Culture

From 1958's SUPERMAN'S GIRL FRIEND, LOIS LANE #5 Can you imagine what would have happened if the Internet existed in 1958? Perhaps people like Mort Weisinger could not exist in a wired world. Julie Schwartz would probably have been running a website and playing Halo.

Marvel Executive Editor Tom Brevoort has opened up some kind of secret vault where artifacts from Marvel's history have been stored; and just like anyone else would do, he's putting them on Tumblr. For instance, here's the origial last page of AVENGERS #1 with Tom's annotation:

By Todd Allen There's a sub-genre of espionage that's come to be called "Spy-Fi."  Spy-Fi is the blending of science fiction and spy stories.  It's...

The folks at MovieCLIPS have just released the TrailerCats version of the Dark Knight trailer, and as much as we like Tom Hardy, darned if Bane doesn't look just as scary when portrayed by a hairless cat. Plus, easier to understand.

The Romanian webcomic Fredo and Pid'jin, has been a big success for its creators Eugen Erhan and Tudor Muscalu, this piece at Next Web tells us, if by success you mean lots of links on Reddit and Digg. What emerges is the story of two guy with a dream and a webcomic about two evil pigeons out to conquer the world. Things looked low, but then a guy who works on the Simpsons came and told them they were on the right track, energizing them to carry on. But...questions remain:

Since everyone is always comparing the comics business to the music business in terms of retail erosion, howabout looking at a music success story? The New York Times has a profile of musician Cee Lo Green explaining how, despite the economic decimation in the music industry, he's been able to make some $20 million this year by rigorously branding himself and expanding his activities to including numerous TV hosting gigs, merchandising and Vegas. Along the way some interesting iTunes numbers are dropped. Although "F&^% You," Cee Lo's anthemic yet catchy song of moving on was downloaded some 5.3 million times in the US, that doesn't mean he made $5 million from it.

Nothing tops off a holiday like a nice slice of cheese. The Star Wars Holiday Special, in case you missed the briefing, aired for the first and only legitimate time on November 17, 1978. It was the very first filmed Star Wars spin-off and introduced to the Star Wars mythos Boba Fett, the planet of the Wookies, and Life Day. It also introduced to the Star Wars universe characters played by Art Carney, Harvey Korman and Beatrice Arthur -- all sitcom stars of the era. In case you haven't figured it out, it was a mystically horrific comedy/musical that was, if not the worst thing ever associated with Star Wars, then at least the most ludicrously inappropriate.

Cartoonist/writer/editor Dave Roman has created a Christmas Classic:

An EC classic by Johnny Craig for some holiday ho ho horror.

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From all of us to all of you -- the very happiest and safest of holidays.

Merry Christmas. I'll be watching some basketball today. The NBA has long tried to be to Christmas what the NFL is to Thanksgiving, and this year the league is even launching the season on Christmas. (If you don't know, don't ask. There was a work stoppage and it was ugly.) You may not realize it, but there's a smidgeon of crossover between comics and the NBA. Bill Jemas was fairly high up in the league offices YEARS before he joined Marvel. Remember the NBA Hoops trading cards that the league owned? That was Bill. Which led to Fleer. Which led to Marvel. Current Marvel EIC Axel Alonso has been speaking of basketball in his interviews of late. Marvel also did a neat cross-promotion with the NBA, ESPN and Wired last year, making up mock comic book covers merging Marvel characters with the various teams. Comics Alliance has an archive of it.