* Good news on the torture front from the new administration…

President Obama is expected to sign executive orders Thursday directing the Central Intelligence Agency to shut what remains of its network of secret prisons and ordering the closing of the Guantánamo detention camp within a year, government officials said.

The orders, which would be the first steps in undoing detention policies of former President George W. Bush, would rewrite American rules for the detention of terrorism suspects. They would require an immediate review of the 245 detainees still held at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to determine if they should be transferred, released or prosecuted.

And the orders would bring to an end a Central Intelligence Agency program that kept terrorism suspects in secret custody for months or years, a practice that has brought fierce criticism from foreign governments and human rights activists. They will also prohibit the C.I.A. from using coercive interrogation methods, requiring the agency to follow the same rules used by the military in interrogating terrorism suspects, government officials said.

…and from the majority of the American people:

A majority of Americans in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll oppose the use of torture in terrorism investigations, backing Barack Obama’s pledge that “under my administration, the United States does not torture.” But there’s an even split on whether he should investigate whether laws were broken in the way suspects were treated under the Bush administration. [It’s actually 50-47 in favor -STC]

Overall, 58 percent support the prohibition Obama declared before taking office, but there’s a wide gap across party lines: 71 percent of Democrats and 56 percent of independents in the poll said torture should never be used, but most Republicans, 55 percent, said there are cases in which the U.S. should consider using torture against terrorism suspects.

Note that last bit, because it perhaps explains the behavior of some GOP senators in the confirmation hearings for Attorney General-designate Eric Holder: They’re playing to their torture-enthusiast base.

* I oppose torture but not the Darwin Awards, so it’s a shame that this story about al-Qaeda operatives dying en masse of their own bubonic-plague experiments is most likely bullroar, since otherwise it would manage to be both horrifying and hilarious in one fell swoop. Either way, no word as to the presence of the Walkin’ Dude at or near the training camp. (Via Ta-Nehisi Coates.)

* Bryan Alexander tracks the Onion’s pretty shockingly horrific Bush Administration send-off pieces from the past few months.

* Curt Purcell catches that that much-discussed piece by former Starbuck Dirk Benedict on the supposed awfulness of the current Battlestar Galactica actually dates back to May 2004, before all but the initial miniseries had aired. Benedict says a lot of things in the piece that are stupid and loathsome regardless of when he said them, but this does at least excuse some of his egregious misreadings and mischaracterizations of the show and its characters. It also makes the whole kerfuffle make more sense to me, since I recalled seeing Benedict happily chatting and smoking stogies with Katee “Stardoe” Sackhoff in a behind-the-scenes featurette on one of the BSG DVD sets. On the other hand, it speaks pretty poorly of either Benedict or the right-wing entertainment-ressentiment site Big Hollywood or both that they thought it appropriate to dredge the piece up and post it again.

* Legislators in the UK are moving to increase restrictions on drawn and computer-generated representations of children engaged in sexual conduct. This is a bad idea for reasons I’ve gone into before; it’s of a piece with Europe’s illiberal attitude and legal climate regarding unpleasant or controversial speech generally, but that doesn’t mean it can’t and doesn’t happen here, as the Christopher Handley case (going to trial February 2nd) demonstrates. The people and art and speech involved in all these cases may or may not be distasteful or even outrageous, but they are people and art and speech deserving of protection. Bad law is bad law. (Links via Tom Spurgeon, Kevin Melrose.)

* Newsarama’s Michael C. Lorah talks to David B. (in French AND English) about his dream-comic collection Nocturnal Conspiracies, one of my favorite books of 2008. (Via Dirk Deppey.)

* Kurt Busiek politely explains the uses and abuses of shared-universe, continuity-based superhero storytelling to a largely skeptical audience of Noah Berlatsky. I really liked what he has to say here, which I don’t think will surprise those of you who’ve followed my recent explanations of my own approach to such comics. (Also via Dirk Deppey.)

* Shelf porn from my pal Ryan Penagos of Marvel.com! I’ve seen this in person, and it’s freaking impressive.

* Which is the most awesome part of this Hammer horror poster: the image, the title, or the tagline? U DECIDE!

* Finally, here’s rising altcomix star Jon Vermilyea’s video for Animal Collective’s “My Girls.”

SPOILER WARNING

* A lot to swallow. Maybe too much? Maybe they should have just done an hour? Not that I’m complaining, really, but it was a little hard to get a handle on any kind of “story unit” flow because it was two separate episodes crammed together rather than a two-hour premiere. The breakneck pace established now that we’ve done away with flashbacks and flashforwards and are doing all-plot episodes contributes to the feeling that we’re just seeing a lot of stuff happening.

* Last night I told a friend that I thought a lot fewer people were going to complain about the show dividing the cast this time than they did during the beginning of season three, because this time both halves of the story were so crazy and action-packed. But sure enough, there’s someone on my Tori Amos board complaining about how boring the Sayid and Hurley stuff is. You really can’t please everybody!

