A joint statement has just been released by Marvel and the family of Jack Kirby indicating that a settlement of somekind hs been made:

“Marvel and the family of Jack Kirby have amicably resolved their legal disputes, and are looking forward to advancing their shared goal of honoring Mr. Kirby’s significant role in Marvel’s history.” 

HOLY CRAP.

The Kirby Estate had been suing Marvel for right to the characters Kirby created over the years, from Captain America in the 40s to the Fantastic Four in the 60s. Although every court case went against the Kirby family, recently it seemed that the case might actually go to the Supreme Court, and it may have been the unpredictable nature of the claims that led to this settlement.

While an initial wave of joy over the end of this battle is the natural emotion, one hopes that the Kirby family got something out of this and it wasn’t just keeping up appearances in the light of an ongoing battle that didn’t look like it would end favorably.

The splendor of Strahov Library

I am typing this while looking at the building where these images were taken: the library of Strahov Abbey, towering high above Prague. While the monastery was established in 1143, the library dates from 1720. It is one of the most impressive I have visited: thousands of books placed in what looks more like a museum than a library. I hope you get a sense of the atmosphere from these images.

Pics (my own): Strahov Abbey Library, Prague.

The Finnish postal service launched its most successful limited edition stamps of all time last week -- featuring a pair of pertly muscular buttocks and a naked man being straddled by a biker. Advance orders for the stamp came in from 178 countries worldwide, and people lined up on launch day like the stamps had an Apple logo on them.

The reason for the stamps' appeal -- beyond the objective appeal of buttocks -- was the artist responsible, one of the nation's most successful comic book creators: the legendary homoerotic artist Tom of Finland. In the first of a very important series of articles exploring comics' treatment of hot dudes, which we're calling 'The New Hotness', ComicsAlliance explores the work and legacy of Tom.

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Q: We know your favorite anti-heroes, sidekicks, and villains, but who's your favorite minor villain, and why? -- @fizzbang

A: Y'know, the way you phrase that question makes it sound like I've written about everything except who my favorite superhero is, and... that doesn't sound right. I'm a little too lazy to go and look, but it feels like surely at some point in the last 210 columns, I probably would've mentioned that. Oh well, I'm sure I'll probably get to talking about Batman at some point.

Anyway, back to the question. Favorite minor villains? OH MY GOD, IT'S THE ENFORCERS I LOVE THE ENFORCERS SO MUCH LET'S TALK ABOUT FANCY DAN FOR THE NEXT THREE HOURS OH MY GOD.

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Yeah, sure. Here is a paraphrase of the story as reported by Mark Evanier, who was Kirby’s assistant at the time, and is currently his official biographer:

Don Rickles was really popular in the early 70s when Kirby was doing JIMMY OLSEN and getting the Fourth World started. Rickles, for those who don’t know, is known as a relentless insult comic, tearing down whoever for whatever reason. At the time, he was appearing on basically every TV show, just demolishing the hosts. But his line was that he only went after the big guys, not the little guys. (As we would say today, he didn’t punch down.)

So Evanier and fellow Kirby assistant Steve Sherman thought, “Well, who’s a bigger guy than Superman?” So they told Kirby that Don Rickles should show up for like a page, tell off Superman, and then skedaddle. Kirby was a huge fan of Rickles, so he was into the idea.

Sherman contacted Rickles’s publicist, who got the grudging approval of Don RIckles. But when Kirby contacted DC’s publicist about it, he flipped for joy. He said it couldn’t just be a one to two page cameo. It had to be a multi-issue epic, so that Rickles would talk about it on all the talk shows, etc.

And so that’s how you get Don Rickles and his doppelganger Goody Rickels (note the spelling on the last name; no one ever gets that right) for two issues of JIMMY OLSEN.

Of course Don Rickles was not thrilled that his begrudging permission to appear on one page and insult Superman had turned into two issues with his mug on the cover and his name in bold and a weird evil twin version of him all without making a dime, so of course he never mentioned it on TV at all.

Perhaps the funniest part is that after all that, Kirby was Kirby, and while this story is of course awesome and hilarious, he kind of forgot the main point of the whole thing, and neither Don Rickles nor Goody Rickels ever actually meets Superman.

