Culture

Fox has been holding back on the January Jones/White Queen lingerie shots for X-MEN: FIRST CLASS but The Hollywood Reporter is delivering with some shots in era-appropriate (and now fetishized) garb.

NY Mag's Vulture blog goes where no man had dared: How Vulnerable Are Superheroes’ Crotches? A Vulture Investigation, providing a detailed look at how the Magnuttos have been protected in various superhero films. Some -- Night Owl, Thor -- keep everything in one iron-clad package, but others -- Spider-Man, Green Hornet -- just leave the family jewels sitting out there. Tsk tsk tsk.

Via Yesterday's Papers, aging goodness from Knockout.

Since the announcement that Wonder Woman pilot had not made NBC's schedule, there has been no dearth of analysis about what it says about Wonder Woman, about us, about women, about...EVERYTHING, dammit. The Wonder Woman pilot getting dropped may just be the most significant event of our time! First off, a picture of the variant "shorts" costume has been making the rounds. Would showing a bit more thigh have tipped the balance for the show? Probably not. With Wonder Woman nothing can ever, ever be simple.

The notorious 1990 Comics Journal interview with Jack Kirby is now online in its entirety, and you can see what made it notorious. The 71-year-old Kirby was not shy about asserting his place in the creation of comics' best known characters and at the expense of his collaborators.

The Maine Comics Art Festival gains momentum with each passing year like the gentle fog we kept hoping would come visit this year. The Saturday night before the show started out just right with a stop off at Casablanca Comics.

Archaia is making some moves, both with a new distributor -- PGW -- and its first illustrated novel, strong>Conspiracy of the Planet of the Apes. Buried in a PR on the Ape book is the news that Archaia is leaving Diamond for PGW, which already distributes Cartoon Books. PGW distributes over 100 independent publishers, so picking up a few GN publishers makes sense. And Archaia's new books-only plan is also a good bit for a books-only distributor.

Because that last item was a little gloomy, here's Anita Olin's story of how she got into reading comics, from tis month's Sequential Tart:

By now you have all seen the above image, which swept through social media yesterday with the tagline "Macho Man prevented the Rapture." In a world seemingly without order, connecting the senseless (and very sad) death of Randy "Macho Man" Savage, and the impending Rapture predicting by Harold Camping (inexplicably still alive) would seem to give us some joy. But where did it come from? Such viral images come and go so quickly on the internet, we thought it would be informative to see what we could come up with as an origin story.

Many people probably have only heard of Biblical scholar Harold Camping now that his readings of the Scripture have revealed that the Rapture is coming tomorrow, Saturday May 21st, and we all have only a few hours to say our goodbyes. Since we'll be somewhere at the Big Apple Con tomorrow when the big event occurs, you can bet we'll be ready for the end to be nigh. However, we've actually been Camping "fans" for years!

The Maine Comics Arts Festival is in its third year of providing Portland, Maine - Yes, the other Portland - with a wide array of comics by East Coast cartoonists. Sitting on the beautiful waterfront, attendees and exhibitors will be graced by a fantastic view of the water and the perpetual fog that sleeps atop Portland.

The war between cars and wrestlers has claimed another victim. Randall "Randy Savage" Poffo, who thrilled the wrestling world with his hysterical rumblings and grumblings as Macho Man, died in a car crash this morning at age 58. He reportedly suffered a heart attack while behind the wheel, and veered across traffic into a tree. His wife of one year was also in the vehicle but was not seriously injured.