The Beat

Tom Spurgeon is relocating from New Mexico to Columbus, OH this week. I can only imagine how stressful that is—some tweets posts about...

Awards season is barreling along now. And here are the nominees for the LA Times Book Prizes, which added a graphic novel category several years back. It's a prestigious literary prize, and the winners over the years—Duncan the Wonder Dog, Finder, Today is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life among them—have definitely lived up to the billing. This year's five books chosen include what I would almost call the usual suspects for 2014:

It would be easy to mock this Jen Teasdale-style column in the Norfolk Daily News where a woman goes to find some comics in her local bookstore but finds only superheroes and not Little Lulu, but I think there is a lesson in it. The tone is not the anger you sometimes find —"That's not MY Aquaman!"—but rather curiosity.

With Agent Carter plugging up the airwaves with awesomeness, it’s time for the comics to start integrating period pieces back into the fold. Enter...

After using the powers of social media to unlock a new trailer, we see the Avengers in a hopeless battle against Ultron! He's only one robot, what is the problem??? Nice character moments for the Black Widow and Cap, as we see the Avengers facing a host of CGI adversaries, and a ton of CGI building coming crashing down! And I nuanced take on the aqua/orange color scheme of all movies with a more roin's egg blue and light bisque patina.

Wordless! is a collaboration between artist Art Spiegelman and musician Phillip Johnston—but it's really about Frans Masereel, Lynd Ward, and Milt Gross. The...