Audiences were not ready for the amount of emotional damage Jon Bernthal inflicted in one week. He co-wrote and starred in two standalone pieces that came out this week: The Bear’s surprise prequel episode, Gary, and Marvel’s Special Presentation, The Punisher One Last Kill. Interestingly, both stories examine their characters' inner states, making them more relatable rather than giving fans an absolute adventure or heroic moments.

MADRID, May 14 — Real Madrid officially started their electoral process today, after president Florentino Perez announced his decision to call elections, in which he will stand.

There is a 10-day window, until May 23, for the submission of candidacies, Madrid said in a statement.

Among the requirements to be a candidate are having been a club member for 20 years and providing a guarantee of 187 million euros (US$219m), equivalent to 15 per cent of the club’s annual budget, which must be backed by personal assets.

Perez, who was re-elected unopposed in January 2025 for a four-year term, announced at a press conference on Tuesday that he will run again.

Spanish media report Enrique Riquelme, the president of the water and energy group Cox, is considering entering the race.

In a letter published by several outlets in Spain, the renewable energy businessman asked Perez for more time to potentially prepare a candidacy.

”When I ran in the 2000 elections, I didn’t ask for more time; I ran and I won,” said Perez in an interview on television channel La Sexta yesterday. 

If multiple candidates stand the electoral board will announce the date and place of the elections in due course.

If no one else comes forward, Perez, 79, would retain his post, as happened in the 2013, 2017, 2021 and 2025 elections.

The Spanish businessman was first elected as Madrid president in 2000, overseeing the club’s Galactico era, and resigned in 2006.

Since Perez returned in 2009, Madrid have won five Spanish league titles and a remarkable six European cups, among other silverware. — AFP

A number of fantastic ducks lined up in the month of June and I want to talk about all of them, but there isn’t time to do it in one giant post. One duck, however, took the form of appearing at the 14th International Melville Society Conference to speak about my time aboard the Charles W. Morgan eleven years ago. (You can read the comic about that trip here.)

I read Moby-Dick for the first time a handful of years ago and loved it, but I wouldn’t call myself a Melville scholar. However, attending this conference felt like a great chance to scratch the academic itch without, say, going to grad school.

I ended up spending the whole week taking visual notes, which allowed me to drop into a type of weightless, fixated attention that I’ve really missed in my caregiving life. It also helped give me something to do during panels where I felt a little, uh, out of my depth.

When I’m drawing, words just wash over me. I can pluck the ones that resonate in the moment, then step back at the end of the hour and get a picture of what I took away from the talk. I particularly loved the freedom to just wander into panels where I had no idea what the speakers were talking about, only to come away newly-enthused about some niche avenue into Melville’s work.

Time and time again the attendees emphasized how unique this conference is in its warmth and intellectual diversity. I met scientists and art historians and medievalists and printmakers and disability scholars and tall ship sailors and filmmakers and many, many professors. It was a dreamy, albeit intense, four days.

Here are the notes from every talk I attended, all drawn straight to ink during the speakers’ presentations (usually about 20 minutes per person).

The biggest takeaway was that we need embedded cartoonists at all sorts of academic conferences—and the demand is there! People were so thrilled to see this kind of work coming out of the event, and there are lots of journals hungry to publish unusual creative content alongside academic papers.

Something to pursue…eventually. Got a couple things* to wrap up first.

_{*unfathomably vast creative projects}