Have you taken a look at these paintings yet? And get a load of the shirt she won on eBay today. Let’s just say that The Missus is going to be the belle of the San Diego Comic-Con! “Spider-sense tingling” indeed!

Martha Stewart quits company board

Iraq opponents march to White House (Sixty whole people! Wow! Stop the press!)

The Syrian military, some 10,000 strong, surrounds several northern cities in possible preparation for a Hama-style massacre

Question: Which of the following stories can not be found on CNN.com’s front page today?

(Syria and protest links courtesy of Glenn Reynolds.)

The estimable Jim Henley labors mightily to tease an interpretation out of the Spanish attack/election that doesn’t involve the word “appeasement,” and comes up with the following:

1) The from-behind Socialist victory was about Prime Minister Aznar playing politics with the bombing investigation, and not about the Iraq War;

2) Except when the from-behind Socialist victory was about the Iraq War, but it was Aznar’s own fault for backing a course of action overwhelmingly rejected by his constituents.

So if you go by Jim’s second theory, we’ve all learned a valuable lesson, which is that if you’re a politician, and you’re mulling over a course of action that is right but is also unpopular, it really is best to listen to the polls. (Or to the terrorists, who, as Jim’s fellow antiwar libertarian semi-comics blogger Franklin Harris points out in the comment thread to this post, were really just giving the Spaniards an impolite but nevertheless necessary reminder as to the appropriate electoral outcome. (Yikes.)) Well, Jim, we certainly wouldn’t want politicians to evaluate their potentially unpopular policies on a case-by-case basis, or indeed to do anything but slavishly obey the whims of their constituents, would we?

But if you go by Jim’s first theory (let’s try ’em all on for size and see what fits, how’s that sound?), i.e. that this wasn’t a repudiation of the Iraq war in deference to the will of Islamist terror but an expression of dissatisfaction with the way the government was handling the investigation–well, let’s just say that some folks appear not to have gotten that particular memo:

Spain’s prime minister-elect, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, vowed to withdraw troops from Iraq and criticised US President George W. Bush after Spanish voters ousted the government that dragged their country into the controversial war.

“The war in Iraq was a disaster, the occupation of Iraq is a disaster,” Zapatero, 43, told Cadena Ser radio Monday….

…An ongoing investigation into the attacks has found growing evidence they were carried out by Islamic extremists linked to Al-Qaeda as punishment for Spain’s help in the invasion and occupation of Iraq….

…Spain’s Socialists won 43 percent of the ballots to 38 percent for the PP, largely because of the near-total public opposition to the war, Zapatero said.

Turnout was a high 77 percent, reflecting the strong emotions in the aftermath of the attacks.

Many voters had expressed anger at Aznar, who had previously announced he was retiring after the elections. He was jostled and booed at Sunday while some protesters shouted “Aznar: your war, our dead.”

Zapatero, making good on an pre-election pledge, said that barring new developments in Iraq before June 30 — the date the United States has promised to hand power over to an Iraqi provisional government — Spain’s 1,300 troops in Iraq “will return home”….

…Zapatero firmly aligned himself with France and Germany, which opposed the war from the start, in calling the invasion an “error”….

…Bush and Blair, both of whom are facing elections in coming months, need to engage in “self-criticism,” Zapatero said.

“You can’t bomb a people” over a perceived threat, Zapatero said in comments coming five days before the first anniversary of the March 20 start of the war.

“You can’t organise a war on the basis of lies,” he said, alluding to Bush’s and Blair’s insistence the war was justified by their belief — so far unfounded — that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that posed an imminent threat.

“Wars such as that which has occurred in Iraq only allow hatred, violence and terror to proliferate,” he said.

The head of the EU executive arm, European Commission chief Romano Prodi, agreed, in an interview published by Italy’s La Stampa newspaper Monday.

“It is clear that using force is not the answer to resolving the conflict with terrorists,” Prodi said. “Terrorism is infinitely more powerful than a year ago,” and all of Europe now feels threatened, he told the paper.

