A certain degree of dedication isn't unusual among comics fans, but one Venezuelan man's devotion to the Marvel supervillain Red Skull apparently exceeded his devotion to having a sense of smell.
Gird your loins, everyone, because with Thor opening this weekend, the long summer slog of superhero movies is upon us. Some of them are so good, but some of them are so damn crappy. That's why I've devised a simple formula to figure out which is which.
Young boys only have two models of masculinity, according to a University of Massachusetts psychologist: Violent, misogynistic superheroes or lazy, funny slackers. What does this mean, for the future of the U.S.? Why, a nation filled with bloggers wearing costumes!
There's actually going to be one, guys. And that's what the live-action Broadway show used. Roller skates. (Well, Heelys.) Also today: good news for a 90210 alum, more X-Men casting news, and Valerie Bertinelli will be employed for another year.
With Disney's big buy of Marvel, America suddenly finds much of its entire animated universe — from Spider-Man to Pluto — in the hands of one media conglomerate. How many cartoon characters must a company own before the FTC acts?
The recent spike in comics franchises and other superhero entertainment could soon take an especially fabulous turn if Perry Moore gets his way. The novelist and Chronicles of Narnia co-producer (pictured) blabbed to Vulture this week about negotiations to adapt his young adult novel Hero — about Thom Creed, "the world's first gay superhero" — for TV; Moore expects a deal with one of two unnamed networks any day now, but he isn't waiting around to affirm its credibility among gays, fanboys, gay fanboys, executives and myriad other demographic permutations:
Gosh, Marvel Studios, just take a minute to chew your food, would you? Less than 24 hours after its debut picture Iron Man finished a $100 million opening weekend, studio boss David Maisel was all over town announcing Marvel's forthcoming slate — through 2011. As we noted yesterday, an Iron Man sequel is naturally to follow on April 30, 2010, while an adaptation of Thor will drop that same summer on June 10. It gets fairly outrageous from there: The First Avenger: Captain America appears May 11, 2011, followed by The Avengers — combining Iron Man, Captain America, The Incredible Hulk and Thor a mere two months later. (The studio says its sitting out 2009 as a result of a development lag left over from the writers strike.)
So New York Comic Con has been going on all weekend and, of course, I couldn't go. So while all my nerd brothers and sisters are getting to see extended trailers for The Dark Night and sneak peaks of an Iron Man/The Incredible Hulk crossover, I'm stuck reading their half-assed reports. The one thing I could get my hands on was that my apartment-bound ass did get to see was this teaser for Sin City director Frank Miller's upcoming The Spirit which just hit the Net. Jump!
Alison Bechdel, whose brilliant memoir Fun Home detailed her closeted dad's probable suicide and its effects on her family, writes in Slate today about how she was tormented about her mother's reaction to the book. Bechdel did tell her mother what to expect, but she still feels guilty.
At a panel at the 92nd St. Y, comic book creators came down against the term "graphic novel," which we've always hated because it could mean, like, a graphically violent Chuck Pahlaniuk Palahniuk (hey, we're nailing "Kuczynski" on a regular basis, ok?) novel, and because it doesn't make any sense when applied to a single issue of a thinky comic book. La Perdida author Jessica Abel summed it up: "A graphic novel is a description, not a definition of an art form. We really need to repossess that word [comics] and make it something we can use."
