* As you may have heard, my buddy Ben Morse, his special lady Megan Sherlock, and woman-I-shared-an-SPX-hotel-room-with Sam Walker have created quite the viral marketing sensation with their secret Secret Invasion tie-in “Kinsey” videos on MySpace.

* Meanwhile, my pseudonymous Marvel.com pals Agent M and Annihilator 882 serve up Marvel’s 10 Mightiest Mullets. The Longshot pic is really spectacular.

* Daily Topless Robot link! Here’s your quote of the day:

Nothing bad ever comes out of a question mark block. The question they’re asking is, “Hey, Paisan, want something awesome?” And the answer is always “Yes.”

That’s my compadre Jackson Alpern on The 8 Most Insane Things About Super Mario Bros. (When You Stop and Think About Them). As you might recall, this is a subject close to my heart.

* Finally, at Topless Robot’s new videogame-centric sister site Joystick Division, my chum Chris Ward shows off four of the most prized items from his frighteningly extensive Pac-Man memorabilia collection. Here’s one now:

Incredible Hercules #114-115

Greg Pak & Fred Van Lente, writers

Khoi Pham, artist

Marvel Comics, February & March 2008

22 pages of story each, I think?

$2.99 each

Anyone else reading this? The Marvel fans among you must first put aside your disbelief and disgust that Marvel brass honestly believe Jeph Loeb is the best choice to take over the Hulk from Planet Hulk and World War Hulk author Greg Pak; now that Pak’s launched this spinoff title to replace Incredible Hulk (the name of the upcoming movie, in case you forgot, which apparently Marvel did), Loeb has the opportunity to inflict himself on yet another marquee character. The rest of you have no idea what I’m talking about and don’t care to find out. So I’m really speaking to the first segment of the audience: My bet is that if you enjoy superhero comics, or at least Marvel’s version thereof, you’ll really enjoy this series.

It feels a bit like Immortal Iron Fist in that it bounces between flashbacks and the present day (which I guess is Lost‘s influence on comics, now that I think about it) in a way that fleshes out its Greek god main character Hercules and his brother and nemesis Ares’ unique place in the Marvel Universe, one that retains their mythological history while still having them occasionally team-up with Hawkeye and Wonder Man. Khoi Pham’s art is impressively scratchy yet also expensive-looking, as if New Avengers artist Leinil Yu were better at drawing widescreen action. He and his sadly late colorist Stephane Peru also make the transitions between flashback and present day so distinct that I had to double-check to make sure they didn’t switch pencillers a la David Aja and his gaggle of guest stars on Iron Fist. The writing is also sharp, with the characterization of Herc, his teen-genius ally Amadeus Cho, his resentful brother and erstwhile Avenger Ares, and his former teammate and current reluctant adversary Black Widow imbued with more emotional shading than you’d think they deserve. There’s even a clever moebius-strip moment as Hercules recounts the story of his Twelve Labors, making a nice little point about both the nature of myth as primarily a chronicle of moral values rather than a history lesson, and also serving up an indictment of the self-perpetuating nature of violence among Great Men in a subtle but unmistakable way that’s rarely seen in the sort of comic that’s an oblique tie-in to World War Hulk and Secret Invasion. Like all Marvel writers at the moment, Van Lente and Pak are faced with the fact that the company’s massive Civil War event made about 50% of their intellectual property irredeemably icky; they square that circle by giving the characters implicated in Iron Man’s dickheaded dictatorship appear the same shrugged-shoulders “whaddyagonnado?” air that most of the writers themselves have. And again as with Iron Fist, there are knowing winks at Marvel’s less-than-storied ’70s material, from Hercules’ goofy old team the Champions to the fact that Godzilla was once an in-continuity target of S.H.I.E.L.D. Good stuff.

Curt Purcell keeps the discussion about the potential impact of a centralized host-driven linkblog on the horror blogosphere going in a new post on the topic. (Earlier: here and here and here and here.) In it he includes a gentle reminder to me to post regarding the positive impact such blogs can have in terms of the obnoxious fannish tendencies a cohesive, collective blogosphere can display. Frankly, I’m not sure there is one beyond leading by example. If a Big Important Linkblog manages to avoid indulging the kinds of myopic, know-it-all behaviors that Bruce Baugh lays out here much more coherently than I’ve done in any of my posts, well, that’s one less blog doing so, and a prominent one at that. I don’t think their impact would go that far beyond that, however. Insofar as the big problems I have with cohesive blogospheres stem from the bloggers’ mutually reinforced conviction that they’re absolutely right about what they choose to talk about, it’s not as though any one other blogger can really put a dent in that.