(Emphases mine; link courtesy of Andrew Sullivan.)

Hmm. The victorious Socialist candidate, the chief of the European Commission, and the average Spanish voter (at least according to this report) all seem to have done what we hawkish warblogging types have been ever-so-gently chided for, and jumped to the conclusion that this election shows is Europe’s way of showing that terrorists should not be fought, that Europe is unserious about rebuilding Iraq and preventing terrorist infiltration thereof, and that in a choice between Bush-advocated policies and al Qaeda-advocated policies, Europe is more comfortable with the latter. Don’t they know they’re supposed to wait until they hear from experts like Atrios’s wife?

Update: As it turns out, Prodi probably said that terrorism could not be dealt with by force alone, which is a little bit better. Still, why do I get the sense that the additional methods he has in mind don’t rolling up financial networks and monitoring communications and infiltrating madrassas, etc., so much as they involve Asking Ourselves Why They Hate Us and tiptoeing around so as not to wake them up (and, in all likelihood, really sticking it to the goddamn Jews)?

Postcript: Jim also joshes me for expecting too much too soon from PM-elect Zapatero in terms of getting tough on terror. Four days after the worst terror attacks in the country’s history, and here I am expecting the country’s new leader to do something about it! Easy there, tiger!

No, no, I kid. Jim’s point stems from the fact that my language was unclear: It made it sound like I wanted to see less talk and more action from Zapatero, when no one but the Flash would have had time or ability to do anything but talk at the point when I made my initial comments. What I was trying to say was that Zapatero’s acceptance-speech comments vowing to fight terror were offset, in my view, by his next-day interviews calling the Iraq War a disaster and an error, saying that Bush and Blair lied and were waging war on an entire people, and reiterating his intention to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq ASAP. (This was before I’d seen his earlier comments to the effect that he wanted John Kerry to win in the U.S. so that he and the distinguished gentleman from Massacusetts could form an “alliance…for peace, against war, [and] no more deaths for oil.” So it’s not really fair to draw any conclusions from those statements, is it.)

‘Course, I’m just one of those starry-eyed hawks who thinks that Iraq and the War on Terror are in some way related, which is a notion that has nothing to do with what’s been happening in Spain over the past week, no sirree Bob.

Post-postscript: Jim also brings the sobering news that Bob Zangas, a blogger who travelled to Iraq to help the reconstruction as both a Marine and a civilian, has been killed by rogue Iraqi cops. Normally this is the point where the chickenhawk argument would be expected against my wrongheaded bellicose warmongering, so go ahead and make it, if you’re so inclined. I’ll simply say now, as I’ve said before, that I advocate the policies I’ve been advocating out of the fervent belief that, when all is said and done, they will lead to fewer murdered Bob Zangases, not more. Until then, if you believe nothing else I say, believe me when I tell you that I feel the pain of each of these deaths. One is a tragedy. Two hundred is a tragedy. Three thousand is a tragedy. My hope is that these compounded tragedies will somehow make us act in such a way as to avoid the eventual seven-digit statistic.

Post-post-postcript: A round-up of all my Spain posts is here.

Necessary caveat: Regardless of the actions of the Spanish electorate, regardless of the political ramifications thereof, 200 people are dead, 1500 are wounded, and countless others are greiving. It’s still an unspeakably awful tragedy, and the heart still strains with the senslessness and pain of it. Mine does, that’s for sure.

You’re starting to miss me talking about Blankets, aren’t you?

Here are some more thoughts on Spain (for earlier installments, go here, here, here, here, here, and here):

1) The first and most obvious conclusion to draw is that al Qaeda will now begin its very own “Rock the Vote” campaign in earnest. Jim Henley points out that the motives of the Spanish electorate probably were more nuanced than “we supported the U.S., al Qaeda attacked us, we should now stop supporting the U.S.,” (Aznar’s simple reluctance to ascribe the bombings to anyone but the Basques despite mounting evidence agains this theory seemed to have angered a lot of voters, and rightly so) but when talking about the thought process behind al Qaeda, “nuanced” is the last word I’d use. These motherfuckers want to conquer the world, like HYDRA or A.I.M. for Chrissakes. They’re going to draw a lesson from this, no doubt about that, and the lesson is “murdering hundreds of people in countries with governments who oppose us will lead to the toppling of those governments.” If I were English or Italian, I’d be very worried right now. And if I were American, I’d–oh, hey, look at that! This ought to be a fun campaign season.

