NATIONAL POST ARTS

Northstar, Marvel’s first openly gay character, to marry beau in upcoming comic

Wedding bells will ring this summer for Marvel Comics’ first openly gay hero, super speedster Northstar.

The New York-based publisher said Tuesday that Canadian character Jean-Paul Beaubier will marry his beau, Kyle Jinadu, in the pages of Astonishing X-Men No. 51, due out June 20.

Avengers, Assembled!

Presenting the Top 4 Marvel Avengers, as chosen by you, the National Post reader!

Cartoonist Jason’s sad-sack realism occupies a solitary world

The most striking thing about Norwegian cartoonist Jason’s drawings is just how much space there is. He isn’t prone to landscapes or long views: More often than not we’re presented with just a character, maybe two, static in a room. But they tend to be surrounded by emptiness, practically weighed down by the sense of nothing that fills the panel.

It’s Day 3 in our Avengers Assemble tournament!

So far, Ms. Marvel and Iron Man have beaten out the competition to be voted your favourite Avengers. But who’s your pick of the bunch today? Read all about each Avenger here, then vote for your favourite in the poll! 

Avengers Assemble, Day 2: After a narrow victory yesterday by Iron Man, our Avengers Assemble tournament returns wit ha new batch of heroes.

Who’s your favourite? Vote for your choice here!

Stan Lee will never retire

“I think if you enjoy what you do it’s like playing and you can’t stop,” says Lee, who sounds as sharp, upbeat and charismatic as ever in a recent phone interview. “Most men want to retire at a certain age. ‘I can’t wait to retire so I can golf or travel,’ or whatever it is. But I’m already doing what I want to do. It’s so much fun.”

2012 Movies Preview: If you only see a dozen movies this year…

Last year at this time, we were talking about all the upcoming movies that have numbers after the titles: 2011 was going to be a year of sequels. Well, looking over the 2012 slate, what do we find but a lot of movies with numbers after the titles. Yes, it’s déjà vu all over again, a sequel of sequels, but what are you going to do? In Hollywood, familiarity breeds content. Fortunately, we don’t have to travel that road. Here, in the order they are set to open, Jay Stone takes a look at 12 to look forward to in 2012:

Cultural Lessons: It’s impossible being green: From Hornet to Lantern, heroes of this hue lost the battle in 2011
When people talk about the marvellous modern age we live in, they often say things like, “We put a man on the moon,” or “My phone has no cord and is full of dirty photographs.” But when I think about the wonders of today, my first thought is, “They made a Thor movie. They actually made a Thor movie.”

I’m a nerd; a very specific nerd, thank you. Gandalfs don’t Frodo my Sam, Super Marios don’t Koopa my Troopa (though I do happen to understand all of those words). I’m a comic book nerd and I’m living in an entertainment world where Hollywood has torn apart my bedroom of 1989 in order to plan their big-budget movies of 2011. And honestly? It’s pretty fabulous. This year I finally got to see Captain America awaken in the modern era and Thor do battle on the Rainbow Bridge and not have it all be as utterly dumb as it sounds. But for every superhero success, there’s a Shaq-filled Steel lurking or a Dolph Lundgren/Thomas Jane/Ray Stevenson Punisher stinking up the joint, and this year the busts can be summed up with a colour: green.

First-ever Superman comic sells for record $2.16-million
A copy of the first issue of Action Comics, in which Superman was unveiled to the world, has sold in an online auction for a record US$2.16-million. It cost 10 cents when it was published in 1938.

The comic, featuring a picture of the “Man of Steel” lifting a car above his head as people around him flee, had been valued at just over US$1-million by auction site ComicConnect.com.

Family Circus creator Bil Keane dead at 89

Born William Aloysius Keane, the American cartoonist taught himself to draw by mimicking The New Yorker-style cartoons published in that paper, and had his own first publication on the amateur page of the Philadelphia Daily News in 1936.