The Ten Best Musician/Comic Artist Friendships - New York Music - Sound of the City

Music and comics. Comics and music. They go together like peanut butter and jelly:

2. Neil Gaiman and Tori Amos
Though Gaiman has denied long-running rumors that his character Delirium—featured in his canonical series The Sandman—was based on Amos, he did admit that their friendship influenced his interpretation of the character. She later wrote an introduction for the collection of Sandman spin-off Death: The High Cost Of Living, and he repaid the favor by collaborating with Amos on story structure for her covers album Strange Little Girls. The platonic Joe Dimaggio and Marilyn Monroe for misfit ’90s kids with dramatic tendencies (more on Gaiman’s less platonic, just as public musical relationship later), they met after Amos, already a fan, sang about “me and Neil hanging-out with the Dream King” for her song “Tear In Your Hand.” (She later went on to sing about her anxiety that a lover might be unable to find her if “Neil makes me a tree,” which sort of happened in Stardust.) The pair share a love of folklore and a willingness to blow up odd ideas in a spectacular fashion, and an argument could be made that her friendship with Gaiman drove new readers to Sandman and Vertigo in general, and was one of several factors that helped make the art form’s less of a boy’s club.

It’s a great list, but misses off the most critical music/comics mutual appreciation of all: Jolly Jack Kirby and Paul McCartney. Read the story here and here.

Smoking, Drinking, Writing, Womanizing, Smoking, Drinking... - Mad Men - Television - NYTimes.com

Weiner’s achievements with “Mad Men,” which is produced by Lionsgate, are plentiful, starting with the storytelling. Setting it in the early 1960s, on the cusp between the repression and conformity of the cold war and McCarthy-era 1950s and the yet-to-unfold social and cultural upheavals of the 60s, allows Weiner an arc of character growth that is staggering in its possibilities. It also gives him the opportunity to mine the Rat Pack romance of that period, when the wreaths of cigarette smoke, the fog of too many martinis — whether exhilarating or nauseating — and the silhouettes specific to bullet bras only heightened the headiness of the dream that all men might one day become James Bond or, at the very least, key holders to the local Playboy Club.

Could Community star Donald Glover play Spider-Man? - HitFix.com

The internet chatter du jour:

So we’ve had three films now where Spider-Man is a humorless mope who looks perpetually ready to cry.  Great.  If casting Donald Glover means that we get a Spider-Man who is as comfortable cracking a joke as spinning a web, then I’ll gladly accept a non-white Peter Parker and never look back.

However, just the idea of a black actor WANTING to play Spider-Man… and keep in mind, he hasn’t auditioned or spoken to Sony or done anything official except say he sure would love a chance at the role… has made the fanboy nation crazy, and I wonder how many of them even fully understand the implications of what they write when they rail against the idea.  It’s a big deal to call somebody a racist, and it’s not a word I throw around lightly.  I think there are many people who are opposed to the notion of Donald Glover playing the role because he doesn’t fit their interpretation of the character, and I can see that.  Casting an icon like this is never easy.  But there’s a difference between knowing Donald’s work, considering that work, and deciding that you’d rather see someone else play the part and flat-out rejecting the notion that any black man can EVER play the role, and that’s the position that many people have taken in this debate.

I saw Don Glover at a comedy club on a recent trip to NYC. He was relentless, like a bullet train on laughing gas, and the whole room was howling with glee. Sony Pictures should seriously give this some thought.