2) Aside from the thinking of al Qaeda, the thinking of many–not all, I’m sure, but many–Spaniards was very similar:

It reads, “Could this picture have cost 200 deaths?” And then there’s this:

This one says, “The bombs dropped in Iraq explode in Madrid.” It’s clear that a large number of Spanish voters viewed the Madrid terror murders as a direct consequence of Spanish involvement in Iraq–and what’s more, they thought that the terrorists were, all things considered, in the right! Granted, their methods were a little blunt, but the message was received, and agreed with.

Granted, these kinds of protestor images are the type the news media would invent if they didn’t already exist, but it does seem that thousands of like-minded protesters took to the streets on election eve saying just this sort of thing. Then they woke up on Sunday and said it again, in the ballot box.

3) It is also, by the way, the exact same thing being said by the winner of the election, Socialist Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. In his first post-election interview, an interview which quite frankly is beyond my worst nightmare vision of what this guy was going to do and say, the newly elected Prime Minister says:

“The war has been a disaster, the occupation continues to be a disaster. It has only caused violence,” Zapatero said in his first interview after a surprise triumph on Sunday.

“There must be consequences. There has been one already — the election result. The second will be that the Spanish troops will come back,” he said.

“Mr Blair and Mr Bush must do some reflection and self-criticism. You can’t bomb a people, you can’t organise a war with lies,” he added in a lengthy chat with Spain’s Cadena SER radio.

Zapatero goes on to say “I want Europe to see us again as pro-European, my feeling is that the election result has caused surprise but a lot of satisfaction in Europe.” “Europe,” of course, means nothing more or less than “France and Germany”–countries like the U.K. and Poland are just as firmly entrenched on the European left-elite’s pay-no-mind list as they are on John Kerry’s (whose every statement to the effect that we have no real allies anymore is a kick in the nuts of every British and Polish soldier in the field, to say nothing of those countries’ leaders). Basically you have the brand-new leader of a major European nation capitulating to about a dozen bombers, threatening to bring his troops home from a country that needs a destabilizing pull-out like it needs a SARS outbreak, saying that the election result and the horrendous violence are both direct consequences of the “disastrous” invasion and occupation, repeating the “BUSH LIED/BLAIR LIED” tinfoil-hat party line, and making it quite clear to the American people that he doesn’t really care about them at all. Just wanted to make that clear, since it’s perfectly clear to Zapatero, and the people who elected him, and the murderers who engineered that election result. (Link courtesy of The Command Post.)

4) And lest you think that it’s only Gulf War II that the Spanish thought it was a terrible idea to support (it’s always a good idea to try to leave this conflict aside, seeing as how it’s a totally unrelated neocon Zionist oil-baron imperialist project with no relation whatsoever to the War on Terror, etc.):

This is a book of remembrance left at one of the train stations where an attack took place, and the message reads “Aznar: the answer of Afghanistan and Iraq is here.” Emphasis mine. Now unless you’re maintaining regular (out to) lunch dates with Ted Rall, it seems safe to assume that the Afghan War was a direct response to the 9/11 attacks, its goal being to depose the regime that supported the attackers and capture or kill their associates and commanders. This, generally speaking, is believed even by people who think the Iraq War was an unrelated, preordained war of expansionism. And even this directly related and universally understandable use of force against Islamic fascists is unacceptable to a great many people in Spain. In a conflict between the United States and the Taliban, they’d prefer their country to not take sides. That is deeply, deeply disturbing.

