The fine publication that brought the world "Bat Boy" is shutting its doors after 27 years. Newsarama brings us the sad word that Weekly World News will be reprinting a few last issues and closing down come August 3. 

From editor Bob Greenberger's blog:

Friday morning, Jeff Rovin comes in for a meeting and then the staff was to be called in. He’s looking harried, not at all relaxed. At 11:30, we’re finally shown into an office where we are told the Board of Directors has chosen to close Weekly World News. The reasons given make no sense. We’re stunned and shell-shocked.

We’re to stay on through August 3, finishing the reprint issues and then we’re done. A glorious, funny, odd publication, born in 1979, will go out with a whimper and all I can think is that something’s going on that they’re not telling us because it just doesn’t make sense.

Greenberger was formerly an editor at DC Comics, as was fellow editor Paul Kupperberg.

WWN was always a welcome breath of silly air on the supermarket checkout lane.  Other tabloids posted shocking photos and sexual scandals, while WWN proudly printed alien babies and pictures of Jesus and Mary appearing in food products.  The pinnacle of the mock-tabloid's career was the series of articles about so-called "Bat Boy," a feral child found in a West Virginia cave.  They eventually made the story into a musical.  (I've heard the soundtrack.  It's not half bad.)

Sing on, Bat Boy.  Sing on.