* Standing in the Strange Tales Spotlight today: Jacob Chabot.
* While we’re on the self-plugging tip, it’s only one comment long as of this writing and already the comment thread at my latest Savage Critic(s) post is awesome beyond words.
* Finally, I think there have been like four Marvel.com What The–?! videos released since I last linked to them: You can find the full YouTube playlist here. If you’ve ever wanted to hear the Blob say “Keep fucking that chicken,” now’s your chance!
* Big sale at the Drawn & Quarterly store. 40-50% off everything! (Via Tom Spurgeon.) I went looking for Crickets #2 but it’s out of stock. Does anyone have a copy they’d be willing to part with?
* Wow, Watchmen‘s DVD release pattern seems actively designed to alienate the movie’s relatively few fans. After releasing a “director’s cut” that was not, in fact, the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink cut that director Zach Snyder had been promising for as long as the movie’s been in production, Warner Bros. is now finally putting out that “Ultimate Cut”–but it doesn’t include DVDs of the theatrical or “director’s” cuts, charges you for a digital copy and the motion comic each on its own disc, tosses in some extras that apparently were already available on the other editions, and tops it all off with the goofiest cover imaginable. Aggressively irritating.
* This manga may supposedly stink, but the cover sure doesn’t. Wolf whistle. Stomach fat wrinkles are so sexy.
* Dang, Andrew DeGraff! (Via JK Parkin.)
* My friend Zach Oat’s list of his favorite Bruce Willis robots had me laughing out loud. I like the Squinty 5000 myself.
* Please oh please let a Gary Numan/Trent Reznor collaboration get off the ground. Still, I don’t get the impression that Trent likes when his potential collaborators let the cat out of the bag too early.
* For a long time since the advent of near-universal cellphone usage I’ve thought about old movies that depended on people not being able to get in touch and how some entire plots wouldn’t work if the characters could just reach into their pockets and pull out a cellphone. Turns out a lot of horror and thriller screenwriters have thought about this problem to, and their solution is just to drop coverage. Leave it to Rich Juzwiak, pop culture’s leading obsessive compulsive, to compile all the “shit–no signal!” scenes he could find into one 4 minute 56 second montage.