* My one beef/quibble/beefquibble with the time-travel storyline is that it would have been nice if, like, back in season two or something, we’d had maybe one random encounter between a character and a time-anomaly version of someone. Heck, even that same character, perhaps. I mean, maybe we HAVE, but it wasn’t anything obvious. I’m mentally comparing it to a scene from Savage Dragon where the Dragon suddenly flashes forward into a post-apocalyptic future, and his as-yet-unborn son wearing a space suit appears to him and says “Dad?”, and it wasn’t followed up on for literally YEARS. I’d like for something like that to have happened relating to the time-travel storyline much earlier in the show–something that really stuck out, like Libby showing up in Hurley’s asylum, but then they don’t explain it for season after season. Trying to shoehorn it in after the fact–as with Faraday’s meeting with Desmond, which Desmond had never been shown to remember until last night–doesn’t cut it.

* Now that I think about it, it seems reasonable to assume that the mysterious eye that peers out of Jacob’s cabin’s window the second time Locke goes to visit it is in fact Locke himself. So maybe I’ve got nothing to complain about. But that’s something we’ve all filed away in the “Jacob’s cabin is crazy” file, not the “time travel paradox” file. Also, I’m hearing people say that maybe the whispers are the sound of people elsewhere in the time stream, and that when Locke initially discovered the crashed plane he had a flash-vision of the actual crash and then inexplicable leg pain, which would seem to connect to his Billy Pilgrim routine last night, so there’s that stuff too, I suppose.

* It’s good to see Sun becoming a cold-hearted bastard because she’s always been a bit annoying and she’s always had that side to her personality. And I was pleasantly surprised to see her stick the knife in Kate over her “I’ll go get Jin” move on the freighter, which I had totally forgotten about but at the time was like “Way to go get Jin there, Freckles.”

* I liked seeing Ana Lucia, and I liked the shout-out to Libby and the unspoken remembrance of Eko and his brother with the plane crash (even though Locke’s mental associations with it would most likely be the death of Boone and Charlie’s heroin addiction, at least WE can remember Eko and his brother). I like it when the show acknowledges the existence of the non-Bernard Tailies and acts as though that whole storyline actually made a difference even though it really didn’t. I hate when external factors like negotiations with actors and scheduling conflicts and so on force changes on the storyline–the actor who played Eko not wanting to live in Hawaii anymore, for example, or the rumor that Libby and Ana Lucia’s DWIs hastened their departure. And I always assume that otherwise unexplained gaps in the story in terms of actors playing a part and then disappearing are related to such external concerns–the stewardess who joined the Others, the tribunal Other woman who the creators now claim died during the Others’ ill-fated attack on the beach camp even though we never saw her, why they’ve taken so long to follow up on Libby’s story, why Michelle Rodriguez didn’t show up again until now, why Eko hasn’t made any more cameos, whether Matthew Abbadon is now stuck in Fringe purgatory and won’t be coming back–and it drives me fucking nuts. So yeah, happy for all the Tail Section-related stuff last night.

* Always happy to see Rose and Bernard, too.

* Now that we’ve firmly established time travel as a phenomenon, who do we think are the Adam & Eve skeletons with the white and black stones that Jack and Kate discovered in the caves way back when? A friend of mine assumed it was whoever discovered them, since that would be the most poetically fitting thing. But the fact that it was Jack and Kate who discovered them makes that seem unlikely to me because a) I think the Sawyer/Kate couple will end up prevailing, not Jack/Kate; b) I’m not convinced that they’re gonna let their main characters die on the Island, whether through foul play or because they stay there voluntarily and die of old age or whatever. So who is it? Jack and Kate? Sawyer and Kate? Jack and Juliet? Desmond and Penny? Ben and his mysterious disappearing childhood girlfriend? Daniel and Redhead Woman whose name I can’t remember ever? Rose and Bernard?

* Do you think there are any mysteries they’re just not gonna get around to explaining by the end of the show? Like how they consigned the Numbers to that stupid ARG and are now just kind of pretending that was never a big deal?

* New Battlestar Galactica on Friday, new President Barack Obama on Tuesday, new Lost tonight…not a bad week, huh?

* Just how bad will Diamond’s new minimum order thresholds hurt the alternative comic book? Pretty bad, if you ask AdHouse’s Chris Pitzer; he elaborates here. The Beguiling’s Chris Butcher is even more pessimistic.

* My pal David Paggi lists his best comics of 2008 at Wizard’s Indie Jones blog. My list is here if you missed it in all the hubbub yesterday.

* Chris Mautner adds the very powerful, very well executed, very hard to read I Live Here to his list of the year’s most criminally ignored books.

* I think many potentially interesting questions in this two-part interview with writer Grant Morrison are phrased in such a way as to leech out any potential drama and disagreement, which is a shame, but still, it’s a two-part interview with Grant Morrison:

In recent years, we’ve seen the superhero as celebrity and as super-soldier, tool of the Military Industrial Complex. The coming wave is more escapist, more psychedelic in tone. The Hero home from the War. The superhero always mirrors the emotional needs of his audience, and comic book creators adapt—sometimes quite unconsciously—to provide the kind of protector and role model each age demands.

Does the zeitgeisty success of the new Animal Collective album (officially released on Inauguration Day, no less; listen to it at the link) vindicate this theory of the New Psychedelic Age? U DECIDE!

* Morrison also mentions upcoming Vertigo collaborations with Cameron Stewart (see below), Sean Murphy, and Camilla D’Errico.

