* Tom Spurgeon’s Comics Reporter site is back, thank God. I really enjoyed his interviews with two of my favorite people in alternative comics, Fantagraphics editor/publicist Eric Reynolds (worth reading for the beans he spills about Fanta’s upcoming releases–Rory Hayes!) and AdHouse publisher Chris Pitzer (worth reading for Pitzer’s overview of his company’s mission as a publisher).
* Bloody Disgusting reports that Doomsday, the post-apocalyptic thriller from The Descent director Neil Marshall, is now slated for a March 14th release.
* Lost star Matthew Fox lets slip some mild spoilers in a lengthy interview with Entertainment Weekly’s Dan Snierson (what, was Jeff Jensen busy?). So be warned, he does state some facts (both structural and specific) about the the show’s previous and upcoming seasons that are not readily apparent from what we’ve seen so far. But if you can stomach that, he also has some fairly candid and interesting things to say about what has worked and not worked on the show.
* Dick Hyacinth’s lengthy, catholic Best Comics of 2007 list is one of my favorites of its kind so far.
* Echoing Ted Rall’s complaint about the perceived New York Times/Best American Angsty Artcomix Axis, NeilAlien argues that such institutions lean so heavily enough to a certain flavor of comics to create the impression that “all artcomix are precious white suburban objets d’angst,” likening the phenomenon to the deleterious impact of the superherocentricity of the Direct Market. I’ve seen many a “new mainstream” adherent draw this parallel, which is bogus because a) a couple of editors at a couple of outlets don’t have nearly the level of control over access to comics that the spandex-fixated majority of DM retailers do, and b) the real complaint about the domination of one particular genre is not simply that the genre is dominant, but that many examples of that genre are lousy and and don’t deserve the dominance. Unless you’re an inveterate contrarian, this is not something you’d say about the work of creators like Chris Ware, Dan Clowes, and Jaime Hernandez (whose Maggie strip from the NYT doesn’t even fit into the lamely stereotyped mold the anti-angst crew is trying to push on it anyway).
* Finally, from the Ozymandias files, via Bryan Alexander: A joint US/Norwegian research team has stumbled across a bust of Lenin abandoned by Soviet scientists at the Antarctic Pole of Inaccessibility, the most remote point on the frozen continent, some 50 years ago. Look on my works, ye capitalists, and despair.