5) To take that point a step further, let’s not forget that Spain was a staging ground for 9/11, and that one of the men arrested in connection with the Madrid attacks was himself a disciple of a man convicted for aiding and abetting the 9/11 hijackers. Islamic terror was a major Spanish problem long before Madrid. And Spain’s voters have now told those terrorists “Hey, man, go about your business–we’d just as soon leave you alone.” Again, take a look at a scene from the anti-government protests:

That’s supposed to be a Guantanamo Bay detainee. Just a couple of days after the Gitmo detainees’ fellow travelers slaughtered 200 commuters, the biggest outrage this fellow could think of was the incarceration of Taliban and al Qaeda in sunny Cuba. I say again that Spain sent a message not just to the terrorists yesterday, but to us as well, and the message to us was “fuck you–you deserved it.”

(All these images come courtesy of LGF.)

6) Even ignoring all the immediate geopolitical ramifications of the Spanish election results, it’s stupid for an entirely different reason: al Qaeda wants to reconquer Spain for the ummah. Tacitus has a link-rich post on this topic, which demonstrates a variety of things, including just how seriously al Qaeda takes the loss of the once-Muslim kingdom of Andalusia (Spain, of course), and just how fucking batshit insane al Qaeda’s philosophy really is (as if you needed more evidence of that). The problem, of course, is that Spain’s voters apparently recognize none of this.

I always think it’s important to rank al Qaeda’s one-world ambitions fairly low as a predictor for their actions. The organization is taking the long view, and I think that even in their most optimistic appraisals of their situation they know that a planet united under the Crescent is scores of years away. Right now their motive is primarily just to murder as many thousands of infidels as they can in an effort to punish those enemy regimes with a direct hand in the current Muslim world. But many people apparently feel that if those regimes (the U.S., India, Russia, Israel, Australia, the U.K., etc.) were to suddenly extricate themselves from the area, terrorist attacks against them would forever cease. Even a cursory glance at the theology behind Islamic fascist groups like al Qaeda (and for that matter Hamas, Hezbollah, al Aqsa et al) reveals that these groups will not stop until their grotesque brand of Islam rules the entire globe.

In essence, Spain is trying to pass the buck, hoping that a short-term refusal to engage the problems posed by Islamic facsist killers (who, I’d just like to point out, apparently feel a great deal of affinity with the deposed Baathist regime in Iraq, on whose behalf they just murdered 200 Spaniards) will result in a long-term reprieve from those killers. And this, of course, is bullshit.

The situation is different from that of Europe in the 1930s in its specifics–the countries who appeased fascism back then had only five or ten years to wait before the no-longer-satiated killers came gunning for them; these days those countries may perhaps have a good deal longer–but not in its fundamentals. Spain is trying to appease totalitarian murderers, who by their nature cannot and will not remain appeased forever. They’re still holding grudges from the Middle Ages, for crying out loud. Those grudges will not die because some quisling Socialist prime minister stops aiding the reconstruction of Iraq.

7) Is there any reason to hope? Yes, some. Glenn Reynolds links to a pair of articles that suggest that, due to internal outrage and external pressure (primarily from Ireland, a nation with a long legacy of sorrow thanks to terrorist scum on both sides), Zapatero may well take a hard line against terrorism.

Paradoxically, I think that the Left, who until this point in the WoT have primarily served as fascism’s respectable apologists and enablers, may actually have freer reign to attack terrorism than the Right does. Speaking mainly on unrelated points, Jim Henley recently pointed out that ostensibly left-liberal politicians and officials can get away with murder from their constituencies when they’re actually in power. Take a look at Saint William of Hope, Arkansas, who in actuality was an enthusiastic drug warrior who eroded civil liberties and packed the prisons in the name of the War on Drugs, who relegated gays to second-class citizen status in matters of both marriage and the military, who used government muscle to assault free speech with things like the V-Chip, and whose own actions against terrorism relegate the Patriot Act and its ilk to mere icing-on-the-cake status. Of course, nowadays the American Left looks on the Clinton Years as the kind of Golden Age with the kind of grotesquely distorted nostalgia that would earn a knowing nod and a sad but wise smile from an al Qaeda fanatic pining for the days of al-Andalus.

