Culture

Want to read a 96 graphic novel about a young woman and a time travelling ghost for FREE? You can read about the making of the book at the Under the Apple Tree webpage and download it here. Cartoonist Sarah Winifred Searle created it as part of a Children’s Writer-in-Residence at the Boston Public Library. here's the logline:

Fall is in the air, bringing a crisp step and the crunch of leaves under foot, and the inevitable—perhaps inescapable—presence of Pumpkin Spice everything all around us! Yes, it's time for 31 Days of Halloween, The Beat's annual tribute to our MOST FAVORITEST TIME OF YEAR. And let's get things going with probably the most obvious link possible...but I have ever written about painter/cartoonist/musician Menton3 on The Beat before so here goes! Based in Chicago, Menton3—aka Menton J Matthews III—is a painter of atmospheric and disturbing images. While you can find a lot of his work at his website, he's probably best known these days as a partner in 44Flood, a publishing company that has teamed with IDW to put out art books and comics. Along with fellow artists Kasra Ghanbari, Ben Templesmith and Nick Idell, 44Flood has put out Tome, an artbook which was mostly Kickstarted, Templesmith's The Squidder, the comic Monocyte, which you see on this page, and Libretto, an anthology of eerieness centering on vampirism. A new volume of Tome is on its way or already here (I couldn't find a lot of solid news about the bunch.)

Friday's announcement of a settlement between Jack Kirby's heirs and Marvel seems like good news—but is it? And what does it mean? I'm told Jeff Trexler, whose identification of the "instance and expense" aspect of the lawsuit may have helped get that into the petition to the Supremes, is writing his summary for TCJ.com, so while we all eagerly await that, here's a little of the known knowns and known unknowns: First off, Mark Evanier, a Kirby family confidant, a witness at various Kirby-related trials and filier of an amicus curiae brief is certainly in a position to know more of the Kirby position and this is all he had to say on the matter:

Over the weekend at the Long Beach Comic Con, Tamara Brooks found some officially licensed DC t-shirts that gave messages that were a...

On December 8th, UFC 181 will take place withThe cover unveiled will be used ahead of UFC 181 as the promotion teams up with...

Chris Pratt hosted Saturday's Saturday Night Live season premiere and along with the inevitable Starlord jokes, there was a pretty spot on parody of...

Here’s the fifth part of my interview with the late Steve Moore, with more to follow. The first, second, third, and fourth parts are...

A joint statement has just been released by Marvel and the family of Jack Kirby indicating that a settlement of somekind hs been made: “Marvel and the family of Jack Kirby have amicably resolved their legal disputes, and are looking forward to advancing their shared goal of honoring Mr. Kirby’s significant role in Marvel’s history.”

Australian cartoonist/journalist Eleri Mai Harris isn't just an editor at The Nib, Medium's marvelous comics section, run by Matt Bors. She's a trained journalist who turned to comics to tell stories and in today's Nib she has a good one: the story of the abortive designs for Canberra, the capital of Australia. Like a few other planned capital cities—Celebration and Brasilia comes to mind—the structural, utopian approach to city design rarely works out. The story also includes a dandy forgotten woman—Frank Lloyd Wright's associate Marion Mahony Griffin. So sit back and learn some Australian and architectural history.

It's Autumn now, and it's been a long time since we attempted to ride the coattails of Guardians of the Galaxy, 2014's breakout stars....

It's Banned Books Week, a n annual event mostly held in libraries which spotlights attempts to remove books. This year's theme is graphic novels,...

On Friday, the long running—22 years!—Brian Bendis message board shut down with the above message, and al of its archives went with it. The Bendis...