Comic Books

Walt Disney Co.'s acquisition of Marvel Entertainment gave it the Hulk, Iron Man and other superheroes to fuel summer blockbusters for years to come. It also got Ike Perlmutter. Marvel's chief executive is hardly a household name. But Disney's purchase of the comic book publisher made Perlmutter one of the largest individual shareholders in the entertainment conglomerate, giving him special powers all his own. Superheroes are big business in Hollywood, accounting for three of the top-grossing films in the U.S. this year: Marvel's"The Avengers,""The Dark Knight Rises" and"The Amazing Spider-Man.

Joe Kubert was never a superstar comics artist - his work didn't have the necessary bombast or polished edges - but the man who drew ragged, soulful soldiers in "Sgt. Rock," "The Haunted Tank" and "Enemy Ace" did something his characters would have admired: Kubert marched farther and longer than anyone else and proved himself a natural leader. Kubert, 85, who died Sunday in Morristown, N.J., of multiple myeloma, leaves behind a legacy spread across comic books published in eight decades and built into the walls of the Kubert School.

Kit Quinn wipes away the sweat below her faux-ruby-encrusted tiara as she makes her way by foot to Anime Expo, an annual mecca of sorts for anime and manga lovers. It's been two years since she's been there, and she's surprised by the hordes of people at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Her raven black hair and fair skin, coupled with a red and white schoolgirl uniform, elbow-length gloves and red pumps, make her a near-perfect doppelganger of the wildly popular anime character Sailor Mars.

Anyone familiar with the comic books that inspired AMC's hit series "The Walking Dead" might have had an inkling that Jon Bernthal's increasingly unhinged former lawman Shane Walsh wouldn't survive the show's unforgiving post-apocalyptic landscape. But it wasn't a hungry zombie that did Shane in - it was a knife wound to the gut courtesy of his former best friend and partner, delivered in a spectacular moonlight standoff in the second-season finale. Life after death seems to agree with Bernthal, though, who arrived for a recent afternoon interview in good spirits, his sweet-natured pit bull, Boss, by his side.

COMEDY A long way removed from a puzzling early career that found him sarcastically hosting the frat-tastic MTV dating show "Singled Out" in the '90s, Chris Hardwick has developed into a solid comic talent with his popular Nerdist blog and podcast, which made the leap to television on BBC America earlier this year. This live podcast taping will deliver more nods to comic books and further tributaries of nerd culture with guests Jonah Ray and Matt Mira. Nokia Theatre, 800 W. Olympic Blvd., L.A. Sat. 7:30 p.m. $16.50-$26.50 http://www.ticketmaster.com .

Hong Kong - Times were good in the 1970s and '80s for Hong Kong comics - so good that one publisher was listed on the stock exchange and a newspaper dedicated to the genre published daily for two years. They were, in the words of Tony Wong, the creator of the Oriental Heroes action series whom fans, artists and scholars have dubbed the territory's godfather of comics, "the golden years. " In recent years, comics publishers here in one of the world's largest markets for the genre have slimmed down.

Free Comic Book Day, what some call the fanboy answer to Christmas, is happening Saturday. "The Avengers," featuring some of the most popular characters in comic book lore, is already rampaging through theaters. It's going to be a good weekend for nerds and the industry that serves them. And about time too March was less than stunning for comic book retailers. Sales were down 5.9% from February in dollar terms and 2.1% in units. Compared with March 2011, dollar sales fell 2.6% while unit sales slumped 2%, according to Diamond Comic Distributors.

Washington is full of nerds. I know. I speak nerd, not fluently mind you, at least not anymore. But I certainly know more than a few phrases memorized from a Berlitz nerd-to-English phrase book. I can talk Dungeons & Dragons (both D&D and AD&D). I know about the Golden Age of Comics (as in comic books -- if you thought that was a reference to Bob Newhart's heyday, subtract 20 nerd points right there). Anyway, if you spend any time in Washington you'll find nerds. What happens is most of them sublimate their fixations with comics, or baseball cards, or 1960s British comedies to policy minutiae and political arcana.

HONG KONG - A few days ago, an art professor from northern China named Li Xu was in a small Beijing gallery in the shadow of Tiananmen Square explaining the unlikely inspiration for one of his paintings: the $2.7-billion blockbuster "Avatar. " After the 34-year-old finally caught the film last year (it first opened in China in early 2010), Li wanted to see if he could marry the serenity he felt infused "Avatar"with the aesthetic of traditional Chinese painting, his primary medium.

'Comic Book Men' Where: AMC When: 10 p.m. Sunday Rating: Not rated