Entertainment

Spider-Man stars Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone have been spotted canoodling as they shopped around NYC. The pair play Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy in this year's THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN. While cast romance is manufactured or encouraged by press agents, some thespians can't help falling in love — or lust — with their co-stars. Or sometimes two cute kids just can't resist going steady. Somewhere, Jim Carrey is crying.

Another gender clash in the comics world....so soon??? YES. The title and trailers for that Kevin Smith Secret Stash comic book store show we mentioned a while ago have been revealed and it's called COMIC BOOK MEN, a fact which saddened Jill Pantozzi -- she and other comics-wise females had auditioned for the show:

Looks like we might not get that "New Manhattan" live-action version of AKIRA after all. I know you're all crying. Maybe Warner Bros. knows that too, as they shut down the Vancouver production office:

We don't know HOW we missed this story when it originally broke as we're such huge fans of The Brick Testament at Stately Beat Manor. Lest you forget, this is one man's crazy 10-year quest to retell the Bible using Legos a gargantuan task of posing and photographing, not to mention compression. When the book came out in November, we were all over that shit, and so, originally, was massive ass market retailer Sam's Club and religious bookstores, who thought that a version of the Bible told in colorful brick would appeal to children.

As we've mentioned here several times, there have been no more important graphic novels published in this century than PERSEPOLIS by Marjane Satrapi and FUN HOME by Alison Bechdel. Both found large audiences well beyond the traditional ones for comics, and both have become oft-imitated -- but never duplicated -- by book publishers trying to cash in on the "graphic novel" trend. (The number of graphic autobiographies exploring ethnic roots alone is staggering.)

I look back and recall the interesting events of 2011. What's my choice for the biggest event of 2011? Read and find out!

Listen to Heidi MacDonald, The Beat herself, discuss 2011 in comics on a special year-end edition of More To Come, the PW Comics World podcast! As you may or may not know, Heidi has been one of the hosts of our bi-weekly comics news podcast for the past several months. In this episode, Heidi MacDonald and her co-hosts PW Comics World editor Calvin Reid and I discuss the biggest trends and events of the past year, including...

Ever play "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon"? I present the geeky version! (And give a link to a nerdy version as well!) Happy New Year!

Tom Neely's HENRY AND GLENN FOREVER comic is a classic mini that envisions two punk icons -- Black Flag's Henry Rollins (once of Black Flag) and Glenn Danzig (once in the Misfits) -- as a gay couple with sitcom problems -- dealing with jealousy, having Hall and Oates over for dinner. Imagine a punk METALOCALYPSE you can put in your pocket. Danzig -- a notoriously feisty scrapper who's been known to pop people in the snoot and once was a credible choice to play Wolverine -- is no stranger to comics. He once ran his own Verotik line and was a pioneer of the comics Nerdlebrity. However, his reaction to the comic has been crabby ranting. Now Rollins, who is also a published poet and photographer, has gone on the record with his own response, in a video interview with Narduwar the Serviette. The bit begins at about 6:18.

Ever heard of a UK import called "Misfits?" I've heard it described as "Heroes, but better." Actually, I'd say closer to a mash-up of Heroes, Smallville and the Nathan Barley/Snuffbox school of very dark British humor. And yes, it is better than Heroes. Especially Heroes after the first season.

While they don't equate him with a miracle, Disney stablemates ESPN and Marvel have teamed up for a brief cartoon painting Tebow as a superhero. The segment is barely a minute long, and really only features some stills drawn in the mighty Marvel style, so "minimum comics content." And no Tebowing.

Via their Facebook page, the upcoming Spider-Man reboot movie posted some stills. Surely Jim Carrey is very excited now over this still of Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy, as well as Captain Stacy and Peter Parker in action. Is it just us or has this Spidey reboot hype kind of gotten lost in the Batman/Avengers shuffle?