* In the battle of the Battlestar stars, I’ll take Richard Hatch’s thoughtfulness over Dirk Benedict’s grotesque, ignorant, sexist, poorly observed and argued ressentiment anytime. Faceman, we hardly knew ye.

* I’m not easily offended, but see if you can figure out how this poster for some horror movie called Babysitter Wanted isn’t just about the most misogynistic thing you’ve seen since Dave Sim’s last letter column. It’s lazy and derivative, too! All in all, a pretty tremendous illustration of how the tools of the extreme really only work in very, very skilled hands.

* How about some sexy Bryan Lee O’Malley Kim & Ramona art to cleanse the palate?

* And do you wanna see BLO’M draw Kitty Pryde? Yeah you do.

* And what about Wonder Woman Covered by Robert Goodin? I thought so.

* And hey, I bet you a nice preview website for Hans Rickheit’s forthcoming Fantagraphics graphic novel The Squirrel Machine would hit the spot too, huh? (Via Tom Spurgeon.)

* Or perhaps you’d prefer some preview art for David Mazzuchelli’s forthcoming Pantheon graphic novel Asterios Polyp? (Looks like Dash Shaw, no?)

* Or maybe the cover and Previews solicit for Grant Morrison and Cameron Stewart’s long-awaited Seaguy sequel is more to your taste? (Will there be a rainbow of Seaguy Corps?)

* Regardless, surely you can’t resist the “many faces of Rorschach” Watchmen T-shirt by Warren Hart! (Via Sean B.)

* And you can wash it all down with a mildly NSFW video for the new Antony & the Johnsons song “Epilepsy Is Dancing,” directed by the freaking Wachowski Brothers!

B.P.R.D. Vol. 9: 1946

Mike Mignola & Joshua Dysart, writers

Paul Azaceta, artist

Dark Horse, November 2008

144 pages

$17.95

Buy it from Amazon.com

Another Hellboy-verse tale, another litany of misery, failure, and impending doom. Like the proverbial pink elephant, now that I’ve noticed the mile-wide undercurrent of fatalism flowing like the Styx through all of Mike Mignola’s interconnected Hellboy and BPRD comics over the past few years, it’s impossible to stop thinking about it. But that’s a good thing, because it prevents me from writing off this look at one of the early adventures of Hellboy’s old mentor Professor Bruttenholm (pronounced “Broom,” which I don’t think I’d ever put together until now) as something of a throwaway throwback. Both the main Hellboy minis and the parallel BPRD books have gotten pretty far away from early HB‘s two-fisted occult-Nazi slugfests, so when you open a book with that familiar mix of cybernetic Nazi gorillas, sentient decapitated SS-captain heads in jars and so forth, you might think Mignola and his collaborators are going for the easy stuff. Not so: Mignola and his co-writer Dysart root nearly all the important character bits in the trauma of the then-just-completed Second World War. Much of what happens in the central storyline, centered around a Nazi vampire-virus doomsday weapon to be released when the Reich falls, happens because of how American and German soldier characters recoil from the thought of both inflicting and enduring further horrors. There’s a genuinely difficult sequence in which the protagonists’ noble intentions are thwarted by circumstance and they end up perpetrating the exact atrocity they promised not to. Mignola and company also make the effort to push the Nazis out of the “I hate those guys” boo-hiss villain mold and connect their blasphemous black-magic doings in the story to the real-world mentality that led them to systematically slaughter millions of people.

Which brings us back to do, if you will, and how the supernatural evil in Mignola’s stuff seems to be slouching toward victory. One of the main characters here is Varvara, an unnervingly cute little Russian girl in a frilly white dress who runs the Soviet Union’s BPRD equivalent. Turns out she’s actually a demon in human form who hangs around our world because she loves watching people get hurt. If there’s a better encapsulation of the prevailing tone of the Hellboyverse over the past few years, I’d like to see it. I wouldn’t mind seeing it drawn by Paul Azaceta just like this one is, by the by. His loose, simplified, seemingly photoreffed style reminds me of Emmanuel Guibert gone pulp, and he executes all the creepy images and military hardware his writers serve to him with panache. It’s exciting, emotionally resonant genre storytelling; with All Star Superman over and depending on how you feel about Captain America, I’d say it’s another chapter in the best ongoing super-comic on the stands today.

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.

Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more. Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint. We are the keepers of this legacy.

–President Barack Obama

15. An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories Vol. 2 (Ivan Brunetti et al, Yale University Press)/Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*! (Art Spiegelman, Pantheon)/Love & Rockets: New Stories #1 (Gilbert, Jaime, and Mario Hernandez, Fantagraphics); MOME Vols. 10, 11, and 12 (Gary Groth and Eric Reynolds, editors, Fantagraphics)/Nocturnal Conspiracies (David B., NBM)/Pocket Full of Rain and Other Stories (Jason, Fantagraphics)

I love short comic stories (duh), and this year offered a bumper crop.

14. Tales Designed to Thrizzle #4 (Michael Kupperman, Fantagraphics)

Hilarious, but also amazingly drawn, which I think people miss.

13. The Mage’s Tower (Lane Milburn, Closed Caption Comics)/Powr Mastrs Vol. 2 (C.F., PictureBox Inc.)

The avant-garde fantasy slot. As with early Roxy Music or Björk, the familiar genre constraints give them the freedom to really run wild with style, tone, and effect.

