Posted in: Comics, Run Around | Tagged: beatles, Comics

Saturday Runaround – Freedom To Beatle

Published Sat, 19 Oct 2013 06:26:34 -0500

Last updated Sat, 19 Oct 2013 06:27:01 -0500

FREEDOM TO BEATLE

The Freedom To Marry campaign has adopted the recent graphic novel The Fifth Beatle, about the life Brian Epstein.

"Freedom to Marry has long urged that the most effective way to continue winning over hearts and minds is talking about who gay people are, why marriage matters, and the harms inflicted by the denial of the freedom to marry," said Evan Wolfson, founder and president of Freedom to Marry. "Vivek J. Tiwary's The Fifth Beatle tells the compelling story of a tremendously successful entertainment executive who lived at a time that gay people were excluded from the public dialogue — not that long ago — and the costs of that exclusion. Brian Epstein's story portrays the unnecessary, unfair, and unacceptable pain and price of telling some of our friends that they cannot dream of a life of love and commitment equally respected under the law. In a year when we celebrate our winning the freedom to marry in Epstein's home country of Britain, and a year of real momentum here in the U.S., we continue to imagine, as John Lennon urged, a better world — and are working to bring it home."

WOMEN, KNOW YOUR LIMITS

The Guardian goes to The Lakes Comics Art Festival.

Greenberg hasn't felt sidelined in the UK comics scene itself however, and certainly indie comic fairs have a very even gender split. "Generations of women have struggled so that I can be so lucky," she tells me.

One such generation of course includes Posy Simmonds and Trina Robbins. Pretty in Ink (Fantagraphics, December), Robbins's most recent "herstorian" or feminist history, illustrates the struggles that women artists and cartoonists have faced across the decades. But overall, coverage of comics and women creators has almost certainly improved – not least because the audience is ever expanding, and increasingly diverse.

A FRACTION OF LIFE EXPERIENCE

Matt Fraction's remarkable essay on on depression, suicide and his own experiences. Bookmark this one, one day it may save someone's life.

I shaved off exactly half my pubic hair vertically. The end result was a 'fro of pubes that looked like a Chia Pet that only half-worked. I started to laugh as I did it. And every time i'd piss, looking down made me laugh.

Because JESUS what a nightmare.

Shortly thereafter I got very heavily into Chuck Jones and Tex Avery. Way less chafing and way more funny.

VIEW TO A THRILL

Heidi MacDonald watches The View. So you don't have to. Actually, it's geolocked so I can't. But knock yourselves out.

As I mentioned, previously, Goldberg has always been a nerd friendly celeb, and she doesn't patronize in a smarmy way here. It's enthusiastic and positive—and also very girl and family friendly. I judge this a win for our side.

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF PARADISE LOST

Re-re-re-reading Justice League Of America.

Earlier this week, Justice League of America #8 premiered the incoming creative team of writer Matt Kindt and artist Doug Mahnke. Playing out in the wake of the "Trinity War" and the opening of "Forever Evil" megaevents, "Paradise Lost" reads as a magical superhero version of Beckett's Endgame. Every one is in their own personal hell, each of our heroes alone. And the magic in this interpretation of Beckett? The Martian Manhunter transitions an Earth-3 psychic prison where each of the cells form entire realities, but read like the discrete photographs on a crimeboard. It is an impossibly poignant metaphor for the reality post-"Trinity War"; that the world has been broken, and the heroes are now trapped in the broken pieces.

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