Of course, waging a hardcore War on Terror from the Left would, unlike most of the aforementioned, be a good thing. I myself already view the WoT from a liberal standpoint, and see it as the liberal cause of our time. Left-liberal politicians could take advantage of their die-hard constituents’ unshakeable belief that such politicians Know Best and really put the hurt on al Qaeda and their cohorts. I’m no longer one of those die-hards, but I remember the mindset well enough. If Bush cites “human rights” as a reason to invade a country, they say “Halliburton.” If Zapatero were to cite “human rights” as a reason to invade a country, they’d say “of course–and how can you possibly oppose this, you fascist?” (There are some Leftists, of the International A.N.S.W.E.R. variety, who will oppose all military action by Western governments, forever and ever amen, and who in fact did so when left-liberal leaders went after the exterminationist regime of Slobodan Milosevic. But having a more mainstream left-liberal government in power will set up an opposite pole on that end of the political spectrum, and such pro-dictator “Leftists” will once again assume their well-deserved position of ignominious obscurity.)

The fact that left-liberal pols can generally count the members of the news media among their supporters will help, too. Take a trip down memory lane and recall the news coverage of Bill Clinton’s military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan versus their coverage of Dubya’s for example. The primary difference between the two, of course, was that Dubya’s were actually successful, and yet Clinton comes off looking like George Marshall while Bush is painted like Robert McNamara. Go figure.

The thing is, though, that thus far Zapatero has shown no sign that his lip-service to getting tough on terrorism is anything but lip-service: His first major policy statement is that he’ll pull his troops out of Iraq. (He leaves himself some wiggle room, invoking the mystical powers of the UN to wave its magic wand and grant those troops legitimacy that somehow they’d otherwise lack were it not for the approval of wise and good-hearted UN member states like Syria and Zimbabwe.) Now, you may believe, bless your na

Here are three paintings by my comically talented wife. Consider it art therapy.

…and then I’m done for the day. Glenn Reynolds has a long post on the Spanish election and the lessons it teaches, offering a variety of links and points of view. Definitely worth a look.

Okay, now go look at the paintings.

Spain sent a message to terrorists today, and the message was “we give up.” The message is “you were right.” The message is “you win.”

Pre-election bombings in other countries (including our own), already likely, are now a virtual certainty. And why shouldn’t they be? Spain’s Socialists and their supporters have taught al Qaeda that murdering 200 commuters for no reason is perfectly viable campaign strategy.

The Spain debacle is easily the biggest setback to the free world since the War on Terror began, and I feel worse about it than I can remember feeling about anything since that awful autumn. It truly is a disaster–not just for the local- and geo-political ramifications, mind you, but (it bears repeating) because this virtually guarantees that many many more people will be killed in countries across the globe whenever an election is in the offing.

ADDTF reader George writes in to lament the lack of attention being paid to these issues here in America. Of course, the reason it’s not being made a bigger deal of in this country is because the people responsible for making things a big deal, the major news media, think that voting the PP out of office was an eminently sensible response to being attacked by terrorists–a dress rehearsal, if you will, for November 2004 here in the good old U.S. of A.

Not good. Not good at all.

Meanwhile, as a commenter points out here, a major Western nation has just been defeated by an army of approximately one dozen people.

Europe is gone.

I wonder if history will look at 9/11 or 3/11 as the more momentous occasion.