12. All Star Superman (Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely, DC)/B.P.R.D. and related titles (Mike Mignola, John Arcudi et al, Dark Horse)/The Immortal Iron Fist (Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, David Aja et al, Marvel)

Fine, personal superhero comics.

11. Look Out!! Monsters (Geoff Grogan, self-published)

Powerful, political collage.

10. Water Baby (Ross Campbell, DC/Minx)

Sexy, sleazy, and sad.

9. I Live Here (Mia Kirshner, J.B. MacKinnon, Paul Shoebridge, Michael Simons, et al, Pantheon)

Eye-opening, soul-crushing work.

8. Boy’s Club 2 (Matt Furie, Buenaventura Press)

The funniest comic around.

7. Big Questions #11 (Anders Nilsen, Drawn & Quarterly)

Dark, devastating horror.

6. Kramers Ergot 7 (Sammy Harkham et al, Buenaventura Press)

Alt/art comics’ summarizing statement.

5. Capacity (Theo Ellsworth, Secret Acres)

An idiosyncratic knockout of a debut, mesmerizing both visually and narratively.

4. Travel (Yuichi Yokoyama, PictureBox Inc.)

Thrillingly abstract, abstractly thrilling, LOL, bravura, beautiful comics-making.

3. Final Crisis/Batman: R.I.P. (Grant Morrison et al, DC)

The most gripping, formally daring superhero comics I’ve read in ages. For raw entertainment value they were tough to beat.

2. Skyscrapers of the Midwest (Joshua W. Cotter, AdHouse)

A landmark debut.

1. ACME Novelty Library #19 (Chris Ware, Acme Novelty Library/Drawn & Quarterly)

Savagely scary science fiction and equally brutal pointilist portraiture. Career-best work from the best cartoonist in the world.

Learned on Gossip Girl tonight: Chuck Bass has a mild form of clairvoyance that alerts him to any nearby sexual assaults.

* The big news in comics circles is that Diamond, the monopoly distributor of comic books to comic shops, is raising its minimum order cutoff from $1500 to $2500. Tom Spurgeon and Heidi MacDonald have both rounded up reactions and posted thoughts on the potentially chilling effect this move will have on the small press. I was particularly troubled by PictureBox Inc. publisher Dan Nadel’s comment to Tom that titles like Travel, Powr Mastrs, Cold Heat, and Goddess of War would not have made the cut. Admittedly, there are a lot of issues at work here that complicate Diamond’s decision beyond the black-hatted “aiding the powerful and popular at the expense of the independent and idiosyncratic” interpretation of this move: the cataclysmic overall economic picture; the legions of small-press companies that put out comics of dubious quality using methods of dubious reliability; the fact that it doesn’t sound like that cutoff is automatic, et cetera. Still, it’s most likely very bad news for some very good comics.

* Jim Woodring has announced the creation of a new 96-page Frank book. Everyone’s happy about it except Manhog.

* Tim O’Shea interviews John Arcudi, co-writer of the excellent BPRD.

* Marc-Oliver Frisch really goes to bat in favor of Final Crisis #6. This bit made me laugh:

One of the features of a good work of fiction is that you can pick out pretty much any element in it and find that it’s somehow plugged into the work’s larger theme. And here, indeed, the theme is everywhere. It’s in the “God-Weapon” Brainiac 5 shows Superman, “a machine that turns thoughts into things” (Hey, kids: comics?).

* Bruce Baugh‘s post about how ruins-based World of Warcraft settings make him feel like his place needs cleaning made me chuckle.

* My Bloody Valentine 3D? Sure, I’ll eat it.

* Whoa man: Kent Williams’s Wolverine: Meltdown Covered by Renee French.

* God I love the rainbow of Lanterns. Now in toy form! (Look out for a Blackest Night spoiler at the link, though.)

* Sorry, Tilda: Bowie does it better.

* Speaking of Bowie, here he is with a little fat man who sold his soul.

* Finally:

—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mephis, Tennessee, April 3, 1968.

What do you think it was like for the Edge when he came up with that riff? Like, he’s sitting around with his guitar, trying this, trying that, and then suddenly that riff comes out. Then he’s like, “Hmm. That’s…that’s something, alright.” And he calls the rest of the band in and he’s like “Hey guys, check this out, what do you think of this?”

It’s kind of amazing to me that music like that is actually the product of some human being’s trial and error, you know? I mean, when you hit on something like that, how must that feel?

Anyway, today is a wonderful, wonderful Martin Luther King Day.

