In case you've forgotten what was going on in The Walking Dead all the way back on December 2, you're not alone. It might be wise to refresh your memory with a recap of that mid-season finale -- because Episode 9 of Season 3 picks up directly where we left off: Daryl and Merle surrounded by Woodbury folk yelling for their blood, as a freshly one-eyed Governor watches on.

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On left, the extraterrestrial Teen Titan, Starfire; on right, the image redrawn for The Hawkeye Initiative by Lauren Armstrong

The concept behind the hot new Tumblr, the Hawkeye Initiative, is simple: In order to demonstrate just how much superhero comics distort the bodies of female characters, fans take real comic art and redraw it, replacing the female characters with Hawkeye, perhaps the least interesting character ever to grace the pages of a Marvel comic.

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Love and Rockets Celebrates 30 Years of Queer, Punk Comic Genius

Good Vibrations Sex Summit Is a Veritable Sex-Nerd Orgy

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So, after years of legal and logistical wrangling in which director Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema were suing each other over royalties from the Lord of the Rings movies and whether he'd direct the not-really-necessary The Hobbit, followed by Guillermo Del Toro signing on to direct and then dropping out again and Jackson finally signing on to direct what was only intended to be two movies -- whew! -- part one of the pointlessly three-part Hobbit saga is finally here. Just two more of them to go, and we can put it all behind us.

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How Much of The Hobbit Can You Read During the Running Time of The Hobbit?

Licensed to Blecch: Mad Magazine's James Bond Parodies

In Space, No One Can Hear You Blecch: Mad Magazine's Alien Parodies

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Christopher Morgan

20. "My eyes are up here, guys."

We'll be honest, we didn't know what cosplay was until we googled it just now. For those in the dark who are, like us, no doubt carving blog posts out of stone tablets, cosplay, "short for 'costume play,' is a type of performance art in which participants wear costumes and accessories to represent a specific character or idea." We put together a slideshow of the best cosplay outfits of the entire year (Merry Christmas!), from comic book conventions, anime events, sci-fi shindigs, and more. Such representation helps to debunk the image of cosplay folks as pale, overweight men, shedding much-needed light on the outdated assumptions and stereotypes that plague our ... sorry, what? We couldn't hear you over all the boobs.

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Our full slideshow, 100 Memorable Cosplay Images of 2012 

Talk on Internet Dating Is Like a Blind Date With Group Therapy

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She has indestructible bracelets, an invisible plane, and a Lasso of Truth. She appeared on the first Ms. Magazine cover, and on the recent 40th anniversary edition. The man who created her was a psychologist who invented the lie detector and thought there should be a woman superhero out there. We're talking, of course, about Nancy Pelosi. Wait, no, Wonder Woman.

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San Francisco's Top 8 Comic Book Stores

DEADLINE EXTENDED Call for submissions: SF Weekly Comics Issue 2012

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DEADLINE EXTENDED TO WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 5 at 5pm.

Connected in San Francisco: What's your interpretation?

This is a city of connections. Big bridges, little phones, unusual cultures. San Francisco lives for this stuff. Draw us some stories about how it all fits together.

We are looking for local artists to give us their take on this theme!

The best entries will be selected to appear in print.

Submissions should be created as true sequential art - a full story unto itself. Cartoonists are encouraged to be creative within the confines of the required dimensions. There are no restrictions on the number of panels or how you arrange them.

Be sure to work within our half- or quarter-page sizes. If you would like to do a full-page comic, please submit a proposal via email prior to producing it.

Guidelines

• Submissions must be in black and white. You may propose full color, but you must demonstrate competency in this before it will be green-lighted.
• If coloring with tones of gray, separate grays by 15 percent, i.e. 15, 30, 45, 60, 85 percent grays.
• Grayscale images: 300 dpi.
• Bitmapped black-and-white images: 600dpi

• Submit your entry with the following contact information:

• Your full legal name
• The name you prefer to be credited in print
• Your website, if applicable
• Comics must conform to one of the sizes listed in the PDF download below

Size & Compensation

Items selected for print will be compensated based on size. Please download the PDF for specifications and more info.

The new James Bond movie Skyfall has been out for a few weeks now, grossing nearly $789M worldwide and getting a healthy 91 percent on the Tomatometer. That's a damn shame, too, because it means that hundreds of critics were denied the opportunity to write "Skyfall? More like Skyfail, amirte?"

Under normal circumstances we could count on Mad Magazine to pick up that particular slack, but oddly enough, it hasn't spoofed a Bond film for 30 years, and it only did three full-length parodies before quitting.

See also:

In Space, No One Can Hear You Blecch: Mad Magazine's Alien Parodies

The Top 10 "Wait, What?" Moments from Bad Movie Night, Part 1: A - M

Retro Nerd Alert No. 3: Bob Wilkins Talks Hardware Wars & More on Creature Features

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Jaime Hernandez

Love and Rockets turns 30 this year.

Most people don't associate Love and Rockets with the legendary comic book by Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez (with occasional contributions by their brother Mario), but with the alt-rock band that named themselves after it. Even more unfortunately, some people will read that first sentence and see nothing but word salad. And that's a real shame. Love and Rockets is without a doubt one of the most unique works to come out of the 1980s indie comics boom, or anytime since.

See also:

San Francisco's Top 8 Comic Book Stores

San Francisco's Top 10 Offbeat Museums

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Kaylin Marie Andres and Jon Solo, the creators of Terminally Illin'.

"Cancer is not funny; cancer is hilarious!"

Soon, the motto of Terminally Illin', the punk rock comic about fighting cancer published by San Francisco's Last Gasp Publishing that we profiled last spring, will have an even bigger national audience, as its creators are featured in 12 episodes of World of Jenks, a reality series from young documentary filmmaker Andrew Jenks that airs on MTV.

Back in April, cancer survivor Kaylin Marie Andres and her artist friend Jon Solo executed the second of two successful Kickstarter campaigns to create a preview issue of Terminally Illin' as well as an 80-page graphic novel. The latter is presently being finalized, and many moments in its creation were captured for World of Jenks.

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All photos by Casey Burchby

As one of the primary foci of the underground comics movement beginning in the 1960s, the Bay Area has a well-documented tradition of fostering comics creators large and small. Robert Crumb (Fritz the Cat, Zap Comix) lived in San Francisco throughout a key period of his career, and just across the bay in Oakland, Daniel Clowes (Ghost World, The Death Ray) continues to create complex pictographic narratives. It would follow that San Francisco and environs would boast a strong collection of comic book retailers -- and indeed it does, including a handful that have been nominated for the prestigious Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award. Here are our top eight comics outfits in the city.More »