* Anders Nilsen posts some of the art available in his 46 Million fundraiser auction supporting public-option health care reform. This whole thing is pretty impressive–it went from “hey, wouldn’t it be neat if…” to a done deal in a couple of weeks, apparently.
* Potentially Cool Thing I Haven’t Looked At Yet #1: the trailer for The Descent: Part 2.
* Potentially Cool Thing I Haven’t Looked At Yet #2: PopMatters presents a series of essays honoring Hellboy’s 16th birthday. (Via Kevin Melrose.)
* Curt Purcell turns his Blackest Night/Great Darkness Saga series toward examining the changing definition of “universe-wide” superhero stories. Where once the all-encompassing import of a big storyline–the Dark Phoenix Saga, say–was conveyed simply by having a handful of guest-star panels showing characters from other franchises reacting to the goings-on or some other within-one-series tie-in, nowadays these things spill across entire publishing lines and necessitate multiple new miniseries. I’ve gotta think that there’s a business reason for this, in that the creation of the Direct Market enabled companies to spread a story across dozens of issues and titles while counting on its audience to be able to find them, whereas the less dedicated newsstand market couldn’t guarantee that kind of regular, predictable access.
* I love the idea behind Mark Todd’s cover version of the cover of Amazing Spider-Man #53. What other villains could you convey this way, I wonder?
* Courtesy of Bryan Alexander: Everything you need to know about the Phillip Garrido, the California man who kidnapped a girl he then kept prisoner for 18 years, fathering two children with her. Sounds like God told him to do it.
* Every once in a while I’ll run across a story of paranormal phenomena/forteana that freaks me the hell out. For example: Meet the Grinning Man. Indrid Cold, I presume?
* Finally, Happy 92nd Birthday to Jack Kirby, the King of Comics. Tom Spurgeon’s celebratory image gallery is a thing of wild wonder. Jack Kirby is the revelation, the tiger-force at the core of all things. When you cry out in your dreams, it is Kirby that you see!
A couple of other writing strategies for dealing with events that would logically have line-wide implications were a) making them so weird or specific they only applied to the characters you’re seeing (that Man-Thing/Howard the Duck/Korrak/Jennifer Kale thing), b) making all the other characters subject to some aspect of the universe-altering event that puts them effectively on the sideline (in Avengers vs. Defenders everyone else becomes monsters).
The “Grinning Man” reminded me of a story I heard as a child about a disfigured “Green Man” who would walk around Pittsburgh at night and glow green with radiation. I just now came across the origin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Robinson_%28Green_Man%29
You could do neato Venom and Mirror Master covers using the Todd method. Clayface too.
Kirby Kwotes!
Kool!