Culture

This iFanboy interview with a comics pirate who recently quit indicated that even among the scanning community, the good old days were awesome. Now, not so much.

This weekend's GeekGirl Con in Seattle sounds like it was a big success; both Saturday and Sunday sold out, and while the above news report doesn't make it look like it was sardine-land, maybe selling out before you get to that point is not a bad idea. Gail Simone has a lengthy write-up that deserves to be read in full; the idea of a female-run and female-centric convention seems to be fairly emblematic of the time and place we find ourselves in, and it sounds like the programming, in particular, was noteworthy:

Via The Horror of it All Blog, comes this Atlas story drawn by Everett Raymond Kinstler from the September 1953 issue of MYSTERY TALES #15. Crime does not pay!

The "Red Circle" line of superheroes—The Fly, the Shield and so on—has been bouncing around the industry for a while now -- first at Archie, then recently licensed to DC where they basically kicked back on the veranda with an iced tea. They're one of those little bits of IP that isn't always out in front but just seems too valuable to let go of entirely. Now Archie Comics is continuing its forward looking ways by bringing back their superheroes as a series of digital comics.

Today's image is pretty strong stuff so to see the whole thing, you'll have have to click on the thumbnail. It comes to us from Sam Costello, who writes:

This image is from our latest story, A Mother's Love, for Split Lip Comics. I wrote it and David Hitchcock (Whitechapel Freak, Springheeled Jack, etc.) drew it. The story is about a monster plaguing a small town in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

You can read the whole story here.

While others celebrate Columbus, we will celebrate Torsten Adair, who's become our regular weekend poster, keeper of the Coming Attractions, and master of the roundup. Torsten has been commenting at the Beat as long as there's been a Beat, and somewhere back in the mists of the Mesozoic Era we said "Hey, if you're going to write all that you might as well post it."

Here is a Village Voice interview with Marv Wolfman, which is interesting for many reasons. Because Wolfman is always a thoughtful commenter on the comics industry and its may pressures, but also because CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS --and NEW TEEN TITANS by the same Wolfman/Perez team -- is to the New 52 generation what Fantastic Four #1 (the 1961 one) was to so many before it. With its sweeping changes, dramatic deaths and multiple universes, it set the stage for many a crisis to come. And, famously, there was talk after CoIE of doing a line-wide issue #1 reboot. The idea lay dormant until now. But Wolfman points out that for an event to be an event it should have actual motivation:

Michel Fiffe's interviewing and archiving skills cannot be doubted -- nor, after his dynamic ZEGAS debut can his cartooning skills -- but this time out he offers a compelling survey of the often uneasy, sometimes brilliant crossover between indy and superhero esthetics:

by Matt Demers--

The other day, The Beat covered the launch of Champion!, a new iPad-only magazine that's being staffed by a number of former Wizard personnel. As a huge fan of the latter, I decided to load up the free preview issue and give it a look.

Inside, I was treated to a number of different features, including interviews with Jim Lee and Will Friedle, spotlights on toys and t-shirts and a number of off-beat features (such as comic creators' first books) that Wizard was famous for. However, capturing the spirit of the old magazine isn't the only good thing that Champion! is managing to pull off.

Well, this is kinda a big deal. The Small Press Expo has announced they are collaborating with the lIbrary of Congress on a collection that will showcase the work of indie cartoonists. However, before you plow through your boxes of stuff to ship 'em off, only SPX guests and exhibitors can have their work considered for collection. Luckily, that covers an astonishing number of important creators.

If you have been around the nerdier sectors of the net in the last decade you have surely seen The Brick Testament, by Brendan Powell Smith a loving recreation of the BIble's most gruesome, perverted and vengeful moment rendered in Lego brick men and women. What you may NOT have known is that the whole glorious thing is coming out this month in a paperback from Skyhorse.

In the interests of equal time to our male readers, we'd like to point out this story where a female Gizmodo writer did not feel comfortable dating Magic the Gathering World Champion Jon Finkel after she met him via OK Cupid: