* Wolverine co-creator Len Wein, who basically invented the X-Men franchise as we know it and also edited Watchmen, has suffered a catastrophic house fire that destroyed many of his possessions and took the life of one of his dogs. This is just awful. The long and the short is that there’s nothing for fans of Wein’s work to do about it just yet. Robot 6 and Tom Spurgeon have comprehensive link round-ups.

* The Eisner Award nominees have been announced. It’s nice to see them get rid of a bunch of categories, like the “Best Single Issue” one that enables Brad Meltzer to be referred to as an Eisner Award-winning writer, but then again this forces all the nominations for Acme Novelty Library #19 to be shunted into categories for Chris Ware specifically rather than for the book itself, and a world where Acme #19 can’t win an Eisner as Best Something isn’t so hot a world, although hey, that’s a lot of nominations for Chris Ware, which is terrific. Anyway, I look forward to Sammy Harkham’s concession speech when Dark Horse MySpace Presents wins Best Anthology.

* I’m going to jump on the bandwagon with Jog and Spurge by saying that Adrian Tomine’s Shortcomings is a rigorously observed, beautifully drawn, painfully angry book that you should buy now that it’s coming out in softcover tomorrow.

* Here’s a fun interview with Garbage Pail Kids artist John Pound, the man behind the immortal Shrunken Ed. (Via Jason Adams.)

* CRwM says “it’s high time for a little elitist disdain” when it comes to horror movies:

Imagine how different the genre would be if fans told filmmakers that every time they were going to kill a bunch of people, they should have a dramatically and intellectually convincing reason to do so.

* Helena Bonham Carter is apparently in the upcoming Terminator sequel. Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care, but I loved HBC back before this serial homewrecker became the muse of Tim “phoning in the goth nonsense” Burton and she looks not unlike the Missus, so I thought Arrow in the Headl’s choice of photo to illustrate their latest story on this was equal parts hilarious and delightful.

* Beck Cloonan Sure Can Draw update: Becky Cloonan sure can draw.

* I liked this interview with Bat for Lashes’ Natasha Khan about her personal style. (Via Largehearted Boy.)

* Ta-Nehisi Coates wonders if the dividing line between honest lust and demeaning misogyny in hip-hop and rock lyrics lies between “I want to” and “I’m going to.” This strikes me as quite insightful.

* This isn’t the sort of thing I get to say every day, but in the past 24 hours I’ve come across three very funny examinations of murder. First up: A recent episode of Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, which worked some pretty rough chuckles in an episode-long chronicle of the fall of the Cinco Brothers, the snake-oil salesmen/inventors responsible for all of the horrible products featured in the show’s spoof ads. A lot of it is the usual ridiculous Tim & Eric lo-fi/surreal nonsense, but there are also some pretty spot-on send-ups of post-Scorsese/Tarantino tough-guy rise-and-fall crime movies, and some vicious jabs at the unthinking, violence-tinged misogyny of the media. Hiring shock-jock Tom Leykis to play and/or parody himself in an episode centered around the murders of a trophy wife and a prostitute was particularly inspired.

* Next: “Don’t Murder Your Friends,” a routine from comedian Jen Kirkman in which she muses on how the difference between murderers and normal people is that they a) don’t check the impulse to kill when it occurs to them and b) if they’re lucky, they don’t come to regret it either. From there she segues into a pretty horrifying urban legend that isn’t any less creepy for the fact that she’s picking apart how unrealistic it really is. (Via Said the Gramophone.)

* Finally, and you’ve probably seen this already: The Onion News Network (now featuring actual former CNN anchorwoman Bobbi Batista!) takes a look at Close Range, the hot new first-person-shooter video game that consists solely of shooting people in the face at point-blank range. There’s so much to unpack here I hardly know where to begin, but here are two potential points of departure:

1) I would happily play this game–and guess what, I can!;

2) the piece slowly ratchets up the horror from pistols that blow a comparatively neat hole in the target’s face to shotgun blasts that split their skulls in two like smashing a watermelon, but it’s not until they present an interlude where animals are the targets that the gruesome hilarity of it all becomes almost unbearable. If the sight of a realistic, adorable horse’s face being blown in half doesn’t get you, the way the ostrich’s tubular neck sways and swivels like a firehose as blood spurts out after it’s decapitated by a close-range blast will.

To be honest, I’ve been a little bit soured on the Onion since I spent a little time working for them and saw how the sausage gets made–comics fans, if you think your average Marvel or DC deal is unfavorable, you ain’t seen nothing yet–but I think this bit is not just funny, but profound.

* And here’s a good reason why. The state of the beast: The Army uses live pigs to test anti-explosive armor. (Via Pterodactyls.)

* I’m late on this, but I’m sure you’re already aware that there was a horrible spree of mass shootings over the past few days. Vietnamese immigrant Jiverly Wong, frustrated by the loss of his job and feeling like a fish out of water, killed 13 people in Binghamton, NY before killing himself. Richard Poplawski, motivated by racist, anti-Semitic, and (for lack of a better term) “gun-nut” far-right conspiracy theories regarding the Obama Administration and the government in general, killed three police officers in Pittsburgh, PA before surrendering. And James Harrison, distraught after discovering his wife with another man for whom she announced she was leaving him, killed his five children (aged 7 to 16) and himself in Graham, WA.

* The International Committee of the Red Cross’s report on doctors and medical officers who participated in the systemic torture of inmates throughout the CIA’s secret prison system has been leaked.

Based on statements by 14 prisoners who belonged to Al Qaeda and were moved to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in late 2006, Red Cross investigators concluded that medical professionals working for the C.I.A. monitored prisoners undergoing waterboarding, apparently to make sure they did not drown. Medical workers were also present when guards confined prisoners in small boxes, shackled their arms to the ceiling, kept them in frigid cells and slammed them repeatedly into walls, the report said.

Facilitating such practices, which the Red Cross described as torture, was a violation of medical ethics even if the medical workers’ intentions had been to prevent death or permanent injury, the report said. But it found that the medical professionals’ role was primarily to support the interrogators, not to protect the prisoners, and that the professionals had “condoned and participated in ill treatment.”

The New York Review of Books’ Mark Danner broke the story; you can download the full report here.

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