xkcd: Earth Temperature Timeline

Go checkout xkcd: Earth Temperature Timeline.

‘The Force Awakens’ Reimagined As Calvin and Hobbes

‘The Force Awakens’ Reimagined As Calvin and Hobbes Will Make Your Heart Melt "Artist Brian Kesinger from Walt Disney animation studios drew ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ in the style of Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson and it was just perfect."

His instagram and twitter accounts are the source but have other stuff. This Rickey article looks like it's being updated with new images as they come out. These two are my favorites:

Todays Retro Calvin & Hobbes is Great

The One Thing That Makes SUPERGIRL Better Than MAN OF STEEL

Devin Faraci describes in Birth. Movies. Death., The One Thing That Makes SUPERGIRL Better Than MAN OF STEEL “There’s one thing that Supergirl gets right that Man of Steel completely whiffed, and while it’s a small thing it is, in a very real sense, the only thing that matters. In Supergirl Kara Zor-El wants to be a hero.”

And I agreed, but thinking about it a little more clarified something else for me. First off I didn’t like Man of Steel. Parts were ok but it definitely got Superman wrong and it didn’t need to be dark. The line that clinched it for me was Pa Kent telling Clark that perhaps he should have let a school bus crash (was it over a bridge) and let all of his friends die. Sorry that’s not Superman or Pa Kent.

Usually I hear that the difference between Superman and Batman is that Superman is a “boy scout” and that this is a trait that makes the character boring. I have to agree that there aren’t a lot of great Superman stories, particularly compared to Batman, but it doesn’t have to make the character boring. The 1978 film certainly wasn’t.

But what this article got me to realize is that Superman the character wants to save people. That may be a definition of hero, but it’s a different one from Batman. Batman (certainly recent incarnations of him) wants to stop criminals. Phrased as “saving people” it really describes what’s wrong with Superman in Man of Steel, because he doesn’t do that. He’s dragged into the hero role because of Zod and destroys a city and kills his adversary. None of this was about saving people (or even wanting to stop criminals, rather he was drafted into it).

'Bloom County' And Opus The Penguin Return After A 25-Year Hiatus

Fresh Air interviewed Berkeley Breathed, 'Bloom County' And Opus The Penguin Return After A 25-Year Hiatus. Here's just one interesting tidbit:

BERKELEY BREATHED: I watched slack-jawed in horror as they threw one of the 20th century's most iconic fictional heroes, Atticus Finch, under the bus. At the time - and this was a couple of months ago - it made me think that there would have been no 'Bloom County' without 'Mockingbird' because I was 12 I read it, and the book's fictional Southern small town of Maycomb had settled deep into my graphic imagination and informed it forever. If you look at any of my art for the past 30 years, there's always a small-town flavor to it.

So this summer, just a couple months ago when 'Go Set A Watchman' was causing an uproar, I went back to my files and I pulled an old fan letter from years ago. It says (reading) dear Mr. Breathed, this is a plea from a dotty old lady and from others not dotty at all. Please don't shut down Opus. Can't you at least give him a reprieve? Opus is simply the best comic strip there is and depriving him of life is murder - a hard word to describe an obliteration of your creation. But Opus is real. He lives. Harper Lee, Monroeville, Ala.

A New Universal 'New Yorker' Cartoon Caption

A New Universal 'New Yorker' Cartoon Caption has been found. There are now three captions known to work in all New Yorker cartoons. They are (in order of discovery):

• Christ, what an asshole!
• What a misunderstanding!
• I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.

What's The Best Medium For A Storyteller In 2015 And Beyond?

Hugh Hancock has a very interesting piece, What's The Best Medium For A Storyteller In 2015 And Beyond?.

• Feature Films - "The phrase I keep hearing about filmmaking is "there's never been a better time to get your movie made, and never been a worse time to get anyone to watch it"."
• Television And Webseries - "Televison's a refugee camp right now, where half of the hollow-eyed survivors wandering around in a daze are absent-mindedly clutching Oscars." "And thanks to the brain-drain from film, there's no shortage of really well-known people with serious portfolios eager to get their series made. That means that it's at least as hard to break in as it ever was for a newbie. "
• Games - like film, dev tools are advancing and cheap (free), but distribution (getting noticed) is hard.
• Prose - "is interesting because it's the only one of the artforms I'm discussing here that has gone through a revolution in distribution but not in creation." and people are willing to pay for self-published content.
• Virtual Reality - "The new frontier". Early adopter market but there is some money available there, but no one knows how to tell a story yet.
• Comics - "They're about halfway between film and prose in terms of revolution of creation." "And in terms of distribution, it turns out that comics are very well suited to the Internet as a form of delivery."

The article has a lot more detail and speculation than I summarize above. Well worth a read.

Kimble v. Marvel: Now With Spider-Man Jokes

I didn't get a chance to read any of the Supreme Court decisions last week so I'm behind. I did find out something about Justice Kagan that might make her my favorite justice. "She is a comic book fan and an avid fan of comic-book based action films, claiming that she has seen them all and that her favorite film is The Avengers."

She let this fandom leak out a little in her opinion in Kimble v Marvel Enterprises Inc.. It's a patent and contract case. Stephen Kimble invented a toy web shooter and several years later Marvel sold their own version violating the patent. They came to agreement that Marvel would buy the patent for about $500,000 plus 3% royalties on future sales. There was no time limit on this and the case comes about because what happens after the patent expires?

It turns out there's an existing 1964 case, Brulotte that found that "The royalty provisions of a patent-licensing agreement which provides for royalties for the use of machines incorporating certain patents are not enforceable for the period beyond the expiration of the last patent incorporated in the machine."

Kimble's patent expired, Marvel found out about Brulotte (neither knew about the case when drafting the contract) and wanted to stop payments, Kimble sued. The court found in Marvel's favor 6-3 citing Brulotte and stare decisis (a caution in overturning previous decisions unless really necessary). History hasn't been kind to Brulotte. Economists find it anti-completive, the opposite of its intent. The argument was that allowing contracts with royalties paid after the patent basically extends the monopoly. The argument against is that it isn't because others can enter the market without royalities and sometimes it's financially useful to extend the payment period longer (allowing smaller payments).

The court found that even if Brulotte was wrong, this case doesn't rise above the stare decisis burden to overturn it and really Congress should be the one to change the statutes. Justice Alito wrote a dissent (which was joined by Roberts and Thomas) saying that it should be overturned. I kinda agree with the dissent.

Still Kagan's opinion is fun for a different reason. She included various Spider-Man references in her writing. Vox describes them but here are my excerpts:

• The parties set no end date for royalties, apparently contemplating that they would continue for as long as kids want to imitate Spider-Man (by doing whatever a spider can).
• Patents endow their holders with certain superpowers, but only for a limited time.
• As against this superpowered form of stare decisis, we would need a superspecial justification to warrant reversing Brulotte.
• To the contrary, the decision's close relation to a whole web of precedents means that reversing it could threaten others.
• But stare decisis teaches that we should exercise that authority sparingly. Cf. S. Lee and S. Ditko, Amazing Fantasy No. 15: “Spider-Man,” p. 13 (1962) (“[I]n this world, with great power there must also come—great responsibility”).

I want to point out Alito's second to last paragraph in which I think he basically admits that Congress is broken:

Passing legislation is no easy task. A federal statute must withstand the “finely wrought” procedure of bicameralism and presentment. ... Within that onerous process, there are additional practical hurdles. A law must be taken up for discussion and not passed over in favor of more pressing matters, and Senate rules require 60 votes to end debate on most legislation. And even if the House and Senate agree on a general policy, the details of the measure usually must be hammered out in a conference committee and repassed by both Houses.

