Culture

My essay on Marvel and DC as dedicated safe spaces for male-focused entertainment got quite a bit of talk going, which is the best possible reaction to any essay. Several very smart people wrote rebuttals, and these posts also generated very thoughtful comment sections.

Marvel have announced Kieron Gillen and Greg Land as the creative team behind what is certainly going to be the Iron Man relaunch

Friday's Olympics Opening Ceremony was perhaps the most deliriously audacious spectacle of the Internet age. Devised by the Anglo-Irish Danny Boyle, it celebrated the uniquely English heritage of industrialization, socialized medicine, drug-inspired music trends, James Bond, and fantasy literature. God, how did I even write that sentence?

It's time for ICV2's annual sit down with the DC publisher, or in this case, co-publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee. As is usually the case, DiDio is more the quotable provocateur. And boy, did he drop a bunkerbuster of a bomb in this one...

Marvel's best characters (minus Ursa Major) have been assembled into a team for a series of bizarre webisodes online, for poorly-defined reasons which seem to amount to WELL WHY NOT?

“I have spent 17 years in the dark, wondering what the readers of my stuff really wanted,” wrote Barks to Willits. “It would be an enlightening experience to talk to one. In the event you phone, my wife will answer the call, my hearing aids which are okay for ordinary conversation are shuttery for telephonic jazz.”

Because bums are always funny, we couldn't resists linking to the Jef UK/ Paul Ahern webcomics Time Bum earlier today. But then we were reminded via Twitter that the great Michael Kupperman already did a Time Bum comic which you can read here and here and here and here.

A digital magazine about...digital comics? Why didn't anyone think of that before?

Daniel Clowes is in the news! So much going on.

It would almost be self-aggrandizing to praise Noelene Clark's recent women in comics piece in the LA Times, since I"m quoted so extensively in it, but I'm happy to say that the bulk of the cartoonists she spoke with were also proponents of the idea that I often promote here: women have already had massive, historic success in the comics industry, and at this point those outlets that aren't adapting to the wave of female readers and creators are truly out of step with the times, and not the trendsetters.

Fresh off a successful Kickstarter fundraiser, and with a little help from Alternative Comics and Wow Cool, Ted May's Injury #4 is fully loaded and ready for release. Complete with two chapters (one, a mid-eighties high schooler attempting to make it through morning detention and two, a continuation of a werewolf biplane pilot saga) it's hard not to get a kick out of May's depictions of non-stop gags and teenage nostalgia.

We don't know who came up with it, but it appears the heartbreak of crotchleg has been with us for a while and seems to be here to stay.