Rodanof42

alienswithankhs:

norttron:

expertinfailure:

alienswithankhs:

are they fucking serious with this spacesuit design

I’ve never seen an outfit defeats its purpose so horribly.

If the next panel isn’t her literally exploding I am writing a strongly worded letter to their science consultant

Whuh? -_o  What’s the point of that spacesuit.

At this rate I might need to make a tag for bizarre spacesuits.

(sent my way by benchbench)

Although this is the best time in recent comics history for sales and quality, the current sales success doesn’t come without an asterisk: the huge number of variants that almost every publisher is pumping out. Industry observer Johanna Draper Carlson does some math and concludes “Variant Covers Are Propping Up the Comic Market”. A look at this weeks shipping schedule revealed that nearly half of the periodicals shipping were variants:

This week (tomorrow), there are 167 comic books coming out. I took the list and removed digests, trades, books, magazines, and toys, leaving only comic issues, to get that number. By the way, there are 267 items total, so pity your comic store staff having to sort through all that.

Then I removed all variant and second printing covers, leaving a total of 95 line items. That means that 43% of the new comics for sale tomorrow are duplicates of something already released. Nearly half the market is variant covers.

Carlson also noted publishers that didn’t do variants: Alternative, Bongo, Kenzer & Company, Oni Press, and Titan. On the other hand, the following publishers all had a variant for every comic they published: Archie, Aspen, Avatar, Big Dog Ink, Boom!, IDW, Microcosm, Valiant and Zenescope. She was surprised that Marvel has relatively fewer variants than other publishers, but they make up for it by double and triple shipping.

Is a reliance on variants to boost sales the rotten core at the center of comics current success? It was speculation and variants that brought down the inflated tulip-craze-like comics boom of the early 90s. Is this more of the same?

As we’ve noted here before, we’ve checked in with retailers and they’ve all given a variation on the “I know what I’m doing this time,” response. They point to a stronger, more varied customer base, weeding out retailers who don’t know what they are doing, and some publisher restraint as factors that makes this variant boom less of a danger.

In fact, my gut feeling is that it isn’t the comics business that’s in jeopardy here, but the publishers who rely too much on variants instead of quality material. Is it these companies that are being “propped up?”

In case you haven't heard yet, Grant Morrison recently offered his take on the end of The Killing Joke, the seminal 1988 story from Alan Moore and Brian Bolland. Widely considered one of the greatest Batman stories -- and possibly the greatest Joker story -- of all time, the ending is, arguably, a bit ambiguous. In an interview on Kevin Smith's "Fatman on Batman," Morrison said he believes that one-shot was Moore and Bolland's take on what would be a final Batman story --similar to Moore'sWhatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow? -- with the story ending when, in his mind, Batman chokes the Joker to death as he laughs maniacally.

The timing of this comment from Morrison is interesting, because I was talking about this scene a few days ago with a friend who I've been having this same argument with since 1998. She's on Team Morrison, believing that Batman kills the Joker as well. It's an interesting theory, and one I understand, but here's the thing: Not only do I think both my friend and Morrison are wrong, but I think Batman killing the Joker would make for a completely pointless story.

Continue reading…

chrisroberson:

billwalko:

awesomecomicthings:

Superhero Style Guides by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez

A master at work

These are the versions that live in my head.

ilovecharts:

Places Actually Discovered by Europeans

JIMMY: Super duper! I thought I heard a Bat-Rope outside the window!

ROBIN: Jimmy! Gotham City’s a long way from Metropolis, isn’t it?

JIMMY: Sure is, Robin! I’m on special assignment from the Daily Planet, covering that Egyptian Cat Statue exhibit at the museum with my pal Clark!

BATMAN: Where is Mr. Kent?

JIMMY: Oh, he had to run off for some reason. I wish he was a little more reliable, like Gotham’s millionaire philanthropist, Bruce Wayne!

ROBIN: Golly, Jimmy! You really aren’t from here! Most Gotham Citizens know that Mr. Wayne is often indisposed on fishing trips!

BATMAN: Best not to spread rumors, old chum. Come along! We can still catch up to that evil Egyptologist, King Tut!

PUNISHER: …

BATMAN: …

ROBIN: Uh…

PUNISHER: How about we just pretend we didn’t see each other?

BATMAN: Best to move on, old chum.

ROBIN: But aren’t you gonna —

BATMAN: I’m surprised at you, Robin! Respect for our military veterans is one of the most important aspects of our American way of life!