BUT! First of all, it’s important to remember that the emergence of a cohesive horror blogosphere would have its own positive aspects, several of which Curt and I have talked about enthusiastically–increased exchange of ideas with one another, exposing genre fans to ways of discussing the genre they might not have had access to before and may get something out of, etc.

Second of all, as J.E. Bennett and ILoz Zoc point out, horror bloggers in the main seem to be a slightly less combative and self-serious bunch than those in more problematic blogospheres. I don’t think that’s at all true of horror fandom generally–you don’t need to look any further than comment threads and forums at the big horror sites to figure that out–but I can say that the horror blogs I read tend not to stoke the fires of faux outrage or make proclamations regarding what kinds of horror count or don’t count. Then again, there’s obviously some selection bias in that group. But who knows, maybe a more interactive group of horror bloggers would remain less given to belligerence and dogma.

I think the biggest problem facing the creation of a horror blogosphere is that it’s based on a genre, not a medium. The comics blogosphere is, after all, about comics, and Scott McLoud notwithstanding it’s basically easy to understand what constitutes comics: comic books, graphic novels, manga, BD, editorial cartoons, comic strips, etc. Even if you factor in occasional digressions into illustration proper or animation or superheroes in other media or nerd-culture in general, it’s clear that while different comics bloggers’ tastes may vary, it will at least be clear to each that the other is, in fact, a comics blogger.

Horror is different in that it’s based entirely on qualitative judgments regarding what horror is, which means that differences in personal taste have a lot more impact on whether we can even agree we’re blogging about the same subject. I mean, as Curt and I have discussed in the past, our interests in terms of the genre have very little overlap, and in some fundamental ways we disagree on what constitutes horror in the first place. Now, we’re both broad-minded or informed or whatever enough to acknowledge each other’s interests in horror as horror, but multiply us two by however many other horror blogs there are with however many other interpretations of and interests in and takes on and views of the genre those blogs have, and it becomes that much more difficult to create a cohesive feel.

Any centralized, hosted horror linkblog is going to have to deal with this, and it might end up being difficult. Again, when Dirk Deppey or Tom Spurgeon looks around the internet for things to link to, it’s pretty easy for them to figure out what qualifies as “comics.” Taste enters into what they choose to link to to a certain extent, but here there’s the added wrinkle that whatever their differences they both have what is generally considered to be “good taste” in comics–both of them having been in charge of the English language’s preeminent comics criticism magazine, for example. But for horror, how would such a blogger figure out where their purview begins and ends? What does “good taste in horror” even mean? It’s so much more subjective than the problems faced by comics linkbloggers…which might mean that the subjective will become the objective out of sheer necessity and cause even more of the problems I was talking about before. Or it might mean that a horror linkblog, and the horror blogosphere in general, becomes a lot more open to the kinds of “blog what you feel” blogs that Bruce Baugh is talking about.

My point, I suppose, is…I don’t know that I have one, as a matter of fact. I’m kind of just thinking through the pros and cons. Both exist, and while one might outweigh the other for a given reader or blogger, certainly neither can erase the other.

* There’s gonna be some consternation over at My New Plaid Pants: The goddamn Weinsteins have announced that they’re consigning Wolf Creek director Greg McLean’s killer-crocodile movie Rogue to a 10-market limited release on April 25th—that’s just 24 days from now! Where’s a man-eating croc when you need one, man.

* It’s posts like this that are why I make Monster Brains a daily stop: He’s posted a gallery of images from Among the Gibjigs and Among the Woblins, children’s fantasy books from the 1880s written by Sydney Hodges and illustrated by Horace Petherick. They don’t make ’em like this anymore.

* Doug Wolk reviews Ganges #2 and All Star Superman #10.

* Daily Topless Robot: My pal Zach Oat runs down the 10 Star Wars Toys They’ll Really Never Make.

Curt at Groovy Age has posted the latest installment in an ongoing conversation regarding the state of the horror blogosphere and the role a prominent, hosted linkblog could play in its maturation. In this go-round, I am particularly fond of his rationale for wanting a more cohesive blogosphere for the genre in the first place:

I think there’s a massive horror fan-base that’s almost entirely oblivious to the existence of horror blogs, and I suspect that’s largely because we remain “a bunch of intense loners off in their own corners.” My hunch is that if we pulled together and achieved some kind of critical mass, we’d make a much bigger splash in horror fandom. Which is another way of saying, the audience most likely to appreciate and embrace what we’re doing would actually begin to find its way to us in increasingly significant numbers.

