Culture

This Vanity Fairinterview with Stan Lee is FULL of awesomeness, and shows that Lee can still turn a quip like a young man of 70. But the bit that is getting the most excitement this day is the part where Stan answers the question he dodged in MALLRATS all those years ago -- the one about whether the Thing's junk was made of orange rock. Only they didn't call it junk back then--they called it a dork!

This Saturday marks the first occurance of a new comics event claiming to be "The Capital's Bohemian Comic Show" and seemingly replacing the now defunct UK Web & Minicomix Thing UK Web & Minicomix Thing .

Oh, PS, until they make that Spider-Man: The Musical opera, here's Ward Sutton's more humorous take.

Speaking of Vermont, Beat Spy Inky Jen passed along this epic photo of a huge Batman carved from the icy terrain spotted by a passing motorist/blogger. (Click link for larger image.)

For a while last night, Twitter and Facebook were a parade of laughs as a number of prominent comics pros were struck by a hacker who commandeered their tweets and status updates to suggest that "I just viewed my TOP10 Profile STALKERS. I can't believe my EX is still checking me every day." Really no fun for the hackees, but it was amusing to watch unfold. Poor Ed Brubaker was hard hit, and Chip Zdarsky suggested it was getting really out of control. Okay, maybe you had to be there.

"On a November day in 1957 I found myself standing in front of Miss Grosier’s first grade class in Hillcrest Elementary School in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, trying to think of a really good word. She had us play this game in which each kid had to offer up a word to the class, and for every classmate who couldn’t spell your word, you got a point--provided, of course, that you could spell the word. Whoever got the most points received the coveted gold star."

It's international Women's Day, yo. To celebrate, let's watch this video of Judi Dench (M) interrogating Daniel Craig (uh, James Bond) who appears in drag. "We're equals, aren't we, 007?" asks Dame Dench. Let's also look at the day in nerd gender relations. There was much tweeting yesterday about the new TCJ.com and the number of lady contributors. Melinda Beasi at Manga Bookshelf sums up the whole thing, and the comments have it out and then everyone sat down and ate a hearty lunch.

As long rumored, the much maligned Comics Journal website has re-launched with a new editorial team: Dan Nadel and Tim Hodler, founders of the Comics Comics website and zine, will bring their view of contemporary comics to the hallowed brand of TCJ.com. Hodler started things off with an editorial which, amazingly, did not talk about how crappy websites are; insead it laid out a pretty exciting vision for the new site:

This site is divided into several sections which will continue to grow over the days and weeks and months to come: Feature articles, including lengthy interviews, investigative journalism, and long-form critical and historical essays; regular columns on a variety of subjects; a steady stream of book reviews; thorough and easily navigated event listings; an ever-growing archive of The Comics Journal‘s thirty-plus years as a print magazine (by the end of 2011, each and every issue will be online)—this will be available in full to magazine subscribers only; and of course this daily blog, which will be a catch-all for short items, selective link-blogging, and a forum for guest voices and bad jokes.

The long awaited Wizard World Digital magazine has debuted, and it's basically a pdf that you can read on your computer or iWhatever.

Although comics are such a cool, welcoming place that sometimes it seems no one ever goes away, that isn't true. People drop in and out all the time. Two recent blog posts rack down some of the most missed MIAs. At Comics Comics, the indie side of things gets covered with Frank Santoro and friends recalling Guang Yap, (above) Joel Orff, Jeff Nicholson among others. The long comments thread brings u many other memories and ideas of Things That Are Best Left Forgotten:

They just don't make 'em like they used to. UPDATE WITH DANZIG!!!

Last night Bosch Fawstin, the former-Muslim-turned-ant-jihadist crusader, was quizzed on the Daily Show regarding his alarm over Nightrunner, Batman's parkour-practicing Muslim French sidekick. Aasif Mandvi does the interviewing, and he also gets Chris Sims (one 'm') from Comics Alliance to explain what's happening from a comics blogger point of view.