* Yesterday I put out a call for review requests. If there’s a comic you’d like me to review, let me know in the comments and if I have it I’ll try to review it. (Try not to suggest a million things, though, and please don’t request stuff you worked on. Also, please be patient–I’ve got a backlog!) Thanks to everyone who’s made suggestions so far!
* While I’m talking about my stuff, I want to remind everyone of my various Web 8.0 ventures:
Bowie Loves Beyonce: A blog dedicated to pictures of David Bowie and Beyonce Knowles.
Fuck Yeah, T-Shirts: A blog dedicated to pictures of t-shirts I like.
@theseantcollins: A Twitter account dedicated to whatever it is Twitter accounts are dedicated to.
* Kevin Huizenga previews Ganges #3! Elsewhere, Fantagraphics’ Kim Thompson updates us on the rest of the Ignatz line. (Via Chris Mautner.)
* The new George A. Romero zombie movie will be called Survival of the Dead. Honestly, I’ll be stunned if it’s even watchable…but I like being stunned.
* The Onion AV Club interviews Michael Kupperman! There’s a big shoutout to my pal Alejandro Arbona and the whole altcomix-supporting ex-Wizard crew, and Kupperman’s amazing Twitter account is discussed in detail.
* This is fascinating: Borders is launching Borders Ink, a teens department centering on YA staples like fantasy, Twilight, and graphic novels. Given that Borders seemed just as likely fold as launch a major new initiative this year, and given the chunk of the comics market that relies on a healthy Borders, I’ll be watching this with great interest. (Via Kevin Melrose.)
* Continuing Not Coming to a Theater Near You’s series on action movies, Leo Goldsmith reviews John McTiernan’s Die Hard. I think he makes a little too much of the notion that Bruce Willis’s physique was shockingly relatable–maybe compared to Stallone or Schwarzenegger, okay, but they didn’t throw in the glass-in-the-feet business because Willis wasn’t enough of a physical specimen for people to relate to. Still, good stuff, especially about how likable the bad guys were (not even in a “love to hate ’em” way–they were genuinely likable!).
* In a pair of posts inspired by my own post on the topic, Gene Phillips talks torture and superheroes. In addition to correcting my memory of the “criminal through the window” scene in The Dark Knight Returns (the guy throws himself through the window to get away from Batman). I’m not as sure as Phillips that it’s advisable, or even possible, to divorce the physical torture of criminals by superheroes for information from thinking about what that would mean in real-world terms, but he’s certainly right to argue that this was, in the words of The Wire, “all in the game” for many decades, unexamined by creators and audience alike. I wonder if that’s good or bad.
* Look, Hans Rickheit has a new blog for his upcoming graphic novel The Squirrel Machine! (Via Mike Baehr.)
Solicits for Cry for Justice #4 suggest that Robinson was, indeed, setting us up for just such a discussion (on torture as a valid means of extracting information):
“How far would you go for justice? The heroes have found themselves turning to darker tactics in their search for retribution. Starman and Congorilla have captured the killers who took down some of their friends, but now what do they do with them? Meanwhile, Green Lantern and company wrestle with the idea of torturing villains for information in order to save lives.”
If the Atom scene in #1 was set-up to make us uneasy in order to fuel something that addresses these concerns, I will gladly retract my fanwank assessment of that moment.
Carnival of souls
* I believe it was Louis Seize who said Apres Preview Night, le deluge. N’est-ce pas? * The Onion AV Club speaks to Grant Morrison about this and that. He does some more public proclaiming of his desire to work…