* I started a tumblr dedicated to (SPOILERY) thoughts on George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, in case you missed it.
* I reviewed Thomas Ott’s best-of collection R.I.P.: Best of 1985-2004 for The Comics Journal. I didn’t care for it.
* Over at Robot 6, I wrote about site stats for Wizard’s digital magazine.
* You’ve only got a couple more days to take advantage of an awesome sale on Lane Milburn comics. Go!
* Tom Tomorrow is Daily Kos’s new Comics Editor. Lots of intriguing possibilities there.
* Truth, justice, and the American way.
* Chris Mautner wrote a terrific introduction to the work of Frank Miller, listing the books to read first, the ones to read next, and the ones to avoid. I don’t agree with him on all of it, but it’s a cogent and at times passionately argued piece.
* Groovy Age of Horror indeed: Curt Purcell reviews Gossip Girl! Sometimes I think I have too much influence. Anyway, Curt brings his usual eye for unusual, revealing detail and his attention to structure and expectation to the proceedings.
* Curt’s also up to A Clash of Kings in A Song of Ice and Fire.
* Michael DeForge has been posting remarkable material on the daily lately. Here’s a few pages from a graphic novel he actually destroyed rather than finish and publish.
* Geoff Johns is writing an Aquaman series. Hooray!
* I’m saving this for when I have more time and energy, but Sean Belcher reviews Dragon Age II at length. I really have no idea what Dragon Age is, other than a thing a lot of people get excited about when it comes out, but I link to this anyway because the mere existence of this sort of writing seems to put paid to the notion that video games can’t be art. (Cf. this idiocy.)
* Buy more stuff from Tom Neely!
* Reach for it! J.H. Williams III channels funk for a Static Shock cover. Wouldn’t it be rad if more superhero artists did things you hadn’t seen before with color?
* Wow, this is a great Seth Fisher piece. Thanks, Corey Blake.
* Fresh from his triumphant run of drawing sexy women, Tom Kaczynski is now drawing ’80s action figures. It’s like he’s reading my mind.
* Robert Goodin covers Johnny Ryan. Indeed.
* Anders Nilsen reveals the cover for the collected Big Questions…
* …and Anders Nilsen draws some covers for Richard Brautigan books.
* Really digging these promotional images for Strangeways‘ new online iteration.
* This Axe Cop kicker made me laugh and laugh.
* Uno Moralez, man. Uno Moralez. (Wait for it.)
* Sucker Punch as camp is one of the few reads of that film that could persuade me to see it. Nothing against Zack Snyder — until now he’s made three films, all of which I enjoyed, two of which I enjoyed immensely — but it occurred to me that lo and behold, I really don’t have any interest in schoolgirls fighting robot samurai. The fanservice failed to service me, in essence.
* Hey, congratulations to my old boss and friend Brian Cunningham on taking over the editorial reins for the Green Lantern line, DC’s biggest franchise.
* LOL: The Xorn retcon happened Grant Morrison didn’t write Magneto well enough. Well, they certainly showed him!
* It’s quite telling, but also strangely depressing given that he’s the person who introduced me to the phrase “Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen,” that Andrew Sullivan believes he must formulate and articulate a position on literally every issue of import. That’s simply crazy. You’re not an expert on everything; you’ll be outright stupid on some things. So I learned to my eternal regret.
* Real Life Horror: This chart is hilariously awful, just on a “something is obviously wrong with this picture” level.
* Real Life Horror 2: War oughta be fun! People really think this way about the enterprise of killing large numbers of people to achieve a political goal, and feel no shame about saying so. Fuck those people.
* On the other hand, I do enjoy the Captain America trailer. Rob Bricken is right: The emphasis it places on Steve Rogers having been a bullied weakling until very recently reveals an element of the character too often forgotten. (I find Ultimate Captain America all but unreadable any time I come across him now for that very reason.)
* Another Game of Thrones trailer? Don’t mind as I do.
* Finally, George R.R. Martin has finished two more chapters in A Dance with Dragons. He says the end is truly nigh.
Tags: A Song of Ice and Fire, Carnival of souls, comics, fantasy, Game of Thrones, gaming, George R.R. Martin, horror, links, movies, real life, TV
The fingers letting go of the seat in the Uno Moralez piece… I think I’ve sat through the sequence seven or eight times now, and it still gives me chills.
Thanks for the linkage.
BTW, can just say how that image you posted just reinforces how much I miss seeing Seth Fisher’s work? That Vertigo Pop Tokyo book was just fantastic. What a great talent he was.
Sean –
“Schoolgirls fighting robot samurai” is an extremely small part of Sucker Punch. I’d say what camp is there is pretty intentional and is of the same kind of camp that you get in Tarantino and David Lynch. I would also say that if there was ever a movie made for a fan of David Bowie, Kill Bill, Mulholland Drive, Roxy Music, and Frank Miller comics, that movie is Sucker Punch. And I don’t think you can really compare it to Snyder’s other movies, where he’s shepherding other people’s ideas to the screen (with varying less of success) and his contribution is mainly technical and formal: Sucker Punch picks up on the Rivettian stuff in Kill Bill and Death Proof and takes it in its own direction. It is, among other things, like Mulholland Drive in the way it gets at the split between the fantasy and reality of being an actress in Hollywood. I can’t recommend it to you strongly enough.
Well, color me intrigued.
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