I love this song because it’s very stupid, but it’s also sweet and fun and has a message I can get behind (Friday is a nice day of the week), whereas every day I hear things on the radio that are just about as stupid as that, but that are made by legions of mercenaries with the intention of being hugely successful, as opposed to some girl’s sweet 16 present or whatever this was. I’ve been listening to the radio a lot in the car on the way to and from the hospital a couple times a day, and even before I heard of this song I was like “Wow, being stupid really is the way to pop success today.” “Friday”‘s just an exaggerated version of the many many idiotic sounds you can hear on the radio over the past couple of years: Ke$ha doing a song based on “there’s a place in France where the naked ladies dance,” Lady Gaga’s ridiculous “You’re Lebanese, you’re Orient” “Vogue” rap in “Born This Way,” the existence of “Forget You,” that song T-Pain did with Pitbull that goes “Hey baby GIRL” with the most strident autotuning he’s ever done, Britney doing a song based on the kind of pick-up line Larry would use on someone in the Regal Beagle in Three’s Company, Drake’s cameo in “What’s My Name” featuring the middle-school sex joke “the square root of 69 is ate-something,” the goofy singing in “Down On Me,” the powerfully and enjoyably dumb “Like a G6,” the car-alarm cadence of “Black and Yellow,” that part in “We R Who We R” where they make Ke$ha say “DJ turn it up tup tup tup tup tup” like a robot someone poured water on, Snoop’s cameo on “California Gurls,” Ludacris’s cameo in “Baby”, the entirety of “Bedrock”…”Friday” is the equivalent of the kind of sci-fi movie they’d watch on Mystery Science Theater 3000, not the really dreary soul-crushing ones but the exuberantly and energetically bad ones, the ones where you know they set out to make something that felt like Star Wars or whatever but had no taste or judgment and thus got certain things went waaaaaayyyyyy out of control, only in this case things were already out of control, and she/they just takes it that much further and makes it that much less sophisticated. At least Rebecca Black has an adorable smile and is singing about something I can RELATE TO.

He dreamt an old dream, of three knights in white cloaks, and a tower long fallen, and Lyanna in her bed of blood.

In the dream his friends rode with him, as they had in life. Proud Martyn Cassel, Jory’s father; faithful Theo Wull; Ethan Glover, who had been Brandon’s squire; Ser Mark Ryswell, soft of speech and gentle of heart; the crannogman, Howland Reed; Lord Dustin on his great red stallion. Ned had known their faces as well as he knew his own once, but the years leech at a man’s memories, even those he has vowed never to forget. In the dream they were only shadows, grey wraiths on horses made of mist.

They were seven, facing three. In the dream as it had been in life. Yet these were no ordinary three. They waited before the round tower, the red mountains of Dorne at their backs, their white cloaks blowing in the wind. And these were no shadows; their faces burned clear, even now. Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning, had a sad smile on his lips. The hilt of the greatsword Dawn poked up over his right shoulder. Ser Oswell Whent was on one knee, sharpening his blade with a whetstone. Across his white-enameled helm, the black bat of his House spread its wings. Between them stood fierce old Ser Gerold Hightower, the White Bull, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.

“I looked for you on the Trident,” Ned said to them.

“We were not there,” Ser Gerold answered.

“Woe to the Usurper if we had been,” said Ser Oswell.

“When King’s Landing fell, Ser Jaime slew your king with a golden sword, and I wondered where you were.”

“Far away,” Ser Gerold Said, “or Aerys would yet sit the Iron Throne, and our false brother would burn in seven hells.”

“I came down on Storm’s End to lift the seige,” Ned told them, “and the Lords Tyrell and Redwyne dipped their banners, and all their knights bent the knee to pledge us fealty. I was certain you would be among them.”

“Our knees do not bend easily,” said Ser Arthur Dayne.

“Ser Willem Darry is fled to Dragonstone, with your queen and Prince Viserys. I thought you might have sailed with him.”

“Ser Willem is a good man and true,” said Ser Oswell.

“But not of the Kingsguard,” Sir Gerold pointed out. “The Kingsguard does not flee.”

“Then or now,” said Ser Arthur. He donned his helm.

“We swore a vow,” explained old Ser Gerold.

Ned’s wraiths moved up beside him, with shadow swords in hand. They were seven against three.

“And now it begins,” said Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning. He unsheathed Dawn and held it with both hands. The blade was pale as milkglass, alive with light.

