superheroes // Current

'Iron Man 2' exclusive image for Empire Magazine offers fans something shiny and new

Jorge Carreon blogs that the Holiday 2009 film season is far from over, but fans are... more

MediaJor
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Koldcast looks at the Evolution of Superhero Movie

Web TV channel KoldCast (which has web series 'Chick' and 'Johnny Raikou' on their... more

smurph25
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3 days ago
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Queer Sighted's list of the 10 Gay Superheroes

The site 'Queer Sighted' has compiled the top ten list of Gay Superheroes (not joking... more

smurph25
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9 days ago
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Steampunkazon- Zombie-Hunter!

Stayin alive,......and gittin er done!... more

remanns
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25 days ago
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6 comments

Don't be a zero, make you a Super Hero!

Everyone needs a superhero in their likeness. Now you can waste your afternoon making... more

abbym0308
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5 months ago
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7 comments

Blog@Ween: What Would Watchmen Think?

If you’ve been reading Blog@ for the past couple of days, you’ve seen that we’ve... more

remanns
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28 days ago
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Marvel Heroes: How they square-off against each other

The Marvel Heroes have come and gone over the past few years; some have successfully... more

Skyscraper08
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28 days ago
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3 comments

PC Hookup: Interview with a Superhero

A superhero gives a candid interview about many aspects of his life. Check out the... more

hundleyjared
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3 months ago
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Kirby's Lost Future; Kamandi's World!

This is kind of a cheap post, but I always like to include this when I blog. You’re... more

remanns
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1 month ago
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"NOT-SO SUPERFRIENDS", A SUPERHERO SATIRE NOW AVAILABLE ONLINE

You may not find these heroes in the pages of Marvel of DC, but Captain Condor and... more

Gukbe
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1 month ago
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Superhero pub crawl in Norwich

Over 50 men dressed as their favourite superheroes on a pub crawl on Saturday, and it... more

smurph25
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1 month ago
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STUDENT PUNISHED FOR SPAGHETTI BELIEFS

A student has been suspended from school in America for coming to class dressed as a... more

AndreaKnoll
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1 month ago
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The bittersweet legacy of Jack Kirby

"You’d be hard-pressed to find a recent comic book that didn’t have the stylish scrawl of the artists somewhere on the cover, but that was not the case when Jack Kirby was making pop culture history back in the 1960s with his wildly kinetic drawings of the X-Men, Hulk and the Fantastic Four. “I think I have a highly unique and unusual style, and that’s the reason I never sign my drawings,” the proud Kirby told an interviewer in 1987, seven years before his death. “Everybody could tell any of my covers a mile away on the newsstand, and that satisfied me.”

The satisfaction was fleeting. The artist may be reverently referred to as “King” Kirby by the pop scholars and younger artists who celebrate his genre-defining work but Kirby is, in some ways, an overlooked figure in the broader view of American culture. He didn’t live to see his creations fly across the movie screen over the last decade and his four children made nothing from those lucrative films, although they are now pursuing legal action to claim some of the future Hollywood wealth. “There is,” daughter Lisa Kirby says, “a bittersweet legacy to my father’s work.”

On a recent afternoon, in Beverly Hills, a different man was autographing a giant lithograph reproducing one of Kirby’s classic Fantastic Four covers. It was Stan Lee, the writer who was Kirby’s most famous collaborator until they became estranged over creative credit, artwork custody and money. An art dealer had brought stacks of limited-edition lithos, some to be priced at $850, to Lee’s Santa Monica Boulevard office along with a check in his pocket to pay the 86-year-old Lee for his autographs.

Lee had written the stories for the classic comics, of course, but considering all the history, it was still odd to see his name etched on the cosmic Kirby tableau from 1966.

“Yes, there was a time when there was some hard feeling on his part ... but he got over that and we were friends,” Lee said. “It really is sad that he didn’t get to see all the big movies. None of us could predict that we would get to this point with the films. I don’t dwell on it too much because I’m always so busy doing what I am doing today. Unfortunately the guys back in the day did not make as much as they do today. Years ago also you had artists doing these comics who, well, there was nothing else they could have done. Their style wasn’t right for advertising or magazines like Saturday Evening Post or Collier’s. And as for us writers, well, we weren’t qualified to write for the New Yorker. Comic book writers were considered hacks, and artists weren’t really thought of as much beyond that.”

Lee studied one of the other art pieces, a dazzling revisiting of a Kirby cover for Captain America. "Wow, look at this one." The pieces are being sold by the Santa Monica gallery called Every Picture Tells a Story as part of a new licensing deal with Marvel to create high-end wall art from illustrations that were, in their day, the most gaudy and disposable entertainment imaginable. “As far as I’m concerned,” Lee said with his endless zeal, “it is fine art."

The story of two “hacks,” as Lee would frame it, will be scrutinized much more considering recent events. Last month, the Walt Disney Co. paid $4 billion to scoop up Marvel Entertainment and its vault of florid characters who over the last decade have become Hollywood box-office heroes. Many of the most valuable properties in that vault were created by the wildly prolific tandem of Lee and Kirby in the 1960s; there are two big-budget movies now in the pipeline for Marvel Studios that are based on Lee-Kirby creations (“The Mighty Thor" and “The Avengers”) and a third (“First Avenger: Captain America”) based on the work of Kirby and writer Joe Simon. The Kirby brood watched the Disney deal happen and within days were conferring with new attorneys."

This is Movie News
http://current.com/groups/movie-news/"You’d be hard-pressed to find a recent comic book that didn’t have the stylish... more