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Top comic-book artists today are like rock stars. They have groupies, often attracting long lines of them at signings and conventions; they have riches, as illustrator and multimillionaire Todd McFarlane can attest to; and they have Hollywood chasing after them, following the recent slew of semi-animated blockbusters developed from comic books like Frank Miller’s Sin City and 300.

Among comic-book artists, few are hotter these days than John Cassaday. A self-taught illustrator whose first job was directing television news in Texas, Cassaday has worked on several of the highest-profile titles in the comic-book world, including the relaunch of Captain America and the hugely popular Astonishing X-Men, written by Buffy the Vampire Slayer-creator Joss Whedon. From 2004 to 2006, Cassaday won an unprecedented three straight Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards—the field’s Oscars—for Best Penciller/Inker. Little wonder that writer Warren Ellis—himself a comics superstar as well as a Cassaday business partner—calls Cassaday an illustration god.

But Cassaday, 36, did start out a mere mortal. He studied filmmaking at a small college in Texas but in 1996 decided to take a portfolio of drawings he’d done over the years to San Diego’s Comic-Con International, the comic industry’s leading convention. He made some fortuitous connections there, including one with veteran writer and editor Mark Waid, who was impressed by the greenhorn illustrator. “He knew how to draw mood and emotion and not just pole-dancers in superhero costumes,” notes Waid.

Through his new contacts, Cassaday began lining up assignments, first from smaller publishers and then from the bigger companies such as Marvel Comics and DC Comics, working as an independent contractor, which is typical even of some of the most established artists. In 1999, he partnered with Ellis to create Planetary, an X-Files-esque superhero series for the DC-owned imprint Wildstorm. Planetary received resounding critical acclaim and vaulted Cassaday into the ranks of the field’s premier illustrators.

These days, Cassaday finds himself in the enviable position of being able to pick and choose which assignments he takes.

"I’ve got specific goals in mind and don’t want to deviate just for a few bucks if I’m not interested," he says. "The story must come first."

Though he won’t reveal what he makes, his page rate—the amount an artist charges per page drawn—is among the highest in the business. Given that an elite illustrator can command up to $1,000 a page for a 22-page comic book and that most popular titles are monthlies, a top talent like Cassaday can comfortably clear six figures annually. And that’s not counting potential back-end royalties for merchandise, trade paperbacks and spin-offs, which are negotiated separately.

Of course, the big money comes into play when Hollywood gets into the act, and with the recent blockbuster success of such properties as the X-Men, Spider-Man and 300, movie execs haven’t been subtle in their rush to mine the natural resources of the comic world. This summer alone will see the release of another Batman movie, a new version of The Incredible Hulk and the first feature version of Iron Man (opening this Friday).

Cassaday has had his share of brushes with Hollywood, and he admits he’s been tempted by the prospect of getting his work on-screen.

"I plan to start making films in the next two years," says the former film major. "I do admire artists who can tell their stories in a wide variety of mediums. I like the idea of being a chameleon storyteller."

Cassaday adds, however, that he has no intention of abandoning the field that made him a star. Drawing comics, says Cassaday, is his dream job: "I get to clock in as a kid every day and make stories live. It’s a wonderful thing."

Brain researchers for the first time claim to have found a method for improving the general problem-solving ability scientists call fluid intelligence, otherwise known as "smarts."

Fluid intelligence was previously thought to be genetically hard-wired, but the finding suggests that with about 25 minutes of rigorous mental training a day, healthy adults could improve their mental capacities.

The method, if commercialized, could be a boon to the growing, multimillion-dollar market for "brain fitness" software like Nintendo's Brain Age.

"The most important point of our work is that we can show that it is possible to improve fluid intelligence," said Martin Buschkuehl, a psychology researcher based at the University of Bern, Switzerland. "It was assumed that fluid intelligence was immutable."