I want the War on Terror to be fought and to be won now, because the potential outcome if we do not do this is beyond terrible. I think there are two possibilities if we do not take the war as seriously as we should right now, and fight to win. The first is that eventually a massive terrorist strike will destroy a major Western or American city, and that in retalliation a nuclear exchange will wipe out much of the Muslim world in order to prevent such an attack from ever happening again. While technically a “victory” for the West, needless to say this will be the most horrific event in history. I have no desire to see billions of innocent people die in a completely avoidable man-made armageddon, and I have no desire to see the free world commit mass murder, as whatever freedom we preserve will be irrevocably tainted. The second possibility is that eventually a massive terrorist strike will destroy a major Western or American city, but self-preservation will be trumped by self-abnegation, and we will not respond with overwhelming force. Thus, as the barbarians once destroyed Roman civilization by slowly chipping away, civilization as we know it will slowly be chipped away, as we cower and appease our new fundamentalist masters to avoid incurring their wrath again. The caliphate will rise again, as pluralist democracy will slowly disappear.

That’s how I see this conflict playing out: two nightmare scenarios, avoidable if and only if we take the conflict seriously in the here and now and battle on all possible fronts against fundamentalist Islam, its bankers and armament suppliers, and its murderous, fascist practitioners.

Even more than 9/11, 3/11 was an attempt by the enemy to directly challenge the West. Three days before an election in a major Western democracy, they slaughtered 200 innocents for the crime of getting up in the morning and going to work in a country whose leadership was taking the War on Terror seriously. In their alleged claims of responsibility, al Qaeda has made it quite clear that the bombings are a direct response to Spain’s participation in the antifascist coalition in Iraq.

How will the Spanish people respond? The conventional wisdom instantly promulgated by the world news media–and, not coincidentally, the opposition Socialist party–is that they will angrily vote the government out of office for having the temerity to defy the wishes of the murderous vanguard of Islam. Oddly, this same “conventional wisdom” has it that if, as initially thought, the Basque separatist group ETA was responsible, this would actually work in the government’s favor, since they’d taken a hard line against the group. In other words, taking a hard line against al Qaeda and Islamic fascism would cost the government the election if those groups were behind the blasts, but taking a hard line against the ultraleft Basque separatists would win them the election if that group was responsible. Odd, isn’t it, that this contradictory CW dictates a government loss given the facts as we now know them. Why, it’s almost as if certain parties have an interest in seeing a certain outcome.

The point is, though, that the people of Spain may well be on the verge of sending the following message: “we’re sorry, nice Islamic terrorists, we should never have gotten involved in fighting against you and in toppling tyrants, we’re going to vote the leaders who got us in this mess out of office, we want to pull out, we want peace, peace now, peace unilaterally, please leave us alone, we’re sorry, we know it’s our fault for doing something you don’t want us to have done, you’re not such bad guys, we’re sure you’ll understand, please please don’t hurt us any more, we deserved it but we won’t deserve it anymore, we’re sorry, you win.” They’ll send the terrorists the message that they have the power, through the murder of innocents (although they’ll show they agree with the killers that, though innocent, they probably deserved it in some sense), the forces of fundamentalism have the power to bring down a government.

Where will it end after that? Where will the newly emboldened terrorists lead us? As I said, there are two possibilities. And I’m so, so afraid of both.

In addition to the raw agony I feel about the 199 murders that took place in Madrid the other day, there’s the agonizing wait to find out how the people of Spain, and of Europe, will react. After the initial grief and shock subsides, will they wave the white flag, offer a mea culpa, wash their hands of the efforts to safeguard civilization against those who are engaged in the process of destroying it, and decide that the best response to being senselessly brutalized by nihilist sectarian murderers is to try to make themselves inoffensive to them, in hopes that this will be enough to persuade the killers to direct their sickness elsewhere? Or will they find renewed determination to condemn such acts and their perpetrators regardless of their so-called justifications, declare that deliberate murder of people whose only crime was going to work one morning is anathema to life as we know it, stand up against the notion that no one is innocent and that everyone is fair game for a murderous god to destroy, and take the fight to these enemies of liberalism and democracy and humankind without embarassment and without hesitation and without mercy? Whither Spain? Whither Europe?

Agonizing though this wait might be, one thing it will not be is long. Spanish elections are tomorrow.

Uprising in Iran.

Uprising in Syria.

“Wind is changing!”

–Ghan-buri-Ghan, The Return of the King

(Links courtesy LGF, IP.)