This is my new office. I sit in here and read books and draw comics. I’m with these other fellows. It’s great. I’ve always loved libraries. A dream come true.

franzferdinand2:

Personal mantra.

Wee Virginia Woolf 

greg-pak:

Gene Yang is one of my heroes. Read this, y’all.

weneeddiversebooks:

Read This: Gene Luen Yang’s rousing comics speech at the 2014 National Book Festival gala

From the Washington Post, article here.

GENE LUEN YANG, Library of Congress, Jefferson Building:

Good evening. Thank you, Library of Congress and National Book Festival, for inviting me to share the stage with such esteemed authors, and to speak with all of you. I am deeply grateful for this honor.

I’m a comic-book guy, so tonight I’d like to talk about another comic book guy. Dwayne McDuffie was one of my favorite writers. When I was growing up, he was one of the few African-Americans working in American comics. Dwayne worked primarily within the superhero genre. He got his start at Marvel Comics but eventually worked for almost every comic book publisher out there. He even branched out into television and wrote for popular cartoon series like “Justice League” and “Ben 10.”

Dwayne McDuffie

Dwayne McDuffie is no longer with us, unfortunately. He passed away in 2011, at the age of 49. But within comics, his influence is still deeply felt.

I was lucky enough to have met him once. About a year before his death, we were on a panel together at Comic-Con. I had the opportunity to shake his hand and tell him how much his work meant to me.

In a column Dwayne wrote in 1999, he talked about his love of the Black Panther, a Marvel Comics character. The Black Panther’s secret alias is T’Challa, the king of the fictional African nation of Wakanda. He has super senses, super strength, and super agility. He’s an Avenger, though he hasn’t yet made it into the movies.

The Black Panther wasn’t created by African American cartoonists. He was created in July of 1966 by two Jewish Americans, Stan Lee (who was born Stanley Lieber) and Jack Kirby (who was born Jacob Kurtzberg).

By modern standards, the Black Panther is not a flawless example of a black superhero. In their first draft of the character, Lee and Kirby called him “the Coal Tiger” and gave him a goofy yellow and black costume. Even in his final form, his superhero alias includes the word “Black.” This is true of many early African and African American superheroes, as if what makes them remarkable is neither their superpowers nor their heroism, but their ethnicity. Most problematic, though, was that Marvel made their most prominent black superhero the star of a series called Jungle Action.

All of these flaws were lost on Dwayne McDuffie when he first encountered the Black Panther in 1973, at the age of 11. What struck him was the character’s commanding sense of dignity. The Black Panther wasn’t anyone’s sidekick. He wasn’t an angry thug. He wasn’t a victim. He was his own hero, his own man. As Dwayne describes it, “In the space of 15 pages, black people moved from invisible to inevitable.”

Dwayne’s love of the Black Panther eventually blossomed into a love of comics in general. Dwayne was a smart guy with a lot of options in life. He’d earned a master’s degree in physics. But he chose to write comics as his career. I would argue that without the Black Panther, this flawed black character created by a writer and an artist who were not black, there would be no Dwayne McDuffie the comic book writer.

Dwayne wasn’t just a writer — he was also a businessman. In the early ’90s, he teamed with a group of writers and artists to found Milestone Media, the most prominent minority-owned comic book company that has ever existed. The Milestone universe have since been folded into DC Comics, so these days characters like Static Shock and Icon – characters Dwayne co-created – fight crime alongside Superman and Batman.

In the early ’90s, I was finishing up my adolescence. I visited my local comic-book store on a weekly basis, and one week I found a book on the stands called Xombi, published by Milestone Media. Xombi is a scientist who became a superhero after he was injected with nanotechnology. He allied himself with a secret order of superpowered nuns. One sister was known as Nun of the Above, another Nun the Less. Together, they protected the world from all kinds of supernatural threats.

Xombi was inventive and fun, but he stood out to me because he was an Asian American male carrying in his own monthly title. And even more notable – he didn’t know Kung Fu. Xombi wasn’t created by Asian Americans – his writer was white and his artist black – but he did make Asian Americans a little less invisible.

We in the book community are in the middle of a sustained conversation about diversity. We talk about our need for diverse books with diverse characters written by diverse writers. I wholeheartedly agree.

