A few years ago, I posted about how archeologists realized that some paleolithic cave paintings were actually done as multiple images on top of one other that were something akin to crude animation when viewed in flickering firelight. A newer report takes a look at the "rules" of cave paintings in the Basque region of Spain and found that certain animals are almost always depicted pointing the same direction. Horses almost always faced to the right and bison almost always faced to the left, for examples. This remained consistent regardless of the orientation of the figure; if it was drawn sideways or upside-down, a horse's head would still be faced to its left.

Furthermore, some animals tended to show up more centrally in the various compositions than others. Bison were featured most prominently in this way, with horses also frequently taking a central visual position.

Now, we don't know what that actually means or what significance it might have. The centrality of some figures suggests a greater level of importance, but we don't know what meaning to ascribe to which direction they happen to be facing. But that it remained consistent over 500 different paintings across nine cave systems shows that it was deliberate. And that it likely wasn't just the random preference of a single artist.

The researchers here were mainly concerned with nailing down a solid, quantitative methodolgy for looking at these cave paintings, moreso than trying to parse out their original meaning. Hence there are no conclusions discussing specific intent or messaging. But the key thing to note here is that these artists from tens of thousands of years ago had developed a set of graphic rules for their storytelling. They're obviously not the same set of graphic rules we have for comics as we know them today, but they are a set of shared rules that everyone understood.

The same way that stars circling above a character's head means they're dazed or dizzy. The same way a set of grawlixes in a word balloon means a character is swearing. The same way a word balloon shows how a character is talking! None of those things are strictly reprsentational. These are all just a shared set of graphic rules we all have learned to understand.

Does that mean cavemen were creating comics thousands of years ago? No. Like I said, we don't know what these particular cave paintings mean, let alone if they can be understood in any sort of narrative sense. But they were following a set of shared rules, of the sort that you need to establish in order for comics to even work, making the two close cousins if nothing else!

Ray Bradbury's work has been adapted into comics form many times. And, although I find his original prose story much more effective from a narrative perspective, "There Will Come Soft Rains" is incredibly evocative and almost demands to be visualized. The story was first published in 1950, with the EC Comics adaptation coming out three years later. But the whole thing is set on August 4, 2026 so I thought it worthwhile to share it with you today since it is, sadly, still revelant...

Possibly the single most impressive thing about Katy Doughty's How to Survive the End of the World is that she spends 256 pages talking about different ways the entire world either could or almost did end, and she manages to keep things cheerful and upbeat the entire time. I mean, even when Douglas Adams -- an iconically funny writer who had written for Monty Python -- wrote about the planet blowing up, he still had the sole survivor reflect, in a typically understated British fashion, "I'm a bit upset about that." Doughty doesn't even flinch that much.

The book is divided up into section based on the types of end of world scenarios. Plagues, climate collapse, AI/killer robots, etc. In each case, Doughty walks through how those scenarios would play out, often basing things on past precedent. The bubonic plague, the dinosaurs getting wiped out, and so on. (Obviously not so much past precedent on the killer robots, though.) She walks through both how each situations would arise, and what scientists have worked/are working on as possible counter measures. And rather than just saying, "hey, I did my own research on this; trust me," she brings in interviews she conducted with experts, letting them explain in their own words how things would play out. That's actually part of how she's able to remain positive throughout the book; scientists tend to be a hopeful lot, exploring possible solutions. And in some cases, they just pull out a mathematical reality check and say, "we actually calculated the odds of this happening and it's statistically zero."

Doughty doesn't just focus on the "immediate" issues either. She talks about the Earth getting swallowed by our sun as it eventually expands despite that being some 5 billion years in the future and even the eventual collapse of the entire universe that's so far in the future as to be functionally incalcuable. And despite even these certainties, Doughty takes the route of hope essentially saying that we should do the most with whatever time we do have.

What Doughty does exceptionally well throughout the book -- beyong just being positive -- is relaying a lot of fairly robust scientific information in exceptionally easy-to-understand language. It makes the book a surprisingly light read, despite the subject matter. It probably helps, too, that she uses a relatively cartoony style so that even the most horrific scenarios that she postulates on aren't rendered in a disturbing or grotesque fashion. Both of these things make the book incredibly approachable for virtually everyone.

