Culture

If you read only one think piece on comics by a great cartoonist today, you should read The Literaries by Eddie Campbell. The piece spins off of the current discussion on the place of EC comics which I mentioned the other day. Campbell's response is specifically to Ng Suat Tong's declaration that EC comics were mostly well-drawn pulp.

Former DC editor and current Comics Alliance editor-in-chief Joe Hughes kicks off Black History Month by baldly stating a shameful fact about the US comics industry::

At the risk of lowering the tone, I relay to you the news of Jane Mai's Poop Nightmare: so bad it needed capitalization  As someone...

Preliminary voting is in on this year's Eisner Award Hall of Fame and the judges have selected Mort Meskin and Spain Rodriguez for automatic inclusion.

In the tradition of advocacy cartooning through the ages, the NY-based political comics anthology World War 3 reminds us that the late Ed Koch, former mayor of New York, wasn't always a beloved avuncular figure. Contemporary cartoons from Eric Drooker, Steve Brodner and Tom Keough take on Kach's handling of the homeless, affordable housing and police brutality.

The early award season for books is here, and earlier this week the American Library association handed out a slew of literary awards. As has been the recent trend, several graphic novels were recognized among the pictureless books:

All this business about DC's "WTF month" got me thinking -- while you've got the whole gimmick cover thing as an attempt to get...

In case you missed last night's PBS documentary on Superheroes, you can watch it above—or at this link if the embed isn't working. The program includes Wizard World all-star festival of folks like Lou Ferrigno, Burt Ward, Adam West and Lynda Carter talking about playing superheroes. They are all veteran charmers, and when we have a spare 53 minutes, we plan on watching the whole thing. A supporting webpage has background and stills—such as the above one of Julie Newmar as Catwoman—and some extra videos.

The Center for Jewish History hosted a celebration of the 2013 75th birthday of the seminal superhero Superman on January 27th with co-sponsorship from...

Somehow we missed this piece by Bobby Timony when it went up but here at the beat we never miss a chance to big up The Rescue Rangers. Seriously how great would this team be?

If there's one trend we've noticed growing over the years its the use of graphic novels as teaching tools—on the must basic level, comics are now recognized as a way to get reluctant readers to get started reading. On a larger level, comics are being used as a general teaching tool. Josh Elder's Reading with Pictures organization has been promoting this idea and cataloging the use of comics in the classroom. It's not just the visceral appeal of colorful pictures that puts comics over—some think that the verbal-visual blend is the future of literacy, and comics could potentially be on the forefront of that.

In 2008, the Siegel family won a historic courtroom victory. So why did they risk it all on an appeal? An encounter between Jerry Siegel's widow, Joanne,  and Super Boys author Brad Ricca provides a telling clue.