But I have noticed an undercurrent of fear in many of our discussions. We’re afraid of writing characters different from ourselves because we’re afraid of getting it wrong. We’re afraid of what the Internet might say.

This fear can be a good thing if it drives us to do our homework, to be meticulous in our cultural research. But this fear crosses the line when we become so intimidated that we quietly make choices against stepping out of our own identities.
After all, our job as writers is to step out of ourselves, and to encourage our readers to do the same.

I told you the story of Dwayne McDuffie to encourage all of us to be generous with ourselves and with one another. The Black Panther, despite his flaws, was able to inspire a young African American reader to become a writer.

We have to allow ourselves the freedom to make mistakes, including cultural mistakes, in our first drafts. I believe it’s okay to get cultural details wrong in your first draft. It’s okay if stereotypes emerge. It just means that your experience is limited, that you’re human.

Just make sure you iron them out before the final draft. Make sure you do your homework. Make sure your early readers include people who are a part of the culture you’re writing about. Make sure your editor has the insider knowledge to help you out. If they don’t, consider hiring a freelance editor who does.

Also, it’s okay if stereotypes emerge in the first drafts of your colleagues. Correct them – definitely correct them – but do so in a spirit of generosity. Remember how soul-wrenching the act of writing is, how much courage it took for that writer to put words down on a page.

And let’s say you do your best. You put in all the effort you can. But then when your book comes out, the Internet gets angry. You slowly realize that, for once, the Internet might be right. You made a cultural misstep. If this happens, take comfort in the fact that even flawed characters can inspire. Apologize if necessary, resolve do better, and move on.

Let your fear drive you to do your homework. But no matter what, don’t ever let your fear stop you.

Gene is the best dude.

leseanthomas:

OMFG. THIS. SHOW.

weirdly relevant to the question I answered yesterday.

Just repeat to yourself “This isn’t the Olympics, it’s an industry” and go make those comics!!!!!!!!!

kirbymuseum:

Jack Kirby at war - nine minutes of World War two stories. Enjoy!

"They made a perfect circle, except the bottom half of their bodies were missing. The shell evidently hit right in the center of the group and threw them out in a circle… and you see a lot of these nice designs, if you’re an artist."

Medieval rockstar

The last page of a medieval book is usually a protective flyleaf, which is positioned between the actual text and the bookbinding. It was usually left blank and it therefore often filled up with pen trials, notes, doodles, or drawings. This addition I encountered today and it is not what you’d expect: a full-on drawing of a maiden playing the lute, which she holds just like a guitar. A peaceful smile shines on her face. I love this rockstar lady, so unexpectedly positioned at the end of the book, trying to catch the reader’s attention as he is closing it.

Pic: London, British Library, Sloane MS 554 (more here).

Benign Kingdom fills a niche that lay absurdly open for too long: well designed and curated artbooks from webcomic creators. Somehow, the idea never occurred to me or most anyone for years, despite the absolute cavalcade of talent on display. Who knew Danielle Corsetto, creator of Girls With Slingshots, produced such gorgeous figure drawings? Who knew Yuko Ota, co-creator and artist of Johnny Wander, could fill a page with such whimsy and menace?
One enormously successful Kickstarter later, Benign Kingdom has presented the world with these awesome talents, but also helped demonstrate the viability of self-publishing. ComicsAlliance sought out Evan Dahm, co-founder of the Benign Kingdom project and creator of the webcomic Rice Boy, to discuss a changing industry and their place within it.

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jimchadwick:

IT’S JACK KIRBY DAY

Jack Kirby, the greatest and most prolific comic book artist of all time, was born 97 years ago today, August 28, 1917. Gone 20 years now, his legacy lives on now and forever. Long Live the King!

The Art of Swimming (1587)

themanicpixienightmaregirl:

A different kind of cissexism.

Important.

tinymediaempire:

"we can no longer protect you forever."
by Daniel Danger
24x36” five color screenprint.
2014

Thursday 8/21/14: im posting this new print on tumblr, twitter, and instagram. reblog, retweet, or instagram this image with the title and #danieldanger and i, through some very scientific means, will pick one random follower who does this from each service on monday and send them a personalized copy for free. sound good? cool. shameless? yes.

