Comic Books

Is Spiderman's web really strong enough to support him as he swings from building to building? Why did Superman's home planet of Krypton explode? How much would the Flash need to eat in order to run around the globe in 80 seconds? The man to ask is University of Minnesota physics professor Jim Kakalios. Kakalios is entering his second semester teaching an elective course for freshmen called Science in Comic Books. He says using comic books to teach the fundamentals of physics is a great way to stimulate his students.

My nomination for American hero of the 20th century is someone who lived half his life in disguise and the other half as the world's most recognizable man. He appeared on more radio broadcasts than Ellery Queen and in more movies than Marlon Brando, who once played his father. He helped give America the backbone to wage war against the Nazis, the Depression and the Red Menace. He remains an intimate to kids from Boston to Belgrade and has adult devotees who, like Talmudic scholars, parse his every utterance.

King Arthur, the model of chivalric virtue, leads the valiant knights of the Table Round into battle once more. But things have changed: The Once and Future King has been transformed into a 6-foot-3 Hercules who numbers a woman, a samurai and a mutant among his vassals. And their foes consist of a horde of green-skinned aliens. Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Tintagel anymore. And we're not. "Camelot 3000" by Mike W. Barr and Brian Bolland takes place in the not-too-distant future.

Fans waiting in line Saturday for the annual Free Comic Book Day event at Golden Apple Comics on Melrose Avenue witnessed firsthand the kind of high-speed car chase and police action regularly featured in graphic novels. Dozens of people in two lines streaming into the store and a nearby gallery and parking lot, where free comic book issues were being handed out, first heard sirens around 12:30 p.m. Then a yellow Jeep, its front bumper damaged, peeled south down La Brea Avenue, swinging left onto Melrose in front of Golden Apple, followed quickly by at least two police cruisers.

Lost and forgotten in the seemingly unceasing "Batman" hoopla is the name of the man who wrote the first Batman comic book stories. Bill Finger, who died in 1974, collaborated with artist Bob Kane on the original "The Bat-man" comic book that appeared in May, 1939, according to "The World Encyclopedia of Comic Books." Kane, the recognized creator of Batman, received a credit on the film as the creator of the Batman comic characters. Finger's name is nowhere to be found. "I'm annoyed at the whole thing because people should get what they deserve," said Lyn Simmons, Finger's widow, who asked Warner Bros.

ONCE upon a time, you could safely speak up at a dinner party and mock comic books as the empty calories of a juvenile diet, the brightly colored cotton candy of the magazine rack. Those days are gone. Comic books (sorry -- graphic novels) are now treated in some quarters as museum pieces -- that is quite literally the case at the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Hammer Museum, which, starting Sunday, will co-host an exhibit that anoints and annotates the "Masters of American Comics."

First Person: Despite my prison term, it was my colleagues in Hollywood - yes, Hollywood - who gave me encouragement. In the summer of 2009 I was dragged into a federal courtroom in handcuffs and leg irons. I'd been looking for a sense of family my entire life, a journey that had led me to a street gang for a decade and a half. So the arraignment on extortion charges wasn't a surprise, but the timing was. I'd left the gang three years earlier and had just found out my film"ENMV0002398"> , "Little Birds,"was fully financed and we were set to begin shooting.

In a move that could provide a boost to the small but growing digital comic book business, DC Comics has signed deals to sell comics through online stores owned by Apple, Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Previously, comic book readers could only buy digital copies of issues to read on tablets or other digital devices through DC's own app, or an application controlled by the company ComiXology. While graphic novels have previously been available to buy for digital devices through a variety of stores, DC is the first company to offer single comic book issues through Apple's iBookstore, Amazon's Kindle Store and Barnes & Noble's Nook Book Store.

The late Marvel Comics editor Mark Gruenwald got his wish: His ashes were blended with ink and made into a comic book. "This is something that he really wanted because he really loved comics. He wanted to be part of his work in a very real sense," said Mark Harras, Marvel's editor in chief. The ashes of Marvel's senior executive editor were mixed at a printing plant in Canton, Ohio, for use in "Squadron Supreme," a reprint of a limited edition 1985 comic he wrote, Harras said Thursday.

Look, up in the sky! In case you haven't noticed already, our entertainment stratosphere has grown crowded with muscle-bound superheroes in almost every conceivable shape and size: the franchise-rebooted likes of Spider-Man and Superman, battle-armored warriors such as Robin Hood and Perseus. To whom do we owe our super-saturated superhero culture? It would be easy to lay all of the credit (or blame) at the feet of comic-book artists and Hollywood executives. But superhero roots go much deeper than that, and if you excavate long enough, you will inevitably bump smack into Richard Wagner, the 19th century composer whose four-opera cycle "The Ring of the Nibelung" is regarded by many as an important genetic mother ship for today's fleet of action heroes.