Captain America: Winter Soldier Vols. 1 & 2, Captain America: Red Menace Vols. 1 & 2, Civil War: Captain America, The Death of Captain America Vols. 1 & 2

Ed Brubaker, writer

Steve Epting, Mike Perkins, Michael Lark, John Paul Leon, Marcos Martin, Lee Weeks, Butch Guice, artists

Marvel, 2004-2008

various page counts

various prices

Buy them from Amazon.com

I think you can count the number of times the title character smiles in this long, high-quality run of superhero comics by Ed Brubaker on one hand and have three fingers left over. Considering how that’s two different guys we’re talking about here, that’s really rather impressive. I suppose it’s not necessarily a particularly noteworthy achievement to have crafted such a uniformly bleak work of superheroics in this the age of SUPERHEROES IS SERIOUS BUSINESS, but what distinguishes Brubaker’s work from similar efforts by many of his contemporaries is not just a grimness of tone but a moderation of it. Brubaker appears in total control of the milieu he has developed for Captain America–as I’ve described it many times in the past, a perfect blend of countless Cap flavors, including World War II hero, post-9/11 symbol, black-ops badass, Steranko spy, and Star-Spangled Avenger, set in a world of super-powered espionage and terrorism. By tweaking the plot, the antagonist, the setting, or the combination of supporting characters just so, Brubaker can emphasize any one of those notes at any time. It’s the rare comic where armed corporate security forces opening fire on protesters can share space in a storyline with a severed cybernetic arm springing to life and incapacitating a roomful of scientists and neither feels ridiculous or out of place. (Wow, I just re-read the review I wrote of a couple Cap issues from this time last year, and it’s a little uncanny how closely what I just wrote echoes what I wrote then. But I guess masterful craft leaves an impression.)

In rereading the bulk of Brubaker’s run in a handful of sittings, though, it really is a certain sadness that emerges as the dominant impression. Brubaker’s Steve Rogers is a very lonely guy, held in awe by almost everyone who knows him but feeling like his adult life is a series of deaths and regrets. Nearly all of his supporting characters are similarly haunted by their violent pasts (and presents!). Brainwashing emerges as a recurring element, and perhaps as a metaphor for how we can’t control what our minds and memories give precedence to. Heck, the Red Skull actually kills his archenemy and doesn’t even take a single panel to gloat over it. To find another superhero comic this intrinsically unhappy with violent conflict you’d have to go back to Jack Kirby’s Fourth World saga–yet here as there the action is both thrilling and constant, and drawn with flair by really the originators of the new Marvel house style, Steve Epting, Mike Perkins, and several seamlessly slotted fill-in artists here and there. Strong, ultimately pretty unusual stuff.

* WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD. Don’t read this entry unless you’ve seen last night’s episode of Battlestar Galactica.

* Your BSG must-read of the day: The Chicago Tribune’s Maureen Ryan has assembled a series of lengthy interviews with head honcho Ron Moore, writers Bradley Thompson and David Weddle, and director Michael Nankin about last night’s episode. One thing they bring up again and again is that everyone involved believed the episode, the last to be filmed before the writers’ strike shut down production, would be the last BSG episode ever, and consciously gave their all with that in mind. Just make sure to watch out when Ryan chimes in with her thoughts at the end of the piece, because she throws in a major, major spoiler for The Shield out of the blue.

* SciFi Wire interviews Kandyse “Dualla” McClure about her final episode, while the LA Times speaks with Kate Vernon about her return as Ellen Tigh and the reveal of Ellen’s status as the Final Cylon.

* The House Next Door’s Todd VanDerWerff returns to resume his strong weekly recap/reviews of the series.

* Jim Henley has my favorite take on last night’s big Final Cylon reveal: in essence, “It’s so crazy it just might work!” I’ve never been much for the “Who are the Final Five?” mythology mystery, but I have to say that solving it this way really impressed me. First of all, I can’t imagine very many people had “Ellen Tigh” in their Final Cylon office pool–any of the major, obvious candidates would have felt anticlimactic, but this was a genuine and welcome curveball. Secondly, it makes Michael “Col. Tigh” Hogan the emotional lynchpin of the remainder of the mythology, a decision akin to how the producers of Lost decided to center their show around Michael Emerson, i.e. a brilliant one. I sure am glad, however, that the “next week on BSG” promo spelled out who exactly was the Final Cylon, because otherwise the Ellen/Starbuck debate would be raging right now.

* Finally, both Variety and the LA Times have tons of interviews and features on the show. While away the hours.

You know what? It does.

Thanks, Shaggy!

On sale for freaking $8.98! Even with shipping it’s like $15, which is the best price for a t-shirt you can find.

Dear Sean,

Thank you for shopping at Hottopic.com!

Note that orders are processed Monday through Friday. Please allow a processing time of 1-2 business

days before your order is shipped.

Your Hot Topic order number is: XXXXXXX

Order date: 2009-01-16 20:57:58

Status of your Hot Topic order: Sent to Warehouse

(Via David Paggi.)

Beyoncé makes the world a better place.

(via – hat tip)

* Sean news one: the official ToyFare blog reminds us that I’m going to be joining some of my colleagues on the New York Comic Con’s Twisted ToyFare Theater panel. So go check it out!

* Sean news two: Just making sure that everyone caught “A Real Gentle Knife”, a comic based on a song by Golden Boy and Miss Kittin, written by me, and drawn by Josiah Leighton, over at Top Shelf 2.0.

* Battlestar Galactica returns tonight, and to celebrate, SciFi Wire has put together a pretty terrific feature in which virtually the entire cast talks about their favorite moments in making the series. Michael “Colonel Tigh” Hogan’s is a goddamn doozy:

“The whole cast was there because we were burying the soldiers. It was the funeral,” says Hogan. “Adama talks about how we have to be responsible for the things that we have done, and at the end of that … We didn’t really know each other, any of the cast members, and didn’t really know what to expect, especially as far as acting, because this was first day of principal photography.

