You don’t tend to think of Disney characters existing in a post apocalyptic world inhabited by the walking dead, but artist Kasami-Sensei has created some wonderful images showcasing just that:
The Walking Disney features many characters, including the beautiful princesses from Snow White to Anna and Elsa (Frozen), with cuts, bruises, and scratches, holding firearms and machetes, and looking as if they just won their last fight.
No longer perfectly dressed in fancy ball gowns, tuxedos, tiaras, or glass slippers, these well-known fictional characters face a new reality. Placed on rough, worn paper, the gruesome illustrations eliminate any lingering innocence. The artist has transformed the world into an apocalyptic, zombie-filled environment where self-defense is the key to survival.
You know how you come across an image and your jaw drops? That happens almost every time I visit This Is Colossal and it happened again today:
One of six astronauts currently on board the International Space Station, geophysicist Alexander Gerst spends much of his free time staring out the window as the world zooms by 205 miles below, camera in-hand. Since arriving at the ISS in June of this year Gerst has taken tons of photographs that document hurricanes, floods, dust storms, and oil fields.
One of his favorite things to shoot are the shadows cast by clouds, something that appears surprisingly dramatic from space. Dense cloud formations can create long shadows that stretch for thousands of miles across the Earth’s surface as they eventually disappear into a black horizon. You can see new photos from Gerst daily on Twitter. (viaStellar)
These two are my absolute favorites, with the first being the one that caused my jaw to drop. Can you imagine being in orbit around the Earth and viewing the clouds like this? It gives me the chills thinking about it.
Earlier this month YouTube user questpact sent his DJI Phantom quad-copter and GoPro Hero 3 over the top of Niagara Falls to capture this pretty spectacular footage.
I’ve had cats all my life, and even though I love dogs too, I’ll always have a place in my heart for cats. I would love to have a room for cats like this:
Asking to be seated at a table with a view is no problem at this Filipino restaurant. Located at the foot of the Labasin Falls in the Quezon Province, diners may enjoy authentic Filipino cuisine and the area’s natural splendor as fresh water streams through their toes. Nature and dining all in one? Now that’s my kind of travel.
99-year-old Lillian Weber has a generous heart and sewing hands that just won’t stop. The Iowa-based woman spends hours every single day making a dress for small children who receive the clothing through the Christian nonprofit group Little Dresses for Africa.
For the past two years, Weber has made more than 840 dresses because, simply stated, she just wanted to help people. She uses a pattern to make the dress but she doesn’t stop there. She adds a few personal touches to each garment in order to make the items more unique and so that no two dresses are alike. Weber’s goal is to continue sewing 150 more dresses so that she can create her 1,000th dress by the time she turns 100 years old next May. “When I get to that thousand, if I’m able to, I won’t quit,” she recently said. “I’ll go at it again.” What an amazing story of generosity! You can learn a little more about Weber in the video below.
What does 200 calories worth of food look like? The website Wisegeek conducted a study of 71 different edibles to find out. They proportioned things like peanut butter, canned beans, fruits, veggies, and even soda into 200 calorie quantities and photographed the results. It’s surprising to see what this actually looks like when on a plate.
Marvel has made great strides in recent months to diversify their output. No place is this more apparent than in the increasing number of titles meant to appeal to women. Storm, Elektra, the all-female X-Men book, She-Hulk, the upcoming Thor relaunch, Black Widow, Ms. Marvel, and Captain Marvel are all books headlined by women. This is a move to diversify and I fully support it. Joining the ranks of these titles is the upcoming Spiderwoman book by writer Dennis Hopeless and artist Greg Land (I’ll state for the record that I do NOT like Land’s art). The launch of this book comes at the beginning of a big Spider-Man related storyline called ‘Spiderverse’, which ought to help sales of Spiderwoman initially.
There’s a problem.
A big problem, in my opinion.
It’s a problem that continues to plague the comic book industry, and one that I thought was getting better.
Manara’s cover is blatantly sexist. The focus of the image is clearly on Spiderwoman’s ass. This is an issue of sexual objectification of women in comics, which, as I mentioned above, is an ongoing problem in the comic book industry. Men are never drawn like this. While male heroes in comics are male power fantasies with idealized bodies, they are not sexually objectified. The focus of artists is not on bulging crotches and plump asses of male characters. Yet this is a focus for female characters. Nowhere is this made more apparent than at the Hawkeye Initiative.
