Comics Now!, a quarterly magazine launched early last year, has ceased publication. Issue 3, released in September, was the last. (via Johanna Draper Carlson)

• Amazon.com will close three distribution centers in Munster, Indiana, Red Rock, Nevada, and Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, reportedly as part of a reorganization of the company's fulfillment network. The warehouses employ about 215 people.

This is the first closing of a warehouse by the online-retail giant since 2006.

• Lisa Lopacinski of Neptune Comics questions DC Comics' order requirement for retailers to receive the sketch variant edition of Batman and Robin #1: one variant for every 250 copies ordered of the standard edition.

"Now don't get me wrong," she writes. "I'm sure this will be a popular comic. Especially the first issue. But 250 copies?!? This promotion is clearly going to benefit about 10-15 of Diamond's largest customers in the U.S. who have a need to order that large of a quantity."

Operation Comix Relief organizer Chris Tarbassian worries that higher shipping costs could cripple efforts to send comic books to U.S. soldiers serving overseas.

• The final issue of the U.K. comics anthology The DFC rolls out today. Richard Bruton pens a eulogy, and points out that some of the magazine's creators have launched a blog called Super Comics Adventure Squad.

• Comic-strip journalist Brenda Starr learned today she has lost her job because of staff cuts in the fictional newsroom of B. Babbitt Bottomline. The strip's writer, Mary Schmich, says Starr's life "is a fantasy with nuggets of reality tossed in. But even fantasies need some grounding in reality, and right now, economic crisis is the reality that colors everything else at pretty much every newspaper."

• At io9.com, Charlie Jane Anders wonders how the recession has affected the sales of science-fiction books.