I wonder if that sentiment, that's it's difficult for Congress to fix things, comes into bearing in his view of the typo in Obamacare that comes up in King v. Burwell. I'm guessing not.

Article Dump: Comics

• FXGuide talks about the work various special effects companies did in Avengers: Age of Ultron, Casting the vendors on Avengers.

• HitFix: Our second look at Avengers: Age Of Ultron digs deeper into the films flaws

• io9 describes 4 Lessons We Learned From This Year’s Superhero TV Series.

• A better-than-perfect facsimile of an iconic comic book talks about "How Daniel Clowes remastered Eightball". "To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Eightball Fantagraphics released a slipcase 2-volume facsimile edition of Eightball that includes the first 18 issues of the comic book. It's stunningly gorgeous, and Fantagraphics went all out to create a package that will please people like me who read Eightball in its single issue format as well as people who are new to his early work." It's more involved than you would guess.

• She Makes Comics: A New Documentary Explores the History of Women in Comics

• We Don’t Have To Be That Political Anymore: An Interview with Jeff Smith

The Martian

I've seen that there's a new movie coming out in November with Matt Damon called The Martian. I haven't watched the trailer (I've been down on trailers for a while) but am vaguely aware that people seem to like it. I found out it's based on a book that one of the Mythbusters' loves. Today's xkcd convinced me I really want to read and see this:

So for $6 it's now downloaded to my Kindle.

Update: Read it, the description is dead on and I loved it. Lots of "Oh Shit" moments followed by a laugh-out-loud line.

Understanding the socio-political context of Charlie Hebdo cartoons

Before the other week I had never heard of Charlie Hebdo. Since then I've heard a lot of things about their content and don't really know what to believe. This site is the best I've seen in helping me to Understanding the socio-political context of Charlie Hebdo cartoons "The French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has received a lot of attention after the recent attacks at their office. Some of the criticism directed at Charlie Hebdo is uncalled for and inaccurate. This website tries to explain the cartoons within the context they were published so that they may be better understood."

An Injury to One is an Injury to All

Monday's Tom Tomorrow was really good and before the latest example.

Terms of Service

Al Jazeera America has posted a non-fiction graphic novella, Terms of Service by reporter Michael Keller and cartoonist Josh Neufeld (who drew Brooke Gladstone's comic The Influencing Machine). The subtitle is "Understanding Our Role in the World of Big Data" and it does a nice job balancing the issues of privacy, social media, and new forms of data tracking.

Talks I've Been To Recently

I saw Melissa Harris-Perry give a talk at the Radcliffe Institute, Who's Choosin' Who? Race, Gender, and the New American Politics. This was one of the most entertaining talks I've been to. She spoke much more quickly and candidly than on her TV show with a lot of amusing asides. The main point was that in our government the winners don't take all, they take some, but lately it's been closer to all. Which is odd, because even as more minorities get elected they seem to have less and less influence. While there were nice graphs and things, it still seemed more about the asides. She doesn't seem to be a fan of Hilary (anyone who loses to a black guy named Hussein who just a year prior was a school board president, you've had your chance). She's less against Sarah Palin than I would have expected. Egalitarian incompetence should exist for women as it does for men, see John Edwards and Palin caused many woman GOP women to run in the next election. She also pointed out that Rick Perry and Justice Scalia favor repeal of 17th Amendment, allowing direct election of Senators.

I saw Art Spiegelman and Phillip Johnston's Wordless! at the ICA. Spiegelman spoke about and read from early wordless (often woodcut) comics while Johnston led a jazz sextet providing a soundtrack. I'd read some of the works in the collection, Graphic Witness. I enjoyed the presentation but I didn't learn all that much.

