Entertainment

Steve Bissette is second to none when it comes to well-sourced, exhaustively thorough and stimulatingly thoughtful writings on culture, so his new book TEEN ANGELS & NEW MUTANTS should be quite the read. ... Amazingly, while EW's comics coverage has been spotty of late, here's an awesome interview with Bissette in Shelf Life : Brat Pack is not a graphic novel that tends to get mentioned in the same breath as, say, Watchmen or The Dark Knight Returns, when people talk about all-time great comics.

Now that the drama had ended, and the show has gone on, some of the folks associated with the epic Spider-Man musical revamp are talking about their roles in it. Playwright/comics scribe Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa pens his memoirs of how he came to help rewrite the show and it's quite sunny in tone, but also gives his side of it for the first time:

So much good stuff! Bestselling author Christopher Moore writes a graphic novel! Ray Bradbury, Grandmaster, has two classics adapted! Grant Morrison writes about superheroes and religion! Disney and Hitler, together again! Girlie comics from Marvel! "Good Girl" comics from Jim Silke, Doug Sneyd, and Dean Yeagle! Great Women comics from Gail Simone, Colleen Coover, Megan Kelso, Jill Thompson, and Corinne Mucha! (Can't find female creators on the newsstands? Check the bookshelves!) And lots of masterful work from Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, Jim Starlin, and Floyd Gottfredson!

Based on this trippy preview, we'd say probably. This stage show opens July 19th in the UK, and arrives in America in 2012.

While Captain America's sugartastic ice cream and donut tie-ins have been causing a lot of comment -- and cavities -- here's a new comic book movie tie-in that is frighteningly hip: a lens/case pak for Hipstamatic, the trendy and addictive photo app for iPhones that produces instantly professional looking photos thanks to filters and levels. Director Jon Favreauannounced it on Twitter:

Not since Star Trek waffles (I'm not kidding) has a movie had so many unconventional food tie-ins as Captain America: The First Avenger. Clearly this called for a review in the interest of science journalism. So while visiting my parents for the Fourth of July weekend, I decided an expedition into patriotic tie-in food was required and resolved to try and review it all, a project which revealed one vitally important fact - apparently Americans really, really like patriotic donuts.

To find out that one of your regular drinking pals had quietly snuck off into the desert and directed a movie is always a surprise -- when it's Garth Ennis who did the sneaking it's a delightful surprise.

Anina Bennett wrote to share the cover to FUTURAMA #57, a steampunk story which includes a mashup of acerbic robot Bender with historical chameleon robot Boilerplate (created by Paul Guinan and Bennett) called...Benderplate. It had to happen.

An Englishman and a Scotsman talk about Doctor Who. Of Course.

If you were wondering when a Game of Thrones comic book would show up, it's been in the works for quite a while from Bantam Books and Dynamite The first issue is due in September. Daniel Abraham writes, Tommy Patterson draws, and Alex Ross and Mike S. Miller will provide the covers. Martin had a previous comics encounter when the Dabel Brothers adapted his Hedge Knight Books.

Jeff Kinney's Wimpy Kid series get profiled revealing that is has now joined such publishing behemoths as Twilight and Stieg Larsson - indeed only the late Swedish author beat Kinney as best selling author in the US last year. The piece expands a bit on how YA publishing is still strong as other genres fade:

Kate Beaton shows us how to celebrate with her Strong Female Characters®.