* Whenever the topic of Thor comes up, which in my life is often, I say that any and every Thor comic should be at least as cool as Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” or it’s not worth doing. While this video uses a different song to make its point, it is otherwise exactly what I’m talking about.

When Thor shows up in a comic, all the other characters should go “OH FUCK IT’S THOR RUN FOR YOUR FUCKING LIVES HE’S A VIKING WAR GOD WITH A FUCKING MAGIC HAMMER” and if they don’t then that writer and artist FAIL.

* Sounds like the great Howard Shore will be returning to Middle-earth to compose the score to The Hobbit parts one and two, though this same report acts as though Guillermo del Toro has been confirmed as the films’ director, so who really knows?

* Tom Spurgeon serves up two scoops of well-deserved contempt today. The first is directed toward students at the University of Utah who are protesting the inclusion of Alison Bechdel’s excellent graphic memoir Fun Home on a course syllabus:

The fact that they’re so casual in both calling this award-winning book pornography and throwing out the leads-to-children-being-abused idea as if they’re givens and not acidic, horrible, super-serious things to say about anyone’s work makes this whole matter difficult to blog about except to in every way express my derision and contempt for that point of view and the spectacularly childish way in which it’s being expressed.

Indeed.

* Tom’s second scoop o’ scorn is aimed at fans whose reaction to the Jerry Siegel/Superman copyright decision is so repugnantly base and abysmally imbecilic to me that I’ve literally been trying not to think about it:

Shame on every stupid-ass, morally ignorant fan out there who has expressed even the slightest opinion that this course of legal action in any way reflects an agenda of greed on the part of people not directly involved in the act of creation, or worse, has articulated as their primary concern the potential interruption of their monthly four-color fantasy intake. Part of me wishes we lived in the might makes right moral universe that supports such a piggish outlook, because then I could quit my job and drive around on a motorcycle punching people in the face until they penned a formal apology to the Siegel family.

Indeed. (Astute readers will note Tom’s appropriation of the mission statement and modus operandi of Justice Society of America member Wildcat, and “indeed” to that as well.)

* Tom also reviews Grant Morrison’s excellent All Star Superman #10, but his review ends with what to me is an unsupported assertion:

…the rush to a conclusion after so many promising starts reminds us all that this is in the end a very clever superhero comic book, and may end up more of a sparkling commentary on the best of comics than a great one in its own right.

Personally I see All Star Superman‘s neverending parade of beginnings—i.e. standalone stories involving funhouse-mirror Superman doppelgangers of varying sorts—to be not commentary but a statement of its own. Sure, it’s an homage to the shotgun-blast approach of Silver Age DC superhero comics to science fiction’s “literature of ideas,” but insofar as it links up with Morrison and Quitely’s portrayal of Superman himself, it also stands as a message that being a caring, competent, helpful, clever, cooperative, kind person is what enables us to navigate the wild web of ideas we find ourselves tangled in in our everyday lives and come to our own ends with fewer regrets. It’s not just a love-letter to Mort Weisinger.

* Your seemingly daily Topless Robot link: Todd Ciolek runs down the 10 Most Regrettably Missing Movie Scenes of All Time. Horror is well represented, from the giant bugs in King Kong to Paul Reiser’s fate in Aliens. And there’s pie!

* News flash: Katee Sackhoff is attractive.

* Creeping Coruscant Alert: A Saudi Arabian prince is planning to build a mile-high skyscraper. What could possibly go wrong there? While the fan of science-fiction manmade immensity in me jumped for joy after reading this story, it also triggered my fear of heights so badly I got nauseated.

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