Culture

Based on what we know of publishing data, August 8th, 1961 was the day FANTASTIC FOUR #1 arrived on newsstands. Tom Brevoort sent out a birthday tweet. Although there's talk of boycotts and justified anger over Marvel's shoddy treatment of some of its greatest talent over the years, we should still mark this day. Pairing the protean storytelling of Ditko and Kirby with the breezy populism of Stan Lee created some of the greatest adventure comics that have ever been, and we suspect they'll be read for another 50 years.

This is so cool. Nick Abadzis writes to remind us that his strips for the 25th Anniversary of Big Planet Comics has ended: a series of gorgeous alternate endings to his GN LAIKA, about the dog who went into space ... and never came back. Four strips are up here, with tributes to "Stan and Jack (Stan referring to both the Man and Kubrick), and several iterations of how the story could've turned out." The final episode definitely calls out for a sequel/spin-off.

Here's a widely distributed pic of Henry Cavill in Man of Steel (via The Beat)...And here's one of Anne Hathaway as Catwoman in The...

Mr. Tony Lee, author of many Doctor Who and soon MacGyver stories, has posted some thoughts on guest behavior at cons, basically saying that if you are a paid-for guest, you should stay a guest after hours, and not just on the show floor.

There have been about 42 multigabillion reactions in the media to the new multi-culti-ultimate Spider-Man, and we're not going to link to all of them, but here are the three best that have crossed our desk today. Perhaps we'll update this post if more good ones come in. • As you can see Stephen Colbert weighed in last night with some funny, funny jokes. Colbert is an avowed comics fan with many crossovers in his resume already, including having Joe Quesada on as a guest, and guesting himself in an issue of Spider-man.

We've suggested here several times that if someone wants to make some easy money, get Adam West and William Shatner together in a movie as retired detectives who just wander around saying things. Admit it! You would listen to West's mahogany stylings and Shatner's stentorian cadences non-stop!

In one of my rebuttals to one of the idiotic racist postings on The Beat yesterday, I Almost....ALMOST made a reference to Glenn Beck along the lines of, "Glenn Beck should start a line of comics just for all the angry white men; sales would soar." And then I thought, oh that's too knee-jerk. What was I thinking?

Morgan Spurlock's documentary recapping the 2010 Comic-Con will premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, it's being reported. The film -- backed by a nerd pantheon of people like Stan Lee, Joss Whedon and Thomas Tull -- was show at last year's con and was expected to perhaps debut at this year's, but Spurlock is going for a bigger film venue in TIFF.

Well, HOLY CRAP. It's all done broke loose now, hasn't it. What the hell is going on? The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together. OR should that be: men and women, blacks and whites making COMICS together. It seems like "The Diversity Issue" in comics has exploded all over the place. It can't be silenced. It can't be swept under the rug. More accurately, its ISP can't be blocked. The intersquawk just won't let these issue die. Is it just a few malcontents who won't shut up? Is it a reflection of the world we live in? Or is it just that as we enter the Digital Age of comics (and everything else) infinite accessibility means that the broadening audience for comics needs them to step up and join the real world?

The must-read from yesterday is Michael Dean's look at the actual court documents ALSO, Spanish cartoonist Pepo Perez has his own comments on creator ownership, here in the Google translation. That's makes for some awkwardness, but also some great stuff.

The feud between dueling comics movies COWBOYS & ALIENs and THE SMURFS erupted in violence last night when COWBOYS star Harrison Ford ripped the head off a stuffed Papa Smurf handed to him my late night chat host Conan O'Brien. Ford's rage may have been misplaced, as COWBOYS AND ALIENS eventually edged SMURFS at the box office by a million buckaroonies or so. If nothing else, the incident set up a dandy idea for a sequel: COWBOYS VS LITTLE BLUE PEOPLE.

All of you folks who have been crying about diversity in comics had better be all over this! Marvel has revealed that the new Ultimate Spider-Man will be Hispanic/African-American teenager Miles Morales. A USA Today story broke the news and reveals that yes, Donald Glover's campaign to play Spider-Man was an influence on writer Brian Michael Bendis, although only as an indication that previous discussions about relaunching Spider-Man as a non-white character were on the right track.