I saw Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick at the Harvard Kennedy School talk about how the Supreme Court Is Increasingly Wary of the Media and Internet (full audio at that link). Justice Stewart gave Bob Woodward a lot of insider information for his 1979 book The Brethren, that's not going to happen again. The court has no press arm and believes everything that anyone needs to know is in the opinions. It seems lost on them that the average person isn't going to read (or necessarily understand) an opinion that journalism could be a useful tool to them. Court reporters are allowed to bring into the court one piece of paper and one pen. No video of the arguments is taken. While audio of arguments is released, it's made available after 5pm on Friday, "when news goes to die". She said that for the Obamacare ruling a reporter had three options:

• They could be in the chamber and see and hear the ruling, but were not allowed to take notes and couldn't leave early
• They could be in an overflow room where they couldn't see but hear, take notes and leave (but not come back)
• They could be in another room where they couldn't see or hear the ruling but could read the opinion.

The court doesn't get modern journalism. When asked about the difficulties of getting several rulings in one day and having to write about them, Justices say to write articles on different days. Journalists don't understand this, though I think I might be on the Justices side on this one. There's enough time to read the court summaries and write a quick article and they could write more detailed articles after having time to read the opinions. We wait for months between arguments and rulings, what's a few more days?.

I saw Jill Lepore explain How Wonder Woman Got into Harvard also at the Radcliffe Institute. I knew some of the history, that Wonder Woman was created by William Moulton Marston, who invented the lie detector (hence her magic lasso) and lived with his wife and girlfriend and there was a lot of bondage in the early comics. It turns out there was a lot more I didn't know. His wife, Elizabeth Holloway Marston, was as accomplished as he, at a time when that wasn't common. She had a law degree from BU and a masters in psychology from Radcliffe and was an editor for Encyclopædia Britannica. The girlfriend was his student Olive Byrne. He came home and told Elizabeth that Olive was moving in and if she objected he'd leave her, she said ok if Olive would raise the kids so she could have a career. Elizabeth and Olive continue to live together long after William's death. This arrangement damaged his academic career which had some questionable issues anyway. Olive's aunt was Margaret Sanger who was a famous birth control activist and founded organizations that became Planned Parenthood. Marston was surrounded by feminists and conceived Wonder Woman to teach kids that woman could be the equal (or better) of men. The bondage stuff was using the iconography of suffrage and feminist movements (editorial cartoons often had women breaking chains). Many of the plots were modeled on events from Marton's past. When he was at Harvard, women weren't allowed; some Wonder Woman stories had her breaking into colleges. A psychology professor of his didn't believe in educating women (even though he also taught at Radcliffe for the money) and was the model for the villain Dr. Psycho. It was a really interesting talk and I'm curious about her new book, The Secret History of Wonder Woman.

xkcd: Worst Hurricane

Sometimes xkcd comes up with ideas and images that are obvious, informative and interesting and that I've never seen before. Worst Hurricane "What's the Worst Hurricane anyone in your town remembers?"

Senator Patrick Leahy and Batman

The Boston Globe has a story that seems like a fabrication of Stephen Glass, Senator Pat Leahy: Living in a fantasy world "Leahy, 74, the longest-serving senator, lays claim to one the most fanciful hobbies in Washington: He has been quietly co-writing Batman comic books and anthologies, as well as taking bit parts and voiceover roles in Caped Crusader films and cartoons — including a turn as a 19th-century frontier politician."

“I helped write this,” Leahy boasted in an interview in his office, referring to the land mine comic. “I’ve also written the foreward to one of their anthologies. I’ve been in four Batman movies. I’ve done voiceovers. I’ve made a huge amount of money on it. Sometimes I kind of gawk when I see the size of the checks, but I committed to [donate it to the library] years ago.”

xkcd: Now

xkcd's latest, Now is basically a world clock image that will stay in sync with the day. Not the "business hours" designation and the "rude to call" one.

xkcd: Frequency

Today's xkcd: Frequency is fun.

xkcd: Cold

I really liked today's xkcd: Cold.

Calvin and Hobbes Snow Art Gallery

With our first real storm of the season coming soon, seems appropriate for the yearly Calvin and Hobbes Snow Art Gallery posting.