About The Hawkeye Initiative
Created on December 2nd 2012, The Hawkeye Initiative uses Hawkeye and other male comic characters to illustrate how deformed, hyper-sexualized, and impossibly contorted women are commonly illustrated in comics, books, and video games.
After seeing the origin posts on Tumblr, Skjaldmeyja started the The Hawkeye Initiative as a means to keep track of the artwork that was quickly being created, with the blog’s name taken from the tags on Hoursago’s post.
These are only two examples in a multitude of images found in comics. Women are drawn in sexualized poses that you never find men in. The “camera angle” so often used to depict women focuses on T&A, while the same is not said for men.
This is problematic. Marvel is supposedly attempting to appeal to female comic book readers in an attempt to diversify, yet the alternate cover to Spiderwoman #1 is exactly the kind of thing that pisses women off (and a lot of men too, like myself). It doesn’t help. It’s two steps back when they claim to be moving forward.
Bleeding Cool News has some words to say about this. Spiderwoman as drawn by Manara bears a strong resemblance to a character on the cover of an pornographic cover Manara drew for a European comic.
The Mary Sue says Milo should be sent back to the drawing board.
i09 says it looks like she is covered in body paint.
Vox says this is not a good sign for women. I agree.
Even Slate has criticized Marvel (I don’t usually see Slate discussing comic books. In all fairness, the issue is about sexual objectification of women, which is a serious problem in society, and one that Slate does tackle.)
Seriously. If Picasso were solicited on a cover, would you be complaining the face he drew had 2 eyes on the same side of its head? C’mon.
I understand what Dan is getting at, but it’s no excuse. Manara’s cover is sexually objectifying. Women in society deal with issues of sexual objectification EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. It is a problem caused by men who view women as sexual objects. It is a problem that needs to stop. It won’t stop by dismissing it as “this is how he draws”. It stops by saying “either redraw this, or we will find another artist for the alternate cover”. I’d go a step further and tell Milo Manara what the problem is and explain to him that in the future if he wants to work for Marvel, he will not draw women in sexually objectifying poses. It is entirely possible to draw beautiful women in ways that do not focus on their T&A. It happens. Just not enough. Come on Marvel. You can do better. If you want to acquire more women readers, you had better do better.
Thanks to Comic Book Alliance, I discovered the blog of Des Taylor, an artist out of London. When I say this guy is good, he is good! His art is detailed, crisp, and walks the line between comic book art and animation-and believe me, this is a good thing. He draws very nice looking women, but not in sexist, objectifying ways (take note comic book artists, it is possible to draw sexy women without being a sexist asshat).
I remember these cereals from my childhood. I never had the chance to eat them, however. My parents would buy cereal for me, but they deemed these to be without nutritional value (I’d be hard pressed to disagree with them too). Even as an adult who still likes to eat cereal, I don’t find myself wanting to try any of those General Mills monster cereals (partly due to my aversion to marshmallows in cereal). As I checked out Comic Book Resources today, I noticed an article about these cereals. CBR is the last place I’d think to find a discussion about cereal, but there you go. Apparently, General Mills sought to redesign the look of their cereal monsters, and approached artists from DC comics to aid them:
Although Halloween is still a few months away, it’s getting closer to the time when General Mills will release its special Halloween-themed cereals once again — but this time, the company is enlisting DC Comics to help out. The new boxes will feature redesigns of the cereal mascots by some of the top illustrators in the industry, including Jim Lee on Boo Berry, Dave Johnson on Franken Berry and Terry Dodson and Rachel Dodson on Count Chocula. Reported by USA Today, the cereals will feature limited-edition packaging with the new art work, and comic strips drawn by Brent Schoonover.
“I put a lot of thought in it. It was stressful,” Lee told USA Today of designing an updated Boo Berry. “Drawing simpler characters is a lot more work and harder than drawing something that’s more complicated or has a lot of renderings. Every line counts and every distance between the eyes and the ears, it’s all super critical.”
Photographer Francisco Negroni is a talented artist who has captured multiple awe-inspiring images of nature. I was introduced to hir work by way of Sapphoshands; specifically these electrifying images:
