Lots of great stuff to read on the internets this weekend.

SCOTT PILGRIM: Need a fix of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim? Total Film can hook you up. Writer Sam Ashurst has an interview with Shaun of the Dead’s Edgar Wright where he talks about his forthcoming adaptation Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Here’s a sample from Wright’s pie-hole: “On one hand it’s very faithful to the books, on the other it has become something that has the structure of a romantic comedy action film.”
(h/t Forbidden Planet International Blog)

DC COMICS: Back in the day (that would, in this case, be 1989), comic book industry veteran KC Carlson worked for DC Comics. He left Madison, WI and moved to the big city where he eventually became Richard Bruning’s assistant and learned to nearly-master New York’s 1940s umbrella-and-revolving-door technology. Recently he blogged about his experience interviewing for the job, living in New York and trying to trick Mike Gold. There’s a lot of fun stuff you don’t think about until you’ve worked in the cramped Manhattan offices of a major comic book publisher. Like where to store the original oversized paintings by Dave McKean in a pre-digital era. Fascinating stuff, especially if you remember some of your DC players from the late 1980s and early 1990s.

HARVEY KURTZMAN: An undisputed genius. His work on EC Comics revolutionized storytelling and he set a high mark for how to tell war stories in comic books. He’s the founding editor of MAD when it started as a comic book parodying other comic books, back in 1952. With his long-time friend Will Elder he created Little Annie Fanny for Playboy. Kurtzman was The Onion, The Daily Show and David Letterman of the generation that came of age in the 1950s and 1960s. He popped a culture that needed popping. Post-MAD, one of the things Kurtzman did was gather a group of fellow creators - Elder, Jack Davis, and Al Jaffee, and Arnold Roth - and launch their own humor magazine: Humbug. Fantagraphics is releasing the entire 11-issue run of the magazine in a deluxe format edition. To tease you, they’ve put the entire first issue of Humbug online. If you’re familiar with Kurtzman, you’re already going to click the link. If you’re not familiar with him, see what everyone’s talking about and click the link.

STAN GOLDBERG: Did you ever wonder who colored all those great Marvel comics of the 1960s? That was Stan Goldberg. Stan spent much of his time drawing in the classic Archie house style chronicling the adventures of the gang from Riverdale, but he was also the uncredited colorist on those early Marvel classics. He’s the guy who set the color pattern for Spider-Man’s costume, made the Hulk green and the Fantastic Four’s unitards blue. Mark Evanier has all this and much, much more about the Stan at Marvel who wasn’t named “Lee.”

That’s all for this Friday. I’ll be back soon with more great stuff from all over.
(Artwork © Bryan Lee O’Malley)