I have a piece in the new issue of Maxim (the one with Olivia Wilde on the cover) about Final Crisis, featuring some quotes from Grant Morrison. Needless to say, getting Grant Morrison and Final Crisis into Maxim is one of my crowning achievements–though you should see the book I got into the next issue…

* Now it can be told: My pal Kiel Phegley will be co-hosting the weekly Joe Quesada interview series Cup o’ Joe with Jonah Weiland at Comic Book Resources from now on. I understand what the function of these kinds of Head Honcho Spotlight series is, but even still, Kiel’s a bright guy and I expect the intelligence and directness of the questions lobbed Joe Q.’s way to be considerable.

* Evan Dorkin points out some weirdness about MoCCA’s table-reservation process for 2010: Even though they haven’t announced a date for the show yet, you’re still not guaranteed a refund if you have to cancel your reservation. What the blood clot? (Via Tom Spurgeon.)

* The film adaptation of Clive Barker’s Book of Blood comes out on DVD on September 29th. I don’t know why I follow these things so closely when I still haven’t even fucking seen The Midnight Meat Train, but there you have it. (Via Shock Till You Drop.)

* I love this review of John Carpenter’s Escape from New York by Katherine Follett.

* Josh Simmons will draw your portrait! A bargain at any price.

Okay, fine, “churlish” is a funny word. But if you take another look at my post both before and I dropped the c-bomb, you’ll see that your beef with the Armory’s appearance was the only place where I disagreed with what you were saying about MoCCA. Heck, in the immediately preceding sentence I talked about how useful your post in shutting down some silly defenses of the show’s lousy aspects this year, and how you’d pointed out problems I’d lazily taken for granted for so long that I’d never even bothered talking about them. Armory aesthetics aside, I’m on board with all your complaints about this year’s show, as I said in my original post-show post and have now said repeatedly. In calling you a “professional parade rainer” I just meant that you seem like a bit of a grump, which is fine–I didn’t mean to imply that this parade didn’t need a thorough raining-on, because it did.

* My pal TJ Dietsch has conducted an absolutely fascinating interview with Harold Ramis about Ghostbusters. It’s for ToyFare so he leads with a bunch of questions about the toys and video games, but stick with it for gems like this:

Have you seen any of the guys recently?

I talk to Dan a little bit, I’m in touch with Ernie, and Bill I have virtually no contact with. I just keep track of him through his brothers, who I’m still friends with, and other people. You know, he’s a mystery man.

And I’m not sure I knew this about the original premise for the first film:

…the script was pretty much unmakeable the way Dan conceived it. The Marshmallow Man, which is the large-scale effect that really pays off the whole movie, happened around page 50 in Dan’s original script, and things got bigger after that. So, not only was it impractical as a production, it sort of took it too far from the world of the mundane, which is where the comic edge was really vivid. Ivan and I had a similar thought independently. We thought the origin story would be really interesting, how the Ghostbusters came to be Ghostbusters, who were these guys, how did this happen, whereas Dan’s original script surpassed all that. He projected into a time in the future when ghost occurrences were common, when Ghostbusters were around pretty much like Orkin exterminators, that there were a bunch of teams around, and that the Ghostbusters in Dan’s script were just one of many teams of ghost exterminators in New York.

Sounds like a sequel waiting to happen, no?

* Speaking of juicy interviews, Chris Mautner speaks with PictureBox honcho Dan Nadel about adopting a pledge/preorder/subscription model for some of his books, the all-adventure-stories Art Out of Time 2, and more.

* The staff of Clive Barker’s official website Revelations has seen a 144-minute workprint of Nightbreed! And they say there’s even more footage out there. Pray to Eris that the Director’s Cut of this film happens. (Via Dread Central.)

* The trailer for Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island has been making the rounds, and taking the horror sites by storm–if I had a nickel for every big gorehound site that said something to the effect of “I wasn’t sure whether or not to cover this movie until I saw this trailer” I’d have, I dunno, fifteen cents. Is it Marty’s Shining, or a second Cape Fear? Either way I’m sound as a pound.

