* At the Comics Reporter, Tom Spurgeon has posted an obituary for the late Michael Turner with an admirable focus on his work and its impact. It features extensive quotes from me, which is humbling.
* At Marvel.com, I interview artist Mike Perkins about his upcoming Stephen King adaptation, The Stand.
* In this month’s Maxim I’ve got a little piece on ugly movie heroes, tying in with Hellboy II: The Golden Army. I don’t think it’s online, but there are worse ways you could spend a few bucks than for some nerdy snark and sexy ladies.
* Good Lord look at the cover for Chris Ware’s Acme Novelty Library #19.
* I’m not gonna post them myself because they’re kind of spoilery, but Bloody Disgusting has yet another pair of deeply impressive stills from The Midnight Meat Train. Meanwhile, BD’s Spooky Dan notes that the film has an anti-meat subtext, a welcome addition to any horror movie (cf. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Hostel) and a surefire way to make me even angrier that the movie’s getting buried due to office politics.
* Back over in Spurgevillie, Tom has posted YouTube clips of entirety of his New Art Comics Panel with Alvin Buenaventura, Sammy Harkham, and Dan Nadel from Heroes Con the other weekend. These guys are doing important work and it’s well worth a viewing.
* This trailer for the next James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, is pretty great. Looks like the hints toward the reemergence of SPECTRE from the first Daniel Craig Bond film are gonna pay off.
* They’re maybe gonna make a sequel to 300 with Frank Miller and Zack Snyder. Um, okay. (Via Whitney Matheson.)
* Becky Cloonan draws Cesare from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari…with sexy results!
* This piece comparing and contrasting the summer event comics Secret Invasion and Final Crisis by Pitchfork columnist Tom Ewing (via Big Sunny D) has a couple of things going for it: 1) It’s quite thoughtful and fair in addressing the strengths and weaknesses of each series, angrily dismissing neither; 2) it will hopefully force Pitchfork-reading hipsters into thinking they have to read Secret Invasion and Final Crisis to be “with it.”
You really acquitted yourself admirably in Spurge’s obit for Michael Turner, Sean. I think Mike would have really appreciated it.
I’m glad to hear you say that, Ben. Thanks very much. And I hope it’s true. One thing I was concerned about was that everyone would focus on what a nice guy he was and his almost ridiculously inspiring way of dealing with his illness, and not talk about the reason we’d all heard of him and met him in the first place, his art. That’s not to say that it was all to my taste, even–just that his work worked, and the reasons why, his qualities as an artist, deserve to be remembered alongside his qualities as a person.
300 2: Xenophobic Boogaloo