With the release of Superman Returns into theaters on June 28th, Superman mania is in full swing. You can’t go anywhere without being smacked in the face with the iconic ‘S’ shield of the big, blue boyscout, and honestly, that couldn’t be more exciting for me.

I’m not a huge Superman fan. He’s too clean, too powerful, and too outwardly flawless to really garner any sympathies from me. He wouldn’t steal your girlfriend, but he could, and he’d probably be a lot better at a lot of things, and I don’t need that kind of emasculation. Beyond the character himself, that big ‘S’ has always stood for hope in hopeless situations, imaginary or not. So, on some deeply personal level, where that icon of the ‘S’ has burnt its way into our collective psyches, something inside of my brain smiles, whether it’s just to advertise a movie or not.

But every hero must have their foil and their antagonist. Someone to keep them actively fighting wrongdoing and prevent them from falling into indifference. For Superman, who can punch his way through mountains and give you a lobotomy with a finely-honed blast of his heat vision, that archenemy is Alexander Joseph Luthor, affectionately nicknamed ‘Lex’. Alternately a mad genius, a billionaire industrialist, president of the United States, and once a friend of Clark Kent, he’s still nothing more than a normal human in physical attributes. Still, he manages to wreak havoc in the Man of Steel’s life, using resources scientific, magical and alien.

This year is a banner year for collectors of Lex Luthor miscellanea, with DC Direct announcing a good handful of Lex action figures and busts, to be released over the next 6 months or so. So, let’s take a short look at the future (and brief past) of Lex, in action figure form.

The very first Lex Luthor action figure of note came from the Mego Corporation in 1980, in a line of miniature figures called ‘Pocket Superheroes’, a name that would later be resurrected by DC Direct for their own line of tiny hero figures. Mego somehow failed to incorporate Luthor into their legendary 8” articulated figures, instead including a strangely human-sized Mr. Mxyzptlk as the primary Superman villain. What’s scarier is that I can spell ‘Mxyzptlk’ without any kind of hesitation.

In the following years, more incarnations of Luthor showed up in both his purple suit (in Toy Biz’s 1990 DC Comics Superheroes line, miscrediting him as ‘Luther’) and the charming green pants / purple shirt / raygun combo (1984’s Super Powers Collection from Kenner). Sometimes, he’d even don his hi-tech battle suit, still in those same ill-chosen colors, and go blow-for-blow with Superman and exchange knuckle sandwich recipes. In 1997, Time Warner released the Superman Animated Series, which also featured Lex prominently, adding more figures to the accompanying toy line by Hasbro. Still a bit later than that, the Justice League and JL Unlimited cartoon series prompted further figures all executed in Bruce Timm style, but absolutely none of the aforementioned figures stood over 5” tall. Having an action figure that breaks the half-foot-tall mark is pretty essential if you want to be taken seriously. It wasn’t until 2003 that DC Direct released a 6.25” Luthor in their Superfriends Deluxe sets, paired with a cartoon-styled Superman. This Lex is also of note for having the largest collar that an action figure has ever, or will ever, possess. It’s probably safer this way.

In May, DC Direct released their second Lex figure ever, clad in perfectly sensible Silver Age attire. You can just ignore the giant blue blob that he’s wearing for a hat, right? The poor guy’s baldness really gets to him. Try not to stare. Mattel also released a movie-based Kevin Spacey Luthor, though minimal in articulation and still fairly small. I’m not leaving out the ‘Smallville’ Lex Luthor figure. That figure left itself out. You know what I mean. Aside from two tiny Heroclix figures, we’ve scraped the bottom of the salty, Lex-flavored barrel.

The future of Lex is even more exciting. Soon, DC Direct alone will be releasing five new Lex figures. We’ll get ‘Crisis on Infinite Earths’ Lex, in his green 80’s battlesuit. We’ll get a metallic Lex based on the artwork of Alex Ross in ‘Justice League’ series 5. We’ll get a mammoth 13” Lex with real fabric clothing and complete articulation. We’ll get a tiny Minimates Luthor. And we’ll get a truly whacked-out maniac Luthor based on the art of Ed McGuinness, also in his battlesuit, from the ‘Superman / Batman Public Enemies’ set. Check out the publicity images below and tell me that they don’t represent an awesome variety of Lex.

