Bean Bandit, a.k.a. the titular Riding Bean, runs an illegal courier service in the heart of Chicago. With his sharp-shooting partner Rally Vincent riding shotgun, he’ll transport you and/or your goods wherever they need to go, no questions asked. A consummate professional and master at the wheel, his services cost a literal fortune. He only has two rules: no messing with kids, and no dissing his badass customized car, the Roadbuster.
Riding Bean is a 45-minute OVA based on a short-lived manga by Kenichi Sonoda (Bubblegum Crisis, Gunsmith Cats). It contains some of the most meticulous, well-animated car chase sequences in the history of anime, reflecting Sonoda’s compulsive attention to detail. The action is Riding Bean’s biggest draw, but its humorously gritty tale of intrigue and the ludicrousness of Bean’s Invincible Hulk-esque attributes are also great fun. If there’s one flaw, it’s that the script can’t help but include some of the fetishy excesses Sonoda would become better known for in his Gunsmith Cats manga; while there’s nothing explicit, a prolonged early sequence is bound to make you squirm in your seat. Still, that’s only five out of forty minutes of high-octane awesomeness.
Dash Shaw writes about curating the pop-up shop at the Metrograph theater in New York City, where his film My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea opened on April 14th 2017 - on The Comics Journal.
The shop carries “rare DVDs, film-related books, and issues of Cahiers du Cinéma. They asked me to pick books and DVDs that felt related to my movie, or that a cinema-going audience would be interested in.” Included in the selection is Frank Santoro’s Incanto (above).
Dash Shaw writes that Frank “painted the key exterior background paintings in High School Sinking. This particular zine by Santoro is lovely and poetic, and also, to me, utterly hilarious, because a section of it comes from a Speed Racer episode. Santoro told me that this was drawn after working as Francesco Clemente’s assistant. Clemente would often interpret preexisting old drawings, so that inspired Santoro to adapt a two-second Speed Racer moment. It’s perfect – like seeing something you’ve seen before for the first time. He captures the stillness of those Speed Racer cartoons with their minimal background paintings.”
Millie the Model was Marvel Comics’ longest-running humor title, first published by the company’s 1940s predecessor, Timely Comics, and continuing through its 1950s forerunner, Atlas Comics, to 1970s Marvel.
The series ran 207 issues (cover-dated Winter 1945 to Dec. 1973), a 28-year span that included one of the first Marvel Comics annuals (in 1962), and spin-offs including A Date with Millie, Life with Millie, Mad About Millie, and Modeling with Millie. Initially a humorous career-gal book about New York City model Millie Collins, it very quickly evolved into a broader, more slapstick comedy – though for a time becoming a romantic adventure series with all the same characters (#113–153, March 1963 – Aug. 1967) before returning to humor.
The character was created by writer-artist Ruth Atkinson, one of the pioneering women cartoonists in comic books. Following this first issue, subsequent early stories were drawn mostly by Timely staffer Mike Sekowsky.
The character’s essential look, however, was the work of future Archie Comics great Dan DeCarlo, who would later create Josie and the Pussycats and other Archie icons. DeCarlo’s 10-year run on the series, from #18–93 (June 1949 – Nov. 1959), was succeeded by the team of writer Stan Lee and artist Stan Goldberg, a.k.a. “Stan G.”, the main Atlas/Marvel colorist at the time. Goldberg mimicked the house style DeCarlo set, and later went on to work with him at Archie, as did occasional Millie artist Henry Scarpelli. Al Hartley and Ogden Whitney provided an occasional cover.
Millie became part of the Marvel Universe with Fantastic Four Annual #3 (1965), which chronicled the wedding of Reed Richards and Susan Storm. Fellow humor-comic stars Patsy Walker and Hedy Wolfe, among the sidewalk crowd outside, talk about wanting to catch a glimpse of celebrity Millie, whom they’ve heard is on the guest list. Alex Ross depicted her at the ceremony when he revisited the wedding in the 1990s miniseries Marvels.
Fridtjof Nansen led a 3-year-long voyage of exploration of the Arctic. After WW I he devoted his life to famine relief in Russia and refugee issues. He also drew this frontispiece for a history of arctic exploration he wrote. October 10th is his birthday.
I feel like maybe this might be of interest to some.
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Reblogging right now because I’m having a random anxiety attack and figured someone else might need soothing too.
Cheetahs are one of my favorite animals, and they have anxiety too! They get spooked pretty easily and actually are often given therapy dogs in order to help them with their anxiety.
They’re very sweet; they just have big claws and big teeth. They’re really loving when in groups and habitually do social grooming for hours and hours. They’re a lovely animal. :3 To hear them purr is a pure delight.