“No,” Ned said with sadness in his voice. “Now it ends.” As they came together in a rush of steel and shadow, he could hear Lyanna screaming. “Eddard!” she called. A storm of rose petals blew across a blood-streaked sky, as blue as the eyes of death.

—George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

* I want to thank everyone for all your kind words and warm wishes about the Missus and baby Helena. They have meant a great deal to us over the past few days. They also give me a great excuse to run this piece of Destructor/Helena fanart by Isaac Moylan.

* Two new Game of Thrones videos: One’s a new trailer that sets up the basics and show some skin, the other a featurette on House Stark.

* They did a really nice job with the official Game of Thrones poster. click to see it at its full huge size.

* Looks like GRRM managed to add hisself an extra chapter to the still-unfinished A Dance with Dragons. Slowly he turned, step by step, inch by inch…

* Curt Purcell has finished watching Lost. What did he think? The ANSWERS await you!!!! Seriously, Curt has maybe the sharpest take yet on why what didn’t work didn’t work.

* I just like reading Tom Brevoort talking about how comics are made.

* Nice little piece on the infant section of ACME Novelty Library #20 by The Comics Grid’s Roberto Bartual.

* This is a fine suite of nominees for the Stumptown comic con’s awards program, with what seems to my eyes like a unique and considered emphasis on illustrative chops.

* Speaking of awards, I found myself quite happy to see that Moto Hagio’s A Drunken Dream won About.com’s Readers’ Choice Award, just because I’m happy to see Hagio’s book win anything anyone cares to award it, but also because a “readers’ choice award” indicates that it’s clicking with more people than just dudes on the internet who don’t read a lot of shojo with which to compare it, like me.

* Bookmarking this for a likely imaginary future in which I have enough free time to read it: The Mindless Ones annotate Batman Inc. #3, an unusually dense issue in terms of annotable things, even by Grant Morrison Batman standards.

* Over at the Nu-Comics Journal, Matt Seneca reviews the revised/expanded edition of C.F.’s City-Hunter Magazine #1.

* I’ll take a new full-color Ben Katchor comic strip, sure.

* Benjamin Marra needs to keep on doing pin-ups for people’s pulp comics.

* Tom Kaczynski needs to keep sketching sessy ladies.

* I really like this Shining piece by Matt Rota.

* “Involuntary Collaborations: I buy other people’s landscape paintings at yard sales and Goodwill and put monsters in them.” (Via Bryan Alexander.)

* Jacob’s Ladder is one of those films that I saw for a class in college, liked a great deal, but then never watched again for some reason. I feel like I should.

* Prepare to flash back to your childhood like whoa: Rue Morgue takes a look at the Crestwood House series of books about classic horror movies. I’ll never ever forget those orange hardcovers.

* What, are you dense? Are you from Harvard or something? What the hell do you think I am? I’m a goddamn Yalie.

The third page of “Destructor and the Lady” has been posted.

Helena Christine Collins (M: Missus Collins, F: Sean T. Collins, 4 lbs. 8 oz., 17 in.), originally slated for a May 2 release, has shipped early, arriving at 11:28am this morning, March 11, 2011. Retailers please note: This item is nonreturnable.

* Today I kicked off “Say Hello,” my regular interview column for The Comics Journal focusing on up-and-coming cartoonists. The inaugural interview is with Blaise Larmee. I think this is the most I’ve ever directly challenged the things an interview subject of mine were saying, but that’s not a reflection on Blaise (who I like) or his work (which I also like), more a reflection on me trying to connect the comics with the persona behind/surrounding them. I hope you like it.

* I’ve been pulling some overtime at Robot 6 this week, and over the past 24 hours two of my favorite things I’ve ever done for the site have gone up. The first is my interview with Yuichi Yokoyama and preview of his amazing new book Garden. Few cartoonists are doing work as exciting as this.

* The second is my list of seven great moments from Guy Davis’ B.P.R.D. run. What a pleasure it was to go back through all my collections to pull these out. I mean it when I say that some of these stand with anything I’ve ever read in any comic ever. Big, big thanks to Jim Gibbons and Scott Allie at Dark Horse for helping to make this happen (and a shout-out to Andy Serwin for commissioning the Davis/BPRD illustration from Wizard I used to kick off the piece.)

