Culture

As you may know, in recent years, the Padres are scheduled to be on the road during Comic-Con, to alleviate congestion down by the...

Now, that is funny.

I was walking through the aisles at BEA (BookExpo America -- the biggest book industry event of the year) a few weeks ago; the...

Okay, we've restocked our load of piss and vinegar and we've loaded our shotgun for bear! UNTIL WE TELL IT, WE JUST CAN"T MOVE ON! My first "Complaints" post drew a bit of private praise, especially from those who welcomed a return to more pointed commentary. To which I say, I'd love to do more of it but I was literally up until dawn writing that first one (I'm ssslllooowww) and this one will take just as long. Especially since this time I"m taking on everyone's FAVORITE SUBJECTS: Race and gender. It's a good thing comics never talk about religion or we'd be here all night and day! And if I can predict one thing with dead certainty it's this: Gene PHillips will show up in the comments.

Click the link if you dare.

This week: Boom! Studios dives into digital-distribution breach; more on green, pink and blue people and race in comics; Marvel and DC Comics advertisement behemoths for September; the clunkiness of Ex Machina; and a troika of must-read Grant Morrison reprints.

Sean T. Collins stumbled upon a bunch of old strips and what nots that Kevin Huizenga had been digitally squirelling away, and got very excited, and who can blame him. They are aces.

Listen up. I know the shit you've been saying behind my back. You think I'm stupid. You think I'm immature. You think I'm a malformed, pathetic excuse for a font. Well think again, nerdhole, because I'm Comic Sans, and I'm the best thing to happen to typography since Johannes fucking Gutenberg.

If you follow our twitter feed, you may have gathered that The Beatwas once again on the road last week, and the week before, and before that it was moving, and a holiday and before that BEA and before that...oh I don't know what it was but it was something. It's been even crazier than usual, and we're definitely been shirking our blogging duty. Along the way we've been storing up all these hot news stories to add our own snark dignified commentary to, but we never had the time to build up a full head of steam. And based on the longer-than-anticipated lifespan of some of these "controversies," they deserved a full measure of well thought out snark dignified commentary, and not something half tossed off while I was babysitting or eating a piece of chicken or whatever. Which is a roundabout way of saying, yeah, this is all belated, but at least I'm not holding a chicken bone. As some kind of lagniappe, I will scatter a bit of my own reportage of things i saw/heard with my OWN EYES AND EARS over the last little while. Enjoy.

Via David Macho

Although there has been no official confirmation, close family friends have reported that EC artist Al WIlliamson has passed away. The youngest of the EC artists, Williamson joined the legendary crew at the age of 20, finding kindred spirits in

Frank Frazetta, Roy Krenkel and Angelo Torres

, the group known as the "Fleagle Gang." All shared a love of classic illustration -- influenced by Alex Raymond and Hal Foster -- which found expression in a lush, romantic style based in classical drawing.

Dealer Robert Beerbohm appears to have found a copy of a French comic book from either 1844 or 1856, called The History of Mr. Tuberculus.