Movies | National Public Radio commentator John Ridley critiques Hollywood for being even less diverse than the Big Two when it comes to diversity in lead characters, and demolishes their blame-the-audience theory that white people won't go to see a movie with a black lead by pointing to a study by Indiana University professor Andrew Weaver: "Weaver found that white audiences tended to be racially selective with regard to romantic movies, but not necessarily when it came to other genres. So, sorry, Hollywood. You can't blame it on the ticket buyers." [NPR]
Piracy | Comic-book torrent tracker Z-Cult FM, which was threatened with legal action by Marvel in 2007 and eventually shut down in 2009, has re-opened its virtual doors. [Facebook]
Creators | Becky Cloonan talks about the joys and the hardships of being a full-time comics creator: "Comics are hard work. Comics are relentless. Comics will break your heart. Comics are monetarily unsatisfying. Comics don’t offer much in terms of fortune and glory, but comics will give you complete freedom to tell the stories you want to tell, in ways unlike any other medium. Comics will pick you up after it knocks you down. Comics will dust you off and tell you it loves you. And you will look into its eyes and know it’s true, that you love comics back." [Becky Cloonan: Comics or STFU]
Creators | The Sixth Gun writer Cullen Bunn has returned to writing a column for Broken Frontier. [Broken Frontier]
Creators | Vera Brosgol, whose first graphic novel, Anya's Ghost, was just published by First Second, talks about being that funny immigrant kid... who knew how to draw comics. [Speakeasy]
Creators | Robot 6 contributor Brigid Alverson interviews artist Ramon Perez about his work on A Tale of Sand, a graphic novel based on a recently discovered script written by Muppets creator Jim Henson. [Publishers Weekly]
Creators | James Romberger talks to Anders Nilsen about his ambitious new work, aptly titled Big Questions. [Publishers Weekly]
Creators | Vaneta Rogers talks to Scott Lobdell and Ron Marz about their Twitterfight of last week, which started when Lobdell criticized Marz for Tweeting "'Worst. Week. Ever.' — Racists." If you're expecting more snark, go elsewhere; everyone has calmed down and is being all nice now. [Newsarama]
Creators | Sean Kleefeld links us up with a beautiful piece of animation by Little Nemo creator Winsor McCay. It's all hand drawn and amazingly fluid — like watching one of McCay's cartoons come to life. [Kleefeld on Comics]
Infographics | Freestyle Interactive compares popular social media sites to superheroes, noting Facebook is "big, ugly, powerful, but not very friendly" like the Hulk and flickr is "Very impressive to look at but you wouldn't miss it if it was extinguished" like the Human Torch. Burn. [Freestyle Interactive]
Retailing | Todd Allen looks at a little-understood phenomenon, the placement of comics in big-box retail stores — sometimes priced at less than the wholesale cost. [Publishers Weekly]
Retailing | Damage to the Birmingham, England, Nostalgia & Comics store during the recent riots was limited to some broken windows; there was no looting, and no one was hurt. [Forbidden Planet]
Jobs | Want to get into digital comics from the inside? Dark Horse is looking for an Application/Web Developer. [Dark Horse Comics]