(more…)

* Now that the newsy element of the new Comics Journal website has receded into the background a bit, I’m better able to appreciate the actual content. I cannot wait to sink my teeth into Bob Levin’s report on the civil war between members of Frank Frazetta’s family, or Patrick Rosenkranz’s piece on the history of autobio comics. I’m also really thrilled that Tucker Stone is writing reviews for them, too — if you only know him for his “Comics of the Weak” smackdowns, this is a whole new side to discover, and a great look. And back on the newsy tip, Tim Hodler has a morning-after piece on the relaunch and reactions thereto.

* One of the cooler things I discovered via those reactions was Graphic Ladies, a Tumblr by Erin Polgreen that collates and collects links to comics and comics criticism by women. There are only a few days’ worth of entries up at the moment, but so far it’s got excellent taste — it’s not just throwing in anything done by people with the right set of genitals, if you were worried about that sort of thing. (And if you’ve spent any time in any kind of parameter-based publishing ecosystem — the horror Internet, anyone? — you know how important it is to apply standards on top of meeting your basic coverage criteria.) A great idea with great execution so far.

* And via Graphic Ladies I discovered a rock-solid-looking group blog called The Comics Grid, featuring mostly European mostly academic critics writing short, sweet pieces on good books. (I recognize the name of contributor Ernesto Priego.) Right now I’ve got posts on The Wrong Place, The ACME Novelty Library, Footnotes in Gaza, and Maus cued up.

* I was pleased to read that the wildly overrated ex-Hobbit director Guillermo Del Toro has left yet another fantastic-fiction adaptation dear to my heart, H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness.

* Speaking of The Hobbit, Sam Bosma’s Hobbit illustrations are gorgeous.

* Andy Khouri put together some killer cool-image galleries for Comics Alliance and Moviefone lately. The latter is all Tyler Stout movie posters, while the former includes such wonders as by-god Gilbert Hernandez drawing He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.

* I’m really impressed by this Monster Brains gallery of A. Paul Weber illustrations. Yeesh.

* Behold the new Game of Thrones paperback edition!

* Speaking of GoT, it’s a pleasure as always to follow Curt Purcell as he makes his way through a well-done work of genre fiction.

* Real Life Horror: It’s always worth reminding ourselves what an immoral, dangerous, genuinely bad person my Representative, Republican Peter King, really is.

* The Comics Journal has relaunched its website under the auspices of Dan Nadel and Tim Hodler. They run down its major features and contributors in this welcome letter. They say bid adieu to their old hangout, Comics Comics, in this farewell note. They speak about the changeover and their plans at length in this Tom Spurgeon interview. Spurgeon bids adieu to the old TCJ.com’s genuinely evil message board in this Comics Reporter post.

* I write at some length about the Journal’s past, present, and future in this Robot 6 post. I make my first contribution to the new site in this review of Ben Katchor’s The Cardboard Valise. And I will be a regular contributor via my soon-to-launch interview column, Say Hello.

* Phew! I’m very excited about all of this. PS: I recommend tapping into the Journal’s soon-to-be-online-in-their-entirety archives with this Gary Groth interview with the great Phoebe Gloeckner, one of my all-time artistic heroes and one of the all-time great cartoonists.

* Artist Guy Davis is leaving B.P.R.D., one of the very very very best superhero(ish) comics of the past ten years thanks in large part to his contributions. Click the link for my take on Davis’s work on the title. What he and main writer John Arcudi and co-plotter/overseer Mike Mignola did on that book is a genuine achievement. And this is one of my all-time favorite comics pages.

* The Lord of the Rings Extended Edition is coming out in a Blu-Ray box set at last. It contains all three extended-edition films, all the bonus materials from the Extended Edition DVDs, and those weird behind-the-scenes docs from the Limited Edition releases. I don’t think it includes the theatrical editions, but that’s fine. I already preordered it.

* Jay Babcock is discontinuing Arthur magazine’s online incarnation. Even after the print version was shuttered, it continued to be an underrated source of good comics. Best of luck to Mr. Babcock.

* Carol Tyler on her series of memoirs You’ll Never Know and “the legacy of war.”

* Tom Cruise really is starring in Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness. I still think that this works remarkably well.

* Writer Nick Spencer is now Marvel exclusive, though his creator-owned Morning Glories will continue at Image and, remarkably, his T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents revival will continue at DC. That’s a big get for Marvel.

* The very good cartoonist Tom Kaczynski has launched a blog for his publishing imprint Uncivilized Books. Also, his comic in Mome Vol. 21 looks sick, and he drew a sexy woman.

