End of the World

With a massive hurricane forecast to hit much of the Eastern seaboard this weekend, we here at Stately Beat Manor offer the following information to help our readers survive the coming storm.

Trolling the internet while on vacation, I was chilled down to the bone (impressive given the 100+ temperatures in Texas) to see on the announcement on the Center for Cartoon Studies website that the Xeric Award would be no more. Since 1992, Peter Laird of the amazeballs black and white comic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (self-published in 1984) has granted two awards a year to a cartoonist or project for its excellence.

Flashpoint is going to end in new #1 issues across the board and new origin issues for everyone, that much is clear. Will it be the earth shattering annihilation of Crisis on Infinite Earths, or the long-forgotten supposed reboot of Zero Hour?

By now you have all seen the above image, which swept through social media yesterday with the tagline "Macho Man prevented the Rapture." In a world seemingly without order, connecting the senseless (and very sad) death of Randy "Macho Man" Savage, and the impending Rapture predicting by Harold Camping (inexplicably still alive) would seem to give us some joy. But where did it come from? Such viral images come and go so quickly on the internet, we thought it would be informative to see what we could come up with as an origin story.

Many people probably have only heard of Biblical scholar Harold Camping now that his readings of the Scripture have revealed that the Rapture is coming tomorrow, Saturday May 21st, and we all have only a few hours to say our goodbyes. Since we'll be somewhere at the Big Apple Con tomorrow when the big event occurs, you can bet we'll be ready for the end to be nigh. However, we've actually been Camping "fans" for years!

An AP story flooded the wires with a total spoiler on the death in this week's FANTASTIC FOUR #587. We blanked out the name here but click on the link if you MUST know:

"They're big, they're sharp-edged and they contain a lot of energy." Is there anyone other than Galactus who could possibly be behind this???? Head for the hills! We are going to be eaten!

So, does The Walking Dead (premiering this Sunday, Halloween, on AMC at 10:00/9 PM C) live up to the hype? One Word Answer:  Ewwwwwwwwww!

So Darwyn Cooke got caught on video saying that superhero comics should "...stop catering to the perverted needs of forty-five-year-old men." He called out rape, children being forced to eat rats, explicit sex, foul language, and a lack of new characters. And now some people are getting upset. Oh come on, like you've never thought any of that. Unfortunately the whole thing got derailed by his swipe at turning Batwoman into a lesbian, which came off as rather homophobic to some. Personally, I have to admit, I read it more as the character continuity issue of a man who likes his Bronze and Silver Age comics, which is somewhat humorous, given that he's complaining about comics being ruled by the whims of forty-somethings, but he is large, he contains multitudes. (To which I say, Darwyn, it wasn't "overnight". She may have been around since 1956, but she hadn't made any significant appearances since Crisis on Infinite Earths which basically changed everything. SEE? I can be as big of a geek as you are.) So let's break this down from the point of view of someone who is not forty five or male -- me.

Mark Waid has reconstructed his controversial Harvey night speech and made what he was getting at much clearer:

“Yes, Professor Waid, you hippie freak, sharing is all well and good, but how does that pay my bills?”

If you were following our live tweets of the Harveys last night, (and those from ComixMix and JahFurry) you saw portions of Mark Waid's keynote speech transcribed. While claiming it was a "vodka-fueled rant," Waid delivered a heartfelt, if off-the-cuff, talk on the importance of the idea and the supremacy of comics as a medium of ideas. He started off with remarks on the history of copyright, stating it was a means to allow ideas to go into the public domain where they could remain powerful. "No one would say we'd be better off if Shakespeare plays weren't allowed to be read and performed in high schools," he used as an example. While not advocating piracy, his main argument seemed to be that it's already done, the genie is out of the bottle, and struggling to keep ideas protected isn't as important as finding a way to profit from those ideas.

Comics mastermind Alan Moore, creator of creator of WATCHMEN, not to mention V FOR VENDETTA, LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, and many, many more says he's told DC Comics to go jump in a lake. According to Moore in an interview with Wired's blog, Underwire, DC offered him the rights to WATCHMEN back in exchange for writing "some dopey sequels and prequels".