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If you weren't coming to SPX before, you are now: this year's edition will sotlight Fantagraphics' 40 year anniversary with a TRUE all-star line-up including: Joe Sacco, Trina Robbins, Daniel Clowes and The Hernandez Brothers, Carol Tyler, Jim Woodring, Drew Friedman and Ed Piskor.

§ After watching the new Avengers trailers several dozen times, going frame by frame, I think I can reveal a shocking twist: The Avengers will be fighting Ultron! Whoa! If you wat a more conventional breakdown, Russ Burlinghame has a breakdown of the dark brooding and forest shuffling.  Also, Hulkbuster.

§ If you have read this site for a month or two, you will already have figured out 4 Things Everyone Gets Wrong About Graphic Novels and the People Who Read Them. Did you know that comics aren’t just for kids? Eye opining, I know. But perhaps you can beat someone who is intractable over the head  with this if necessary.

§ Fantagraphics has revealed the cover to Hip Hop Family Tree Volume 3 by Ed Piskor and it’s time for Run DMC. These books look so nice shelved next to one another.

§ ICv2 has the BookScan–Top 20 Graphic Novels list and now non fiction is added, making Ros Chast’s Can’t We Talk About Something More PLeasant? The #1 book for December, beating even The Walking Dead and Saga.  This also means that many people may have received this funny but bittersweet memoir about aging parents as a holiday gift. Think about that for a while.

§ I know you have all seen Neil Gaiman’s amazing advice on how to become a writer but for the five people who didn’t, it’s a classic.

§ Dark Horse is publishing a hardcover edition of Cory Levine’s Bowery Boys: Our Fathers! with art by Ian Bertram (Detective Comics, Batman Eternal) and Brent McKee (Outlaw Territory). It collects the web series about rapscallion adventure in rough and tumble 19th century New York City. The book is due in August.  The pr described Bertram as “up and coming” and he really is. 

Cartoonists doing thing, blabbing about it.

§ Reminder — we’re doing our 31 Days of Halloween countdown of spooky art, comics and animation. Send us your links!

§ Congratulations to Noelle Stevenson on finishing Nimona, her webcomic which will be published by Harper Collins in May of 2015. Reminder: the link is a spoiler so beware!

§ Simon Hanselmann continues his press tour with a revealing interview in The A.V. Club.

§ I wanted to do a more in depth analysis of this piece enumerating the Top 100 Events in the United States 2014; Comic-Con in San Diego is listed as the top entertainment event, beating out Sundance. The Academy Awards are the #1 awards event and SXSW is the #1 music festival. (Does CMJ even exist any more?) But then I ran out of time.

§ Steve Morris reprints an excellent list of how to submit writing samples to comics publishers—in many cases you can’t. Breaking in as a writer is still an uphill battle.

§ David Hine writes for the Huffington Post on his comics adaptation of Victor Hugo’s The Man Who Laughs.:

The Man Who Laughs is not an easy read. It was written late in Victor Hugo’s career when he was living in exile on Guernsey, and his contemporaries dismissed it as an inferior work. It’s certainly a pretty turgid read, crammed with long-winded exposition and with a non-linear timeline that annoyingly gives away all the best plot twists too soon. I felt like scrawling “Spoiler Alert!” in the margins when I wasn’t skipping the endless inventories of titles, ranks and possessions of the English aristocracy. But while I was often infuriated by the book’s structure I found myself gripped by the underlying story. Here was a truly enthralling tale of love and humanity, of ordinary people struggling to survive in an unjust and unequal society. At it’s core is the story of a young man who is kidnapped, mutilated and sold to travelling entertainers, yet who retains his integrity and his dignity through the love of his adoptive ‘family’, the eccentric philosopher Ursus, his pet wolf Homo and the beautiful blind girl, Dea.

§ The Boston Globe reviews Michael Cho’s Shoplifter:

In order for a graphic novel to be memorable, it must fulfill both parts of its genre label: The graphics must be arresting enough to justify their presence on the page, and the words must be well-composed. Michael Cho’s “Shoplifter’’ is that rare thing, a graphic novel debut in which text and illustrations fit together like two halves of the same mind; as a result, the taut story told here makes an impact and manages to show distinctiveness while doing so.

§ Also in Boston, a cartoonist claimed making a watermelon joke in a comic strip about President Obama wasn’t racist; many disagreed.  Eyeroll. SMH.

§ Gilbert Hernandez has a wide ranging chat with CBR about his two graphic novels out this fall, Bumperhead and Loverboys.

This year you’ve made “Bumperhead” and “Loverboys” plus a new “Love and Rockets” plus a reprint of “Fatima.” Is this your new normal pace?

It’s something that I can do. It’s work and it’s tiring. I don’t plan on doing so many graphic novels at once, let’s put it that way. It’s just the way that things are scheduled with the publishers. After I finish a book, I can’t just go back to the same publisher and do another one. I jump to another and start a new project. I have to be ahead all the time, producing material. That’s why it ended up coming out at the same time. “Loverboys” might be the quickest long story that I’ve ever done. The time that I put into it was pretty brief, just a couple months. None of it’s rushed. I put the same care into it that I put into everything. But I can imagine a day when I go, “Hey, I can’t put out two new graphic novels a year anymore.” [Laughs]

Disclosure: Gilbert Hernandez is tied as my favorite cartoonist ever, so I’m just gonna keep plugging his stuff until they make me stop. Bumperhead is easily one of his best works ever and serves as a perfect entre to his work without having to plunge into the deep end of Palomar’s tangled generations. I have no idea what Loverboys is about but the cover looks like primo Beto, and what more would you ask for?

§ Is Stan Lee The Watcher?

§ And NOW a Beat VIDEO FILM FESTIVAL!

Cartoonist Cat Staggs and her partner are featured in the Target video about building a nursery for a new baby.

This ad for a bankish thing features a woman who hangs out in a comics shop. The Mary Sue was excited by this example of normalization.

Ed Piskor (Hip Hop Family tree) returns to his family home, which is in tatters, after 19 years in this video for Pittsburgh Magazine. Sorry about the game last night, Pittsburghers. You can’t go home again and here’s more proof.

Beat Pal Christopher Moonlight made this half hour film at the San Diego Comic Con in 2012 about Hollywood encroachment. Among those seen, David Mack, Camilla d’Errico and Batton Lash. Learn more about this film at the FB page.

Professor X';s habit of grasping his temples in pain could give the impression of being a whiny wimp, as this supercut displays.

Did you like our film festival? Send more video links and we’ll do it again! 

I guess it’s all come full circle now.

Ed Piskor’s WIZZYWIG is out in July.