* Appy polly lodgies for the blog outage for the last few days. Fortunately my MT software soldiered on in secrecy, which is why you can now find reviews of Ed Brubaker & Steve Epting’s Captain America and Eleanor Davis’s The Beast Mother below.
* The government of China, which hey by the way is responsible for approximately 2/3 of the world’s state executions, has banned all horror, alien, occult, and supernatural-related media.
* When comics critics collide: Tom Spurgeon interviews Doug Wolk. It’s full of great stuff, including investigations of Wolk’s reactions to various creators and comics, the value of “conversation-starting” and shared universes, and tons more. If you’re interested in comics criticism you should certainly read the whole thing.
* A small part of the interview touches on something I said, which I think bears clarification. In referring to my disapproval of his own excitement about Dave Sim’s upcoming project Glamourpuss, Doug says…
If I had to limit myself to art by people whose world-views matched mine, I wouldn’t have a lot left, and if I couldn’t enjoy art by people whose world-views I find repugnant, I’d lose some things that mean a lot to me.
I’ve said the exact same thing from time to time and still believe it; however, to the extent that an artists repugnant world-views are the subject of their art, as is the case with any Dave Sim comic purporting to be about women, I think it’s perfectly legitimate to find the art just as repugnant as the worldview, no matter how pretty or inventively laid out it might be. (And let’s just say I beg to differ on that score as well. I mean, Jesus.)
* This week’s Horror Roundtable asks us to name a scene in a horror movie that brought us close to tears. After watching the episode of Twin Peaks last night, I’ve got another one to add to the list.
* Another day, another pan of Diary of the Dead, this one from Ken Lowery. Meanwhile it didn’t make a whole lot of money during its opening weekend even on limited-release terms. I’m less excited about schlepping into the city to see this thing with each passing moment.
* The upcoming Hellraiser remake is now going to be written by the screenwriters of Saw IV. Joy. Hey, maybe it’s a wonderful film.
* Am I the only person who thinks that Cloverfield monster toy is inaccurate? I seem to remember its forepaws (or whatever you’d call them) facing backwards, with the wrist or ankle joint pointing the feet back, not forward. I remember that being a very disconcerting detail in fact. (Via Topless Robot.)
* Thanks to the opening of Victoria Large’s review of The Signal, I’m now officially intrigued by the movie, even though I sort of think it would be nice if reviews of horror films could save the pop sociology until at least the second graf.
* Check out this far-out cover to Sammy Harkham’s Crickets #2! Via K. Parille.
* Finally, via Whitney Matheson, an excerpt from the novelization of Road House.