So with all this bad bloggin’ blood flowing around the Internet lately, I decided to go to the Brian Bendis message board and start a thread that would shed some light on the fact that comics blogs are actually pretty good. Here’s that thread. Enjoy!

TheOneRing.net brings you speculation and spoilers, translated from a German source, as to what will appear on the Extended Edition DVD of The Return of the King.

I’m a little excited.

Suddenly these thoughts just overwhelmed me: I just want to say how heartbroken I am for the people of Spain, how sorry I am that these murders took place. I’ve never been there, but for three years I was a railroad commuter, travelling in and out of the big city. The people killed in Madrid were people like me, trying to earn a living, perhaps looking forward to seeing their coworkers, perhaps looking forward to being back home with their families that afternoon. They ate breakfast and drank coffee and kissed their wives or husbands or kids or pets goodbye. They read the paper, listened to their headphones, took a nap, stared out the window, thought about today’s meetings and schedules and projects, thought about the weekend. Now they’re gone forever because a band of vicious killers thought God wanted them dead.

The tragedy of this, on every level, is unspeakably profound. Please spare a thought for these commuters, and their country, and our world.

Chris Allen sings the praises of the comics blogosphere. Alan David Doane doesn’t think he’s singing loud enough. La la la!

ADD also has a 5-Question interview with True Story, Swear to God creator Tom Beland. Beland was on the Comics Journal message board once or twice back in the day and rubbed me the wrong way (which is unsurprising, because as Evan Dorkin points out, that board brings out the absolute worst in absolutely everyone), but I really like his attitude as it comes across in this interview. Give it a read.

But hey–occasionally a nugget of value can drop from between the Journal messboard’s clenched cheeks. For example, board regular Chris Polkki will be editing a new anthology series for Fantagraphics, called Blood Orange. Marc Bell, Anders Nilssen, John Hankiewicz, Ron Rege Jr., Jeffrey Brown, and many more plan to contribute. Fanta has been seen as unnecessarily hostile to young alternative cartoonists–this title ought to go a long way toward putting that to rights. (Link courtesy of Egon, who really needs individual-entry permalinks.)

In a column about CrossGen’s attempt to get back on track, Steven Grant points out that its ostensibly superhero-free lineup is, of course, full of superheroes–“it was blatantly obvious to everyone they were.” Shhhhh–don’t tell Mike Dean!

(While I have your attention, can someone tell Comic Book Resources to put date-specific permalinks to each column within the column itself?)

The Pulse interviews Incredible Hulk writer Bruce Jones. It’s a surprisingly in-depth look at Jones’s thoughts about his work on the series.

Bill Sherman reads and reviews about forty million comics, so you don’t have to!

Finally, holy crap–Enid Coleslaw is an anagram for Daniel Clowes! Did everyone else know this but me? Seriously, I never would have noticed that on my own. Thank you, Guy Leshinski! (Link courtesy of Kevin Melrose.)

How did AiT/PlanetLar head honcho Larry Young develop such a hard-on for bloggers?

(Larry’s own blog, which is exactly what it is, doesn’t have individual-entry permalinks, so check out the entry for March 10th. Link courtesy of Graeme McMillan.)

I don’t get it–it’s not like he’s a publisher people tear to pieces on a daily basis, like Marvel or DC or CrossGen. As far as AiT/PL books go, everyone seems to like True Story, Swear to God, and while Brian Wood’s work is somewhat polarizing, I feel like his hit-miss ratio as far as bloggers are concerned is pretty respectable. Compared to the treatment various bloggers have given Mark Millar, Chuck Austen, Lee Loughridge, Gary Groth, Matt Brady, “Jess Lemon,” Jeph Loeb, Craig Thompson, Joe Quesada, Mark Alessi, Tony Isabella, Brian Bendis, Bill Jemas, Warren Ellis, Grant Morrison, Dave Sim, Mike Dean, Kurt Busiek & George Perez, Seth, and so forth–not to mention other bloggers–Larry and his stable have gotten off comparatively easy.

