* Boody Rogers’ Boody., Ivan Brunetti’s Ho!, the Greg Sadowski-edited Supermen!–that’s an impressive, and oddly punctuation-heavy, assortment of books now out from Fantagraphics.

* Real-world water monster update: Meet Predator X, a 50-foot prehistoric sea monster with four times the biting power of Tyrannosaurus rex–the most powerful jaws of any animal in the history of the planet.

* Curt Purcell ponders cultists vs. critics, liking something vs. “getting” something, and other issues of fandom and buffdom and whatnot. I think this is the key paragraph:

The basis for this difference of experience comes down to different patterns of directing attention. Attention–both what it’s focused on and what is filtered out of it–makes all the difference. Where I, a fan, see a werewolf in a Paul Naschy movie, non-fans see a bad actor in bad makeup. Well, he is a bad actor in bad makeup, and I’m not surprised that’s where most people’s attention comes to focus. If I see him as a werewolf in these movies, it’s not because I think he’s a great actor in amazing makeup. And I haven’t adopted some weird critical standard whereby I pay the same attention as non-fans to his bad acting and cheap makeup, and declare it awesome anyway. What I do is focus my attention much more intensely than most on the werewolf he’s trying to depict, and filter out or disregard as much as I can of anything that would compromise or spoil that experience.

To what extent do you offer a work you like the benefit of the doubt? To what extent does offering it the benefit of the doubt determine whether or not you like it to begin with? That seems to be the chicken-and-egg question with which Curt and his interlocutor here, CRwM, appear to be grappling.

* This brief review of Watchmen by Not Coming to a Theater Near You’s Eva Holland, a total Watchmen virgin, is for some reason my favorite entry in that particular Watchmen review subgenre, for its brevity and its lack of concern with finding the “correct” opinion w/r/t the book or the movie.

* Troubling image of the day #1: A still from a film adaptation of Paul Hornschemeier’s Return of the Elephant, god help us.

* Troubling image of the day #2: Renee French, ladies and gentlemen.

* Delightful image of the day #1: Olga Kurylenko in Neil Marshall’s upcoming Picts. vs. Romans epic Centurion. (Via Jason Adams.)

* Delightful image of the day #2: Kate Winslet, ladies and gentlemen.

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