Finally, Mattel will also be including yet ANOTHER battlesuited Luthor to their DC Superheroes lineup. If all of these similar Lex figures seems like overkill, take another look. All of them represent a different artistic vision of the Lex Luthor persona, a different incarnation of Lex in a different period of comic and world history, from wacky oddball Lex, to President Lex.

I will soon shave my head and join him in the pantheon of great bald men. Patrick Stewart. Telly Savalis. Lex Luthor. And me. Hell, it’s all falling out anyhow.

The French writer Joseph Joubert once said “All gardeners live in beautiful places because they make them so.” This quote has been on my mind lately as I look around and see gorgeous displays of roses blooming everywhere. While gardening can be an enjoyable hobby in itself, many gardeners add another dimension to it by collecting flowers. These gardeners become so enamored of a particular flower or plant that they begin collecting different varieties of it, searching through catalogs for new and unusual types and begging for cuttings. Roses are a favorite among collectors, but gardeners collect all sorts of flowers, including daylilies, orchids, dahlias, tulips, irises and more.

I am a particular fan of roses and grow several types myself. Although I wouldn’t call myself a gardener, I inherited the previous owner’s rose garden when we purchased this house and set to educating myself about things like pruning, aphids and black spot to keep the garden flourishing. As I’ve researched the topic I’ve come across many references to collecting heritage roses, which has piqued my interest.

Advances in rose breeding have created modern roses that bloom all summer long and are more disease resistant. While this is wonderful, a lot of the beautiful, fragrant types of roses that graced the gardens of our great-grandparents have fallen to the wayside. These older roses are termed heritage roses, and many rose collectors are dedicated to finding and growing these roses to keep them from dying out. Groups like the Heritage Rose Foundation have sprung up to unite people with a passion for collecting and preserving old roses.

Whether you’re looking for antique roses or just a few pretty blooms to add to your garden, an inexpensive way to add to a collection of roses is to request cuttings from your friends’ plants. Make it a point to notice the roses when visiting a friend’s home, and if you like what you see, ask for a cutting. By using the proper techniques, you can help the cutting to grow roots and become a beautiful rose bush. This page from the American Rose Society website gives instructions for propagating rose cuttings.

Around seven years ago, my family gave me the gift of art. Unlike most twenty-somethings, I wanted real art on my walls - something actually produced by the hands of a human, not a print. At the time I owned a variety of works, some genuinely old and valuable, but others of the ’starving artist travelling sale’ genre. The art from my parents was mostly of the latter, but one was a bit different. Unframed, sloppily painted on a piece of Masonite, was a winter scene. The story goes that my great-uncle bought it directly from the artist some years before while travelling, and gifted it to my parents some time later. I’d never seen the painting before, which showed my parent’s take on the painting, but I accepted it and planned on getting it framed. Because it was an odd size, large but poorly proportioned, I risked spending lots at a professional framer, so it was put in storage.

Some years later I was browsing a junk store in Wisconsin, when I found something strikingly familiar: two sloppy unframed paintings on Masonite, quite obviously by the same artist. I wasn’t 100-percent sure, but the price was right, so I took them home with me.

According to the family rule, three of anything constitutes a collection. Not wanting to seem an ignorant collector, I decided to find out something about the painter. Two of the paintings were signed “Pletan,” and thanks to Google I found out where my art came from.

ExpressoTILT! has what appears to be the only article on the internet pertaining to the artist, but thankfully it’s quite complete. Burnette G Pletan was, according to the article, the “Fastest Painter In The World,” producing thousands and thousands of works of art in his lifetime. Here, I managed to own three of them, and given the scale of his portfolio, it’s quite surprising not to find more about him online. Burnette took up painting as a career simply because he knew he could do it. Without official training or artistic background, his works could be called folk or outsider art.

