Best Comics Not About Superheroes

Netflix’s popular “Sweet Tooth” series revealed the kinds of worlds available to those willing to look beyond superheroes and see what else comic books have to offer. There’s more to be found than good-guy-versus-bad-guy slugfests, even inside the seemingly narrow field of post-apocalyptic settings and stories. Take a look at the list below and discover all-new ways that the world could end, on the big scale as well as the small, without even one superhero showing up to save the day.

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Maybe it’s the can-do spirit of Gus that appealed to you throughout that first “Sweet Tooth” season. If that’s the case, then Boom! Studios’ “Lumberjanes”— a series that almost defines the term “plucky” in how gung-ho it is about the value of both friendship and bravery in the face of adversity — is a must-read. Created by the team of Shannon Watters, Noelle Stevenson, Grace Ellis, and Brooke Allen, “Lumberjanes“ is the story of five teenagers at a summer camp for “Hardcore Lady Types” where weird things happen regularly… not that anything can really challenge the bond of friendship between the five. Funny, uplifting, and (of course) bad ass.

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Steph Curry invests in a pay equity startup

Equal pay has been important to Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry since at least 2018, when he wrote an essay about the issue for The Players’ Tribune. Now, Curry’s investment arm is putting money behind that commitment.

Penny Jar Capital, the early-stage investment firm led by Curry, made a $1 million investment in Syndio, a pay equity software startup. 

“Ensuring people are paid fairly is long overdue and is a fundamental issue that needs to be addressed to progress towards an equitable society,” Curry said in a statement. “Syndio is an objective solution that removes unconscious bias from the equation and changes the way business leaders tackle workplace equity, making pay equity the standard for companies around the world.”

Founded in 2017, Syndio is led by CEO Maria Colacurcio. The software company helps businesses study compensation in their workforces, with clients including Salesforce, Adobe, and PagerDuty. In total, Syndio’s platform has analyzed the pay of 2.6 million employees, the company says. Its other investors include Bessemer Venture Partners and Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective.

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With the purchase of Scaniverse, Niantic wants to speed up the creation of a 3D map of the world

Pokemon Go has given wings to Niantic, the creator of the augmented reality game. The studio therefore wants to create a “3D map” of the world, which requires the acquisition of specialists in such technologies as Scaniverse.

Niantic has a consistent idea: to create a 3D map of the world so that the games and games that will use this technology are as accurate as possible. At the beginning of last year, the studio bought 6D.ai, a startup with this goal in mind, simply using smartphone cameras.

Easy 3D scanning

Niantic doubles the stakes by acquiring Scaniverse, an app that simplifies recording 3D objects and environments, always with the help of his smartphone’s camera, both old and newer (lidar-equipped, for example). Scaniverse technology will accelerate the video game studio’s project to provide a 3D map of the world.

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Niantic’s CEO believes the metaverse could be a ‘dystopian nightmare’

The metaverse, the concept of an alternative, shared digital world that originated in sci-fi, has bubbled up to the surface of tech chatter during the later days of the pandemic. It’s a concept that a number of Big Tech and gaming companies, most notably Facebook, Roblox, and Epic Games, are trying to make real.

One of the technologies that may be used to interact with a future metaverse is augmented reality, which intermingles digital content with the real world through a smartphone screen right now and AR glasses in the future. Niantic created the game that introduced many people to AR, Pokémon Go, which means that the company has a vested stake in its own version of a digital reality. Niantic said Tuesday it had acquired a 3D scanning app called Scaniverse, which it will use to crowdsource images from the smartphone cameras of game players. Those images will form a map that will allow Niantic to anchor digital objects to real-world places.

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Startup looks to help oil and gas producers 'get real' on methane emissions

Natural gas companies are facing growing pressure from investors and customers to demonstrate their fuel is cleaner than competitors as the industry looks to overcome doubts that it can continue to play a role in addressing climate change.

But the industry has long struggled to collect and provide accurate data to prove claims of clean gas.

A new range of third-party data providers aims to change that by helping companies measure their emissions and certify gas as being clean.

Denver-based startup Project Canary, launched in 2019, scores oil and gas operators based on factors including methane emissions intensity, the level of emissions per unit of economic activity.

The company also provides producers solar-powered devices for continuously monitoring methane emissions that can be installed across the oil and gas supply chain.

Based on the data it helps collect, Project Canary will certify producers as providing “Responsibly Sourced Gas,” a branding that could give operators a leg up in the marketplace.

“Think of it as a credit score,” Project Canary co-founder and CEO Chris Romer told the Washington Examiner. “We are like the Moody and S&P of climate ratings.”

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