Archie getting a makeover for 75th anniversary

2015 seems to be the year of reboots - the X-Men series, Fantastic Four and now the all-time classic Archie Comics. The lovable, accident prone redhead, Archie and his friends in the Riverdale High School will be rediscovered with a touch of the modern times. Jon Goldwater, CEO Archie Comics hopes to make the comics more fresh to appeal to a newer and younger audience while preserving its ethos for old loyalists. With help from television and comic book writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, actress and writer Lena Dunham and various other, Goldwater aims at keeping the brand relevant and vibrant. He also plans on increasing the fan base by creating a television show and a movie. Gregory Schmidt feels that watching the comic books transform from a classic to a new fad will be interesting. 

Read an excerpt of the article written by Gregory Schmidt :

After nearly 75 years of chasing girls through the halls of Riverdale High and hanging out at Pop Tate’s soda shop, the teenage Everyman Archie Andrews is headed for a makeover. Plans for the redheaded Romeo include a new look and an edgier tone, which will be introduced in 2015 when the Archie comic book is reset at No. 1 with a new creative team. The effort is timed to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Archie, who was introduced in 1941, and coincides with plans for a television series on Fox and an apparel line from the fashion designer Marc Ecko. The overhaul at Archie Comic Publications extends to other parts of the company as well, including Red Circle Comics, an imprint that will be rebranded Dark Circle Comics and will reintroduce vintage superheroes like the Fox and the Shield. The updates build on changes that began about five years ago, after Jon Goldwater took over as chief executive and publisher of Archie Comics. Mr. Goldwater stepped in after the 1999 death of his father, John L. Goldwater, who helped found the company in 1939. ‘‘I found Archie to be dusty, irrelevant and watered-down,’’ Mr. Goldwater said. ‘‘It has taken me a while to really wrap my hands around where we are as a brand.’’ Reinvigorating the brand included introducing new titles like Life With Archie, which imagined the teenager’s life as an adult and ended with his much publicized death, and Afterlife With Archie, a darker comic book in which Riverdale is overrun by zombies. The success of those comic books led Mr. Goldwater to broaden his plans. ‘‘These changes are crucial to keep the brand relevant and vibrant,’’ he said. And they are already starting to pay off. Since 2008, bookstore sales have increased 736 percent, and direct-market sales, which include those in specialty stores like comic book shops, rose 226 percent, according to the publisher. Albert Ching, managing editor of Comic Book Resources, a website that tracks the industry, sees the changes as a smart move. ‘‘They are doing bold new things,’’ he said. ‘‘They’ve given people a reason to check them out again.’’ ...read more

Climate fiction fantasy

Climate fiction or cli-fi is a relatively new category of fiction. Through the article, Jason Mark discusses what cli’fi’s like ‘Interstellar’,  ‘Snowpiercer’, ‘Waterworld’, ‘The Day after Tomorrow’, etc. got wrong. Such filmmakers and authors believe that some humans can save themselves from the impeding disaster, or find a new planet, by promising ‘escape’. Jason Mark doesn’t believe in escaping from reality and concludes by stating that there is no Planet B and hence, these films might just be delusional. 

Read an excerpt of the article written by Jason Mark :

