Culture

Predominantly known for his tripptastic, psychedelic art and creating the whacked-out world of BOYS CLUB, Matt Furie takes some time to unload on his newest release, a curious children's book called THE NIGHT RIDERS.

[On Monday, US District judge Otis Wright cancelled a hearing on the case of the Joe Shuster estate's claim for his half of the copyright to Superman. This led many observers to think a decision was near. The Beat's legal expert, Jeff Trexler explains it's just not that simple.]

Oh yeah and speaking of Snow White...she's the subject of this year's Iowa State Fair butter sculpture. Butter sculpting is an Iowan specialty, and actually quite revered, ast least at the State Fair, where the practice goes back more than a hundred years. A woman named Norma "Duffy" Lyon was the Rodin of butter for many years, hewing majestic figures from the blocks of fat for more than 40 years, only passing the churn to her apprentice, Sarah Pratt, in 2006.

You may recall that earlier in the year, artist Colleen Doran's yard was being swarmed by adorable baby foxes. Well, Now it's under attack from lovable forest deer.

By Todd Allen I was wondering if we had a full-on exclusivity war brewing when I started hearing about publishers, particularly digital imprints going exclusive...

By Todd Allen The November solicitations for DC have been released.  As I was scrolling through them, I thought to myself, "that sure is a lot of...

Not a lot of details on this yet, but Twitter and Facebook are spreading the news that Joe Kubert has passed away.

MUST DO EVENT OF THE SEASON!

Afternoon diversion: Well, well, talk about tying up all our themes in one handy image, while tooling round we spotted the cover to the new edition of Women, Art, and Society by Whitney Chadwick, which covers:

This acclaimed study challenges the assumption that great women artists are exceptions to the rule who “transcended” their sex to produce major works of art. While acknowledging the many women whose contributions to visual culture have often been neglected, Whitney Chadwick’s survey reexamines the works themselves and the ways in which they have been perceived as marginal, often in direct reference to gender.

Mitch O'Connell is known as a wonderful artist in a vintage/pin-up style. He also has a huge collection of old comics. And at a perhaps unthinkable cost to himself, he's used that collection to give us one of the great treasures of our age: Sex in Comic! The top 100 strangest, suggestive and steamy vintage comic book panels of all time! Here are three excerpts but the whole thing has us gasping for air.

Brooklyn is, despite the gentrification covering a huge swath of the entire borough, still home to a few people who don't shop at Kitsuné; and most of these urban poor seem to be cartoonists, which Brooklyn also has a huge population. The local website Brokelyn catches up with a few of them for survival tips. Brendan Leach, Leslie Stein and Lisa Hanawalt, (whose book on farts for children is excerpted above) give their recipes for ketchup soup and other practical hints:

Koyama Press will be publishing Volume 4 of Dustin Harbin's Diary Comics this fall, presumably in time for the fall comics show circuit. If you can't get enough of @dustinharbin on twitter or his website, this collection should definitely amuse and enlighten.