Fluid intelligence measures how people adapt to new situations and solve problems they've never seen before. Fluid intelligence differs from crystallized intelligence, which takes into account skills and knowledge that have been acquired -- like vocabulary, grammar and math.

It's not hard, for example, for students to improve their IQ scores by taking lots of IQ tests.

Trouble is, learning how to take IQ tests doesn't improve the underlying smarts. The students just get better at taking tests. In practical terms, people can get better at taking tests, but in daily life, don’t have a blazingly quick new brain.

And that's where Buschkuehl's research, which appears today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, claims to be groundbreaking.

In a limited trial, he and his team were able to make 34 test subjects significantly better at answering IQ test questions after training them on a completely separate memory task.

David Geary, a professor at the University of Missouri and author of The Origin of Mind, who was not involved with the study, said training in one test generally doesn’t generate gains on a different test.

"Transfer is tough to get," Geary said. "Training in task A doesn’t typically improve performance on task B."

But in this case, subjects trained on a complex version of the so-called "n-back task" -- a difficult visual/auditory memory test -- improved their scores on a set of IQ questions drawn from a German intelligence measure called the Bochumer Matrizen-Test. (The Bochumer Matrizen-Test is a harder version of the well-known Ravens Progressive Matrices).

Initially, the test subjects scored an average of 10 questions correctly on the IQ test.

But after the group trained on the n-back task for 25 minutes a day for 19 days, they averaged 14.7 correct answers, an increase of more than 40 percent. (A control group that was not trained showed only a very slight performance increase.)

Buschkuehl's team postulates that the n-back task improves working memory -- how many pieces of information subjects can keep in their head -- as well as the ability to control the brain's attention. Fluid intelligence tests require those types of thinking, and the training improved performance in these underlying skills.

"These are intriguing results," Geary said. However, Geary noted that to claim actual increases in fluid intelligence, the subjects would have to show the performance gains over a long-term period -- or even permanently.

The Michigan researchers are now engaged in studying the long-term effects of training. They are also working to increase the amount of training that users undergo. In the experiment reported in PNAS, the researchers did not find the upper-limit for improvement, suggesting that more training could yield even better mental performance gains.

"The improvement seems to be dosage dependent," Buschkuehl said. "We saw a linear increase in performance with increase in training time."

In the simplest version of the n-back task, a sequence of images is presented every few seconds and subjects are asked to match a picture to an identical one that came previously, say two pictures before it. (For example, in the picture above, the blue square should be in the same location.)

Buschkuehl's subjects, however, also heard a second stream of letters and had to match the sounds at the same time as they matched the visuals. This makes the task very challenging. And as the subjects got better, the gap between matching pictures and letters got bigger, making the task progressively more difficult.

The team has developed a new n-back computer program called Brain Twister, which they have translated into English, but is not available online.

They do not plan to commercialize the software, but with mental gyms like Vibrant Brains in San Francisco springing up, and brain training software companies like Posit Science drawing big-name investors, you can bet you'll be seeing the n-back task on sale sooner rather than later.

In fact, revenue from "brain-fitness software" reached $225 million in 2007, according to SharpBrains, a market-research firm.

In the meantime, a very simplified, DIY version of the n-back is described here.

Neurobehavioral Sciences also offers a 45-day free trial of their neuroscience stimuli program presentation, which is primarily a research tool, and only available for the PC.

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts -- Who are the geek elite that make us laugh out loud? Chances are you've heard of a Tron-obsessed computer guy, gotten a JibJab e-card, or giggled at a Chuck Norris Fact, but you've probably never met the person (or people) behind these internet phenomena.

These profiles unmask individuals who've mesmerized the masses with simple (and sometimes brilliant) ideas. The people behind the memes attended the first-ever ROFLCon internet culture conference last week.