The end is near. At least, Hollywood seems to think so. When it comes to the steady unraveling of essential earth systems — ocean health collapsing, biodiversity plummeting and, ofcourse, the fraying of the atmosphere’s stability — much of the political establishment continues to whistle past the graveyard. Filmmakers, meanwhile, are sending out an S O S: We’re doomed. Is the premise fiction? Only partly. And not in the way you may think. The most fantastical thing about some of these films isn’t their doomsday scenarios. No, the real stretch is the idea that humanity — or at least some privileged slice of it — will be able to remove itself from the disaster. The latest example is the writer-director Christopher Nolan’s epic sci-fi adventure, ‘‘Interstellar.’’ With Earth on the brink of collapse as crops wither and oxygen in the atmosphere dwindles, a team of astronauts race to distant galaxies in search of a new planet for the human race. Earth’s last survivors won’t starve, we are told. They will suffocate. Such end-of-the-world scenarios appear so regularly in books and films that they are now their own mini-genre — cli-fi. The threats are not necessarily always climate related; the impending disaster in ‘‘Interstellar’’ seems to be as much biological as atmospheric. Cli-fi literature includes Margaret Atwood’s dark MaddAddam trilogy, Nathaniel Rich’s ‘‘Odds Against Tomorrow’’ and Jennifer Egan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘‘A Visit From the Goon Squad,’’ which closes with New Yorkers flocking to the top of a giant sea wall, one of the few spots in the city where you can still glimpse a proper sunset. In this time of global warming, cli-fi made an early splash with ‘‘Waterworld,’’ Kevin Costner’s campy 1995 vision of a future where the polar ice caps have melted and Earth is almost entirely submerged. It took almost a decade for the next major cli-fi blockbuster to arrive: Roland Emmerich’s storm-porn extravaganza, ‘‘The Day After Tomorrow.’’ While that movie had its fair share of Hollywood cheese (there was a wolf pack chase through Midtown Manhattan), the film at least made an attempt to detail the basic science of anthropogenic climate change. The protagonist, Dennis Quaid, was a climatologist. Since then, cli-fi films have gotten grimmer. ....Read more

Sex ed, European style

How different is the western world? Pamela Druckerman's article answers this keen question in one major field: parenting. The articles shows the essential difference between American parents and European parents, especially in the matter of Sex Education. While sexual intercourse is dramatised in America, it is normalised in Europe. Contrary to what most sexologists advice, American parents try and avoid the "sex ed talk" until they feel their children are completely ready. Whereas in Europe parents have lots of age appropriate talks with their children to keep them aware. Through the article and her book, Duckerman concludes that "if you treat teenagers as if they’re responsible, they can live up to that".

Read an excerpt of the article written by Pamela Druckerman-

One of the many problems with parenting is that kids keep changing. Just when you’re used to one stage, they zoom into another. I realized this was happening again recently, when my 8-year-old asked me about babies. She knows they grow in a mother’s belly, but how do they get in there to begin with? I wasn’t sure how much to reveal, so I stalled. ‘‘I’ll tell you soon,’’ I said, adding, ‘‘it involves penises.’’ I didn’t want to shock her or shatter her innocence. Like any good American, I’d assumed that one day (many years hence) we’d have that stilted conversation in which I’d reveal the strange mechanics of sex, and she’d tell me that she already knew all about it. Since I live in France, I decide to investigate how Europeans approach this. Do parents give their kids the birds-and-bees talk, too? Is the subject any less awkward here? Is there some savoir-faire to help me navigate this next phase and beyond? I begin my research at a Parisian science museum with an exhibition, Zizi sexuel l’expo, (its English title is Sex — Wot’s the Big Deal?) to teach 9- to 14-year-olds about sexuality. There’s advice about kissing. (Do turn your head sideways, ‘‘especially if you’ve got a big nose.’’ Don’t do the ‘‘coffee grinder,’’ where you spin your tongue in the other person’s mouth.) In the puberty section, I’m asked to identify a smell (it’s armpit) and step on a pedal that makes small white balls — representing sperm — fly out of a pretend penis. There’s also a whole section on how complicated love is. One sign explains that ‘‘loving someone sometimes makes you happy and sometimes makes you really sad. .... read more.

News from the tech world that caught our attention recently

Need online spying? Hackers are for hire. 18 January 2015 New York Times, By MATHEW GOLDSTEIN

The League, a Dating App for Would-Be Power-Couples, By Matt Edge for New York Times 27 January 2015

Microsoft HoloLens, goggles that superimpose an operating system on the actual world, BY DAVID CARR  NYTImes  January 26, 2015

Via satellite, linking the world to Google Company hopes to take the Internet directly to billions lacking access BY CONOR DOUGHERTY NYTimes 23 January 2015