Carnival of souls

* Your must-read of the young year: Tom Spurgeon on the embarrassment of riches that is comics today. It’s a Golden Age.

* Here’s a terrific anecdote you may have heard before, but this one comes in straight-from-the-horse’s-mouth, setting-the-record-straight form: Star Trek’s Nichelle Nichols talks to Savas Abadsidis about her fateful meeting with Martin Luther King Jr.

* More meaty, and yet spoiler-free, Lost wonkery with Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse at Maureen Ryan’s blog. Interesting to hear their take on whether re-watching the whole show is a good idea, for instance.

* Jeebus, go read–or more likely gawk at–this gloriously image-heavy Andrei Molotiu post on abstraction in Frank Miller’s Spider-Man–plenty of Batman, Spidey, and Daredevil art from all eras.

* Today at Robot 6: Gareb Shamus launches Wizard World New Jersey, Kevin Huizenga posts some Yotsuba&! fan art and Tom Brevoort posts some pictures of Blackest Night comics people sent to Marvel for a Deadpool Siege variant. You really want to read the comments for that last one. Study them, remember how they make you feel, and call that to mind every single time you read comment-thread people talking about any of the issues of the day.

* Elsewhere on R6: Jack Kirby Draws, Is God

* Brian Heater interviews the great, gregarious Frank Santoro at length. Never not worth reading. (Via Dan Nadel.)

* Speaking of Frank, here’s a killer little comic by him called “MTA.”

* I enjoyed the latest installment of the Cool Kids Table’s Our Comics Decade series, 2008. Planetes, Casper, Secret Invasion, more.

* Jeet Heer makes the case for the greatness of Gahan Wilson. That seems worth doing to me. I can’t be the only person who sees that huge two-book set sitting on the shelf and thinks “Hey, Wilson’s cool and everything, but is this something I need?

* What do scientists think aliens will look like when we meet them? (Via Thoreau.)