Pop culture roundup: Does your homeowner's insurance cover Sharknados? Doctor Who at Heathrow! Ricky Gervais is Bowie! Dylan and friends! Steranko!

News you can use: Don't worry, your homeowner's insurance will cover a sharknado.
"A tornado is a wind event," says Mike Barry, vice president of media relations. Wind events, including hurricanes, tornadoes, cyclones and other such calamities, are covered under a standard policy. But a falling shark?

"It would be covered, yes, as a falling object," Barry confirms. In case you were wondering, damage from an errant asteroid would be covered by your homeowners insurance under the same principle.

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Passengers at London's Heathrow Airport were greeted by Daleks, Cybermen and more in a celebration of Doctor Who's 50th anniversary.




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Via Dangerous Minds: Before they created "The Office," Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant did a pilot called "Golden Years," a comedy pilot that focused on a very David Brent-like David Bowie impersonator. Take a look:



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See Bob Dylan, Wilco's Jeff Tweedy and My Morning Jacket's Jim James sing a gospel tune from their current package tour:



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A new Twitter feed hosted by veteran comic book artist Jim Steranko is creating a stir among longtime fans. A magician and escape artist in his youth, Steranko has always a colorful character, Steranko is sharing, in small bits, some fantastic stories. Like this one, noted by This is Infamous, about how he inspired the great Jack Kirby's character, Miracle Man.

Kirby’s ears suddenly pricked up, and he made me tell him more about my adventures, tools, and techniques—particularly the hazardous stunts I’d attempted along the way, like from sealed boxes dropped underwater or inside containers set afire or buried alive. I may have spent the next hour hitting the highlights of my Houdini-inspired career. Jack was at rapt attention. Afterward, I mentioned a magazine that covered that aspect of my life and promised to send one the following week—if I could find a copy. I did send one to him, then promptly forgot about the conversation—until a half year later, when I was sitting in the office of Carmine Infantino, then-president of the DC cosmos. During the course of our chat, hazed by the smoke of the illegal Havana-imported cigars he kept in a highly-polished wooden humidor centered on his desktop, he began to chuckle as if he’d just remembered some important secret. “What’s funny” I asked. He reached into the top left drawer of his desk, pulled out a cover proof that he scaled across the desk into my lap. It visualized a new superhero I’d never seen before—masked, cloaked, decked out in Kirbyesque raiment—and up to his eyeballs in chains! “This is YOU!” Infantino confirmed, like he’d just filled an inside straight in a high-roller poker game. A cover proof of #MISTERMIRACLE 1. Of course, I was gratified. How many people in the comics biz had been the real-life inspiration for a superhero?

Vintage Avengers pictures: Steed and... Twiggy!



Holy Hot Toys! First full look at 1966 Batman and Robin figures look just like Adam West and Burt Ward

Forgive that "Holy" headline, but it's appropriate given the subject and the uncanny realism of these figures. Hot Toys is known for doing freakishly accurate sculpts and it looks like they're keeping up their reputation with this Dynamic Duo. Pic via Captain Action Now.


Vintage Avengers pictures: More Steed and Peel!















Asterix and the Picts: First non-Uderzo and Goscinny Asterix album due out in October

"Asterix and the Picts," the first Asterix story not illustrated by Albert Uderzo, is set for release this fall.

Uderzo, who created Asterix with writer René Goscinny in 1956, carried on creating Asterix stories on his own when Goscinny passed away in 1977, but announced his retirement in 2011 at age 84.

Publisher Hachette Livre has since hired a new creative team, Jean-Yves Ferri and Didier Conrad, to create the 35th Asterix book, due out Oct. 24.

No details as to the story, but you can peek at some images and learn about the new creative team here.