ROBIN: Gosh, Batman, you’re right!

Here at ComicsAlliance, we were already pretty big fans of Natasha Allegri thanks to her amazing art and her work on Adventure Time, where she created the female version of Finn, Fionna - the most cosplayable character of the past five years (and wrote and illustrated Boom!'s Fionna and Cake comic miniseries). Now, we've been given another reason why her work's amazing in the form of Bee and PuppyCat, a new series from Cartoon Hangover about an unemployed young lady who gets a strange new pet dropped on her head and enters into a world of transformation sequences and rainbow swordfights. The second episode dropped this week, and I can confirm that it is most definitely the single best five-minute Magical Girl cartoon series currently airing on YouTube.

Uh, in retrospect, that's kind of a narrow category. Just trust me, it's great, and you can watch the first two episodes below!

Continue reading…

benito-cereno:

The very first question in my Scholarship for Dollarship drive comes from Calamity Jon Morris, who inspired the idea for the whole thing in the first place. He asks:

And TWO: What, in your opinion, is the most pagan of all the world’s Christmas myths?

(You will note he starts by numbering his question #2: your first question didn’t get through, Jon; send it to me again, please.)

(Yes, I did just punctuate a compound sentence with both a colon and a semi-colon.)

Okay, so, on to the question:

My first, split-second instinct was that answering this would be difficult: after all, Christmas mythology is packed to the gills with reformed pagan gods who came out of the woods only to be tamed by a Turk with a pope hat. Krampus, Klaubauf, Belsnickel, Zwarte Piet, Hans Muff, and on and on all have pre-Christian roots. How was I going to pick out the MOST pagan element of what is already basically a pagan holiday with a thin veneer of Christianity on top?

And then I remembered Frau Perchta.

Perchta, also spelled Percht, Berchta, Bertha, Perahta, Berchte, and other variations, is basically super-complicated and I have been avoiding writing her entry in my Christmas book because making sense of the whole thing is basically SUPER intimidating. But, uh, you paid me ten dollars, so here we are.

Perchta is a pre-Christian goddess from the Alpine regions of southern Germany. She has a hard-to-define relationship with another goddess named Holda/Holle/etc, who is predominantly from the northern regions of Germany. Jacob Grimm supposes that the convenient apparent regional exclusivity means that they are just variants on the same goddess, but this doesn’t 100% hold up to scrutiny. Certainly the two goddesses are both derived from the same source: Germanic female goddess figures like Frigga and Freya. They also bear some relation to the Weisse Frauen (or White Women) of Germanic myth.

The confusion of Perchta with another goddess works out for her, thematically: duality is one of her big things. She is a beautiful young lady in white; her name means (and is, in fact, cognate with) “bright." However, she also has an ugly side: she can be a gray old wizened lady with a long, hooked iron nose. (Notably, even in her beautiful form, she has something that marks her as more than just another pretty face: a large foot that is known as her “swan foot," or “goose foot." Grimm says this aspect of her appearance marks her as higher being and indicates an ability to change into animal form. On the other hand, it may just be a foot splayed from too much time pumping the pedal at the spinning wheel.)

This duality also arises in her behavior: she is both very kind and inhumanly harsh. Perchta roams the countryside during the twelve days of Christmas—starting at Christmas and ending at Epiphany, known also as Berchtentag—and enter homes to judge the behavior of the children and servants. If the house is clean and the chores—especially the spinning—seem to be done, the children are rewarded with a silver coin in their shoe. If they had not behaved, had not finished the spinning, Perchta would slash open their bellies and fill them with straw and pebbles. A similar fate befell those who did not mad gruzzle Perchta’s traditional dish—herring and gruel—on her feast day. If your belly was not full of fish and oats, your belly was going to be lying in a heap on the floor, and your now empty abdominal cavity would be filled with garbage.

Perchta was also a Wild Hunt leader. Her train is made up of the ghosts of unbaptized children. Good luck awaited those who encountered Perchta and her children and were kind; those who sought to take advantage of the goddess’s generosity…well.

This train of ghostly followers become traditional figures that are still popular in rural villages in the Alpine regions today, the Perchten. The Perchten, like Perchta herself, come in two forms: the Schiachperchten (ugly Perchten) who are hideous beasts covered in hair and chains and bells whose job is to scare off devils, and the Schönperchten (beautiful Perchten), who bring good luck and wealth. These creatures can be seen crowding the streets on Twelfth Night and other festivals in runs known as Perchtenlaufen, a tradition similar to, but distinct from, Krampuslaufen.

