* There isn’t much in this rather sycophantic Wired.com interview with Grant Morrison you haven’t heard the writer say before, but good gravy, take a look at the cover for the collected edition of Final Crisis by J.G. Jones.

* Actually, he does say one thing that strikes me as being some serious horror blogosphere-bait:

Wired.com: Like continuity, is crisis itself becoming obsolete? Disaster scenarios seem to just get heavier and more mind-blowing, but they also are becoming more ubiquitous. Are we too inured to apocalypse and crisis these days to be scared of it anymore?

Morrison: I don’t know if we’re so much inured to apocalypse as almost sexually obsessed by it. We could only love apocalypse more if it had 4 liters of silicone in each tit. Think of all those videogames where the Earth’s overrun by insect-aliens or there’s been an atomic war and we’re stumbling in the ruins with a gun we stole from a zombie. We should be grateful that we live in a culture so insulated from true horror it can afford to play with fear as entertainment.

That’s a rather egregious misreading of the role and provenance of horror art and entertainment, no?

* Meanwhile, the pullquote from Morrison’s interview at Comic Book Resources isn’t from Morrison himself, but from the “tune in next time” text at the bottom:

Check back with CBR News on Friday for a new interview with Grant Morrison, where he discusses “Seaguy: The Slaves of Mickey Eye,” and some other projects he’s currently writing for DC Comics including one book about the Multiverse and a second in the vein of “Watchmen” featuring the heroes of Earth-Four, who are all former Charlton Comics characters.

Emphasis mine. The war of No-Beard against All-Beard continues!

* Speaking of Alan Moore, read this conversation between Carl Wilson and Peli Grietzer about Gossip Girl. (Seriously, it has something to do with Alan Moore, I promise. The thesis they tease out is that much of the “trash culture” you see enthusiastically consumed by, oh I don’t know, ex-Ivy League pop-culture bloggers–from Gossip Girl to Britney Spears’ recent albums–is actually produced with precisely that audience in mind, often by creators who come from that demographic themselves. Given my ambivalent feelings toward “poptimism,” this quote from Grietzer stuck me:

i guess my general thought here is that so much of what’s taken to be literati\hipsters\whatever breaking beyond taste-barriers [some but not all of what ‘poptism’ delineates] is more about a certain generation taking over the production of popular culture and catering to its own tastes rather than a generation shifting its tastes towards ‘the people’.

…as did this from Wilson:

There’s research on the reasons for the “omnivorism” shift among elite consumers, some of which credit it to globalization and multiculturalism – that in the post-industrial economic order, it’s more important to demonstrate your code-switching skills, and not to seem married to a single set of cultural markers.

I resemble that remark! This is part of why I was so taken aback by Alan Moore’s dismissive comments about Hollywood filmmaking, superhero comics, and the like–the bulk of my cultural consumption and conversation takes place in a space where the more voracious a polyglot you are, and the lower your barriers to low culture, the better. (Via Matthew Perpetua.)

* And speaking of Gossip Girl, I have my problems with Terry Richardson, but this is not one of them.

* Tim O’Neil continues slouching toward a Kingdom Come review, this time by pinpointing the rise of Alex Ross as the moment where DC in particular began drinking the “heroes as icons” Kool-Aid. I think you continue to see that play out everywhere from Kurt Busiek’s approach to the Batman/Superman/Wonder Woman trifecta in Trinity to the company-wise fixation on “legacy heroes.”

* This new Vertigo series Sweet Tooth from Jeff Lemire seems interesting. It doesn’t like like An HBO Original Series at all.

* Hey, here’s what Marc Bell looks like these days: A psychotic drifter! And Chris Oliveros looks like Gary Groth’s cousin as always.

* What is wrong with people? Something is very wrong with people.

* Charles Manson, 2009.

* Finally,

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