“Today’s superhero is too much like an action hero who participates in non-stop violence; he’s aggressive, sarcastic and rarely speaks to the virtue of doing good for humanity. When not in superhero costume, these men, like Ironman, exploit women, flaunt bling and convey their manhood with high-powered guns. “

The comic book heroes of the past did fight criminals. “But these were heroes boys could look up to and learn from because outside of their costumes, they were real people with real problems and many vulnerabilities” she said.

To understand how the media and marketers package masculinity to boys, Lamb surveyed 674 boys aged 4 to 18, walked through malls and talked to sales clerks and came to understand what boys were reading and watching on television and at the movies.

Lamb and her co-authors found that marketers take advantage of boys’ need to forge their identity in adolescence and sell them a narrow version of masculinity. They can either be a “player” or a “slacker” – the guy who never even tries – to save face.

Lamb adds, “In today’s media, superheroes and slackers are the only two options boys have.

“Boys are told, if you can’t be a superhero, you can always be a slacker. Slackers are funny, but slackers are not what boys should strive to be; slackers don’t like school and they shirk responsibility. We wonder if the messages boys get about saving face through glorified slacking could be affecting their performance in school”

Full story: IndianTelevision.com

The Telegraph is reporting:

“The image of my client is in danger,” said a lawyer for Warner Bros. “This is clearly a reference to the film and fictional character Harry Potter.

Everyone who sees the condoms automatically thinks of Harry Potter.”

The lawyer for Magic X said: “Our product has nothing to do with Harry Potter.” The brand was launched in 2006 and the name was registered with Swissreg, the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting:

In an interview with Speakeasy, Blagojevich said he never even knew that comic conventions existed, until he and his wife were invited to attend the Chicago version a couple days ago by Barry Greenberg, the fest’s Director of Talent. “It was unexpected and unplanned, but after we thought about it a bit and talked to Barry, we thought it would be a fun thing to do and a kind of chance to walk into a new experience and be out and about and kind of feel the people,” he says. Plus, “Barry promised that there were going to be thousands of people here.”

Blagojevich said: “I remember being a kid growing up and how devoted I was to Thursday nights and making sure I did everything I could to watch Batman. And then I had a chance to meet him [actor Adam West] today, which was kind of interesting. I would say that there was a little moment there in the mid-to-late ‘60s when I was 9, 10, 11, when he was almost as significant to me as Abraham Lincoln. [laughs] I can’t say that’s the case today, but certainly when I was a kid he was a hero and somewhat of a role model.”

The New York Times is reporting:

Several living artists still document that Broadway energy, including Richard Baratz, whose celebrity caricatures line the walls of Sardi’s, and James McMullan, whose posters have cataloged the seasons at Lincoln Center. But since Hirschfeld’s death in 2003, at the age of 99, there has been no clear heir apparent to his title as Broadway’s go-to illustrator.

Not that the pad-and-pencil tradition of drawing Broadway is extinct. (Shrinking, yes, but not dead.) The artist Victor Juhasz, referring to Hirschfeld, writes: “His work was clearly distinctive but by no means the final statement on Broadway illustrations.”

The art of today’s theater illustrators and caricaturists is featured regularly in magazines, playbills and online. (With the exception of the work of Mr. McMullan, however, most show posters these days are photographed or done using computer software, not drawn.) Most lucratively, their pieces are given out in limited editions as gifts on opening or closing nights, or are commissioned for private collections. (Corporate gigs help pay the rest of the bills.)

The Times has an interactive overview of the very best of the new Broadway cartoonists.

“I’ll just say this, if we had been able to make the movie that we had gone down [to Australia] to rehearse, if you had seen the production art I’d seen… it would’ve been the coolest thing ever. It would have been the neatest vision of Batman and the coolest vision of Superman you’ve ever seen. It would have been dark and fairly brutal and quite gory and just f**king epic.”

Full story: Digital Spy

AOL News is reporting:

The U.S. military chose the manga format because it’s “a very common way of communicating in Japan,” Maj. Neal Fisher, deputy director of public affairs for U.S. forces in Japan, told Agence France-Presse.