Left:

Jay Maynard, a computer consultant from Minnesota, is one of the most beloved and visible "cewebrities": Tron Guy. Maynard first rigged up his electroluminescent bodysuit for a sci-fi convention and, after four years of regular use, his spandex costume is wearing thin. Not to worry -- he's got spares at home. These days, he's tricking out a custom jet, painted in the same style as his trademark neon-blue unitard. "I expected maybe 500 people to see the costume, ever," Maynard said from his hotel room. "Boy, was I wrong."

Name: Jay Maynard

Age: 47

Location: Fairmont, Minnesota

Day job: Computer consultant

You know him from: Tron Guy 


Memestruck over ROFLCon attendees: The JibJab guys

Rapper and gem-sweater curator Leslie Hall has carved out a niche online, attracting a loyal cult following in the process. Her Napoleon Dynamite-esque shows -- usually performed in a metallic gold bodysuit -- delight audiences that tend to squeal as she jaunts onstage.

As a net superstar, she's known for her hip-hop YouTube videos, web show appearances and electric live performances with her band, Leslie and the Lys.

Name: Leslie Hall

Age: 26

Location: Ames, Iowa

Day job: Being herself: rapper/bedazzler/performer

You know her from: Her YouTube rap videos 


Memestruck over ROFLCon attendees: The I Can Has Cheezburger? guys and Bert Is Evil guy

As in-house producers for online comedy network JibJab, Adam Mutterperl and Andy Ochiltree can lampoon almost anything in their animated shorts. "We'll take whatever is popular and skewer it," said Ochiltree, who began working for the humor site in 2004. "Within reason."

The animation studio first shot into the memosphere a few years ago when creators Gregg and Evan Spiridellis produced the Bush vs. Kerry political satire "This Land," which was eventually viewed more than 80 million times (and landed JibJab in a legal fight over their use of a classic Woody Guthrie tune).

Names: Adam Mutterperl and Andy Ochiltree

Ages: 33, 27

Location: Santa Monica and Venice Beach, California

Day job: Working on all things JibJab-related

You know them from: JibJab

Memestruck over ROFLCon attendee: "It's hard to pin down, but we did meet the Tron Guy," Mutterperl said. "Which was awesome," Ochiltree added.

Read Underwire's full profile of Mutterperl and Ochiltree.

It all started with a picture of a cat. After a bad day at work in 2007, Eric Nakagawa asked his friend Kari Unebasami to send him a photo of something cute to make him feel better.

She forwarded a few cat macros, and apparently, funny-looking cats with weird captions will make just about anybody feel better. The pair's blog -- I Can Has Cheezburger? -- brought the lolcat craze into the mainstream and became an internet sensation. The site gets roughly 2 million pageviews a day, according to CEO Ben Huh.

Names: Eric Nakagawa, Kari Unebasami (Tofuburger), Ben Huh (Cheezburger)

Ages: 26, 26, 30

Locations: Honolulu and Seattle

Day jobs: Working on all things I Can Has Cheezburger?-related

You know them from: Lolcat site I Can Has Cheezburger?

Memestruck over ROFLCon attendees: Unebasami: "Tron Guy!" Ben Huh: Swedish musician Gunther Nakagawa, and "Leslie Hall.... I can't believe I didn't bring a gem sweater to wear!"

Read Underwire's full profile of the I Can Has Cheezburger? creators.

Brad Neely makes cartoons, but not just any cartoons. His animated shorts for comedy site Super Deluxe whip together a strange amalgamation of bizarre imagery, songs and phrases that is pure funny.

Neely, who has worked as a consultant writer on South Park, also did a great Mystery Science Theater 3000-like rendition of the first Harry Potter movie called "Wizard People, Dear Reader."

So where does he get his quirky-hilarious ideas from? "The Iliad," he said. "It's really a funny book. I'd like to do a whole feature on it."

Name: Brad Neely

Age: 31

Location: Austin, Texas

Day job: Animator

You know him from: "Wizard People, Dear Reader," a Harry Potter spoof; animated shorts on Super Deluxe

Memestruck over ROFLCon attendee: "I'm ashamed to say I'm illiterate about most of the people here. The Homestar Runner guys are funny."