* This is a beautiful spread from Amazing Spider-Man #655 by artist Marcos Martin (and writer Dan Slott). It also basically crushes any given similar image or sequence of images in Inception, by the by. (Via Agent M.)

* Topless Robot’s Chris Cummins lists the 20 Greatest Liquid Television Segments. Man, what a marvel that show was. I so vividly remember feeling like I was watching something genuinely strange and genuinely adult. I still remember the “Cut-Up Camera” and “Dog Boy” theme music, and those silent Aeon Flux shorts crush the property’s later iterations.

* For some reason I really like this very simple poster for Kenneth Branagh’s Thor. (Via Agent M.)

* Michael DeForge remains very talented.

* Kevin Huizenga revisits the ongoing debate over the existence of Hell, the topic of one of his (or anybody’s) best comics, “Jeepers Jacobs.”

* Real Life Horror: Every day, the Obama Administration’s military agents force non-violent, non-suicide-risk Army whistleblower Bradley Manning to sleep and stand for inspection fully naked during his solitary confinement on charges for which he has yet to be convicted and for which he is eligible for the death penalty.

* Finally, sink your teeth into this meaty Tom Spurgeon interview with Renée French. It’s fascinating to see an artist of French’s caliber talk so frankly, and yet without hyperbole or self-pity, about her artistic struggles. Also, I really love the declaration “Fuck narrative.”

Page two of “Destructor and the Lady” has been posted.

The Cardboard Valise
Ben Katchor, writer/artist
Pantheon, March 2011
128 pages, hardcover
$25.95
Buy it for damn near 50% off right now at Amazon.com

For today’s Comics Time review, please see the all-new website for The Comics Journal, to which I am happy to be a contributor.

* Hip hip hooray, the latest Game of Thrones trailer is now available in hi-res! I really don’t know why you’d land an exclusive trailer and then not post it properly, but what do I know. Unsurprisingly the thing is a lot more impressive when you can actually see it clearly.

* Related: I started re-reading A Game of Thrones yesterday–before the news about A Dance with Dragons hit, no less!–and I’ve now had to put the book down twice in the first few chapters because I was literally too excited by everything to come in this volume and all the subsequent ones to concentrate properly on the page at hand.

* Ron Moore, Michael Rymer, Jamie Bamber, and now James Callis — whose Gaius Baltar was one of my favorite television performances of all time — are all part of the big Battlestar Galactica reunion that Moore’s new supernatural-cop show 17th Precinct is turning into.

* Here’s a typically thoughtful Tom Brevoort Q&A at Comic Book Resources, tackling issues of pricing, title cancellations, submissions and talent recruitment, the status of the X-Men/mutant franchise, character gluts, continuity glitches and more — the difference this time around being that the questions are from one selected message-board user. It’s interesting to see how these issues are approached, and what about them is prioritized, by someone with the perspective of pure fandom.

* Now that’s a good idea for a listicle: Steve Erickson presents the Top 10 Artsploitation Films. Worth the price of admission for the Fat Girl screencap alone. (Via The House Next Door.)

* I first discovered the art of Johnny Negron via Ryan Sands a few weeks ago and had been waiting for the right image to come along to send you his way as well. This was the one.

* Real Life Horror: “Nine Years of Nudity in American Detention.”

* Be a birther, be a racist dogwhistler, be an anti-Muslim bigot, be a homophobe if you must, Mike Huckabee. But what kind of idiot fuckface can’t get behind the idea of impregnating Natalie Portman?

Radiohead released their latest album, The King of Limbs, the other day. I don’t think I see much value in viewing it through the lens of “Radiohead’s weakest album” as does my friend Matthew Perpetua. I get what he’s saying about it being a relatively minor work in their catalog, but to me that’s not because it’s a failed experiment, but on the contrary, because it’s so firmly in the vein of some of their previous work, Amnesiac most especially — which really was an experimental break from their great strength through Kid A, which was melodic catharsis — and also Thom Yorke’s solo album The Eraser and some of the In Rainbows songs. Personally I locate it on a spectrum of lush minimalism (that’s a thing, right?) that also includes Yorke’s album and also recent records by James Blake, the xx, and a couple of Spoon tracks — songs where melody is suggested with such instrumental restraint that they almost feel unfinished, or like the fingers can’t quite push the keys all the way down or strum the strings the whole way. (I also hear the skewed ghost soul of How to Dress Well, but I think that’s because I accidentally left the “Vocal Booster” equalizer on my iPod from when I listened to the Inkstuds Al Columbia interview, so the high notes and loud parts were clipping during my first few listens before I figured out what was up.) It’s also quite a showcase for Phil Selway’s crisp, thumpless drums. I like it, and even before it came out I realized that my nearest point of comparison to Radiohead, in terms of a band that audibly grew from record to record (even though there were some stops and starts and misfires here and there) and yet maintained this consistent a discography across its career, is Led Zeppelin, the second-best band of all time. So good for Radiohead for being really really good.

