The newest installment of my regular interview column is up at Wizard, this time featuring Batman Year 100 and Heavy Liquid writer-artist Paul Pope. Endlessly fascinating guy.

The State

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The time has come.

Sigourney Weaver and Aliens for Direct TV.

I believe my exact words upon seeing this for the first time just now were “Oh, no no no no no.”

If someone expressed an interest in some niche product that I enjoy I would, I dunno, try to convey some of my enthusiasm about the subject. Try to share some wisdom. Try to build further enthusiasm. Make recommendations. Anything other than act bitter and petulant.

—Matthew Yglesias on the literary establishment’s antagonistic reaction to the success of Harry Potter. It does indeed seem like a missed opportunity. Yglesias also calls out Harold Bloom for starting on a more productive path vis a vis HP, then immediately walking right back.

I guess this might be SPOILERY in the sense that while it doesn’t actually give away anything, if you read it, it might affect how you view the movie, so if you haven’t seen it, you probably shouldn’t read it. But here’s my take:

Um, duh?

Over at the day job, there’s a preview of Paul Pope’s upcoming limited-edition comic THB: Comics from Mars. Ooh, pretty!

Scientists have discovered a potentially new subspecies of chimpanzee deep in the Congo, one that may hunt big cats like leopards and lions. They haven’t seen the chimps in action of this sort, but they’ve seen them with a leopard corpse (which jibes with the locals’ descriptions of their behavior) and have noted that they actually sleep in nests on the ground as well as in the trees, which would indicate that other big predators steer clear of them for some reason. (Via Andrew Sullivan.)

[Bruce Mendenhall] had a loud voice, but generally kept to himself, aside from an unsuccessful campaign against a preacher for the mayor’s seat about a decade ago.

—“Suspected Serial Killer Once Ran for Mayor; Illinois Town Stunned by Possible Slayings by Local Trucker,” AP

If you are interested in what I thought about the latest issues of New Avengers, Green Lantern, Green Arrow: Year One, B.P.R.D.: Garden of Souls, Civil War Chronicles, Martha Washington Dies, Stormwatch: P.H.D., and Weston Cage & Nicolas Cage’s Voodoo Child, then this week’s Thursday Morning Quarterback at Wizard is the place to be.

Drumnadrochit, Scotland, July 2001. This was me on a travel assignment to Loch Ness. The T-shirt was a nine inch nails “now i’m nothing 1991” tour T-shirt a friend of mine from high school had stolen from his brother, whom it didn’t fit anymore, than gave to me when it didn’t fit HIM anymore either. I think I wore the poor thing to death, unfortunately.

The Dark Is Rising‘s trailer:

Well. That’s a fairly liberal adaptation.

(Hat tip: Justin Aclin.)

Crocodiles!

I meant to post this days ago, but this very cool image and very lame tagline are for Wolf Creek director Greg McLean’s upcoming monster movie Rogue. The creature-feature renaissance continues. (Via Jason Adams.)

Another day, another giant squid.

“Ray, has it ever occurred to you that maybe the reason we’ve been so busy lately is because the dead have been rising from the grave?”

–Winston Zeddemore, Ghostbusters

Replace the dead and the grave with cthulhoid monstrosities from the dead city of R’lyeh and maybe you’re onto something.

Chris Ryall–Publisher at IDW, the company behind the 30 Days of Night comics, and scripter of several of IDW’s Clive Barker adaptations, including the recent The Great and Secret Show—pays a visit to the New Zealand set of David Slade’s upcoming 30 Days of Night movie.

The good folks at Anime Insider bring you an A-Z bestiary of the monsters of Japanese folklore and mythology, as portrayed in various anime.

Certified nerd Patton Oswalt, whose new album Werewolves and Lollipops comes out today, talks his favorite comics and creators.

Okay, I’m excited now. Moreso when I saw which Lost episodes Cloverfield screenwriter Drew Goddard wrote. This kind of thing is still irritating, though, so I’m glad that, according to JJ Abrams, it actually has nothing to do with the movie. This does, but I still don’t have the time to play Myst with a movie’s ad campaign.

Reader Telemachos writes in that the New York Friggin’ Times has an article on the mapinguary, a South American jungle cryptid alternately speculated to be a giant sloth or a relative of sasquatch. Unsurprisingly, Loren Coleman goes wall-to-wall on the topic.

Basically, the world has sloths on the brain.

News broke over the weekend that Meg, the gigantic-freaking-shark movie based on the novel of the same name by Steve Alten, is “dead in the water” (no one could resist the pun, nor should they have) at New Line. They lose the rights in October, and Alten says he’s trying to make something happen elsewhere.

In googling around for this info, I discovered that Alten has written a Loch Ness Monster thriller called The Loch, which centers on the premise that the beastie is a gigantic (wait for it) eel. In a publicity stunt, Alten commissioned the creation of a six-foot replica skull of what such a critter would look like, which is awesome.

Listen to me pontificate about the latest issues of Action Comics, All Star Superman, Thor, Detective Comics, The Exterminators, and Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America at this week’s Thursday Morning Quarterback at Wizard.

At this week’s Horror Roundtable, we participants detail the lengths we’ve gone to for our beloved genre. I’m pretty sure I’m the only one whose response involved a nervous breakdown.