* I suppose now’s as good a time as any to let you know that I reluctantly retired from Robot 6 in mid-January due to time constraints. I miss everyone over there and hope you’ve still been reading them in the months since — I have and will continue to do so!
* With Game of Thrones Season Two set to debut on April 1, I’ve naturally been blogging up a storm at my dedicated GoT/A Song of Ice and Fire blog All Leather Must Be Boiled. I’ll probably do a separate best-of carnival post here this week. I’ve also got one of my trademark Secret ASoIaF Project Announcements coming up soon, with any luck, so stay tuned.
* Everything about the cover for Josh Simmons’s forthcoming Fantagraphics horror-comics collection The Furry Trap makes me uncomfortable.
* Drawn and Quarterly will be republishing Brian Ralph’s Highwater Books classic Cave-In for their children’s line. Smart thinking. That’s a terrific, eye-opening book — like all of Highwater’s Fort Thunder output it hit like a thunderclap at the time.
* In addition to today’s wonderful news about Jonny Negron’s debut book from PictureBox, he also appears to be cranking up the posting of art to his tumblr, which is great news OBVIOUSLY.
* Speaking of ramping it up, Gabrielle Bell is apparently forcing herself to produce more diary comics, as she announces in a post that’s far more self-effacing than it has any need to be.
* I’ve been meaning to say that Jesse Moynihan’s Forming has been really good lately.
* Kate Beaton’s sketches and diary comics are much less ruthlessly gag-oriented than her strips — they pretty much just capture moments, like this one.
* Frank Santoro profiles Zack Soto and his excellent Study Group webcomics site, with an emphasis on how Zack’s reformatted his Secret Voice comic from print to the web.
* Speaking of Study Group, Aidan Koch’s new strip for it, The Blonde Woman, is lovely.
* Press Play’s series of posts describing the plot of Breaking Bad based solely on the show’s opening pre-credits sequences continues to be delightful.
Tags: A Song of Ice and Fire, books, Carnival of souls, comics, fantasy, Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin, horror, links, TV