If I had to offer a critcism, it would be in what she leaves out. She talks about ideas that people often consider extinction level events, and she makes note of how even in some of the worst case scenarios, they would not indeed be that devastating. What she doesn't really cover, though, is how awful and difficult it might be for those people who survive. She talks in terms of humanity writ large, and not people at an individual level. The bubonic plague didn't kill everyone, for example, but that's not much comfort for the people it did kill. Now, is it even possible to write a book that covers both the global and individual view of all these scenarios? Probably not. But Doughty does tend to gloss over that the individual level impacts that I think most people would prioritize in the midst of these scenarios. I mean, if killer robots do come for us, I think everyone's individual first priority is going to be, "how do I not get killed" over "how will humanity survive?"

But in a world where virtually every news headline screams about another way things are going to shit, and how doomsday is arond every corner, Doughty does a good job of keeping a check on the grand scheme of everything. There's a lot we don't have to worry ourselves with. And these days, I think every reason we have to move something into the "crap I don't have to fret over" column is worth taking advantange of; there's a lot of stuff we do need to worry about, so any opportunity to alleviate any of it is worth it.

How to Survive the End of the World actually came out a few months ago from Penguin Random House, so it should be readily available from your favorite bookseller. It retails for $19.99 US in paperback and $33.99 US in hardcover.

Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...

Kleefeld on Comics: Proto-Watchmen
https://ift.tt/qhV40Qc

Kleefeld on Comics: The FF in In-Continuity Media
https://ift.tt/NKTmwfB

Kleefeld on Comics: A Dearth of Stan and Jack Photos
https://ift.tt/ywU81qu

Kleefeld on Comics: The Comic Habit
https://ift.tt/fdV7DTl

Kleefeld on Comics: Minor Thoughts on the Sale of the Kubert School
https://ift.tt/TYayNmp

I haven't seen this make the rounds on comic book news sites yet, but it was announced this week that The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art has been "acquired" by County College of Morris. The Kubert School was founded, of course, by Joe Kubert back in 1976 and has been pretty instrumental in a number of comic artists' careers. A very partial list of alumni includes Tim Truman, Rick Veitch, Jan Duursema, Eric Shanower, Tom Mandrake, Amanda Conner, and Scott Kolins. The school not only has taught drawing and storytelling skills, but includes courses on portfolio presentation and business skills particular to acting as a freelancer for publishers like Marvel and DC. It's been a school very much focused on getting people ready not just for a career in art, but specifically for a career in comic books.

I haven't heard/seen of any specific financial issues the Kubert School may have been having that they'd be interested in selling the school to a larger institution, but I have to presume that's a large part of the rationale behind this. Joe Kubert himself passed away in 2012, and Jaclyn & Anthony Marques bought it in 2019 and have been running it respectively as Director and President since then. As I'll get into shortly, they've almost certainly been dealing with some difficult headwinds, vastly different than anything Joe himself had to deal with.

Back in 1976, there was essentially nothing like it. Of course, art instruction generally goes back centuries and the Federal School of Applied Cartooning's corresponedence courses (the folks behind those "Draw Tippy" ads) date to 1914. But the Kubert School was a "real" school -- having an actual campus and a formal degree program recognized by the state. Not to mention that it was run by working professionals like Kubert himself.

Over the past two or three decades, though, comic instruction has become more mainstream. Beginning in the late 1990s/early 2000s, at some colleges, you could design your own degree program that focused on comic art. And in the decades since then, more and more colleges turned that into a standardized program. While this offered a great deal more opportunity for aspiring cartoonists, it also made for some stiff competition for the Kubert School.

Beyond just being options for people outside of New Jersey, these other programs offered other benefits. There were often more scholarship opportunities, and the on-campus experience was broader just by virtue of having more facilities for extra-curriculars like sports. Furthermore, going to a less-focused school meant that you had a fall-back position if you decided you ultimately didn't want to pursue comics after all; you could stay in the same school and simply transfer into a program for journalism or electrical engineering or business management.

All of which is to say that I'm not surprised the Kubert School has been bought by another school. It's frankly kind of impressive that it independently continued to do as well as it has for as long as it has. I hope that County College opts to keep the Kubert name attached to the school indefinitely, letting it keep its own identity, and it doesn't just become County's art program. (I haven't heard anything on that point one way or another.) The Kubert School has moved a couple times over the years, most recently in May 2025. While some previous moves were a matter of trying to get into better facilities, I have the suspicion that the most recent one had as much to do with finances (Rent? Taxes?) as anything else. But a big move followed by a outright sale a year later suggests that they weren't doing optimally, And if that has been the case, I am glad that County has helped to potentially extend the lifespan and legacy of what Joe started building fifty years ago.

