Artists

TUCSON, Ariz. -- The Center for Biological Diversity will mark this year's Earth Day by distributing 100,000 free Endangered Species Condoms around the country.

PHILADELPHIA -- There are wedding bells in Riverdale, but it's not Archie and Betty or Veronica. It's Army Lt. Kevin Keller and the physical therapist who helped him overcome his war wound -- Clay Walker.

Meanwhile, in the comics pages, Gil is an 8-year-old boy being raised by his divorced factory-working mom, and Dustin is 23 and living at home, unable to find a job after graduating from college.

Comics have always been a portal for escapism and fantasy but have also labored to reflect a contemporary climate, a process that shows no signs of slowing whether it involves super villains, breast cancer or other complicated realities of modern life.

NORTH OGDEN -- Tempers flared Saturday afternoon at the North Ogden Arts Festival when local artist and Weber State University professor Steve Stones got some strange looks and comments over his art display.

PULLMAN, Wash. -- After hours of screwing boards together, a few painful slivers and collaboration with community groups throughout Palouse to build a 15-by15-foot mammoth, all Thad Froio wanted to do is stand back and watch his artwork burn.

Despite this urge to set his creation aflame, the wooden skeleton of Froio's mammoth still stands unsinged in downtown Palouse.

"I'm just too small for how big that idea was, I think," Froio said.

It wasn't rain or weather that put out Froio's fire, it was the Washington State Department of Ecology, which doesn't permit the burning of milled "non-virgin" wood.

CLEARFIELD -- The emerald energy of willpower. That seems to be a trait Tyler Kirkham possesses. For the past year, Kirkham, 28, has been the sketch artist behind the current series of Green Lantern comic books that DC Comics is distributing throughout the country.