Culture

Before she was a much admired editor at DC and Vertigo, Joan Hilty was a talented cartoonist, and somehow she managed to keep both running for nearly a decade. She's just launched JoanHilty.net to showcase all her skills. The site includes new episodes of her strip Bitter Girl, excerpt above.

Tonight at the Barrientos Mexican-American Cultural Center there is a SXSW Interactive evening event called Plutopia: The Future of Play that anyone can attend. Many speakers will focus on the converging technologies of the science field with arts and entertainment via film, demonstrations, performance art.

Dawn broke over the town and I slept the hell right through it. The panels of SXSW Interactive did not start until the afternoon and like a true ol' fogey, I spent the morning walk to the Austin Convention Center complaining about the businesses that had closed and what had been thrown up its place. Kerbey Lane with local art on the walls and pancakes of the day made the list of places to eat because the queso is an optional side like ketchup or chipotle mayo (I guess that one is rather new too).

Austin's South By South West has long been hailed THE place to play your new Renaissance-powered noise band or screen your documentary on the failings of mankind. As a former Austinite myself, I know the activity of the town pulses as if the city itself is running a marathon. The University of Texas students are off on Spring Break allowing for a different sort of tourist to take their spaces at the taco carts, oddly-named bars (hello, Mooseknuckle) and marvel at the bats of Congress Bridge.

Dave McKean and Italian comics artist Lorenzo Mattotti will be in London this weekend and will be hold a discussion concerning Celluloid (McKean's upcoming graphic novel), Stigmata (Mattotti's recent graphic novel from Fantagraphics), and who knows what else.

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.