“Adama finishes this speech and then says, ‘So say we all,’ and I guess we sort of mumbled, ‘So say we all.’ Eddie [Olmos] kind of looked at all of us and said it again, ‘So say we all.’ Well, we weren’t ready for that, so we said, ‘So say we all.’ And he looked at us and said, ‘SO SAY WE ALL.’ And he got us all going, and it was a chilling, chilling time. It was like, ‘Whoa,’ and by the end of it the whole room, the hundreds of us, are just yelling, “SO SAY WE ALL!” And that wasn’t in the script. When that was over you were kind of, ‘Whoa boy, we’re in for a ride now’…”

* Meanwhile, The House Next Door’s Todd VanDerWerff talks to the director of tonight’s BSG premiere, Michael Nankin. It’s a really interesting conversation if you’re interested in the process behind BSG, but also for learning about life as a journeyman director who fell into TV from features and what he’s learned from both.

* The Watchmen lawsuit has been resolved, and They’ve agreed to various boring business/money things, and now I’m done blogging about this movie barring something amazingly awesome until the thing comes out. (You’re welcome, Frank.)

* Jog casts a semi-skeptical eye on Final Crisis #6. For what it’s worth, I think the balance between “bog-standard” superhero event-comics moments and real head-scratchers is what makes the comic so durned innarestin’, as the fella says.

* Jason Adams runs down his Top 25 films of the year. Jeez, Jason sees a lot of movies! Sigh, I wish. Then again I reviewed around 140 comic books, so I guess I’m okay too.

* At the Inkstuds radio show, critics Tom Spurgeon, Douglas Wolk, Paul Gravett, and host Robin McConnell discuss the year in comics.

* Dark Obi-Wan? Sure, I’ll eat it. (You’re welcome, Matthew.)

* I love Hot Topic. I am totally serious. I’ve never understood why we hold it against teenagers that they don’t live near a major legit font of underground culture, so where else are they gonna go? Walking into a Hot Topic makes me feel like I’m entering the nerve center of kids who get called faggots by other kids, which brings back memories. It’s like coming home. Anyway, here’s a Watchmen hoodie on sale at a Hot Topic near you. Last time I was there they had a kickass Final Crisis T-shirt, too, but not in my side, dammit.

Kramers Ergot 7

Sammy Harkham, editor

Alvin Buenaventura, assistant editor

Sammy Harkham, Shobo Shobo, Martin Cendreda, Walt Holcombe, Shary Boyle, Jerry Moriarty, Aapo Rapi, Ted May, Nick Main, Tom Gauld, Geoff McFetridge, Chris Cilla, Tim Hensley, Daniel Clowes, J. Bradley Johnson, James McShane, C.F., Kim Deitch, Chris Ware, Jacob Ciocci, John Brodowski, Jaime Hernandez, Matt Furie, Anders Nilsen, Ivan Brunetti, Carol Tyler, David Heatley, Dan Zettwoch, Johnny Ryan, Mat Brinkman, Eric Haven, Conrad Botes, Josh Simmons, Richard Sala, Jesse McManus, Rick Altergott, James Thurber, John Hankiewicz, Ben Katchor, Frank Santoro, Seth, Leif Goldberg, Blanquet, Blex Bolex, Will Sweeney, Kevin Huizenga, Adrian Tomine, Florent Ruppert, Jerome Mulot, Anna Sommer, Ben Jones, Pshaw, Jonathan Bennett, Helge Reumann, John Pham, Matt Groening, Xavier Robel, Joe Daly, Souther Salazar, Ron Regé Jr., Gabrielle Bell, writers/artists

Buenaventura Press, December 2008

96 comically huge pages, hardcover

$125

Buy it from Buenaventura

Buy it from Amazon.com

The massive, gutterless, green white and orange panels of Frank Santoro’s silent Iraq War morality play. The masterful repetition and variation of John Hankiewicz’s three-page classroom vignette. The way Ben Katchor uses space to force your eye back and forth and effortlessly draw you to the conclusion of his strip about a woman reluctant to date a man who works in an ugly building (a LOL moment). Chris Ware’s lifesize baby. Mat Brinkman’s massive red white and black monsters. Josh Simmons’s jaw-droppingly bleak horror story, its dense panels fluttering by so quickly it almost feels like you’re watching the comic rather than reading it. Eric Haven’s use of blue. Carol Tyler’s huge block-letter “NUTS!” Ivan Brunetti and Kevin Huizenga forcing you to flip this gigantic book around. Jacob Ciocci using a Seal lyric as the philosophical lynchpin of a psychedelic freakout (another LOL moment). The electric guitar soundwave in the middle of John Brodowski’s page. The delicious candy-colored nostalgia of the vintage bottlecaps lining Kim Deitch’s strip. All those James McShane circle panels. The way the traditional altcomix layouts of Tim Hensley, Dan Clowes, and Jaime Hernandez’s strips make you feel like you’re reading a book from a land of giants. Double that with Adrian Tomine’s spread. Tom Gauld’s “two guys in a weird, large, isolated environment” schtick being used to tell the story of Noah’s Ark like some lost Edward Gorey project. Aapo Rapi’s blue yellow and green Grimm Cabbage Patch Kid fairy tale. Walt Holcombe’s rock-poster title page. Matt Groening’s dorm-poster contribution. Matt Furie’s menagerie. John Pham’s evocation of the gray urban nightscape in his strip about stray dogs. Gabrielle Bell’s spy thriller (!). Ben Jones & Pshaw’s color-coded gag strips. Ruppert & Mulot’s vertiginous stairway strip. Sammy Harkham’s two-tone sunset. Seth’s Porcellino-like tribute to Thoreau MacDonald. Anders Nilsen’s pastels. Helge Reumann’s cycle of violence. Shobo Shobo’s bright yellow endpages and nearly useless Where’s Waldo table of contents. Sammy Harkham’s creepy front cover and Shary Boyle’s creepy back cover. Conrad Botes ending things on the downest down note he could play.

