“It’s rare that you have a poster that is just Chris Hemsworth shooting on the set,” said Marvel president of production Kevin Feige. “But he just looks like Thor. We just put in some lightning, and he’s got his hammer and you’re there.” Duh, because Hemsworth IS Thor. (via USA Today)

DNA tests have confirmed “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the remains found last year underneath a parking lot in Leicester do in fact belong to Richard III, the notorious hunchback/(possible) nephew-killer and last English king to die in battle. He was also the subject of Shakespeare’s Richard III and, more amusingly (not that Richard III didn’t have its moments), a pair of Kate Beaton history comics.

Kate Beaton‘s updates are all the more precious for being rare and uniformly of a quality that puts a lump in my throat and makes me want to go hug every parent and every adult child in the world. Go read the rest of the comic here.

Previously in Kate Beaton

The month of December means one thing for everybody, regardless of what particular end of the year holiday they celebrate. Namely, that’s it’s the end of the year, and everybody’s got to get a new calendar and start teaching their muscle memory how to write the date again. You should all be comforted to know that The Mary Sue is here for you in these troubling times. Starting today, you’re going to have a chance to win one of four Hark! A Vagrant 2013 calendars featuring the art of Kate Beaton. We’ve got two copies of Drawn and Quarterly’s There She Blows and Beethoven Birthday Party for folks in North America. Read on for some sample pics and entering info!

What, do you need some kind of explanation? Ryan North (who you might know from Dinosaur Comics) has just started up a Kickstarter for To Be or Not To Be, a choose-your-own-adventure version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet where you can play as Hamlet, Old Hamlet, or Ophelia. It’s already funded, with all profits from the sale of the published books going to charity.

But we thought you’d like to know about it anyway, so you can get in on those sweet rewards, because of the talent behind the book’s illustrations. You see, the more it gets funded, the more illustrations it will have, and the more art we’ll get to see by ladies like Carly Mondardo, Danielle Corsetto, Emily Partridge, Jess Fink, Kate Beaton, Meredith Gran, and Noelle Stevenson. Also come on, you can play as Ophelia.

(via everywhere.)

Marty, the feline upon whom Nyan Cat is based, passed away last night. As a friend of mine said: “He is with Ceiling Cat now.” (Geekosystem)

Here is an actual, working clock based on the Weasley’s Whereabouts Clock from the Harry Potter series. Read all about how it was made on TheMagicClock.com. (via The Group That Shall Not Be Named)

It’s the beginning of the true summer season, and what that means in comics is that DC and Marvel are revealing their solicits for September, that is, the artist lineups, covers, and brief plot teasers. For DC, September is the first anniversary of their New 52, which means special issue #0′s for everybody, each one focusing on (though not necessarily retelling) their origins.

Judging by the cover for Catwoman 0#, Catwoman’s new origin is that she’s a refuge from Lumpy Space. Naturally this did not go unnoticed by some of our favorite webcartoonists. (Post is probably NSFW, if it isn’t already.)

We’ve seen our fair share of women donning TARDIS dresses but I think this is the first time I’ve seen a man dressed up as a fancy dress TARDIS. Well, it happened this weekend at C2E2 in Chicago. (via Kate Kotler) 

Kate Beaton, the historical maven behind Hark! A Vagrant recently surprised a lot of fans by announcing that she would be retiring from regular updates to her webcomic for the foreseeable future, in order reassess her career after publishing her wildly successful first book, and figure out where to go from here. As she said: “Webcomics are often cited as the future of comics and the internet and I don’t know what else, but the fact that no one has retired from them yet means that I, at least, rest a little uneasy in these shoes sometimes if only for the lack of having a dependable compass by which to steer the ship.”

But Beaton herself knows that her successful webcomic and bestselling book mean that she’s worlds ahead of prospective webcomics artists in experience, and in an effort to share the lessons she’s learned, she’s been taking questions on how to make it in webcomics, and answering the most popular ones.