That Brian K. Vaughan is a pretty popular guy right now. He’s got one of the most popular comic books on the stands in Saga from Image Comics, and the film version of his Y: The Last Man series seems to be moving forward again. Vaughan launched a new project this week at panelsyndicate.com titled The Private Eye. The series is written by Vaughan with art by Marcos Martin (The Amazing Spider-Man, Daredevil) and colors by Muntsa Vicente. The plan is for the series to run 10 issues and is available digitally. Now here’s the big deal about it: readers can download the issues for any price they want, starting with the 32-page issue #1 available now.

We’ve seen this done before, most notably when the band Radiohead released their 2007 album In Rainbows with the same “pay what you like” model. And there are other comics that have been released digitally outside of the major publishers, perhaps most notably Mark Waid’s Thrillbent webpage. The Private Eye seems to be a unique pairing of digital publishing and a new way to make money off comics.

If you’re headed to Wizard World St. Louis Comic Con this weekend, be on the look out for a very cool freebee – Robert Kirkman‘s The Walking Dead #1 comic book issue with a special variant cover by Arthur Suydam (Marvel Zombies).

The issue will be given away for free to all full-price attendees at Wizard World St. Louis Comic Con this weekend, March 22-24, at America’s Center. Suydam’s cover is the second series of exclusive Wizard World variant covers for The Walking Dead #1, and the artist will be at the convention signing copies of this special issue, which was unsurprisingly produced in “extremely limited quantities” and will be available while supplies last (don’t expect them to last!).

Check out Suydam’s cover art for The Walking Dead #1 here below.

Happy 84th Birthday today to Mort Drucker, one of the art medium’s great caricaturists, whose work for decades upon decades in Mad Magazine has endeared him to millions of fans around the world and set a bar for himself as one of the genres great artists of all-time.

Starting at Mad in the late 1950s and still contributing to the magazine to the present day, what the art of Mort Drucker has brought to that publication is immeasurable. His caricatures are highly distinctive and original and they run the gamut and spectrum of pretty much everyone in any form of entertainment media, be it from Hollywood’s finest and not-so-finest past and present, music titans, sports figures, and television characters. Drucker stands second to possibly only the late Al Hirschfeld, who elevated and pretty much clamped down on the entire caricature style in illustration and became synonymous with it, creating a body of work that lasted over 70 years and was affixed to everything from Broadway Showbills to U.S. postage stamps.

Stoker
Director: Park Chan-wook
Screenwriter: Wentworth Miller
Cast: Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Goode, Nicole Kidman, Dermot Mulroney
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Rated R | 99 Minutes
Release Date: March 8, 2013 (Limited)

Directed by Park Chan-wook, Stoker stars Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland) as India Stoker, whose 18th birthday is turned upside down after her loving father, Richard (Dermot Mulroney), dies in a horrific car accident.

The quiet and reclusive India is left with her estranged, unstable mother Evelyn (Nicole Kidman) in their secluded mansion. At Richard’s funeral, Evelyn and India are introduced to Richard’s charming, charismatic brother Charlie (Matthew Goode), who has spent his life jet-setting around the globe.

After the service, Uncle Charlie (a reference to Joseph Cotten’s character in Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt) decides to stay indefinitely to help support his brother’s family, much to Evelyn’s delight and India’s displeasure.

Park Chan-wook, the South Korean director best known for his films Oldboy, Lady Vengeance, and Thirst, makes his English-language debut with Stoker, a dark, atmospheric film that feels as Hitchcockian as it does Kubrickian. There is a technical precision in Chan-wook’s movie that forces you to focus on every little detail – and the director’s signature visual style enhances the mystery and the characters caught up in it.

Today marks an absolute milestone in the history of recorded music as Please Please Me, the debut album by The Beatles, celebrates its 50th anniversary.

It would now be incalculable and unthinkable to try and imagine what life would be like if these four men from Liverpool hadn’t come along and made an absolutely indelible stamp on the culture, makeup, and landscape in the musical world. And while of course the band was still in sort of a growing pains mode and possibly even experiencing a slight identity crisis when Please Please Me was released, the out-of-the-gate charm and superstar success the “early Beatles” were to have rather quickly afterwards was firmly right on the launching pad.