* it's worth a reminder now and then that a lot of big-tent genre franchise fans are very conservative, and it's a streak you can find in almost all the corporate fandoms. It's amazing to me now how few gay people are even hinted at on many of these properties, and of course all the big connected superhero universes have spent time in similarly uncomfortable places trying to figure out how they want to reflect that obvious aspect of modern life. The broader the narrative net, the more uncomfortable the absences.
* James Kochalka is turning 50 and he's going to play a concert -- perhaps his last one -- to mark the occasion. If your lingering memory of James is that of a young man fighting with older cartoonists about the importance of craft, this whole bullet-point may be weird.
* Bob Temuka muses on 
