His appreciation of comic book superheroes was threaded continuously throughout his remarkable body of artistic works — The late painter and graffiti writer Jean-Michel Basquiat didn’t have an uncanny talent to sketch out dynamic anatomy like Jack Kirby, Burne Hogarth or the other comic art masters whose work would have made an impact on him as a young fan of comic books. …

You’re gonna wanna see it full screen. — According to Internet number crunchers, Sabrina Salerno’s 1987 music video for “Boys (Summertime Love)” is one of the all-time most downloaded videos on the web. Before diving into it, though, a word of caution. If you, dear reader, aren’t sitting at a desktop or laptop computer (preferably one at work…

Seriously. If not for a daytime drama, this comic book anti-hero wouldn’t be stealing our collective hearts today. — Ten years or so ago, if anybody would’ve suggested to comic book aficionados that a daytime soap that our mommy’s used to watch had a big role in inspiring the creation of DC Comics’ breakout star Harley Quinn, we’d have thought they had dingbats in their belfry. Nevertheless, a remarkable…

These will, these will rock you. — Years before 3 Doors Down vocalist Brad Arnold sang, “If I go crazy…will you still call me Superman?” the influence of comic books on the world of rock music had already been firmly established. Though maybe not as apparent as the unabashed love that hip-hop artists have always shown towards…

We’re clawing our way through 4 decades of comics, True Believer. — Beauty, as goes the popular maxim, is in the eye of the beholder. And the same thing goes for coolness, too. But what’s cool to one person may only be, figuratively speaking, about room temp to another. After seeing this carefully curated list of the 20 coolest Black Panther comic…

In Honor of 80-Plus Years of Hip-Hop Music? — Okay, sure Blast-Master KRS-One. New York’s Boogie Down Bronx may be the birthplace of hip-hop music and all that. But some of its precious “blueprint” now appears to have come from the rough-n-rugged suburbs of Norfolk, Virginia. That’s right, y’all: Norfork, Virginia. It was in the Norfolk suburb of Berkley…

Ya really gotta collect ’em all. — Every now and again I’ll have the good fortune to see an uber-cool vinyl record cover arrangement gracing a wall in the living space of record collector friends and acquaintances. …

Thoughts on the Black Madonna iconography of medieval Europe — “Why are the majority of the virgins that are revered in the celebrated pilgrimages black?” queried writer Romain Rolland, puzzling over the curious existence of religious icons known as the Black Madonna found in hundreds of Christian churches throughout Europe: “At Boulogne-sur-mer (France) the sailors carry a Black Virgin in…

A brief note on Pablo Casal’s infinitely noteworthy “Nigra Sum.” — In 1943, the Spanish composer Pablo Casals (1876–1973) wrote “Nigra Sum,” one of his best-known choral works and, one could argue, one of the most beautiful choral works ever written. Like many of Casals’ compositions, the piece was designed to be sung at the famed Montserrat Monastery in Catalonia, the…