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If you want to explore the long tail of furniture design, a new service called OpenDesk is worth investigating — it's a crowd-sourced database of downloadable furniture designs as well as a network of craftspeople who can build that furniture for you. While there aren't many pieces of furniture available yet, there's a lot you can do if you find a piece you're interested in. If you're a professional with access to a CNC machine and suitable tools, you can fabricate and build your own pieces based on these designs. Fortunately, those without the skills or tools to completely build their own furniture have other options. You can either receive "raw," sawn materials that you can then finish and build into completed furniture, or you can get an IKEA-style "flatpack" of finished pieces that you can assemble yourself.

In all cases, OpenDesk works to pair your request with local builders (OpenDesk calls them "makers) whenever possible. Right now, there's only 12 makers working with OpenDesk, a scant three of whom operate in the US (all on the East Coast). However, if you're not near a maker, OpenDesk will try and pair you with a local crafter who can then provide you with a price quote. There's also only a small number of furniture pieces available for now, but we expect to see more posted if OpenDesk manages to find an audience. While the service is currently useful for a limited audience and for a limited variety of furniture designs, it's a clever concept that could make it easier to get your hands on custom-designed items — assuming OpenDesk can expand both its line of furniture and its network of makers.

It's not uncommon to see lavishly painted and decorated trucks while traveling the sandy roads of Afghanistan — but beyond the visual delights, there's often subtle literary messages to be discovered, as well. It's common to see quick lines of poetry on the sides or backs of trucks, as well. Based on his time driving through the country, Borhan Osman discovered an unique mix of heartfelt messages mixed with a bit of humor by mixing in driving-related phrases alongside a declaration of love:

Don’t be upset if I take a wrong turn

I am late visiting my beloved

"Although romantic love is considered something private in Pashtun society," Osman writes, "as a value it is strong enough to become an excuse for breaching laws — for example, the traffic rules." Of course, beyond love and traffic, many verses reference Afghanistan's ongoing war. In some cases, the words borrow from the language of war but are only used metaphorically to describe the pains of love. "Drones-and al-Qaeda become metaphors to denote an indefinite absence or disappearance of one's lover," wrote Osman of the following:

I am chasing you like a drone

You have become al Qaida; there’s no trace of you

Marvel and Disney done quite a bit of work to build a cinematic universe that culminated into one big shared movie in The Avengers, and promises to do the same many times over in the years to come.

But Disney doesn’t have the film rights to every Marvel character. The X-Men and The Fantastic Four are still securely under the umbrella of Twentieth Century Fox, and if Mark Millar, the creative consultant to Fox’s Marvel movies has his way, they’ll have a shared movie universe of their own.

Millar told movie magazine SFX that the X-Men films and the new Fantastic Four movie to be directed by Chronicle‘s Josh Trank definitely do exist in the same universe, though they won’t cross over into one another just yet.

Here’s what he said:

Without question I think you have to see some of these guys showing up in each other’s movies. I think the most exciting thing in superhero movies, until The Avengers came along, was when Nick Fury showed up in Iron Man. Even though it was a guy with an eye patch, it was really cool – and I expect we will see more of that.

Millar later clarified to say that the X-Men and Fantastic Four movies stand alone, even though they take place in the same universe, so who knows really what he was talking about.

So get ready for that Fantastic Four/X-Men movie that may not actually happen after all. One character that definitely won’t be appearing any any Fox property, we do know, is Daredevil. Marvel Studios got the rights back to The Man Without Fear back in April.

[Via ScreenCrush]

I go back and forth on how I feel about variant covers, in terms of whether or not they’re good for comics in general. But I’ll say this much: the inclusion of variants can sometimes lead to great art we’d otherwise never see. Case in point, Ronald Wimberly‘s variant cover for Mighty Avengers #3, which is probably my favorite cover of 2013 so far.

This is the good part about variants. I think Marvel would be less inclined to run something like this as their regular cover, which means we may have otherwise never seen this homage to blaxploitation, particularly the work of Chester Himes, from Wimberly. It’s a fitting choice for a lot of reasons, but maybe most importantly because the leader of this team, Luke Cage, was based largely on Himes’ Harlem Detective novels starring Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones:

Here’s Wimberly’s full variant cover for Mighty Avengers #3, as well as the promotional poster for Cotton Comes To Harlem, the 1970 film directed by Ossie Davis and based on the novel by Himes.

Mighty Avengers #3 arrives in stores this November.

[Via Wimberly's Tumblr]