* Austin English interviews Theo Ellsworth, author of Capacity, one of the very best comics of 2008. Dude draws 10-13 hours a day!
* Todd VanDerWerrf’s latest Battlestar Galactica review is must reading as always.
* Chris Butcher adds a little bit to his earlier thoughts on Diamond raising its order minimums, mainly regarding the notion that a cratering market forced Diamond’s hand on the move.
* Rickey Purdin presents a con report featuring pix of sketches, loot, panels, thank-yous, the usual fun con-report stuff.
* They’re fucking arresting people in the Michael Phelps “case.” This is Drug War madness at its absolute maddest. Arresting eight people because the greatest Olympic athlete of all time hit a bong! I guess he’s a huge threat to society, huh? At any rate, pleasure must be prosecuted at all costs. Fucking Anti-Life. (Via Andrew Sullivan.)
* Finally, videogame characters that look like David Bowie. (Hat tip: Ryan “Agent M” Penagos.)
Of course they’re prosecuting Phelps to a ridiculous extreme: he shoots a big old hole in the argument that dope smokers are all shiftless, lazy menaces to society and couldn’t possibly perform above average in any kind of physical competition.
And the whole apparatus of opprobrium is so automated at this point that it’s like they have no idea what they’re even supposed to be upset about, they just know they’re supposed to be upset. For example, one of the morning papers in NYC put him in a photo array with Barry Bonds and A-Rod–I guess because weed gives you an unfair advantage in the swimming pool?