Culture

As you may have read, a gunman down in Panama City, Florida walked into a school board meeting, sprayed a V for Vendetta symbol on the wall, walked around with a gun, making a lot of statements, started shooting and eventually was shot by a deputy, then killed himself. (Reports differ on this, but the most credible reports are that he used his gun on himself.) This video is pretty unbelievable, especially the part where a woman sneaks behind him and whacks him with her purse. And gets worse from there.

Things are winding down for the holidays. The Beat is no exception. We'll be on holiday starting next week, and this time we really mean it. Almost no internet. We'll have a few elves looking in, but posting will be pretty perfunctory through Christmas. We will be posting some holiday art for the next few days so send us links or JPGs...but only through Friday. After that we're gone, baby, gone. Looking forward, we'd like to note that we're already booking advertisements into 2011. The top banner is sold out until April, and there are only scattered openings after that.

Cartoonist Matt Bors, who recently went to Afghanistan undercover, writes to tell us about Cartoon Movement, a new site devoted to editorial comics from a worldwide cadre of cartoonists. In his letter he notes that "Unlike other websites, we pay our contributors and and are working to make this a sustainable enterprise." He'll be covering his Afghanistan trip for the site. Above cartoon by Israel's Shlomo Cohen. PR below.

Once I was paid to review websites. In a magazine. And look what was cutting edge in 1997 in the pages of CMJ Monthly.

Back in August we noted that the upcoming Yogi Bear movie appeared to be horror film about deviant sex, based on the perverted poster. When we finally saw the trailer in theaters, we suggested in jest that shooting the filmmakers was the only way to stop this abomination. It turns out someone had a similar idea. Except it was instead to show Booboo shooting Yogi to get a measly $5000 in blood money reward.

Jody Culkin is an artist, photographer, and teacher. Thanks to being married to PW comics maven Calvin Reid, she's also a veteran of many comics and book shows. Camera in hand, she has chronicled the activities and faces of the past seven or eight years of comic cons -- her work can often be found in PW Comics Week.

But she also has a hobby.

Fandom's deadliest duo are back: Ragnell (Lisa Fortuner) and Kalinara (Melissa Krause) are two writers who founded the link blog When Fangirls Attack and set off a whole generation of conversation and outrage. A few years ago they passed WFA to others due to real life stuff -- Ragnell is in the Armed Forces, and Kalinara was in school -- but it's kind of foundered since they left -- two posts explaining why there are no posts since October. So R&K are back with a NEW link blog Dispatches From The Fridge,

Awesome-o.

Last month someone asked me if there had been more "indie" titles in the top 300, or if the high cut off rate for...

I see Saruman was at the Fantagraphics Bookstore Anniversary party on Saturday. It's good to see him getting out of Isengard more. [Via twitter but lost the link!]

It’s Kyle Baker’s birthday today so wish him a happy birthday over on Facebook, visit his blog, leave a comment, and buy tons of...

Although my "official" news story about last weekend's Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival was published in PW Comics Week, I still had some pictures I wanted to put up. Over all it was an awesome day. Not much more to say. I thought last year, set in a dramatic blizzard, would be hard to top for that special something, but the cheerful, can-do spirit of this show equalled that. Everyone seemed to be finding like-minded souls to share their work. As I said several times, "Who knew so many people liked good comics?"