Culture

"Once there was a way, to get back homeward, Once there was a way, to get back home Sleep pretty darling do not cry, and I...

Last night's season-ending episode of Fringe included a sideways universe, and that universe included an alternate version of DC, that had its own versions...

As the hours tick away toward the Television Event of the Decade, the New York Times giveth, the New York Times taketh away: Last night...

Today is the 30th anniversary of the release of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, probably the single greatest event in the history of nerddom. STAR WARS might have been new and cool and funny and fresh, but EMPIRE was all that AND sad and tragic and shocking and filled with the kind of terror and awe that the greatest storytelling inspires. From the frozen beauty of an icy horizon studded with AT-ATs, to the steaming green swamp where Luke Skywalker begins his archetypal but unique hero's journey, to the crimson horror of the carbon freezing chamber, to the primal red and blue of the final battle between Luke and Vader, no SF blockbuster has ever captured the imagination so cleanly and completely. It was grown up in an unself-conscious way that nothing to do with Star Wars would ever be again. (Almost certainly because it was the last one that producer Gary Kurtz would in involved with; after EMPIRE it was George Lucas all the way.)

Graphic Novel Reporter, the resource site for book industry professionals, has released a list of "core" graphic novels that librarians and store owners should consider basics to carry. The list starts with a basic ten book list:

o "Forget Everything You Know"

The major publishers started releasing their advertisements for comics shipping in August 2010. At DC, the big thing of the month is J. Michael Straczynski and Shane Davis's Superman: Earth One paperback, an original book-length reinvention of Superman at 136 pages, with a retail price of $ 19.99.

I'm inclined to say that there's potential in this move and it's about time and such, but then again, I'm not even sure how to measure that book's success right now. Will it have to reach people in bookstores to do what it's supposed to? Probably. On the other hand, though, I'm thinking that it could be a major step in the right direction even if it "just" manages to break, say, 25K in the direct market in its first month.

That sort of success would be a limited one, but in the long term, it might lead to a transformation of that market segment that the field as a whole could stand to profit from tremendously, even if it doesn't catch on with a mainstream audience immediately.

In other DC news, they're starting to test the waters for 22-page, $ 3.99 comics with the new ongoing series Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors, in addition to the previously launched miniseries Time Masters and The Mighty Crusaders.

Dear lord, what is coming out of this woman's vajayjay? People, dogs, monster claws, golden light, frayed denim. This one has it all. The...

Sean Kleefield alerts us to a preview of the Underground & Independent Comics, Comix & Graphic Novels site which appears to do for indies what the now vanished htmlcomics.com did for all comics...but here's the twist....it's...legit?

By the time the New York Times gets around to spotting a trend, that usually means it's something your grandma loves. IN this case, the recent manga implosion gives this New York Times spotlight on manga something of a more urgent undertone. The story focuses on budget cuts in the Queens library system, where the kids -- of widely diverse ethnicities -- have embraced the manga:

We haven't quite been following this story but some other folks have. It seems that a bunch of "legacy" characters at DC who were...

The young people of today can hardly be expected to understand the impact that Tim Burton’s Batman had on movie-goers in the summer of 1989. The general audience of 1989 knew Batman only as the campy, self-conscious, broad-daylight superhero of the Adam West TV show. Nothing in movies prepared viewers for this radical re-thinking of the character, the weird darkness of the themes, the dense, oppressive production design or Jack Nicholson’s performance as The Joker. All of it was alarming, electrifying stuff back then. (Of course, it was all familiar territory for people who had read The Dark Knight Returns and The Killing Joke, but that’s another story.)

Jill Thompson's Scary Godnmother has become something of a Halloween classic, with two animated specials that are still shown on Caqrtoon Network, and a...