B asked: yo, these are people donating money to darren wilson explaining why they did it, are they racist

I don’t know if this needs to be said, but even if you don’t explain why you did it, the only reason to donate money to this dude is, in fact, because you’re racist.

kirbyhands:

Fantastic Four #59

bigredrobot:

coolpages:

The Sandman #1 (DC Comics - 1974)

Writers: Jack Kirby (Plot) & Joe Simon (Script)
Illustrators: Jack Kirby (Pencils) & Mike Royer (Inks)

Your reminder that Simon/Kirby’s Sandman is the creepiest/weirdest comic book.

Ah, but you assume that I am happy all the time, which simply is not true. I don’t know anyone who is. You only see maybe 1 hour tops of content from me a day, when I’m ideally at my best. The rest of the time is mostly depression.

At the moment I know that I can’t be happy with my current living conditions, I know that I need to move out and live with Fiona, that’s my next step. But I can’t do it yet, so instead I turn my focus to you guys who need help more. By aiming to be cheery and positive when I have your attention, by trying my best to help you guys out, it’s a nice distraction from my own thoughts, and it makes me happy to know that you’re happy. I’m trying to find the best mix of selfishness and selflessness. I don’t believe it’s healthy to be 100% of either one. The times I was selfish are when I hurt or shut out other people around me more. But the times I try to be 100% selfless are the times I stress myself out and end up more depressed. So, a balance is needed.

I go through every day doing my best to do a video for you guys and also spend time with Fiona and also play video games for fun by myself or with my friends. It’s a balance. To be able to maintain this and stay relatively positive I simply only need to read the messages, tweets etc. from you all every day, when you guys just watched my new video, or whatever, knowing that I’m making even the slightest difference to your lives is an incredible feeling. I also constantly have the dream of living with Fifi in my mind. I know that will happen one day. It’s all I hold on to right now. Just keeping one dream, belief, person in your mind, no matter how unobtainable it may seem at first, can really help give you the drive and motivation you need.

But balance is the most important thing. Allow time for yourself, allow time for others, allow time to feel sad, allow time to be happy. Allow days to just laze about doing much of nothing, allow days to work non-stop. Allow pleasure. Allow pain. The key is not to aim for complete total happiness, that is unobtainable. The aim is to be able to balance your sadness equally. A yin and yang. It’s okay to be sad. And it’s okay to be happy. It’s okay to spend all day by yourself, and it’s okay to want to go out and party. But too much of one thing (even if it’s positive) throws everything else off. Keep holding on to that dream that you have, keep aiming for that balance, and eventually one day it will come naturally to you. Be your complete self. Good luck.

Oh god where to begin. The short version is that Judge Dread artist Ulises Farinas calling out Yale Stewart over what Farinas deemed ill-advised charity efforts then led to Stewart, the artist of the webcomic JL8, being outed as a naked selfie sender, and then apologizing while putting his webcomic on hiatus.

IT ALL STARTED when Farinas, above, who is something of an opinionated Internet user, called out Stewart’s practice of selling wallpapers themed to various events in the news for $1 with proceeds going to charity. What put Farinas over the edge was this one, which referred to the situation in Ferguson:
Farinas wrote:

Every fucking time there’s some big tragedy, this dude makes a wallpaper to benefit (insert charity) and it just looks like a shameless ploy at self promotion.
Instead of making a cutesy little wallpaper of DC heroes you don’t own, supporting media entities that already ignore brown people, that have news companies that spin a narrative that blames the victims of police brutality and not the aggressors, why don’t you just shutup and privately donate as much as you want to ACLU, whenever you want, and not just when #ferguson is all over twitter.
Putting two images of SPACE COPS as your “SUPPORT FERGUSON” wallpaper, and offering it for a DOLLAR, is fucking gross. And i hate that we can’t distinguish between support and capitalism.
You know the only reason the dollar is going to the ACLU, is he because the product he’s selling isn’t a wallpaper, its himself.