When you open these massive covers and flip through these massive pages and read these massive comics, you’ll find things that lots of things that knock you out immediately and lots of things that work really well once you read them. You’ll also find lots of things that don’t work on a canvas this size, and a number of things that probably don’t work at all. But all told, a decade from now or two decades from now when someone asks you what this decade was like in alternative comics, this is the book you’re going to hand them. This is our era. You were there.

* My pal Kevin Mahadeo got himself a nice little get: An interview with Grant Morrison about the fairly momentous events of Final Crisis #6 on the day FC #6 was released. I particularly liked this exchange:

On the soap box side of things, for me, there’s been a long [stretch] of comics trying to be about the streets and about realism and dealing with the Bush Administration. We wanted to follow more popular culture, which is going in a more psychedelic direction, to use the want of a better word. I think things are starting to get a bit crazier again and people are enjoying stuff a little bit more—the fantastical and demanding of the imagination. I think that’s what we’re trying to do. Final Crisis #7 is almost inventing a new style. We had widescreen comics and decompression and super-compression. This is channel-zapping comics.

For every comic and series you tackle, you always ask questions about what the character means and where the character can go. Is that what you’re seeing in Final Crisis, where can comics go?

MORRISON: Yeah. In particular with superhero comics. Once you’ve seen “Iron Man” and “The Dark Knight,” why bother doing realistic superheroes because now the movies can do them better than anyone. I kind of feel that what it does is free up comics to be a little bit wilder. We’ve got great artists who can sit there with their pencils and draw anything. They’re not limited by budgets. We shouldn’t be following the storytelling techniques of Hollywood because they can do it really well. Comics can do all kinds of other things. They can be really crazy and wild and can really stretch the imagination and be really progressive.

* Speaking of the comics one assumes Morrison was speaking of, there’s been a lot of talk on this blog and elsewhere about the tone-deafness of Secret Invasion and Dark Reign, specifically how rapacious asshole and obviously batshit-crazy evil serial killer Norman Osborn was appointed King Shit of SHIELD Mountain by Barack “Change We Can Believe In” Obama in his first act as the Marvel America’s President. For me at least, this undercut the quick cash-in Spider-Man thing they did for the rubes where Barry gives Spidey dap. However, somebody or other told me that if the solicits for Thunderbolts are any indication, Obama’s role in that infamous Osborn decision–its actual depiction limited, if I recall, to coloring the hand of the otherwise off-panel President brown–is going to be or has already been retconned, and that upcoming storyarcs will feature Obama’s attempt to thwart his predecessor’s decision to put the Green Goblin in charge of stuff while GG will attempt to assassinate Obama. For what it’s worth.

* Some top-notch comics people have posted their Top Comics of 2008 lists. Here’s Frank Santoro’s. Here’s Douglas Wolk’s.

* Speaking of Top Whatever of 2008 Lists from top-notch people, Jason Adams–my favorite horror blogger, when he blogs horror–lists his top horror movies and top indelible (mostly horrific) movie moments.

* Maybe the Watchmen mess will get resolved today? (Sorry, Frank.)

* Gossip Girl prequel series? Sure, I’ll eat it. And while we’re on the subject, X-Men movie written by Josh Schwartz? Sure, I’ll eat it.

* Radiohead re-releases featuring extra discs compiling all those b-sides and EP tracks I never bought except Airbag/How Am I Driving? Sure, I’ll eat it.

* Murder saves lives! Learn how one lucky bird owes its continued existence in part to my Matt Wiegle-designed mini-anthology (available for purchase for the low low price of $3!) in this comic by Sarah Louise Wahrhaftig.

* Chris Mautner shelf porn! Oh, built-in bookshelf walls, how I love thee.

* Quotes of the day:

“We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani.”

—Judge Susan J. Crawford, convening authority of U.S. military commissions.

“Waterboarding is torture.”

—Eric Holder, Attorney General-designate.

* J.R.R. Tolkien continues to do his best Tupac Shakur impression: Tolkien’s The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, “a volume of rare Norse epic poetry,” will be released in May. The Children of Hurin was excellent, fwiw.

* Battlestar Galactica returns on Friday and will run an extra 3 1/2 minutes, so a lot of websites are saying to adjust your DVRs, but in my experience they usually pick up on this sort of thing automatically. I dunno, it’s publicity, I guess. Also, that prequel webisode series The Face of the Enemy has wrapped up and I rather liked it. Not for the squeamish, mind you. Or for, I dunno, Rick Warren.