“Outsider Art” is a term generically used to describe untrained artists creating works based on their own creativity, and in earlier times was attributed to art created by the mentally ill. Today, it’s mostly used as a hipster term to describe anything on the fringes of the artistic community by untrained artists, but it still bears the stigma, based on the term ‘outsider’, of being excluded from the genuine art community. It also often crosses the lines of ‘folk art,’ a style generally culturally-driven and created by untrained small-scale artisans. Pletan, for example, could fall into either category: his art depicts rural scenes, much like a lot of folk art, but his expressive, ultra-fast style of painting and unique media puts his work more towards ‘outsider art’.

The biggest advantage to an art collector is the price: outsider art is generally cheap to come by. Challenging Pletan’s claims of high art volume, Steve Keene considers himself America’s most prolific artist, producing hundreds of paintings in a sitting. On his website, for $12, anyone can purchase one of his works (provided they don’t care what the painting’s subject matter is). While Keene is moving towards the center of the art world, leaving the fringes via exhibitions and media exposure, many “street artists” in large cities sell their art for enough to get by. eBay’s outsider art category is full of artistic hopefuls, many of which appear to be painted deliberately outsidery by trained artists, but as with any eBay shopping excursion careful examination will yield a modern treasure.

Because ‘outsider art’ is primarily a description of the artist rather than the style of art, the variety to choose from is quite large. Due to the lack of refined training much does appear ’sloppy’, but much of modern art today, such as Pollack, emphasises the emotion of the work over realism. The lack of training also reduces the use of artistic metaphors, which makes outsider art much more appealing to the general public.

As a collectible, the volume and price of outsider art available allows most anybody to start and maintain a sizeable and varied collection. As with any collections, the cardinal rule applies: collect what you enjoy. Because of its uniqueness, outsider art begs to be displayed, so be sure you’re willing to look at the work on a daily basis. Since outsider art is rarely found in mainstream outlets, much of the fun is in finding it by frequenting ‘art in the park’ sales, flea markets, or street vendors. As with mainstream art, there’s no guarante that any particular artist will become more valuable than the others, but for the price there’s minimal risk in overspending. A Pletan painting recently sold on eBay for just under $100, and an independent seller is asking for over $2,000 for a particularly nice Pletan painting. While Steve Keene’s paintings aren’t particularly rare, the attention his work is geting will no doubt increase the value of his works as time goes on. Consider also Grandma Moses, who, in her seventies, took up painting because arthritis interfered with her needlework, and over time her works because quite valuable, earning her awards and accolades. Beyond these examples are a wide variety of artists,drawing on nothing more than their own imagination to create beautiful and interesting works of art - far more accessible than the works exhibited in galleries, but in my opinion, definitely better than the prints and posters hanging in most homes. Jump into the unknown, and find some outsider art; at the very least, knowing where the painting came from is worth the price.

Though largely overcast and humid, this past weekend’s Renegade Craft Fair in Brooklyn’s McCarren Park was an enormously pleasant event. Gathering creatives and crafting personalities from all over the East Coast and regions beyond, every one of the few hundred small tents that encircled the walkway along the main park area had wonderful, handmade, exciting things to share.

I came to learn of the Renegade Craft Fair though a long series of coincidences and friendships with other creative types. I’d been planning an outing to this, the second annual New York fair, for months, immersing myself in the world of handmade and recycled objects, and making some objects of my own. With a long-standing fascination with ephemera and the power of the human hand when laid to raw materials, it felt like I was finally among my people. Sure, about 97% of the Fair was cute, creative young women, but it had merits beyond that. You know, when I remembered that there were crafts there too, and not just long skirts and piercings. You might think that ‘crafting’ inspires images of seniors assembling quilts or prepackaged AC Moore schlock, but this was a young, terminally hip crowd. To the left here, you can see the wonderful miss Jenny Harada, politely posing for one of my photographs, and wearing one of her monolithic creations.

Dominant items at the fair included cute hand-sewn plush creatures, handbags, stylish wrist-cuffs with various designs and embellishments, small pins and plenty of raw materials to make your own wonderful crafts. As a self-perpetuating community, the whole atmosphere was very friendly and casual, encouraging the creation of more and more unique THINGS, never a fear that another vendor might be usurping another business with similar items. The appreciation that every single item was lovingly created was far more dominant, and while the prices on many of these items were slightly high, I’m always compelled to spend a few extra bucks on small record labels and independent creators and anyone who puts their heart into their works.

