Comics

Bruce Handy and Dan Goldman give us the lowdown on the ongoing War on Christmas via a webcomic at Vanity Fair. --

A war on Christmas? A harrowing and real thing, if you ask the values police. So we sent leathery war correspondent Bruce Handy and grizzled war cartoonist Dan Goldman to record the frontline combat for posterity, in the manner of their Civil War–era Harper’s forebears. Where we lay our scene: a suburban mall, its Santa’s village defended from invaders by his little helpers. (What follows may contain graphic elf violence.)

At this time of year it is good to confront our own mortality as shown via drop-butt underwear.

The Romanian webcomic Fredo and Pid'jin, has been a big success for its creators Eugen Erhan and Tudor Muscalu, this piece at Next Web tells us, if by success you mean lots of links on Reddit and Digg. What emerges is the story of two guy with a dream and a webcomic about two evil pigeons out to conquer the world. Things looked low, but then a guy who works on the Simpsons came and told them they were on the right track, energizing them to carry on. But...questions remain:

via

Merry Christmas. I'll be watching some basketball today. The NBA has long tried to be to Christmas what the NFL is to Thanksgiving, and this year the league is even launching the season on Christmas. (If you don't know, don't ask. There was a work stoppage and it was ugly.) You may not realize it, but there's a smidgeon of crossover between comics and the NBA. Bill Jemas was fairly high up in the league offices YEARS before he joined Marvel. Remember the NBA Hoops trading cards that the league owned? That was Bill. Which led to Fleer. Which led to Marvel. Current Marvel EIC Axel Alonso has been speaking of basketball in his interviews of late. Marvel also did a neat cross-promotion with the NBA, ESPN and Wired last year, making up mock comic book covers merging Marvel characters with the various teams. Comics Alliance has an archive of it.

Universities? Publishing books about comics? What's the world coming to?

A 1949 King Features booklet of famous comic strip characters singing Christmas carols with art by Chic Young, Alex Raymond, Frank Godwin, Milton Caniff, Hal Foster and more.

When Joe Simon passed away at the age of 98 last week, he left behind an impressive body of work. Although everyone knows he was the partner of Jack "King" Kirby, Simon and Kirby were partners in the truest sense -- collaborating freely on art and writing, with Simon mostly the editor and Kirby the art director. However, Simon was a prolific artist on his own. While he didn't have Kirby's command of sheer power and imagination, he did have a way with wiry, dynamic heroes. Heritage Auctions recently ran a cover tribute to Simon in their newsletter -- have a look:

Hachette's Marvel catalog for May - August 2012 is out and we find a few interesting tidbits that might give us a clue to what Marvel's up to next. The big question is what's up with Henry Pym?

Looking for the unusual? The overlooked? Something a bit different? Take a look here!

Piskor has a new strip up at Boing Boing that examines the similarities between these two American artforms.

ComiXology was the #11 grossing app on iPad for 2011 -- and they just announced a new beta storefront.