* Golly gee willikers, today was a big day for Game of Thrones. In addition to the news about A Dance with Dragons‘ release date (and btw, you can preorder it now on Amazon), HBO debuted a full-fledged two-minute-plus trailer for the show. Right now it’s only available in a streaming, unembeddable, non-HD crappy version exclusively on EW.com, but hopefully we’ll get a better version soon that I can share.

* It looks as though the two Hobbit movies will be subtitled The Unexpected Journey and There and Back Again. (I’m just assuming they’ll use the definite article for the former.) I’d figured “There and Back Again” would be involved but wasn’t sure about the other one.

* Today in self-publishing projects from brilliant cartoonists, part one: Ron Regé Jr.’s Yeast Hoist #16: The Chronically Hallucinating Insomniac is being republished by him after a sold-out 100-copy limited edition from French publisher Kaugummi as an even more limited 15-copy edition for $25, with a free drawing from GR2’s latest Post-It note art show thrown in for good measure. Wish I could afford it these days.

* Today in self-publishing projects from brilliant cartoonists, part two: Tom Neely has completed his new graphic novel The Wolf.

* “Martha I’d Like to Fuck.” (I actually think I may have gotten there first.)

* Johnny Ryan draws Junji Ito’s Gyo, courtesy of Ryan Sands.

* Real Life Horror: Today was one of those days where the atavistic, sociopathic, autarchic, bigoted shittiness of our great nation really fucking got to me. Those are links to fully five separate instances of nightmarish heartlessness and idiocy, and I haven’t even gotten to union-busting or Mike Huckabee yet. The Others take it all.

I picked the right day to start re-reading A Song of Ice and Fire.

(via George R.R. Martin)

* My Robot 6 colleague Brigid Alverson’s piece on the decline and fall of manga publisher Tokyopop, culminating in yesterday’s sacking of three top editors, is pretty brutal in that it lays the blame squarely at the feet of apparent absentee head honcho Stu Levy. Hmmm — dilettantish mogul largely abandons the publishing venture that made him successful for other shiny objects, leaving a plethora of talented and dedicated editorial and creative professionals to wither on the vine and/or take the hits for his bad decisions, occasionally returning to insult the field he works in and fire people who work for him? Sounds like someone I know.

* Tom Spurgeon muses on the failure of DC’s First Wave line of pulp-hero comics to really crest.

* Battlestar Galactica‘s Katee Sackhoff wants to play Deena Pilgrim in FX’s tv adaptation of Powers. Related: I want Battlestar Galactica‘s Katee Sackhoff to play Deena Pilgrim in FX’s tv adaptation of Powers. (Thanks for the image, Rob Bricken.)

* Man, staring at that picture makes me realize how much I miss Sackhoff’s weekly presence in my life.

* Uno Moralez draws the Illuminati. Everyone sees his LiveJournal in Cyrllic, right? It’s not just me?

* DO NOT CLICK THIS LINK UNLESS YOU’VE SEEN EVERY SINGLE EPISODE OF LOST. But if you have, by all means click that link.

* I laughed so, so, so hard at this gallery of stupid rock t-shirt mash-ups that Matthew Perpetua and John Gara made for Rolling Stone. I just wish it included a picture of Tori Amos labeled “Björk.”

* If you’ve got an hour and a half to kill and you love David Bowie (the latter is obviously true for me, but not the former, alas), here are two ginormous videos starring him that you can watch. The first is a full performance from 1978, featuring Talking Heads/King Crimson guitar murderer Adrian Belew and an all-killer-no-filler setlist, provided you enjoy “Alabama Song.” The second, believe it or not, is Cracked Actor, the infamous 1975 BBC documentary by Alan Yentob, chronicling David’s supremely coked-out Philly Dogs tour in 1974. (Links via Ryan Sands and Matt Maxwell; Cracked Actor uploaded by @georgelazenby, who isn’t the one-time James Bond actor but is the best Twitter account on all of Twitter.)

