Jake here, with some exciting news about what is to come this year in the Avatar world.  No, it's not mini-episodes or hour-long specials, but Johane Matte (Rufftoon on DeviantArt), who was a storyboard artist on the back half of Avatar season 3, has confirmed to Avatar Mom (from ASN) that there will be Avatar comics coming to Nick Magazine this year. Here is Johane's statement:

"Did I mention there will be more Avatar comics made for Nick Magazine? Yup, a whole bunch made with a lot of people working on them with a lot of fun. They will be short and mostly geared towards an all ages readership, but still should be enjoyable to everyone who may want to see tidbits of the Avatar world uncovered (not all of it very serious...I'm guilty on that, ha ha!)."

No word on when the comics will start, or how many there will ultimately be, but we will try to keep you all updated.  And I want to stress that you go out and purchase the magazines when comics appear in them.  The show may be over, but our support doesn't has to fall off.  Seeing spikes in readership when the Avatar comics come out will send a good sign to Nick.

BTW, this information comes from AM's Facebook, being a college student and all there really is no other place to get news.   I'm sure she posted this elsewhere, but I just found it there.

EDIT: Go to http://www.nick.com/shows/nick_mag/nicktoon_comics/index.jhtmland click on the Avatar icon (last one on the first tow) to view the comics that have been released thus far, including a new one titled "Night Animals." Thanks to Freespirit for the heads up!

Dylan here and you can meet "Aang" in a Royal Caribbean International Nick Cruise this summer. According to the Sun Sentinel, "One of the family cruises will be on Mariner of the Seas from Los Angeles to the Western Mexican Riviera on July 26, 2009 and another one on the Freedom of the Seas from Port Canaveral to the Eastern Caribbean on Aug. 9. 2009." There are different Nick activities, and of course, you can meet Aang.

Dylan here and Time Warner has dropped Viacom. Time Warner's 13 million subscribers will be losing 19 Viacom channels, including Nickelodeon. Time Warner is the nation's 2nd biggest cable system operator. This will take effect at 12:01 on January 1st. All I can say is, it's good this didn't happen a couple months earlier while Avatar was still running.

UPDATE: Time Warner and Viacom have reached an agreement. Time Warner subscribers will not lose the Viacom channels.

Happy new year from all of us at Dongbu Feng!

Note: While the relation between the subject and methods used to determine the subject's conclusion are intended to be humorous, all data in this post is factual.

Dylan here. Did Aang and Katara kiss in the "The Cave of Two Lovers"? It's one of the most asked questions still in the fandom. In this post, I explore the answer to that question.. scientifically! 

Warning: This post is probably hard to understand for some people, skip to the conclusion if all of this makes no sense!

First, we need our data.  Jake took screenshots for me of the kiss every .25 seconds, starting from this frame. That frame in my data is the time = 0 seconds. I measured the distance from Aang's bottom lip to Katara's bottom lip every .25 seconds of the kiss after that frame. Here is my data from 0 to 1.75 seconds: 

From 0 to 1.75 seconds, Aang and Katara are moving in at a speed of 9.31 mm/s. Here is a picture of that data represented graphically on my TI-83 Plus.

A linear representation of this data is y=-9.31x+28.96.

Next in the data, Aang and Katara remain at the same place from 1.75 to 3 seconds. After 3 seconds, the torch is out and we cannot see how far away from each other they are. Now, after 3 seconds, it is extremely unlikely that they both would just stand there for any more time. So I assumed they continued to lean in after 3 seconds at the same velocity they did from 0 to 1.75 seconds, 9.31 mm/s. Here is that represented on my calculator:

The points to the left are our original 0 - 1.75 seconds data. The point in the line to the right is the last data point before the lights go out, 13 mm at 3 seconds. The line going through the point is the linear representation of the data from 0 - 1.75 seconds, shifted to the right by 1.25. The equation of the line is y=-9.31(x-1.25)+28.96. The last x-value on the screen is 5.75 seconds, the last frame at which the screen is dark, before the crystals appear. As you can see, the line crosses 0 well before 5.75 seconds. It crosses at about 4.37 seconds, indicating that they did indeed kiss while the screen was dark. In fact, the minimum speed needed for them to go after the screen went dark, before the crystals appeared, for their lips to touch, is 4.73 mm/s (for an explanation for how we got this, hit "Read more.."), well less than the predicted speed of 9.31 mm/s.

Conclusion: Aang and Katara did indeed kiss during "The Cave of Two Lovers", and that kiss most likely lasted a minimum of 1.38 seconds.

Thanks so much to Jeff for his help with the math side of this post, and Jake for the screenshots! 

(Hit "Read more.." for an explanation of how Jeff got to 4.73 mm/s as the minimum speed Aang and Katara would have needed to move in at for their lips to touch.)