Off-Panel: November 12, 2014
LA’s DesignerCon saw some pretty impressive recreations of iconic comic book covers in LEGO form. (Robot6)
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“Where is the Netflix of comics?” you ask. Unlimited streaming of everything from Blondie to Urasawa. That remains only a pipe dream, but a site called Comicsfix (get it?) is trying to be the streaming service we want. For $9.95 you get unlimited comics on various apps, and 24 hour access. But access to what? It’s just been announced that Dynamite is the first company Top 10 publisher to sign up with them.”
Comics-on-demand? It’s happening. (The Beat)
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“As a kid who read a lot of science fiction, I’m not sure what I thought American health care would be by the time I became an adult, but I certainly didn’t expect it to involve shelves of Extreme Doritos, buckets of off-brand Cheez Doodles, bottles of Hennessey capped with black-plastic theft hats, and wire bins of hot-pink Koosh balls. Opposite the swooshing pharmacy doors through which my daughter and I entered, in a corner, stood a convincing waiting-room stage set that led into a pretty believable simulation of a doctor’s examination room, into which we were called after we’d entered our names onto a touch screen ringed with Corbis images of smiling old people and multiracial families cast in golden, health-giving sunlight.”
Here’s Chris Ware on the story behind his cover for The New Yorker.
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“We want to find ways to make smaller aircraft more effective, and one promising idea is enabling existing large aircraft, with minimal modification, to become ‘aircraft carriers in the sky’,” said Dan Patt, DARPA program manager. “We envision innovative launch and recovery concepts for new UAS designs that would couple with recent advances in small payload design and collaborative technologies.”
If this sounds familiar, you’re not the only one to draw a connection between this proposal from the Pentagon’s DARPA branch and the S.H.I.E.L.D. hellicarriers seen plummeting to earth in comics and film.