“A lot of people love manga. … Manga is a very lighthearted way to carry information” on where the U.S. bases are, what they are doing and how they are cooperating with the Japanese forces, Fisher said.

The U.S.-funded comics debut also comes amid strained ties between Washington and Tokyo over the presence of American Marines 0n the Japanese island of Okinawa. A row over plans to relocate a U.S. airfield on the island toppled Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama after he broke a campaign promise to move U.S. troops off Okinawa.

Newsweek is reporting:

Her illustrations seemed to come from a different world, and indeed they did. It wasn’t only her gender that set her apart. You can see in her work flashes of Klimt, Schiele, Dix, and other high-art painters she studied as a wealthy young girl in prewar Austria. You can also see the influence of what happened next: World War II. Phillips spent two years as a Jewish war refugee in England, wondering if her parents were still alive, and ultimately escaping to the U.S. with the kind of derring-do you might find in Señorita Rio, an immigrant turned spy who became Phillips’s most celebrated comic creation. “Whatever is in you comes out in the drawings. I think this is probably why they are so personal,” Phillips, 85, says now from her spacious Upper East Side apartment in Manhattan. At a time when we can’t seem to get enough of macho action movies, videogames, and assorted comic-book-inspired fluff, Phillips is that rarest of artists: a woman whose work—and whose very existence—conveyed a sense of import in an otherwise candy-colored world.

iPad Daily is reporting:

Selfish Elite may have been an inflammatory choice of words, but this group of people, MyType found, aren’t just rich, they are well educated and “sophisticated.” For them, the iPad’s price ($499 for the cheapest model) is less daunting and the touchscreen interface is attractive for those who are already likely to be doing business on the move.

“iPad Owners are an elite bunch. They’re wealthy, highly educated and sophisticated. They value power and achievement much more than others. They’re also selfish, scoring low on measures of kindness and altruism. As can be seen in the chart below, we found that people with all or most of these qualities, whom we call selfish elites, are roughly 6 times more likely to be an iPad Owner than the average person,” read the MyType report.

MyType explained that the iPad might be more attractive to selfish people who “jump on the opportunity to take work and the web deeper into their lives. The unselfish are less likely to be single-mindedly ambitious and more likely to be attuned to the needs of their families and other private, offline pursuits.”

Bad generalizations aside, what the survey seemed to show most was that the average person isn’t getting an iPad. More than half of respondents didn’t think the iPad was a very big deal, six percent didn’t even know what it was, and another significant portion had thought about buying but had serious reservations. That left only three percent of people who had bought or were planning to buy an iPad.

OSC is reporting:

Betty Boop was introduced to UFL fans in the home city of the UFL reigning champion Las Vegas Locos on Wednesday as part of a league-wide uniform unveiling at the city’s Fashion Show Mall.

First introduced in the 1930s, Betty Boop was created by Max Fleischer for his “Talkartoons” series, the first “talkies” of animation, which Max’s company, Fleischer Studios, produced for Paramount. Today, the world-famous cartoon character is one of the most popular and successfully licensed characters in entertainment history, with more than 185 licensees in the United States and approximately 375 internationally producing quality products bearing Betty’s likeness in virtually every category.

“King Features has a long and impressive track record for building brands,” said Bill Uglow, the United Football League’s Senior Vice President of Consumer Products and Licensing. “We look forward to the new opportunities their expertise in strategic licensing will bring to the UFL. We believe that our teams’ fans of all ages will enjoy the line of Betty Boop merchandise and will have fun welcoming her to UFL stadiums at many of our games.”

The first licensee on board to develop UFL / Betty Boop co-branded products is Trevco Sportswear, which will launch team T-shirts this Fall at retailers in UFL markets and at local stadiums.

“This co-branded partnership marries two American icons – football and Betty Boop – into a unique product that will have fans cheering,” said David Golzman, Licensing Manager of King Features. “We are thrilled to extend Betty’s presence with the UFL through this sportswear deal with Trevco and look forward to further expanding the UFL brand in the licensing arena.”