There’s One Week until International Darkstar Day 2013!http://ift.tt/1aRVaXI

The Beat is a notable website, a place where smart people gather and talk about book sales and publishing and all the parts of the industry nobody else quite reaches to. All sorts of academics, lawyers, screenwriters and journalists have written here – but, also, I write here too! And I balance out all that important stuff with much-reviled nonsense about half-forgotten Marvel characters from the 1960s.

On that note: it’s International Darkstar Day in a week!

International Darkstar Day is a day for celebrating Marvel’s most beloved (but also hardly anybody knows who she is) character. She’s a strange one, is our Darkstar – she’s popular enough to headline her own one-shot and subsequent miniseries from a few years back, but she’s also not quite popular enough that anybody can pinpoint just WHAT she looks like unless I show you this image:

darkstar2

Darkstar was first created by Tony Isabella and George Tuska in The Champions, before getting taken on by creators like Bill Mantlo, John Byrne, Fabian Nicieza, David Gallaher, Steve Ellis, Grant Morrison and Kurt Busiek. She’s currently “dead”, OR IS SHE, but we all hope that she’ll be back real soon.

This year sees IDD take place on the 18th December, which is next Wednesday. The basic premise of Darkstar Day is: anybody who wants to sends in a picture of Darkstar, and on the 18th they all get compiled on the site, together for us all to appreciate, with any links of your choice alongside them. 

If you want to take part, all you have to do is draw a picture of Darkstar – spend a week working on it or half a minute, it doesn’t matter – and then send it across to me at [email protected]. I will share every Darkstar I receive! Anyone can take part, any age, any one! Young artists are ESPECIALLY welcome!

It’s a very silly celebration, but hopefully something really fun and enjoyable.

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