This took place a few days, and led to a lot more back and forth and then, over Twitter, an increasing number of references to “Dick pics” with Stewart at the center, perhaps spurred by this Tweet of Farinas:

I love that everyone KNOWS what his “OTHER” problem is! BIGGEST OPEN SECRET EVER @andrewthecarl

— ulises farinas ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ (@ulises_f) August 18, 2014

As far as The Beat can ascertain, rumors of Stewart sending unsolicited pictures of himself in a depantsed state have been around for quite a while. The new Twitter flutterings grew and grew, leading to Stewart to take down his twitter account and then announcing that he was putting JL8 on hiatus. Jl8 is a very adorable strip that Stewart has been drawing for a few years that is basically a “Lil JLA” strip. It is COMPLETELY unauthorized by DC—although Stewart was eventually hired to work on some officially licensed Capstone books featuring DC characters— and if there is one thing that amazes me about this whole thing is that he was able to get away with this for so long!

Anyway, while many people seemed to be aware of Stewart’s exhibitionist texts, it wasn’t until Unleash the Fanboy offered a spirited is muddled defense of him with a post called Ulises Farinas Is A Jealous Idiot. I Stand Behind Yale Stewart that the cries for proof got louder. And it all grew when Stewart, who lives at home, said that since the outcry began, his mother had received a threatening phone call regarding the situation.

While some doubted the accusers with the usual abuse, over night a picture of Stewart, tool in hand, was finally posted on 4chan, leading to his public apology:

Good morning.

As some of you may be aware, there have been some rumors circulating about my personal conduct with women in the comics industry. The accusation is that I’ve sent unsolicited intimate photos of myself to fans, colleagues, or possibly both.

Sexual harassment is incredibly serious business, and I believe anyone who has followed me for any period of time knows that I often speak against it. No one should be subject to such behavior. It’s invasive, disrespectful, and occasionally dangerous.

Have I sent intimate photos of myself to women before? Yes. I’ll absolutely admit to that. As a 26 year-old bachelor with a relatively healthy sex life in the internet age, these things happen. However, every photo sent was in direct response to either a photo received or a specific request.

Or so I thought.

Two years ago, I was engaged in two separate relationships with women whom I was sexually active with. Given the nature of these relationships, my experiences in past relationships, and various dialogues with these women, I thought it had been established within each relationship that intimate or explicit photos were acceptable, possibly even desired.

I GROSSLY misread the situation.

It has been brought to my attention that both of these women were uncomfortable with my behavior, and needless to say, I’m absolutely disgusted with myself. How I could so horribly misinterpret the situation confounds me, but that confusion pales in comparison to the shame of knowing that I did the very thing to these two women that I openly chastise people for on a regular basis. Also, beyond that, that these women felt this way for TWO YEARS without me knowing and attempting to make amends, which is wholly unacceptable in its own right.

I have reached out to both of these women and have made private apologies, but I felt it was my responsibility to make a public one as well. As stated earlier, I believe sexual harassment to be an incredibly serious issue, and while the harassment in question was a terrible and ignorant mistake, it does not change the fact that that’s what this was, and I accept full responsibility.

I strive to treat everyone with respect, as I feel those who know me personally or follow my comics work would attest, and as such I hope that helps frame how sorry I truly am that all of this happened. The best I can do is own up to it, acknowledge that I made an incredible error in judgement, and finally, make sure that I learn from this mistake and never repeat it moving forward.

In addition, if there’s anyone else out there who feels like I’ve made them uncomfortable, on any level, please let me know. Clearly I’ve misread situations before, and I don’t want to go years again thinking nothing’s wrong only to learn I’ve hurt someone.

Finally, I’ll be making a donation of $1000 to RAINN, as they’re an organization at the forefront of both preventing and aiding victims of sexual harassment and assault. Hopefully my small donation will in some way help them in educating even just one person, preventing another situation such as this.

My deepest, sincerest apologies to all.

-Yale

A couple of observation about all this:

• Sending naughty texts is a perfectly normal thing to do. Sending unsolicited pictures of your junk to people is not okay, however. It’s my understanding that Stewart had been accused of doing this for quite some time, and had seemingly unwittingly built a bad reputation over this.

