* Woo hoo, a new Girl Talk album! Unabashedly excited about this. I feel like as enthusiasm wanes for him in indie-rock-crit circles, we can better appreciate him for what he is: the best mash-up DJ, no more and no less.

* Frank Santoro presents his favorite comics of 2010. He counts 2010 as lasting from SPX 2009 to SPX 2010, which may be the single best year-ender list cheat I’ve ever heard of. He also has a special category reserved for the old lions of alternative comics, who between Sacco, Crumb, Clowes, Woodring, Ware, and Burns have had an astonishing 12 months. The post gets bonus points for illustrating how a strict no-nonsense, no-aliases commenting policy should be adopted Internet-wide when it comes to discussing the work of Blaise Larmee and his Comets Comets crew–including, if Sam Gaskin’s exasperation is any indication, at Comets Comets itself.

* More depressing news out of the Direct Market as its monopoly distributor declines to handle a project of obvious artistic worth. When you’re the only game in town, I think you have an obligation to include as many people in that game as possible, especially when you’ve made plenty of room for people playing another game entirely.

* Today on Robot 6:

* Holy moley, Emily Carroll;

* I think I might…love these Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark images?;

* Mark Waid relentlessly hounds the person who stole his iPad;

* and by all means, bring Doomsday back and let him cut a swathe of destruction through the DC Universe. Seriously, I’m really happy about this! For one thing, The Death of Superman was a great time at the comics. For another, Doomsday is a great visual and a memorably relentless antagonist. And finally, I’ve long been of the opinion that it’d be great to tie tie-ins revolving around villains to dropping a real daisy cutter on your book’s status quo. Like, for example, back in the “Countdown to Infinite Crisis” days, I was always disappointed by how little the seemingly indestructible OMACs did when they showed up in all these books. They were programmed only to kill superhuman, but they did precious little of it when it mattered. I always thought a great way to drive home the threat and make readers feel like the crossovers were more than just a device to goose sales would have been to insist “Okay, Creative Team X, you can use Crossover Villain Y, but only if you kill off one of your major characters or otherwise totally upend business as usual.” Having Doomsday slaughter his way through the mildlist strikes me as a terrific way to clear out some dead wood and pave the way for a new direction. Y’know, like Cataclysm in World of Warcraft. (However, let me join the commenters in hoping that this doesn’t mean they’re gonna kill Steel, one of the great undervalued superheroes on a visual and conceptual level, to say nothing of the need for good non-white characters.)

* Speaking of which: Yep, still digging Bruce Baugh’s extensive pre-Cataclysm WoWblogging.

* A documentary about the early ’70s creative relationship between David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Lou Reed called The Sacred Triangle? Sure, I’ll eat it. (Via Pitchfork.)

* Bookmarking these for when I’ve seen the episode: Curt Purcell and Sean P. Belcher on The Walking Dead episode 3.

* The Matthijs van Heijningen/Eric Heisserer/Ronald D. Moore prequel to John Carpenter’s The Thing has been yanked from the 2011 release schedule. Weird.

* Very excited that my new blogging platform allows me to place the proper accent mark when linking to Ron Regé Jr.’s Yeast Hoist #6 on What Things Do. Longer and more diaristic than previous installments.

* Somewhere between Ben Katchor, Jeffrey Brown, and Brian Chippendale lurks Victor Kerlow’s “Black Shit Monster.” (Via Floating World and Arthur.)

* Speaking of Chippendale, today’s Puke Force installment is a black-comedy kick in the face.

* And speaking of Brown, Aviv Itzcovitz repanels Bighead.

* Real Life Horror: Two stories about the increasingly invasive and pointlessly humiliating security theater at America’s airports; two stories about the Obama administration’s lawless imperial free-for-all approach to dealing with accused terrorists. 2 + 2 = ? (NOTE: Fuck Anwar al-Awlaki and Go Team Comics, but still.)

* Sheila O’Malley writes in praise of Jeremy Renner. I’ve said this for literally years now, but ever since I saw him in Dahmer I knew he was something special. One day I’ll finally review that damn film. (Via Matt Zoller Seitz.)

* Tom Spurgeon against poptimism, more or less.

* Finally, did Doug Wright invent the infinite canvas? More via Matt Seneca.

Tags: Carnival of souls, comics, film, links, music, television

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