Sociology

Italian fanzine Fumettologica has made an English transcript of their interview with Milo Manara available, and offered it to run at The Beat....

Yesterday the enduring appeal of the human female rump as an object of sexual desire was reaffirmed in two separate incidents. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDZX4ooRsWs Rapper Nicki Minaj...

Oh god where to begin. The short version is that Judge Dread artist Ulises Farinas calling out Yale Stewart over what Farinas deemed ill-advised charity efforts then led to Stewart, the artist of the webcomic JL8, being outed as a naked selfie sender, and then apologizing while putting his webcomic on hiatus.

Cartoonist MariNaomi is starting a database of cartoonists of color (COC) and you can upload your details as explained in the link. There's...

How is it that a mini series that was conceived six years ago can actually be a stunningly accurate mirror of this week's events in Ferguson, MO, where the shooting of an unarmed black teen led to days of police action that looked like something out of a Christopher Nolan Batman movie? Could it be that the issues of race, inequality and violence that Genius deals with are so important that they were just as clear six years ago?

This year marks the 60th anniversary of Fredric Wertham's influential and notorious Seduction of the Innocent, and Comic Con's programming schedule includes several panels...

The following game as a press release from Eventbrite, but its groundbreaking nonetheless, as Eventbrite andRob Salkowtz haveteamed to get even more demographics about...

I was asked not too long ago what was something I was proud of writing on The Beat, and it's actually something I didn't write. This post by political communications specialist Brett Schenker entitled Market Research Says 46.67% of Comic Fans are Female from February, was pretty groundbreaking. Why am I mentioning a six month old post? Well, people continue to quote it when they look for demographic information on comics readership, and it represents a solid benchmark in an area where there is shockingly little research. Schenker's research via Facebook, which he's graciously presented here, has been quoted in numerous articles and yesterday it was referenced in this Time.Com piece on the new female Thor. I tweeted it again and it got a whole new set of reactions on twitter from people who hadn't seen it the first time.

In last week's issue of Captain America, #22, two characters were shown having a few glasses of wine and tumbling into bed only to wake up the next morning wondering what happened. The characters in question were Sam Wilson, aka The Falcon, one of the few prominent African-American characters in both the Marvel comics and film universes. The woman was Jet Black, aka Jet Zola, the daughter of Arnim Zola. Although she runs around in a skimpy costume reminiscent of Leeloo from The Fifth Element, this is perhaps explained by her having been raised in an alien dimension. Although she was born only a few years ago in real world time, she has aged more in comics time.

We're off to HeroesCon in Charlotte later today and one of the many pleasures of that show is its relaxing and expansive Barcon; as opposed to other conventions where people scatter to their various drinking holes, pretty much everyone at HeroesCon stays in the same bar, and it's a great place to catch up with folks and maybe lay the foundation for future work. OR IS IT???

News broke yesterday that My LIttle Pony: Friendship is Magic creator Lauren Faust is going to direct Medusa, a full length animated feature,...

The issue of harassment at cons isn't going to go away, and seems to get highlighted more each day as women, men, organizers, cosplayers and interne bystanders deal with the growing injection of actual hormonal humans into abstract fan scenarios. When I went to shows as a youngster, I thought of cons as a "safe space" believe it or not. Compared to the rock scene I was involved with, the relatively few women in comics were in a mostly hands off zone, mostly because most congoers were afraid of them, and should anything amiss happen there was a huge crew of friends to back you up. Notice that I just said "COMPARED TO THE ROCK SCENE"; it was far from a paradise of equality, but I felt safer at a comic con than I did at most places.