Culture

Can you help identify these pioneers? At first we were amazed at the number of girls there but then remembered it was the 70s and everyone has long hair. Also, maybe it's just those 70s fashions, but nerds of the 70s would totally be Williamsburg hotties today. Finally, notice how slim they are, in a world where high fructose corn syrup didn't exist.

Dash Shaw and Frank Santoro have been working on this teaser for THE RUINED CAST, a new Shaw animation project which includes the Shavian staple of a family in crisis near a body of water, and looks very mind trippy. The final product will be a full length animated feature to be directed by Shaw and produced by Howard Gertler and John Cameron Mitchell. Warning: NSFW if your W does not like male frontal.

Clowes, an illustrator for the "New Yorker," is traditional in other ways, too. At a time when print is down and young cartoonists are turning to the Web, Clowes still draws everything by hand — "I'll never type in a url to look at comics," he says — and he was so shaken when Cody's Books closed in Berkeley that he relates it to how a Catholic would feel if the only church in town shut its doors.