* Appearing in the Strange Tales Spotlight today: Corey Lewis. That stuff looks lovely.

* Ooooh man, I cannot wait to sit down and watch Matt Zoller Seitz’s “Zombie 101” video essay.

* Tom Spurgeon talks to Gary Groth about the coming rejiggering of The Comics Journal‘s print and online iterations.

* Curt Purcell reviews the Superman and Batman Blackest Night tie-in minis. I think Curt is right to defend them against accusations that they’re “red skies” tie-ins, i.e. that they perfunctorily acknowledge the existence of some wider crossover framework but then go about their regular business. Clearly, they’re about nothing but the Blackest Night goings-on. But for me, that’s sort of the problem. What they are is really nothing more or less than three-issue depictions of what’s going on with Superman and the new Batman (and their sidekicks) during the invasion of the Black Lanterns. They don’t really have their own beginnings, and they certainly don’t have much in the way of endings–they’re basically like the “here’s what’s going on with so-and-so” sequences we’ve seen in the main miniseries, only extracted and expanded. It’s just kinda weird, is all. And compared to the two-issue Final Crisis tie-ins for these two characters, which also removed them from the main flow of the event but showed them dealing with unique problems, they feel a little unnecessary. I dunno, man, writing tie-ins that make those who buy them feel like they matter and those who don’t buy them feel like they’re not missing anything crucial to the enjoyment of what they are buying is perhaps the toughest row to hoe in this the event-comics era.

* My love-hate relationship with the Are You a Serious Comic Book Reader gang continues with Brandon’s post on ’70s & ’80s Eurocomic weirdness. I’m all for reclaiming forgotten, fecund areas of comics history, but your argument for this needn’t be laden with egregious strawmen or attacks on publishers simply for not sharing your own tastes. You may not like, say, the comics of Fletcher Hanks, but isn’t that pretty much exactly the kind of “hey, look off the beaten path and shake off your insularity and publish something overlooked” project you’re calling for? And I’m sorry, but you shouldn’t get to say things like this…

It does not really benefit the smaller companies, especially the tastemakers like Fantagraphics or Top Shelf to try to republish this stuff because their bread and butter is still very much the overtly sophisticted, gets-write-ups-in-the-New York Times type comics, be it personal, arty stuff made now or lost pieces of early comics history.

…without getting called out about the Hernandez Brothers and Josh Simmons and Johnny Ryan and Charles Burns and Gipi and Robert Williams and Jacques Tardi and Portable Grindhouse and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and The Surrogates Super Spy and Renee French and everything else those publishers publish that gives obvious lie to those claims. If you think people should publish more weird ’70s and ’80s genre comics that aren’t superheroes, that’s what you should say. If you’ve got confidence in your case, make it on the aesthetic (and financial) merits.

* Tom Neely’s horror-comic cover versions are always a delight.

* So are the Cold Heat pages Frank Santoro posts on his blog.

* Behold the origin of the Psychic TV logo.

* And Now the Screaming Starts notes David Bowie’s mid-’70s occult meltdown. Surprising no one, I have actually written a comic about this. Would anyone out there like to draw it for me? Email’s to your left.

* This Halloween mix by DJ Daymage really is outstanding. Download it twice.

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