Category: Popular Culture

Taschen’s Spider-Man Vol 1: 1962–1964

Big, beautiful, and nearly (but not quite) perfect book of the dawn of Spider-Man The initial volume in Taschen's Marvel Comics Library, Spider-Man. Vol. 1: 1962–1964, brings the first stories of Marvel's web-slinging superhero to a sumptuous, large, high-quality format. The book is massive. The pages measure 11 by 15.6 inches. Its 698 pages make … Continue reading Taschen’s Spider-Man Vol 1: 1962–1964 →

Gary Friedrich: A Small Remembrance

I was deeply saddened to hear this morning of the passing of comics writer Gary Friedrich. I met him only once, briefly, a long time ago. When I was a young lad, sometime in the mid-1960s, I visited New York City for the first time on vacation with my parents. What did I most want … Continue reading Gary Friedrich: A Small Remembrance →

Will E Corp Become the KLondike-5 of Corporate Branding?

In a scene near the beginning of Barry Levinson's Paterno, which debuted on HBO this past Saturday, reporters from Harrisburg Pennsylvania's Patriot-News huddle around a computer monitor to read the criminal charges filed against retired football coach Jerry Sandusky. As the camera shows the team glued to the screen, the back of the computer display … Continue reading Will E Corp Become the KLondike-5 of Corporate Branding? →

Pete Seeger: Free Culture Pioneer

In 2004, students at Swarthmore College launched FreeCulture.org (later named the Free Culture Foundation) to fight "coercive copyright practices and other threats to the free flow of information." The movement was an extension of the work of academics such as Lawrence Lessig and was largely a response to the dissonance between the fluid movement of … Continue reading Pete Seeger: Free Culture Pioneer →