* Dirk Deppey caught that Diamond will stop distributing the venerable Classics Illustrated line due to its failure to reach their new minimum order threshold. I think it’s this story more than any other so far that illustrates what Diamond’s policy means for the direct market: In an industry as completely dominated by one genre as is North American comics, imposing a barrier based on sales is effectively synonymous with imposing a barrier based on genre. It’s not just the artsy likes of Crickets that will suffer.
* Tucker Stone interviews Frank Santoro about Cold Heat, sort of. (Via Dirk.)
* I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the Rainbow of Lantern Corps is 100% pure awesomesauce, as is this pictorial guide to them.
* Quote of the day:
“Or more precisely, why is the belief that the torture of captured combatants is wrong compatible with anything other than some form of pacifism? I mean this an actual question, not as a passive-aggressive assertion.” ~Jim Manzi
One of the things that has kept me from saying much over the last week or so is my sheer amazement that there are people who seriously pose such questions and expect to be answered with something other than expressions of bafflement and moral horror. Something else that has kept me from writing much on this recently is the profoundly dispiriting realization (really, it is just a reminder) that it is torture and aggressive war that today’s mainstream right will go to the wall to defend, while any and every other view can be negotiated, debated, compromised or abandoned. I have started doubting whether people who are openly pro-torture or engaged in the sophistry of Manzi’s post are part of the same moral universe as I am, and I have wondered whether there is even a point in contesting such torture apologia as if they were reasonable arguments deserving of real consideration. Such fundamental assumptions at the core of our civilization should not have to be re-stated or justified anew, and the fact that they have to be is evidence of how deeply corrupted our political life has become, but if such basic norms are not reinforced it seems clear that they will be leeched away over time.
* Oh reunited Goonies, how I loved you. How I daydreamed you would rescue me from bullies when I was in third grade. How I pined for Andy. (Via Jason Adams.)
* Marilyn Loves Kate: still killin’ it.
Hmm. That set of lantern introductions is the first time I’ve really seen things gathered up and…I like it. I like it a lot. Set out like that, it does indeed have a great resonance with the sort of blue-sky speculation I loved as a teen and college student. Thanks.
Is “death” really an emotion?
I think the way they’re playing it is that death is the absence of emotion. Similarly, willpower isn’t an emotion either, but what I’ve heard Geoff and/or Ethan Van Sciver say is that the idea is that willpower, at the center of the “emotional spectrum” like green in the color spectrum, is a neutral force required for any of the emotions to get anything done.