If being a fan of Star Wars and comic books alone isn’t nerdy enough for you, then you’ll be happy to know that  Scottish illustrator Matt Cowan has put together a series of mathematical equations that explain the origins of some of your favorite pop-culture characters, from Darth Vader to Captain Jack Sparrow. Check them out after the jump, and be sure to take a look at Cowan’s T-shirt store  if you have a powerful urge to put one of these cool designs on your body.

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Artist Alex Pardee did his part in the protests against the SOPA/PIPA bills. He created a monster savvy series of artworks titled Icans. At first, the name seems like a weird play on the word “icons.” After all, Pardee creates disfigured versions of pop culture notables like Fred Flinstone and Batman. He explains on his blog, however, that the Icans series humorously speaks to the recent piracy act controversy:

” … Whether SOPA passes or not, I will continue to take any licensed character, or pop culture icon and do whatever I want with it for art’s sake, because ICAN. Also, I just want to conduct an ongoing experiment to see if ICAN take any cool icon from pop culture and make it way shittier by “re-imagining” it. So far, much like Hollywood does most of the time, the experiment is a super fun success!”

Hit the jump for bloated, but loveable, versions of Garfield and other pop culture friends — who we suspect would explode like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man if we squished them with love.

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The Simpsons are among pop culture’s most protean characters; if they weren’t, the show’s writers surely would have run out of story lines over a decade ago. So it’s no surprise that the Internet has taken one of America’s most iconic fictional families and run with it. In the past few months alone, we’ve seen The Simpsons mashed up with Breaking Bad, portraits of the sitcom’s characters as famous works of art, and — most bizarre of all — bizarre photo manipulations that transform celebrities into Simpsons. But we are especially amused by DeviantArt’s Claudia-R, who has created a series of posters that cast Simpsons characters in classic and popular films, from A Clockwork Orange to The Dark Knight. Click through to see ten of our favorites, and visit Claudia’s DeviantArt page for the rest.

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When you’ve been around for over 70 years, chances are you’ve made your fair share of fashion statements. As a great new chart by Screenrant shows, that goes double for superheroes. Their funny and detailed infographic — which you can see in full here — reproduces every “significant” Batsuit from Batman’s 1939 debut through the present, in comic books, movies, TV, video games, and even “Batman Live.” Some highlights include Batman Beyond‘s gothy black-and-red get-up, Azrael Batman’s early-’90s Transformers look, and purple-suited “Super Friends Batman” from ’70s TV. [via io9]

Soon we’ll get to see what Harry Potter star Rhys Ifans will look like in his reptilian get-up as Spidey’s archenemy in Marc Webb’s upcoming The Amazing Spider-Man. Ifans will star as The Lizard — or in his human form, Curtis Connors. A brilliant scientist who loses an arm, Connors tries to regrow his lost limb, but the experiment goes awry. He finds himself transformed into a reptilian humanoid, which we got a glimpse of this week — first in the form of a soon-to-be released Pez dispenser, and some new concept art. If the sketches bear any real resemblance to the eccentric Notting Hill actor’s costume, then yep: he’s a giant, creepy lizard.

We felt inspired to look back at a few of cinema’s ugliest screen villains. Movie heroes’ hideous enemies have ranged from really repulsive men to vile creatures. Note the amount of horror or sci-fi on our list. Too often films attempt to make the villain attractive. Click through to see which baddies were beaten with the ugly stick, renew your appreciation for old-fashioned, unpleasant-looking villains, and then add your picks below. Read More »

What do Batman, Darth Vader, and the Phantom of the Opera have in common? Well, besides being fictional characters, they all wear instantly recognizable masks. Spanish graphic designer Alejandro de Antonio Fernández has recognized this and created a collection of bold, somewhat minimalist posters celebrating film’s most iconic masks, from The Silence of the Lambs to V for Vendetta. Check out a selection of our favorites from the series after the jump, then visit Behance to see the rest, and purchase affordable prints at Society 6, perhaps for the cinephile (or Anonymous member) on your holiday shopping list. Read More »

These amazing retro-modern superhero posters, which we spotted over at My Modern Met, manage to give us those warm nostalgia feelings and a vision of the future all at once. Created by French artist and graphic designer Grégoire Guillemin as part of his “exercises in style” series, they remind us of an imaginary golden age of real-life superheroes that we desperately wish existed, like the ones portrayed in stories like Watchmen and The Incredibles. Click through to check out our gallery of Guillemin’s work and dream of pop culture’s modern knights, and let us know what you think in the comments.

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When you need to get away from reality, sometimes leaving your hometown doesn’t get you far enough. Fortunately, that place just outside reality, the place that exists only on celluloid, in books, and in our minds, is home to some of the most seductive vacation spots with the power to transport you into another world entirely.

It’s also where the worst of purgatories reside, so you won’t want to get too deeply lost in that vast vortex of imagination; we wouldn’t want you to spend your two weeks off stumbling through H.P. Lovecraft’s foreboding Arkham, nor would we recommend traveling all the way to the Little Prince’s B-612, which, other than a vain rose, a few small volcanoes, and some weed-like plant life, doesn’t have too much to offer visitors. We’ve gotten lost in bad books and movies and comic books before, too, so we’ve put together a selective insider’s Baedeker to only the very best imaginary vacation spots we wish we could visit. Follow our guide, below the jump, and tell us where else you would go.

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Andre De Freitas meshes his photography background with illustration by creating crystal clear, realistic drawings. The technique is well-suited to his Zombie Portraits series, in which he transforms adored cartoons and classic comic-book characters into grim, white-eyed zombies with menacing expressions and festering wounds.  Although the eerie collection is the epitome of unsettling — it showcases a demonic Donald Duck and a desolate Charlie Brown — the detailing and color palette De Freitas employs is perfectly apropos for Halloween. See your favorite cartoon metamorphosed into an undead monster after the cut.

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Netherlands-based graphic designer and illustrator Dennis de Groot is pulling at our childhood-nostalgia-loving heart strings with his latest collection of colorful, stripped-down pieces.  Appropriately entitled Bare Essentials, the minimalist series tips its hat to some of our favorite cartoons and films — from The Care Bears to The Smurfs to Batman — in their most natural forms. And while this is definitely a playful collection with overlaid imagery, vibrant rainbow hues, and iconic pop culture characters,  it also explores the line between recognition and detail, questioning whether we need über-detailed art to recognize and appreciate familiar images, or if basic, simple, and sweet illustrations are just as impactful. While you ponder that, have a look at  some of De Groot’s wonderful work after the cut, then visit Fubiz to view the entire series.

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