* Terrible, hard-hitting news from The House Next Door: Longtime House contributor and fine film and television critic Andrew Johnston has died from cancer at the too young age of 40. My absolute best to those who cared about him.

* I think Brian Hibbs’s apples-to-apples comparison of the competing superhero event series Secret Invasion (Marvel) and Final Crisis (DC) is a pretty even-handed look at what’s up with the two books (even though I’m more of a fan of Final Crisis as a work than Hibbs is). It’s noteworthy that the problems he has with Secret Invasion are all intrinsic to the book itself while the problems with Final Crisis have nothing to do with the actual series and everything to do with how it’s been situated in relation to the rest of the titles in the line by DC. It’s also interesting to see another voice in favor of Brian Michael Bendis’s SI tie-in work in New Avengers and Mighty Avengers versus the comparatively lackluster Bendis-penned SI itself.

* This Entertainment Weekly list of the 20 Scariest Movies was rock solid. And yet I’m going to list enough “hmm, how about that”s that it’s going to look like I don’t like it, even though I do. Notes:

1) I could quibble with films like The Omen and Poltergeist, which have two or three terrifying moments surrounded by incoherent and derivative silliness.

2) No Blair Witch Project. That film is well on its way to critical reclamation but in terms of general-interest publications it seems it’s not quite there yet.

3) Looks like Shyamalan has fallen far enough out of favor that The Sixth Sense, the highest grossing horror movie ever, doesn’t even rate anymore.

4) No Saw or Hostel–torture porn of whatever stripe is out.

5) No foreign-language films.

6) Nothing older than Psycho, but I’m fine with that. If I’m being honest with myself, I don’t find anything pre-Psycho genuinely frightening.

7) No The Descent. I thought that one might sneak in there.

8) Everything is pretty clearly a horror film. No David Lynch, no David Cronenberg, no curveballs like Un Chien Andalou or A Clockwork Orange or something like that.

9) I suppose the one obvious omission I can’t really understand is Alien.

10) I think that generally, these kinds of lists ought to consist of the canonical scary movies and this one does. I’d happily hand it to someone who asks “What are some scary movies I should see?”

* Quote of the day:

Is it just me or does it feel like we’re going through a slight FRIDAY THE 13TH craze? Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with that at all. Actually I’m loving it. The new trailer hit the other day and it seems like every horror fan out there is talking about it. It’s not too often you see a teaser trailer get people talking like this one has.

—Jared Pacheco, Arrow in the Head. I certainly didn’t expect to be talking about it, that’s for sure.

* Gorilla vs. zombies. Thank you, World of Warcraft.

* Bruce Baugh advances several explanations for why online fandom is primarily a culture of complaint.

* No shortage of real-world horror stories today: the story of the slaying of Jennifer Hudson’s family grows ever more heartrendingly awful; what the Barack Obama assassination/anti-black killing spree plotters lacked in smarts and realistic expectations they made up for in gruesome imagination; and unknown assailants grabbed an Afghan farmer and gouged out his eyes in front of his family.

* Lane Milburn posts some images from Cold Heat Special #8.

* Matt Maxwell’s horror-Western comic Strangeways begins its serialization at Blog@Newsarama today. Neat.

* I’m still somewhat shaken from writing about all those terrible crimes. But even so, what am I, not going to post the picture of the slave Leia metal-bikini pillowfight? (Via Topless Robot.)

* Finally, good luck and good vibes to Steve Blackwell, Wizard’s longtime creative director and a really kind-hearted guy who is the latest casualty of the company’s long-running bloodbath. The day I was let go with two designers, Steve was visibly shaken by it, and his emotion and kindness that day meant so much to me. Every time a new issue of All Star Batman & Robin came out, I spent the day anxiously awaiting the moment he’d show up at my desk, so full of fury at my wrongness in loving it that he had a hard time getting going–but believe me, he would. I missed him when I wasn’t working there and I bet the company, which by my count has seen the loss of 26 of 43 full-time creative employees since mid-2007, will miss him too.

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