History

This weekend the Small Press Expo takes place in North Bethesda, MD. The show is known for its collegial, summer camp vibe, but this year, it is going ALL OUT. There will never again...

http://youtu.be/mNLcjWIzQHM Before Marvel became the toast of tinsel town, there were some pretty dreadful Marvel-based movies—and I'm not just talking Howard the Duck. Dolph Lundgren starred as The Punisher in 1989, but the movie got...

About Comics is a boutique publisher that specializes in bringing back unjustly obscure comics in affordable editions. They've just released HOLLYWOOD SUPERSTARS by Mark Evanier and Dan Spiegle. Originally published in 1990 via Marvel's Epic line, it was a non-superheroic variant of Crossfire by the same team, basically behind the scenes tales of Hollywood, seen through the adventures of a team of private eyes consisting of a stuntman, an aspiring actress and a stand up comic. Like Crossfire, it has that slightly elegiac air of people who believe Hollywood's legend and lore a little too much, told as only a couple of insiders could tell it.

Since I was just picking a fight with Brian Hibbs, now I'll quote him extensively. His latest Tilting at Windmills is an anniversary post, looking the original Diamond catalog from when he started in 1989! We've lost some soldiers along the way, but the Diamond catalog is now a bloated thing,

Here’s the fourth part of my interview with the late Steve Moore, with more to follow. The first, second, and third parts are already online, along with some explanation of how the interview came...

I was asked not too long ago what was something I was proud of writing on The Beat, and it's actually something I didn't write. This post by political communications specialist Brett Schenker entitled Market Research Says 46.67% of Comic Fans are Female from February, was pretty groundbreaking. Why am I mentioning a six month old post? Well, people continue to quote it when they look for demographic information on comics readership, and it represents a solid benchmark in an area where there is shockingly little research. Schenker's research via Facebook, which he's graciously presented here, has been quoted in numerous articles and yesterday it was referenced in this Time.Com piece on the new female Thor. I tweeted it again and it got a whole new set of reactions on twitter from people who hadn't seen it the first time.

On International Workers' Day, the 1st of May, Jonathan Cape published Sally Heathcote, Suffragette, the second graphic novel written by Mary Talbot, a semi-fictionalised history of the Women's Suffrage movement in Britain, and a...

As mentioned earlier this week, The Beat is 10 years old this month! What was it like in the primitive days of 2004? Thanks to the wonders of digital archiving we can tell you! We can even take you back to San Diego 2004 for a look at skinnier but not necessarily better versions of many Beat favorites. So step with us behind the veils of time for....

  What a great idea for a comic programming focus: this year's Small PressE Expo, to be held September 13-14 in Bethesda, MD, will spotlight the history of alt-weekly comics, a powerful if now vanished,...

Last week I told you about The Forgotten Man, a graphic novel adaptation of Amity Shlaes' history of the Great Depression by Chuck Dixon and Paul Rivoche. As Shlaes is a well known conservative...

Fans of X-men: Days of Future Past excitedly point to the film’s overt “social commentary” as a major reason for its success. We always equate the X-men with these kinds of subjects – race,...

Considering that William Gibson's Neuromancer is one of my favorite books of all times, you'd think I'd have remembered that there was a comics adaptation, but no. Epic Comics put out half of it...