If you've read my blog for any length of time, you're probably aware that I'm an old school Fantastic Four fan. Even when I'm not talking about the book explicitly, it's been something of a background topic that I've used to launch into something else. I started reading the series when I was 11 years old and continued month-in, month-out until the Civil War storyline. I thought they collectively did a phenomenally bad job at interpretting the characters, and I wasn't liking the direction they were taking the broader Marvel stories anyway, so I dropped everything. A few years later, Marvel cancelled the book entirely. And when they announced they would bring it back in 2018, I spent half a year or so picking up seven years' worth of back issues from dollar bins and got myself caught up in time for the new series. (For about a third of the price of if I'd have bought all those issues new!) I mostly enjoyed what Dan Slott did (except for the periodic interruptions mandated for whatever the big crossover du'jour was) and was generally enjoying the book again. Then Ryan North started writing the book in 2023 and...

I haven't disliked the book as much as I did during Civil War, but I've found it devoid of anything engaging. It's not bad exactly, and there have been some interesting germs of ideas, but I do not connect with it at all. Every single issue since then has fallen totally flat for me. And that's fine. I don't have any right to expect any comic to hold my interest in the same way over four decades, and Marvel doesn't need to cater to my interests in particular. The book seems to be selling reasonably well, and the broad response seems to be positive, so who am I to argue with which way the winds are blowing?

But I've kept buying it, hoping for things to shift into a groove that I like. And it keeps not happening. Every time I've sat down to read an issue for the past few years, I've put it down feeling disappointed. Again, not that it's necessarily bad, but that I'm not connecting with it at all. I've been at the point for a while now where a new issue comes in, and I set it aside without even trying to read it for months because I'm so unehtused at the prospect. The last issue I read was #6 (pictured above) which seems to have come out on December 3 of last year.

I was going through the ordering process last night for the latest issues of everything, and I decdided that I'm going to set the title aside once again. I've been buying it out of habit, and that's 100% the wrong reason to continue buying anything. And I don't say that as some kind of major pronouncment against Marvel or anything, but to call out the nature of the habit. One of the reasons, I think, readers tend to drop a series only when the publisher starts a new renumbering or a title change or something is because the publisher themselves are "forced" a break in the habit. But like any habit, the best time to break it is when you're ready. When you're able to recognize that what a comic is delivering now is no longer what it delivered previously.

I've looked at the small stack of Fantastic Four issues I've continued buying since December on many occasions. I've added a new issue to that pile every month, and there have been plenty of times I've thought I should sit down to catch up with them. Only to be so unenthused at the propsect that I go on to something else. It can be difficult to recognize that. Particularly with a history of positive experience that goes back literally decades.

I believe I first posted the suggestion of not buying comics out of habit back in 2009. But that can be easier said than done, often because it's difficult to recognize precisely when you stopped buying out of enjoyment (or at least the anticipation of enjoyment). And you don't want to stop reading a book entirely just because they came out with a single bad issue. But you do need to take a few moments to periodically reflect on what you're buying and why. There are thousands of great comics out there; don't waste your time and money on ones just because you used to enjoy them.

I started writing a piece about Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, and I went to get a picture of the two of them. I realized that I've only ever seen three photographs of the two of them together: one from 1966, one from 1975, and a fairly recently uncovered one from a convention in the 1980s...

Considering how much they worked together, and how significant their partnership was to comics, it strikes me as curious that there are so few pictures of the two of them togther. (I'm sure there's got to be more than just these three, right?)

It's not like either Lee or Kirby were camera-shy. We have a number of pictures of Jack with his other noteable business partner, Joe Simon, and many more with his wife, Roz. And, geez, how many tons of pictures can you find of Stan with a quick Google search? Hell, part of his schtick any more is making cameo appearances in Marvel movies!

So it makes me wonder why they were so rarely photographed together?

I mean, three photos? That's it? I have literally seen more pictures of Jack with Paul and Linda McCartney, who he only met once in 1976, than I have of Jack with Stan.