Entertainment

From various sources, great artists who like to do things their way, and have earned the right to do so. Plus, is it okay for R. Crumb to use the work of other, lesser cartoonists as scrap for his own work?

We didn't get a chance to cover Wizard World Philly this year, although Mike Manley promises his usual Babymen update, however as you can see from the above, as wrestler Lisa Marie Varon tweeted, it was a great chance for nerdlebrities to hang out.

It's been a while since we wrote about The Venture Brothers, our favorite psychoanalytical adventure satire cartoon, but the show's animatic editor, Thomas Bayne has organized an auction of Venture-related artwork, including storyboards, roughs and so on, with all proceeds benefitting Colbert Nation's Gulf of America Fund. Creator Jackson Publick writes:

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm is in interesting entry in the world of long-form cinematic Batman stories for a few different reasons. First, it manages to do what the Tim Burton movies were unable to — make Bruce Wayne/Batman the protagonist of his own story. Second, it’s primarily a detective story as opposed to an action story. Third, at least half of the story is told in flashback, a parallel-action setup ambitious for an animated movie thought of as primarily for kids. Lastly, the story it tells is rather emotional and internal — Bruce/Batman broods a lot in this movie, even by his own standards. The action sequences feel perfunctory and tacked-on. The two that come to mind — a truck chase and the explosive finale — are poorly motivated and don’t advance the plot in any meaningful way.

A Scott Pilgrim video game is coming from Ubisoft later this year as a downloadable game for Xbox Live Arcade and PSN. The game has been created with a retro 16-bit look and a soundtrack by chiptune band Anamanaguchi. Rating: Awesome.

Universal has released individual posters for the seven evil Exes that Scott PIlgrim must battle in the upcoming Scott Pilgrim Vs the Worls movie. In case you don't know them it's Satya Bhabha as Matthew Patel, Chris Evans as Lucas Lee, Brandon Routh as Todd Ingram, Mae Whitman as Roxy Richter, Shota and Keita Saito as Kyle Katayanagi and Jason Schwartzman as the Gideon Gordon Graves. Rating: Awesome.

Artist GB Tran has just relaunched his website, and he has a preview of VIETNAMERICA, a comics memoir to be published by Villard next...

In non-comics news, a slew of TV-show related Comic-Con news is beginning to flood the nets. Among the slebs expected to attend: Ron Perlman,...

Just to make sure no one skips buying the complete Lost on DVD and Blu-Ray (out August 24) ABC is including a bunch...

As we alluded to the other day, concept art for Chris Hemsworth as Thor and Chris Evans as Captain America have been leaked....or "leaked,"...

Well, well, it looks like things are shaping up for Joss Whedon's AVENGERS movie , as Oscar nominee Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) ahs joined the cast as Hawkeye. So far we have RDJ as Iron Man, Chris Evans as Cap, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, ScarJo as The Black Widow, and Don Cheadle as War Machine. That's a hefty and costly lineup of stars, but thrifty Marvel is asking the actors to take pay cuts and otherwise watching the budget very, very closely, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

x17 has photos and video of Robert Downey Jr. stopping in at Meltdown to buy some comics, probably as research for an upcoming role, one would expect. Given that Downey's Iron Man won't be appearing in either CAPTAIN AMERICA or THOR, but is being saved for the all-star Avengers team-up, it's a pretty good bet that the comics he's picking up are Avengers related. As Jim McCann noted via Twitter, that included a Hawkeye-Mockingbird miniseries.