Yeah, numbers. There, I said it. A thousand or a hundred or even just ten more people every day sitting down with their morning coffee or evening drink, visiting my blog in eager anticipation, and smiling at what they see or read? A thousand or a hundred or even just ten more heads nodding or shaking when I spin out my theories on horror and genre? A thousand or a hundred or even just ten more personal tastes educated to appreciate the kind of vintage horror I love so much? A thousand or a hundred or even just ten more pairs of eyeballs on reviews of current writers or artists I’m excited about and trying to promote? Hell yeah, you’re goddamn right I want that! And so would those thousand or hundred or even just ten more people, if only they had some clue that Groovy Age existed.

I REALLY appreciate the rationale he gives for wanting to develop a horror blogosphere–essentially, simply giving horror fans access to a different array of voices and approaches to the genre than they’re probably getting right now.

I think what burned me a bit on the comics blogosphere–and don’t get me wrong, I still read dozens every day while reading nearly zero comics magazines or websites proper–is this sense of “blogger triumphalism” that arose when it became apparent that comics blogs as a collective entity had a substantial readership and therefore could actually have an impact on the areas they cover. Because comics blogs became able to drive conversation about comics online, I think they (and I) developed a sense of self-importance that does not become them, which manifests itself in all different ways: A need to comment in backseat-driver/armchair-quarterback fashion on industry and artistic issues that the blogger may know little or nothing about; a tendency toward tempest-in-a-teapot outrage over the latest stupid move by the corporate publishers; falling into the hype cycle of PR because a given book is the new big thing and as “industry players” the blogs feel that they should be covering it; a tendency to overinflate their own importance and impact, etc. I was certainly guilty of all of this in my comicsblogging days. When I returned to blogging after my brief hiatus and started reading horror blogs and doing one myself, I remember consciously thinking how refreshing it was that no horror bloggers actually felt any kind of proprietary role in the horror industry, and were simply commenting on it from the perspective of well-informed buffs as opposed to the wannabe captains of industry who populate the comics blogosphere, myself included again. So, calls for a more concentrated horror blogosphere have turned me off.

But what Curt calling for is keeping the horse in front of the cart in terms of the importance of readership. He’s not saying that we should have a horror blogosphere because of what we horrorbloggers could get out of having an increased readership, he’s saying we should have one because of what an increased readership could get out of us. And I think that’s absolutely spot-on. I mean, if you’re a horror fan and you’re looking to read informed, intelligent, and idiosyncratic commentary about genre efforts, you basically have, what, Rue Morgue and whatever decent reviews/criticism/essays you can find in the mainstream media. The online non-blog scene is pretty dire, and Curt’s right, I don’t think most fans really know about the blogs at all. It would be nice if people had an alternative to the big sites! And as I’ve said, Curt (who kindly attributes the genesis of this whole discussion to reading various things I’ve written) is quite right to say that a big Journalista-style horror linkblog would help shore up such an alternative.

But the problems with a collective-identity blogosphere I listed above still would remain, most likely. Moreover, while Curt’s call for a linkblog with a strong personality is no doubt intended to stave off the kind of “hey here’s the news on every single movie with a decapitation in it no matter how unwatchable” feel of the big horror sites and other qualitative linkblogging hazards, I actually think that popular personality-driven linkblogs can exacerbate the blogospheric problems I mentioned earlier rather than ameliorate them. The main difficulty is that points of view that seem unobjectionable or even noble in principle can easily devolve into sweeping generalizations or calcified thou-shalt-nots. Meanwhile, sensible aesthetic advocacy can make a clumsy transition into ill-conceived industry second-guessing–the kind of situation where people who note a particular creator or subgenre’s quality go on to demand that the entire industry abandon whatever business models had been working for it up until now in favor of a new approach that benefits that creator/subgenre, or pleases people who are fans of that creator/subgenre, or simply shames those who aren’t. In that sense, popular linkblogs can even magnify that tendency since their voices are so much louder, shaping the discussion both in terms of links they select as noteworthy and the commentary they provide about them. I mean, that’s true of any blog of any kind, but it’s enhanced with the clearinghouse-linkblog type of blog.

All that being said, I now find myself in love with the idea of a Comics Reporter-style link’n’news blog with an old-fashioned creature-feature horror host personality. We need a Web 2.0 Zacherle!

PS: I am going to try to enable comments once again, but this post will be going up while I lay me down to sleep and it’s entirely possible I’ll discover that the comments aren’t working when I wake up–they haven’t in months so I don’t really figure they’ll start now. But it’s worth a shot. Just know that if your comment is in a moderation queue, that means my comment feature is in fact busted.