* The hardcover collection of Marvel’s adaptation of The Stand, which I believe will contain some supplemental items courtesy of yours truly, will only be available in comic shops.

* Via everywhere, part one: Samuel L. Jackson says he and Marvel Studios have not come to a salary agreement regarding his returning as Nick Fury, the character basically drawn for him to eventually play, in subsequent Marvel movies like Iron Man 2 and The Avengers. You have to imagine the possibility of a likeness lawsuit is a possible bargaining chip here, no?

* Via everywhere, part two: Warner Bros. and Fox appear close to a settlement over the rights to distribute Watchmen.

* Via everywhere, part three: Covered, a new blog launched by comics artist and animator Robert Goodin and featuring various artists doing cover versions of their favorite comics covers. Here’s Jeffrey Brown doing Mike Zeck’s Secret Wars.

* Pat Johnson is the new head honcho at big-deal literary comics publishing imprint Pantheon. (Via Heidi Macdonald.)

* The Spanish first-person zombie movie [REC] was just alright for me, dawg, but if you’re into it, you can finally legally purchase a playable DVD version of it via Amazon.ca as of January 27th.

* When good movies happen to good posters: Jason Adams reports that The Broken, which spawned the memorable poster below, was actually pretty good. Nice to know.

* Speaking of good posters, this little number for the upcoming Crank 2 is just about as ridiculous and wonderful as one imagines the film itself will be. (Hat tip: Adam Tracey.)

* Marc-Oliver Frisch takes another swing at the “how to read and review event comics” piñata.

* Oooh, look, someone mapped the Star Wars galaxy! My Rebel Alliance insignia tattoo is glowing. (Via Topless Robot.)

* Finally, here’s Kate Winslet flashing her underwear. Eternal Sunshine indeed.

Over at Top Shelf 2.0 you can now find “A Real Gentle Knife,” a comic based on the song “Rippin Kittin” by Golden Boy and Miss Kittin, written by me, and drawn by my old friend and up-and-coming comics blogger/educator Josiah Leighton. I hope you enjoy it.

Speak of the Devil
Gilbert Hernandez, writer/artist
Dark Horse, October 2008
128 pages, hardcover
$19.95
Buy it from Amazon.com

Hmmm, you know what? Not quite sure what to make of this one. It’s Gilbert Hernandez, so it’s beautiful, in this case almost freakishly so. The image of the moon and clouds in the night sky in the first couple of panels is enormously evocative and engrossing–as cliche as it sounds, you really are instantly transported into the world of this comic. The book’s glossy paper takes Beto’s blacks to a new level of shiny, greasy oiliness. They almost look wet. He can lay out a page like nobody’s business and has the same knack for doing the unexpected but just-right with his panels that John Bonham had with his drums, from a dialogue sequence where word balloons always accompany a shot of the person who isn’t talking to a view of a make-out session that features a positioning of the two involved parties I’d never seen depicted before yet instantly recognized.

The story isn’t quite so smoothly done. I buy the character work in the beginning–I understand why each of these people is making these unusual choices. I was almost thrown by the first outbreak of violence, but then it turns out to be something different and less grievous than I thought it was, so I was back on board with what I thought was a really astute take on troubled teenagedom. I could even go along for the ride when the killing started because of the people with whom it started. I watched Snapped, I know these things happen. But as things get progressively worse, I never quite bought the ease with which our protagonists become a Mickey and Mallory menage a trois, particularly the stepmother, who seemed basically happy with her life if a little kinkier than she felt comfortable letting on with her husband. I understand that we’re not in the “real world” of something like the Palomar material but in the heightened reality of the “Fritz-verse” of b-movies Beto is slowly converting to graphic novel form, but I still feel like the work requires psychological integrity if not psychological realism, and I don’t see how guileless serial murder flows from what we’ve seen in these characters up until that point.

And there’s also this weird disconnect between the astonishingly graphic violence–seriously, this thing is brutal–and the strangely prudish sexual material. Which, I’m sorry, erotic thrillers should have nudity, particularly erotic thrillers from Gilbert freaking Hernandez, the most refreshingly no-holds-barred tackler of sexual material in alternative comics. Am I saying that I want to see the sexy female characters naked? Well, yeah, that’s partially what I’m saying, same as how I wanted to see Superman actually punch people in Superman Returns–it’s sort of the point. And while we’re at it, this isn’t Hollywood, we don’t have the MPAA breathing down our necks, we can show dick, too, as Beto has countless times in the past. To do a Brian DePalma story about peeping toms with several sex and masturbation scenes and not show any nudity at all…it’s just weird, it left me wondering why that decision was made and distracted when the over-the-top violence kicked off, like, “this is okay but nipples aren’t?”. At first I assumed it was because this was originally a serialized Dark Horse comic, but Dark Horse also published Sin City and Hard Boiled, both of them insanely violent comics with a decent amount of nipplage. I dunno, it’s odd, don’t you think? I have a feeling I’ll be returning to this comic anyway, because like its sister book Chance in Hell it’s magnetic and extremely revealing in terms of how much of its author it puts on display, but it doesn’t quite all click for me the way thematically (and even visually) similar works like Black Hole click.