I guess he was tangentially involved in that old blogosphere dust-up with James “The Comics Pimp” Sime, but reacting to that teapot-tempest in the fashion Larry has (if indeed that’s the impetus behind it) would be similar to someone on the other side of that argument deciding that because they disagreed with the point of view espoused by one retailer, all retailers are idiots. And that, of course, is just plain dumb (especially considering that even the retailer in question is himself not an idiot).

Finally, I suppose Larry could legitimately believe that the comics blogosphere as a whole isn’t any good, but that’s even dumber.

If the majority of comics bloggers really are such lousy writers, then there shouldn’t be much harm in Larry actually naming the bloggers he thinks are so bad, rather than continuing in this passive-aggressive vein.

Since you

Oh, hey, my blogroll over there has undergone some serious updating over the past couple-three weeks, including some new additions today. Get yrself acquainted with some of the terrific sites listed therein.

One of which, by the way, is a new blog by military historian and American Warblogger Idol Victor Davis Hanson. Next to Christopher Hitchens, Hanson is my favorite writer on the War on Terror, which facts probably tell you everything you need to know about my feelings about the War on Terror, but there you have it. Permalinks pending, it would appear. Man, he’s good. (Link courtesy of Charles Johnson.)

Also new to the ‘Net is this season’s Slate/Sopranos running discussion. Instead of last season’s shrink-centric roundtable, this year we’ve got the musings of mob reporters Jeffrey Goldberg and Jerry Capeci. Capeci is the author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Mafia, the most comprehensive and easy-to-follow book on the subject I’ve ever read.

Here’s the scoop on the standard-edition DVD for The Return of the King. It’s coming out much earlier than its predecessors did, but I still have yet to hear whether the extended-edition set will be released sooner as well.

Finally, fuckin’ Freemasons. Nothing changes.

Since I’ve scaled back my comics purchasing budget, I’ve forgone a good many trade paperbacks and graphic novels that I’d really like to have. I’m wondering: Do any of you, my delightful readers, have any copies of the following that you’d be willing to donate or trade?

Battle Royale Vol. 5

Uzumaki Vol. 3

If you’d like to make a donation, terrific–send me an email. If you’d like to trade, that too is terrific–I have a trade list here at Sequential Swap, and I’ve also got plenty of complete sets of individual issues that you won’t find on that list. Drop me a line and we’ll work something out.

Semi-comics blogger Franklin Harris is on a roll today.

First, he posts on the Spurgeon/Raphael Stan Lee book, pointing out that as far as taking too much credit for the creation of the Marvel Universe is concerned, Jack “King” Kirby actually oustripped The Man. Of course, Lee was the one who was actually in a position to truly cement his erroneous claims (or, to be charitable, his lack of correct ones) over the years, but still, a post worth examining.

Second, he examines the deeply creepy news that a North Carolina sheriff’s captain is prepping to wage war against manga, because, you know, all those clean-minded teenagers might think about s-e-x if they were to read Love Hina. I think this could accurately be described as a ripple effect from the federal governments asinine decency hearings of recent weeks–this sheriff is simply modeling the behavior of Michael Powell et al, all of whom really have better ways to spend my tax dollars these days. The problem is that on a small, localized scale, and against a medium that garners little public recognition or support, such crusades as the good Captain’s can really do some damage, ruining businesses and instituting a thought-police regime against small-town kids with no other options. Keep an eye on this one.

Finally, Franklin calls our attention to a minor scandal involving the late Silver-Age superstar Julius Schwartz, who was apparently something of a dirty old man. It would seem that the Comics Journal is exhuming a 13-year-old unpublished interview with cartoonist Colleen Doran to help make this point in an upcoming issue. Worthwhile expose, tasteless schadenfreude, or both? It’s too early to make the call just yet.

Franklin’s a swell linkblogger, but pieces of his that run even slightly longer than usual are a real treat, and these ones are no exception. I hope we see more of them.

The Missus has begun mc’ing.

‘Nuff said.