Justine Ezarik, aka iJustine, found web stardom last May when she strapped a camera to her head and began "lifecasting," or streaming video of her life 'round the clock. In August 2007, she created a video of a 300-page iPhone bill she received, and it ricocheted around the net, gathering more than a million views and cementing her place among bona fide meme masters.

Name: Justine Ezarik

Age: 24

Location: Pittsburgh

Day job: Designer, consultant, video editor

You know her from: iJustine; the 300-page iPhone bill viral video

Memestruck over ROFLCon attendees: Internet comedy duo Rhett & Link

Read Underwire's full profile of iJustine.

Media hijacker Ji Lee sank $2,000 into The Bubble Project, an ambitious (and illegal) campaign that transforms advertisements into DIY comic strips ripe for input from anybody with a Magic Marker.

Lee plastered 30,000 blank thought bubbles around New York City, giving passers-by the opportunity to scribble their thoughts into the blank bubbles, turning the ads into a community conversation. Now the concept has spread online, where the Bubble Project targets a "bubbled person of the week."

"The project now has a life of its own," Lee said. "People in other countries have started their own Bubble Projects -- there's one in Italy, Argentina, France."

Name: Ji Lee

Age: 37

Location: New York

Day job: Branding director at Droga5, an advertising agency

You know him from: The Bubble Project

Memestruck over ROFLCon attendees: "Everyone. The whole idea of an internet celebrity get-together seems exciting, so I'm more interested in the event than one particular person."

Read Underwire's full profile of Ji Lee.

A ninja with a superhero complex that battles his simultaneous desire to maim and help people? If it sounds funny, that's because it is. Plenty of people agree -- The Adventures of Dr. McNinja won the 2007 Web Cartoonist's Choice Award for outstanding superhero/action comic, and the site receives about 110,000 unique visitors each day.

Hastings devotes 40 hours a week to penning the adventures of Dr. McNinja and friends.

Name: Chris Hastings

Age: 24

Location: New York

Day job: Self-employed as the creator of The Adventures of Dr. McNinja

You know him from: Webcomic The Adventures of Dr. McNinja

Memestruck over ROFLCon attendees: Brad Neely, the Brothers Chaps, the Cyanide and Happiness guys.

Read Underwire's full profile of Hastings.

Sick of paying rent, Canadian blogger Kyle MacDonald began bartering for a new house. He started with a single red paperclip in 2005. Just a year later, he'd met his goal: a house in Saskatchewan, Canada. Now he's trying to track down the origin of a photograph he found on the net. "It's a mystery," he says, "but there's no point to it."

MacDonald's advice for scoring a winning trade? "Don't plan, just do it."

Name: Kyle MacDonald

Age: 28

Location: Montreal

Day job: Public speaker, author, house renovator

You know him from: One red paperclip

Memestruck over ROFLCon attendees: Tron Guy

When Ian Spector first began fooling around posting jokes about celebs on forum threads in 2005, he had no idea his after-school tinkering would snowball into Chuck Norris Facts, one of the more widely known internet memes, and even a book, The Truth About Chuck Norris.

And yet Spector's ready for all the hubbub to die down. "It's just not all that funny to me anymore," Spector said. "I don't want to get pigeon-holed by something I'm not fond of." Turns out he's not the only one less than thrilled: In December 2007, Norris sued Spector's publisher, Penguin Books, saying readers might mistake the mythical facts for truth.

Name: Ian Spector

Age: 20

Location: Long Island, Rhode Island

Day job: Undergrad at Brown University

You know him from: Chuck Norris Facts

Memestruck over ROFLCon attendee: "Everyone's been asking that! I don't know. Brad Neely saying 'Hi' to me was pretty cool."

Read Underwire's full profile of Spector.