• Now that’s he’s had his sensitivity raised and apologized—and made a $1000 donation to RAINN—after a suitable amount of time Stewart can concentrate on what he does best, drawing, IF HE BEHAVES HIMSELF. I don’t think there’s any real disconnect between doing a kids strip and doing adult things in other spheres of your life. As long as they don’t cross over, you’re good. Someone called Stewart the Anthony Weiner of comics and you’ll recall that Weiner—the one time NYC mayoral candidate who was caught sending pictures of his franks and beans to women while still married and running for office—tried a comeback and what stalled it is that he kept on sending pictures of his junk to people! The key to a comeback is learning from your mistakes and not harassing people any more.

• It’s shameful that the women who were on the receiving end of Stewart’s texts were doubted and tarred with the usual slurs and counter-accusations. Why is this it hard to believe that a male cartoonist would send out naked selfies? If I were to question anything in this WHOLE STORY it would be the threatening phone call because…

• WHO THE HELL TAKES TIMES TO MAKE THREATENING PHONE CALLS OVER COMIC BOOKS? Seriously this is becoming a thing now whenever there’s a comic book kerfuffle. That is also SO NOT COOL, people. Stop it, just stop it.

• Cartoonists doing shady, kinky things is nothing new. Neither is such behavior being talked about over dinners and drinks. BUT things have changed. This is the latest example of how harassment issues are played out over social media, and while I don’t see this going away any time soon, crowd justice is rough justice, so people, if you’re doing something bad and about to get caught, better to stop doing that bad thing and taking appropriate steps in private.

The older I get, the more genuine, un-ironic admiration I have for Rob Liefeld, but I've never been able to find a good resource for news and updates about the Rob. Today, though, that has changed, and now my phone -- and maybe even my life -- have finally found a purpose, because the Rob has launched an official app, containing information about his history in comics, his upcoming appearances, and more.

There's even an "Ask Rob" section that allows fans to pose questions directly to the man himself, which means we can finally find out if he still has those button-fly jeans.

Continue reading…

Just in case you're not up to speed on classic newspaper strips, Winsor McKay's Little Nemo is one of the most innovative comics of the 20th century. Originally running in newspapers from 1905 to 1926, it was arguably one of the first real masterpieces of the form, with McKay's surreal dreamscapes taking the form of beautiful imagery and page layouts that creators are still trying to recreate today.

Now, Nemo is returning to the comics page in Return To Slumberland. Not to be confused with the forthcoming Dream Another Dream anthology, this new series from Eric Shanower, Gabriel Rodriguez and Nelson Daniel launches this week from IDW Publishing, and it is beautiful. Seriously, just hands down one of the prettiest comics I've seen in a long time, and even though the first few pages don't quite get into the strangeness of walking beds and stair-step city skylines, I get the feeling that all of that stuff shows up right where the preview ends.

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ananthymous:

ryankillustration:

New custom poster design I made for the 2008 film “Speed Racer”.

- Ryan

I love this poster and it always comes across my dash without attribution! Reblog from the original artist.

highway62:

The part of the continuum in which I prefer to hang around.

I’ve often thought about the fundamental differences in philosophy between Morrison and Moore, whose work, despite being almost inevitably compared, could hardly be more different at a basic level. This quote says a lot about it, but I’ve often thought of it as Moore deconstructs, Morrison reconstructs.

ryannorth:

There’s a Boom Studios Humble Bundle going on right now and it’s NUTS.  Pay what you want for TONS of rad comics, but if you pay $15 or more, you not only get the COMPLETE Midas Flesh series, but also Lumberjanes, Bee and Puppycat, AND Bravest Warriors!  ALL OF THESE COMICS ARE GREAT.

My name is Ryan North and I have an opinion on what you should spend $15 on today.

WOW WHAT A DEAL

A huge number of people turned out to watch James Gunn's Guardians Of The Galaxy this weekend, but one viewer was deservedly treated to a special private viewing. Bill Mantlo, the writer who created Rocket Raccoon with artist Keith Giffen for Marvel in 1976, was visited by Marvel executives and shown the movie at the care facility where he lives.

As we've reported previously in our Guardians Of The Galaxy coverage, Mantlo was the victim of a hit and run accident in 1992 that left him in need ongoing care and rehabilitation. His family has struggled to cover his medical bills, and fellow writer Greg Pak and others have helped solicit donations to support the Mantlo family.

Continue reading…