Anyway, the point is this: ladies, make sure you spindle is full by the solstice; make sure it’s empty by Epiphany.

THINGS I NEED: 

• Helen Mirren as the Doctor, Lee Byung-Hun as the companion 

Like at this point I’m actually kind of impressed at how terrible these questions are.

Somehow these questions keep getting worse.

Please direct all Shaq-related questions to superheroeswearingjackets.tumblr.com

barfing forever

seriously what did I do to deserve this.

Jesus Christ.

Nope.

Faith Erin Hicks' 2013 Comic-Con trip was very different from her first. Five years ago she took a "quintessential broke SDCC trip," and this year she was a special guest of the show. Like many in her situation would be, the creator of Friends With Boys and Demonology 101 was in a bit of disbelief about the difference in her experience five years later, so much so that she decided to chronicle her time at 2013 Comic-Con  in a series of journal comics. The entire thing is charming and sincere, particularly the parts where she meets Joss Whedon (an idol of hers and the inspiration behind Demonology 101) and the creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender, who actually remember Hicks and are familiar with her work, a revelation that causes her head to explode. (Editors Note: Her head did not literally explode).

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If the people who commissioned [Before Watchmen] really wanted to pay tribute to Watchmen,” perhaps they could have tried to reproduce the circumstances of its birth: giving gifted writers and artists the latitude to make something new and fresh in its tone and execution. Instead, they’ve saddled those creators with extending a groundbreaking work into a glossy but lifeless franchise.

— Douglas Wolk reviewing the Before Watchmen stories For the LA Times in a piece called Did ‘Watchmen’ really need a prequel?
BTW I’ll say something I’ve said many times before, if you really want to read something that has the same tone as Watchmen, read Rick Veitch’s Heroica stories: Brat Pack and The Maximortal have all the darkness and social commentary that the BeWa books could only refer to.

benito-cereno:

If you have the license to these characters, contact me immediately and I will have a pitch on your desk within 24 hours

Oh my God.

Oh my God.

Oh my God.

Boulet is infuriatingly good at making comics.

We've spotlighted the French cartoonist before here at ComicsAlliance, but every time we think we've seen the most amazing thing he's done, he comes up with something new that's just as jaw-dropping as ever -- and his latest, The Long Journey is good enough that unless you're, I don't know, performing surgery, you should probably go ahead and drop whatever you're doing and read it right now.

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edwardspoonhands:

Catching up on Night Vale is all I’m doing on my trip to VidCon.

Tumblr, why didn’t I find out about Night Vale until like two weeks ago? I DEPEND ON YOU FOR THESE THINGS. 

bobbycaputo:

Complete Strangers Pose Together for Portraits  by Photographer Richard Renaldi

In a world where the act of touch is reserved to those that people are comfortable with, Renaldi breaks through the stereotype and creates images that suggest that these complete strangers are close – like friends or family. In his words:

I am a New York city based photographer who began a life long relationship with photography back in high school in 1984. I few years ago I became interested in the dynamics of group portraiture and this led me to the project you see here. The premise of this work is simple: I meet two or more people on the street who are strangers to each other, and to me. I ask them if they will pose for a photograph together with the stipulation that they must touch each other in some manner. Frequently, I instruct or coach the subjects how to touch. Just as often, I let their tentative physical exploration play out before my camera with no interference. Though these situations involve orchestrated collaborations between subject and photographer, the emotions captured are both genuine and honest. Touching Strangers encourages viewers to think about how we relate physically to one another, and to entertain the possibility that there is unlimited potential for new relationships with almost everybody passing by.

tompeyer:

YOU’RE CRAZY BANANAS! 

chrishaley:

robotmountain:

A Parable Comic by Kyle Starks

Everyone needs to read this.

The president spoke in unusually personal terms about the history and experiences that shape the way African Americans see the case.

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anonymous asked: Yo I’m so confused - why aren’t the NRA releasing a statement to say that the tragedy wouldn’t have happened if only Trayvon Martin was armed, and calling on young black men to get themselves guns? Surely that’s the kind of thing they like to do?

It’s allllmoooooooooost like they are a bunch of racist assholes?

Iowa's all male Supreme Court decides that it was legal for a man to fire a woman for being so attractive that he was afraid he would try to have an affair with her.