As fans of “The  Walking Dead” know, one of the pleasures of watching the show is pointing out its various inconsistencies. It's a show that practically invites nitpicking. (I mean, is it really that easy to decapitate the undead? Don't zombies ever starve? And just how is the electricity still working at this point, a year or so into the zombie apocalypse?) On Thursday night, Conan O'Brien got the chance to do what millions of Internet commenters and fanboys across the globe would like to do: He grilled Robert Kirkman, the author of the original comic books and an executive producer on the series, about the many things on “The Walking Dead” that don't completely make sense.

Air Force Capt. Harry "Skip" Brittenham was stranded in officers' quarters in Washington, D.C., during a snowstorm in 1964 when he found a copy of "The Fellowship of the Ring," the first installment of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings. " He couldn't put it down. The next day, he trudged through the snow until he found an open bookstore with a copy of the sequel. Today, Brittenham is arguably Hollywood's most powerful deal-maker, an attorney whose A-list clients have included Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks, and Bob and Harvey Weinstein.

Many people in Hollywood considered "Life of Pi" to be unfilmable. Now that it's about to hit theaters Wednesday, there's a new question: Can it be profitable? Director Ang Lee's $120-million adaptation of Yann Martel's 2001 book, which has sold 9 million copies worldwide, is precisely the kind of movie that many complain the big studios don't make anymore: an ambitious and highbrow creation that's not a sequel and isn't based on a comic book or theme park ride. Marketing the movie in no easy task either.

In a move that could provide a boost to the small but growing digital comic book business, DC Comics has signed deals to sell comics through online stores owned by Apple, Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Previously, comic book readers could only buy digital copies of issues to read on tablets or other digital devices through DC's own app, or an application controlled by the company ComiXology. While graphic novels have previously been available to buy for digital devices through a variety of stores, DC is the first company to offer single comic book issues through Apple's iBookstore, Amazon's Kindle Store and Barnes & Noble's Nook Book Store.

EVENTS At the Long Beach Comic and Horror Convention you'll mix and mingle with genre fans, celebrities and exhibitors and get a look at the year's best comic books and pop culture paraphernalia showcasing the work of an exceptional group of writers, artists, illustrators and creators. Long Beach Convention Center, 300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach. 10 a.m. Sat. and Sun. Prices vary. http://www.longbeachcomiccon.com.

When Mary Shelley wrote "Frankenstein" in 1816, she could not have conceived of the cultural landmark it would become. The novel still throws a long shadow across the popular imagination almost two centuries later. Boris Karloff's performance as the monster in Universal's 1931 film has become iconic, and his is merely one among dozens of adaptations and revisions to come: movies, plays, novels, comic books, even breakfast cereals (remember Franken Berry?). Which brings us to Dave Zeltserman's "Monster" (Overlook: 224 pp., $23.95)

A rare copy of the first comic book featuring Superman has sold for $317,200 in an Internet auction. The previous owner had bought it secondhand for less than a buck. It is one of the highest prices ever paid for a comic book, probably a testament to the volume's rarity and excellent condition, said Stephen Fishler, co-owner of the auction site ComicConnect.com and its sister dealership, Metropolis Collectibles. The winning bid for the 1938 edition of Action Comics No.

The mission of the Legal Aid Society of Orange County is to provide civil representation to people who can't ordinarily afford a lawyer. This year Legal Aid embarked on a program unauthorized by any of its funding sources, unspecified in the society's charter, unconnected with law and employing such unlikely volunteers as Lightning Lady and Firestorm. The program began as a noise-abatement project. Clients bring their children to our waiting rooms.

Fans of One Direction might've wondered if Christmas had come early Thursday morning when an unauthorized version of the U.K. boy band's new single leaked online. A characteristically peppy piece of high-gloss party pop, “Live While We're Young” serves as the lead track from One Direction's upcoming sophomore album, “Take Me Home”; Columbia Records rush-released a music video for the song following the leak (available below). But hold onto your moptops, kids, because there's more: Today Bluewater Productions announced the arrival of “Fame: One Direction,” a comic-book account of the group's ascent from the English “X Factor” (where Simon Cowell conjoined the five elaborately coiffed members)

First Person: Despite my prison term, it was my colleagues in Hollywood - yes, Hollywood - who gave me encouragement. In the summer of 2009 I was dragged into a federal courtroom in handcuffs and leg irons. I'd been looking for a sense of family my entire life, a journey that had led me to a street gang for a decade and a half. So the arraignment on extortion charges wasn't a surprise, but the timing was. I'd left the gang three years earlier and had just found out my film"ENMV0002398"> , "Little Birds,"was fully financed and we were set to begin shooting.