's not really what I mean). Yes, I know that everyone knows about Stan Lee, but there's something else that everyone knows about Stan... That he's not done anything worthwhile for decades. You only have to look at Stripperella and Who Wants To Be A Superhero to see that.

You're just throwing your money away, gentlemen. And, sure, Sir Richard - You're used to that by now (Hey, I've tasted Virgin Cola), but there's no need to rush into it so eagerly this time. Maybe there's some Hollywood money or something you can scare up by selling the rights and make some scratch back before everyone wises up. Or perhaps you can convince Stan that he's got Alzheimer's and imagined the whole thing. Just, please: Don't do anymore superhero comics. It's not a good idea, and you'll just hurt everyone involved.

Just say no.

Lee to create superheroes for Virgin [Variety]

Worried that the never-before-used title might be giving away too much about the project, the rest of the official press announcement is impressively vague about what Nowhere Man actually is, aside from it being "a Sci Fi odyssey set in a groundbreaking vision of the future in which mankind has traded privacy for safety."

Ah, so one of those post-9/11 dystopias, then. The comic series will be developed with and written by Marc Guggenheim, who works on Marvel's Amazing Spider-Man and ABC's Eli Stone, and is expected to premiere before the end of the year.

Hugh Jackman to create comic book property for Virgin [Newsarama]

Now that you're already skipping the Christmas adverts on TiVo, it probably comes as no surprise that comic publishers are gearing up for the holiday sales. Berkeley's Image Comics are the most bold this week, releasing the first issue of their mature-readers title Archibald Saves Christmas, which married those two traditional holiday themes: Released inmates from mental asylums and serial killers. Suicidal Santas, of course, come free.

Image is also going after the bookstore dollar with the release of the anthology Popgun Volume 1, which brings together some of comics' newest, hippest and ubiquitous creators between two covers for a "mixtape" that ignores genre boundaries and, in some cases, just plain good taste. It's probably your best bet for value for money this week, unless you happen to have the $75 spare that would allow you to pick up Marvel Comics' Captain America by Ed Brubaker Omnibus, collecting the first two years' of crime writer Brubaker's run on the Star Spangled Soldier, featuring Nazis, "cosmic cubes", cyborgs and that whole "death of Captain America" thing people were talking about earlier this year. For those with tighter budgets and more delicate dispositions, there's always DC Comics' 1950s reprint book, Showcase Presents: Supergirl Vol. 1, taking you back to when girls knew their places, and those places were hiding in orphanages in brunette wigs because your older cousin doesn't want the world to know you exist.

Oh, you only wish I was joking.

Still bearing the upcoming holidays in mind, Marvel also answers the time-honored question "What do I get my nerdy friend who cares a little too much about the fictional worlds he spends too much time reading about?" with the first issue (of two) of Marvel Atlas, letting you know just where Vibranium can be mined in Africa, and how far you'll have to go to import it into Doctor Doom's kingdom of Latveria. Alternatively, Virgin Comics have something for the overly-sensitive art movie lover in your life: Dock Walloper, a series created for the publisher by The Brothers McMullen director and Saving Private Ryan actor Ed Burns. If you prefer your movies with a little more bullet time, however, you might want to check out the much delayed sixth issue of Doc Frankenstein, written by The Matrix's Wachowski Brothers, and drawn by Matrix storyboard artist Steve Skroce.

Pick of the regular books, meanwhile, is DC's Green Lantern Corps #18, which manages to drop the ho ho ho and replaces it with the kind of high concept Hollywood dreams about: Indestructible Space Cop with Magic Wishing Ring versus Evil Superman. This gem of carnage fiction, along with everything else mentioned above will be available Thursday at your local comic book store, which can be found here.

And if you can't find what you're looking for, remember: You better not cry, you better not pout.

Popgun image courtesy Image Comics, Green Lantern Corps image courtesy of DC Comics