* Borders is bankrupt. That’s pretty bad news for a lot of publishers.
* I’ll tell you what: If Marvel’s upcoming mega-event Fear Itself really does turn out to be about various heroes and villains battling for control of a bunch of magic Thor warhammers, I am on board. Giant muscly dudes smacking each other in the head with hammers is pretty much why I read superhero comics.
* Gabrielle Bell’s comics have really been clicking with me hard lately.
* I quite liked my friend TJ Dietsch’s review of Brian K. Vaugahn and Tony Harris’s recently completed series Ex Machina. TJ had many of the same problems I did with the ending; he makes a why-didn’t-I-think-of-that linkage between the separate ways in which both Vaughan and Harris seemed to run out of steam toward the end; and he uses it as a springboard for musing a bit on the different ways we react to a disappointing ending for a work of long-form fiction in terms of how we might or might not revisit that work. That’s something I think fans of some of the past decade’s great television shows in particular have probably thought a lot about, with the endings of The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, Lost, and Battlestar Galactica all giving varying segments of those shows’ audiences pause.
* Also relevant to my interests: Tom Spurgeon reviews a pair of recent Dark Horse Conan collections, the animating idea of the critique being that character growth is bad for a character of this kind. Food for thought.
Tags: Carnival of souls, comics, links, t-shirts
The shuttering of Borders is depressing. I’ve been following it on my blog and over time a picture was painted of the doom that awaited all. Both of the ones in my area will be gone. Guess I’ll do a membership at the Barnes and Noble around me, or better yet use my girlfriends.
That shit is bomb ass! By the way, my name is Sean, and my last name begins with a T as well, as in Thompson. Always nice to meet a fellow Sean T.!