B.J. Porter and Scott Aukerman of Mr. Show and the weekly Comedy Death Ray showcase in Los Angeles are developing a new late night comedy series for FOX. The new sketch comedy series, according to Aukerman, is based somewhat on the Comedy Death Ray shows and is called The Right Now! Show.

This January, Spike TV will be airing Wild World of Spike, a kind of alternative sports comedy show that doesn't sound too far removed from the network's other wacky sports challenge series, MXC. Wild World of Spike will feature three hosts, Kit Cope, Sam Ellis and Sam Tripoli, who watch bizarre "sports" from around the world such as "mop jousting" and "dirt skiing," and then try to recreate the events themselves. The result, they hope, will be funny for the stoned college kids who will no doubt be the show's core audience. Personally, I'm wondering how long it took them to come up with the concept of watching something on television and then copying it. That's either ingenious or just incredibly lazy, I haven't quite figured out which. The series is being produced by the same folks behind The Princes of Malibu and Growing Up Gotti.

Animation historian Jerry Beck mentioned a very cool new site set up by Nick Magazine (that's "Nick" as in "Nickelodeon") that features drawings of Nick characters as interpreted by other Nick animators or underground and alternative comic strippers. The concept originated in Nickelodeon Magazine, which has a section called "The Comic Book" that features underground cartoonists --or so I'm told, since I don't subscribe to Nickelodeon Magazine. The Live Journal site is a nice bit of synergy between Nick and the underground artists, and something I'm sure I'll be checking out a lot in the future. Here's Avatar as drawn by Butch Hartman of The Fairly OddParents and Danny Phantom. The picture on the left is Jimmy Neutron as drawn by comic artist Jake Parker. I think I prefer his version to the original.