Culture

When last we saw Archie Comics co-CEO Nancy Silberkleit, she was being slapped with a restraining order by Archie Comics and accused of some rather odd behavior. The widow of former Archie owner Michael Silberkleit, Nancy was accused of harassing Archie employees by yelling out words for genitalia at meetings and other odd stuff. Whatever the state of these internal affairs, Silberkleit is still out there using comics to teach children to read, according to a recent story about her visiting various elementary schools:

Toonseum, the Pittsburgh-based comics museum, has teamed with East End Brewing Company to produce Illustration Ale, a pen-and-ink friendly brew that has six different labels by illustrators. Ed Piskor has posted the process for his label which features Wally Wood:

Did you think I was going to miss this one? The noisy birds from the world's most popular mobile game are back with a new Christmas comic which is rolling out a page a day. See how the blue bird functions as the triplicate chorus, a la Huey Dewey and Louie?

The season of writer changes continues at DC. It's been rumored for weeks that Gail Simone left her co-writing duties on Firestorm. Today, DC confirms Simone's departure and names Joe Harris her replacement. Issue 7 will be his first.

How better to celebrate Fred Van Lente Day than with this gem by Ryan Dunlavey, his collaborator on Comic Book Comics, their history of comics comic. For more Van Lente goodness, check out the first link for a preview of his book with Sarah Oleksyk.

Bully's running theme this month is Christmas in Duckburg -- nobody got into the holiday spirit better than Carl Barks!

Once they teamed up to fight dull comics and superhero tropes with the twin pillars of 80s dark and edgy -- THE DARK KNIGHT and WATCHMEN -- but now they find themselves on opposite sides of a political battle! Okay it's not really a fight, it's middle-aged comics creators speaking their minds, but Alan Moore has rebutted Frank Miller's disparaging comments on the Occupy Wall Street movement. While Moore's work has actually become something of a symbol for the various protest movements springing up around the world as the V for Vendetta mask has become an icon at the rallies, Miller called the protesters losers who needed to go home to their momma's basement. And as usual, Moore just has no time for it:

Let's get our Christmas art parade kicked off with Japanese artist Tsuneo Sanda, one of the best known contemporary Star Wars artists -- because nothing says Christmas like Yoda. Every Star Wars Christmas image brings back distant memories of the "Star Wars Holiday Special" and Bea Arthur's bravura performance as the cantina owner. And the burning question "What do you get a wookie for Christmas (when he already owns a comb)?"

I happened across Iron Man 2.0 Vol. 1: Palmer Addley Is Dead at the library and thought I'd give it a go. I'd given the monthly version a look, but it hadn't held my attention. Sometimes, a comic reads better as a book and I've enjoyed Nick Spencer's T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and Infinite Vacation.

By Todd Allen A couple weeks back, BOOM! issued a "visual press release" about Grant Morrison's and Ian Gibson's "Steed and Mrs. Peel."  This caused...

About once a year, we give Stately Beat Manor a really good going-over — tossing out unwanted pamphlets, moving some stuff into storage, organizing permanent additions and so on — and after doing so we write a post with our thoughts about storage and hoarding and so on. This is that post, c. 2011. I assume most of you reading this are borderline hoarders, like The Beat. Your shelf porn resembles a splatter film. You have more longboxes than you do pieces of silverware. Your home contains at least one Billy. You have at one time -- perhaps even at this very moment -- made use of some kind of software to catalog your collection even if it was just Excel or Google spreadsheets. You know the drill.

It's the Hope Diamond of the comic book set. The one-of-a-kind 9.0 graded copy of ACTION #1 that once belonged to actor Nicolas Cage is going on the auction block -- and it is expected to set a record for a comic price. The comics loving actor purchased the copy -- the finest of ACTION #1 known to exist -- in 1997 for $150,000. It was then stolen from his house in 2000 and vanished from history until it was found in a California storage unit last year. According to ComicConnect's Vincent Zurzolo -- the go-to man for all comics collectible lore -- the stolen comic was actually tracked down and traced to a man who had purchased it from the owner of the contents of the unit. Will someone please make a movie about this investigation?