* Ooh, look, Jeet Heer uncovered the cover for Paying for It, Chester Brown’s prostitution memoir! Check the comments to watch noted comics aesthetes recoil.
* The way this excellent Dan Nadel essay on Jack Kirby’s California years for Vice magazine is spread across six hitcount-whoring pages is irritating, to be sure, but don’t let that stop you from reading it. It’s a beautifully written appreciation of Kirby’s art and anti-war humanism. One thing I come back to a lot when thinking about Kirby and about Grant Morrison is Tom Spurgeon’s contention that Kirby’s idea of Anti-Life (essentially, war) is a lot more challenging than Morrison’s (essentially, being a fascist creep). No reasonable person can think up reasons to support Morrisonian Anti-Life. Kirbyan Anti-Life, on the other hand–well, you know.
* More Vice: Nick Gazin interviews Chip Kidd on his new book of superhero pop-culture ephemera, Shazam!, as a part of his latest comics review round-up. I like how he pretty much openly sticks it to Jon Vermilyea and Koren Shadmi, as if that really were the role of the critic after all. (Maybe he’s kidding, I dunno, it’s Vice and the dude says he hates cats so there’s obviously something wrong with him. Also, add the damn comics-only RSS feed already.)
* This is a pretty terrific interview of Charles Burns by the Onion A.V. Club’s Sam Adams. The bits on color and William S. Burroughs’s Interzone were especially interesting. (Via Tom Spurgeon.)
* Jeremy Renner really has no idea what his role as Hawkeye in Joss Whedon’s Avengers movie will be like. What an odd experience it must be to sign on to one of these big movies-by-committee without knowing much more than your character’s name.
* Here’s a trailer for Moon director Duncan Jones’s new movie Source Code. Two thoughts: 1) Wow, he sure knows what he likes, huh? 2) Inception sure opened some doors, huh? 3) The quality of this film notwithstanding, I wonder how much longer “watching major forms of transportation blow up in trailers” will last as a thing.
* Matthew Perpetua assembles a mix that shows the softer side of the Smashing Pumpkins. Well, it includes “Drown” and “Rhinoceros” and such, so “softer” is relative, but you get the idea.
* Lots to chew on in this Tom Ewing piece on Kanye West’s new album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Some of it’s even about the music!
* Today on Robot 6: Box Brown on the COEXIST bumper stickers.