Cracked Actor from georgelazenby on Vimeo.

Attentiondeficitdisorderly regrets the delay.

* Neilalien, the first comicsblogger, has retired after an astonishing eleven years of blogging. I talk a little bit about what this means, and what it means to me personally, over at Robot 6.

* Quentin Tarantino has apparently finished putting together the long-promised Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, which will debut theatrically on March 27th with seven new minutes of O-Ren Ishii anime.

* Nine Inch Nails mastermind Trent Reznor, Videodrome/Thriller/The Ring make-up effects demigod Rick Baker, and Velvet Goldmine/Reign of Fire star Christian Bale all won Oscars at the Academy Awards last night. That’s three for the good guys.

* Jinkies, get a load of the new Game of Thrones trailer. This looks pretty much exactly how I’d want it to look. I do feel, however, that I should say I found myself a bit concerned today that it could devolve into a bit of a harridan-off between Catelyn and Cersei. Hopefully it won’t, but after The Walking Dead I think people will certainly be paying attention to this sort of thing, and rightfully so. (Via Westeros.)

* Variety notes that the pending TV show is already boosting book sales in a big way. This link was also via Westeros, which has more.

* Speaking of Westeros, HBO’s official Game of Thrones site interviews Westeros co-founder Elio Garcia. What a delightful story of the impact A Song of Ice and Fire fandom has had on his life.

* Very very pretty A Song of Ice and Fire fanart by Kali Ciesemier: Sansa Stark, Jon Snow, and Brienne of Tarth. (Via Westeros yet again.)

* Finally, they’re a bit pricey, but there are now official Game of Thrones t-shirts featuring the emblems and words of various major Houses. Have we reached Peak Nerd? (Via Winter Is Coming.)

* Zack Soto is relaunching his much-missed alt-superhero/fantasy comic The Secret Voice as a weekly webcomic! Very exciting news.

* FX has greenlit a pilot for an adaptation of Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming’s very good cops-and-capes series Powers. Lots and lots of potential there.

* It’s looking more and more like the upcoming Marvel event Fear Itself will indeed be about giant dudes getting Asgardian warhammers and wrecking shop with them. I fully support this, even given the Tron costume piping.

* Curt Purcell is still working his way through Lost: Here he is on Season Three and Season Four. I have a lot i want to say about all this but I’ll probably wait till he’s finished the series.

* Are these new Cenobite Halloween costumes, designed by Clive Barker himself, the greatest Halloween costumes of all time?

* The Lord of the Rings costume designer Ngila Dickson won’t be working on The Hobbit due to prior commitments. That’s really a shame, and evidence, perhaps, of the potential tolls on talent and experience the films’ endless delays have taken.

* A John Hankiewicz comic I totally missed? Folks, I count on you to prevent things like this from happening.

* Black Swan/Red Hulk.

* Hey, I made Kanye + Comics!

The first page of our brand-new, never-before-seen Destructor story, “Destructor and the Lady,” has been posted. And remember, you can read “Destructor Comes to Croc-Town” and “Prison Break” in their entirety on one continuously scrolling page apiece by clicking those links. We hope you enjoy both the new Destructor tales and the old!

* Brian Chippendale’s Puke Force: the book — due in 2012.

* Solid crop of Eisner Award Hall of Fame selections this year. Good on the judges for increasing the number of inductees to ensure key figures get the recognition they deserve.

* Tell ’em, John Porcellino.

* Nick Bertozzi talks process, with ample illustrations. Really looking forward to reading his new Lewis & Clark book.

* The Comics Journal #301 looks pretty good.

* Benjamin Marra is a constant delight.

* Wow, Paul Pope can draw the crap out of tigers. Now I want to see him do a Captain Marvel story just for his Mister Tawky Tawny.

* I can get behind a version of math-rock behemoth Battles with Gary Numan (among others) on vocals instead of the squeaky-voiced muppet guy. I mean, Gary Numan plus Helmet drummer John Stanier on a song called “My Machines”? Sure, I’ll eat it.

* Matthew Perpetua explains why Led Zeppelin were a better band than the Rolling Stones.

* This Game of Thrones promo kit is some serious swag. Apparently every person they sent it to got a different set of stuff.

The final page of Destructor’s “Prison Break” has been posted. This concludes our posting of the two previously existing Destructor stories. An all-new story starts this Monday.