Culture

Do you know where your towel is? Friday is the day to show everyone what a hoopy frood you are!

If you've seen the Avengers, you understand what the headline is about. If not... turn back for a spoiler will follow.

Dara Naraghi has been running a features on his blog called Indie Cover Spotlight where he goes through his longboxes and pulls out the amazing, unlikely, and just plain forgotten indie comics of yore, say, like this cover of something called STAR RANGERS by Dave Dorman, a loving tribute to Fredric Wertham.

Everyone does seem to be all hot and bothered about DC's gay superhero announcement. The really odd thing about all the hubbub is it really doesn't seem to have been planned out ahead of time... and as such, the June solicitations show perhaps a slightly different picture than all the buzz. Let's look at the actual timeline for all this:

Well here's a new Kickstarter campaign for a comics memoir by former DC staffer Scott Young which promises some first-class lid ripping including the legendary comics scandal known as "Compgate":

by Casey Burchby

Frank Frazetta’s prodigious and varied output is given even more breadth by a new collection from IDW of the artist’s humor work. The contents of Frazetta – Funny Stuff date from the late 1940s, when he was still just a kid, really, and still a long way from the cavemen, exotic temptresses, movie posters, and cover paintings that would come to define his work. Yet, as Frazetta told The Comics Journal in 1994, “The funny stuff is the real me.”

I usually don't comment on my activity or lack of it any more, but I have pressing matters which preclude commenting on some of the big stuff going on—I'm still working on that damn TCAF report—including the ongoing Jack Kirby/Avengers/creators rights matter. Or the matter of the day as I like to call it. I've been saving up my links and girding my loins. I guess I feel a bit defensive about it because not commenting on something is often attacked as condoning this or supporting that. My thoughts are complex and I don't want to dash something off; it's too important for that.

GAIMAN fans alert! If you're looking to take your Sandman collection to the next level, lucky for you, an "all-ten-volumes-in-one-slipcase-edition" will be coming your way in November.

Roger Langridge mentioned in a podcast that he was done with Marvel and DC (OK, he wasn't working with DC... but he's planning on keeping it that way) a little while back. The story has popped up again over at the Washington Post's Comic Riffs blog. This time out, the emphasis is clearly on Jack Kirby and The Avengers movie.

Torsten gave a fantastic review of things to do this weekend but I'll focus on two fun events for the Maine and Washington people, who desperately should enjoy themselves while the sun is still out!

There's so many cartoonists working at Cartoon Network we couldn't fit 'em all in one post! Here is Part Two featuring interviews with cartoonists/animators Calvin Wong, Rebecca Sugar, John Pham and many more.

As the UK's big three-weekend rolling convention rolls on, Kapow! is the big multimedia/Big Two and Image/mancave convention, with movie premiere stuff, Joe Quesada, Dan DiDio, Eric Stephenson, Jonathan Ross, and even Warren Ellis and Peter Serafinowitz. The show is being held at the fairly intimate London Business Design Centre—total capacity is about 6500 people—and all tickets are already sold out, meaning there will be no walk-up tickets at all—so mastermind Mark Millar's wish to give the UK a mini San Diego has come true.