I ended up purchasing a small polar fleece octopus within about five minutes, which cost twenty dollars, from Fish Cakes. Secretly, in the back of mind, I’d vowed to find something cehpalopodic in order to quench my well-known cephalophelia, and this was it. Later, I’d find some expertly crocheted octopi at another booth, as well as small tiles painted with octopi at another, and be forced to restrain myself. Also making an appearance were plush robots and other various robot-themed works, including a hilarious little ‘zine called ‘Young and Mechanical’, a clever parody of the genre of teen-centric magazines that litter the racks near the checkout line at any given supermarket.

Speaking of ‘zines, I also picked up a Richard Pryor Coloring Book by Erica Waldorf for three dollars. While awkwardly drawn and thoroughly ridiculous, I was won over by a scene of Superman saving Mr. Pryor from some unseen danger. I’d like to venture that the Man of Steel was trying to save Mr. Pryor from himself. My purchases were mostly small 1” buttons to add to my growing collection on my multi-purpose satchel (or, if you’re a jerk, my man-purse), two significant purchases being from a 25-cent gumball machine filled completely with small treasure eggs, each with a unique, one-of-a-kind button inside. The machine, re-purposed by a young male crafter, proudly advertised ‘COLLECT ALL 20,000!’, which was pretty much a siren song to a collector such as myself. After inserting a quarter, I turned the crank and got a button which illustrated ‘cocaine’. Luckily, my second mystery pull was a button of a brain. Clearly, the two were meant to be together, a perfect combination of self-destruction. You can guess which one I’ll not be wearing to work. Oh, and for the ladies at work, librarians all, I picked up some small ‘I read banned books’ pins.

The Renegade Craft Fair website tells the story of two women who single-handedly pulled together a large community of crafters into events both in New York and Chicago, further revealing a huge network of craft fairs that take place across the United States, attracting all kinds of people who enjoy getting their hands dirty and making fine objets d’art. This network is further revealed within the many connections on MySpace between crafters trading, collaborating on and promoting their wares, and the list of hundreds of websites that Renegade presents on their event map. The Chicago event will take place in September, if you’re in the area.

So, a subculture is revealed, and for me, it’s an exciting and inspiring one. When you think of crafts, please don’t think of log cabins made out of popsicle sticks or country-chic wooden placards with gingham paint schemes and outsider-art angels declaring ‘Home Sweet Home’. Think of fine art redefined and made accessible, because the line is thinning, and it’s a thrilling one to walk.

My mother never drank tea when I was a child but she had a collection of teapots in the kitchen and a shiny silver tea service displayed atop a chest in the dining room. I too have a couple of teapots, even though my tea is made exclusively by microwave. I’ve found that they work well as decorating knick-knacks since they can be pretty or interesting, subtle accents or eye-catching conversation pieces.

Teapots are used to brew tea by adding boiling water and either loose leaves or tea bags to the pot and allowing the concoction to steep. After it has been brewed to the desired concentration, the tea is poured into teacups. A teapot generally includes a handle, spout and lid and tends to be small and round where coffee pots are tall and slim.

Though most people associate tea with Great Britain, it originated in China and was introduced in Europe sometime during the 1600s. There is some disagreement about the origins of the teapot, with some sources claiming the Chinese developed it and others saying it was a western invention.

Though teapots were at first strictly functional, it wasn’t long before designers began adding artistic touches to make them beautiful as well. Over the years designers have become more creative with the basic teapot form. A quick glance at eBay will turn up novelty teapots shaped like chickens, snowmen, elephants and the Arc de Triomphe - all sorts of delightful shapes begging to be added to a collection.When beginning a collection or adding a new teapot to an existing collection, look for pots without cracks, chips or crazing, that web of fine lines that can appear in pottery, often due to extreme heat. Because a teapot that is missing its lid is not worth much and it can be extremely difficult to find a matching lid, it’s a good idea to pass on lidless pots. On the other hand, if it’s cheap and you think it would make a fun flowerpot or vase, then go for it. There are so many different sizes and styles of teapots out there, you’re sure to have a great time building a collection that reflects your personal tastes.

Check out this blog for pictures of unique teapots.Here’s an article about collecting modern novelty teapots.