* Battlestar Galactica‘s Ronald D. Moore has been speaking with SciFi Wire. First he sounds off on a variety of issues: fan reaction to the BSG finale (for the record: maybe the best series finale I’ve ever seen), the Caprica pilot’s DVD release (I still haven’t seen it!) and the current status of the series, and the revelation that they’ve brought in another writer to work on the prequel to The Thing he was writing the screenplay for. And here he is on the prospects for Virtuality, his new Fox movie/pilot, depending on whether you’re talking to Fox or to him.

* Torture Link of the Day: Andrew Sullivan traces the history of the word “torture” in The New York Times, noting how the paper once didn’t hesitate to refer to the techniques the Bush administration adopted as torture when done by other regimes, but switched to Newspeak when American torture enthusiasts began insisting these techniques weren’t torture.

* Now this is what I’m talking about: I Knew It Was You, a short documentary about the late great actor John Cazale, the man with the single greatest resume in the history of filmmaking.

* Drawn & Quarterly’s Jessica Campbell’s MoCCA photo parade includes a photo of yours truly with my David Bowie sketchbook in action, but I am not reposting it here because on this blog, at least, I can maintain control of my image and edit out unflattering views. (All that hair is already gone, by the way. Thanks, Armory–lesson learned!)

Time for the MoCCA 2009 edition of Sean’s David Bowie Sketchbook! Let’s get right into it:

Gabrielle Bell: Gabrielle took more time on her sketch than any other artist I’ve gotten a sketch from, I think. Time well spent. A young Mod Bowie, taking tea.

Ron Rege Jr.: A favorite of mine since my earliest days as a grown-up comics reader, Ron debated whether or not to use the photoref I had–he figured he could pull it off with the Ziggy mullet alone. He ultimately used the photo reference, but gave it a very mullet-centric spin. Ron also has the benefit of being a genuine rock star, which adds verisimilitude.

Nora Krug: I think Nora Krug had the shortest span of time of any artist in the book between my first becoming aware of her work and getting a sketch from her–a timespan of approximately one minute.

David Mack: David Mack based his sketch on one of Bowie’s painted self-portriats, but added the disembodied aspect and the flames. He’s alight with the flame of rock and roll, I think.

Kate Beaton: With her rich history of drawing dandies, I knew Kate Beaton would kill on this.

Tom Gauld: Hailing from the UK, Tom Gauld was a guy I was lucky to get, a real coup. Note the reappearance of the everpopular eyepatch.

Cliff Chiang: Cliff knew exactly what era of Bowie he wanted to draw. I think the vampire idea was given to him by an onlooker we were chatting with, though I forget how “vampire” came up in conversation. Either way, damn. Cliff is one of the most talented artists in mainstream comics right now–I’m really glad I nabbed him.

Randall Munroe: When I approached xkcd artist Randall Munroe for a sketch, I debated whether or not to hand him my photo reference books. I ultimately did, not wanting to be insulting. He looked at me and said, after a pregnant pause, “Nnnnnnnnaaaaaaaah, I don’t need photo reference. Good artists need photo reference, not me.” Note the Labyrinth reference and the clever solution to the problem of how to depict tight pants when you draw stick figures.

Hans Rickheit: Hans Rickheit is the guy I always name when asked for a cartoonist who deserves more attention than he gets. I can’t wait for his Fantagraphics book The Squirrel Machine to put him on more people’s radar. In the meantime he gave me this richly detailed rendition of Bowie in full “man’s dress” regalia–enacting one of my favorite idiomatic expressions (“you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a [noun] in here”) to boot.

Dave Kiersh: Dave K. is one of my big personal favorite cartoonists–I’ve loved his stuff ever since coming across it in Jordan Crane’s NON #5, one of the first big alternative comics I came across–and after an abortive attempt to get a sketch from him while he was waiting for his ride home on Saturday night, he hollered at me as I passed his table on Sunday and delivered this Mod-era rendition. Dave is a poet of teenage-dom, so teen Bowie is a delightful choice for him.

Lisa Hannawalt: Lisa was actually working at the Buenaventura booth when I asked her to do a sketch for me, so she ended up doing it while standing up and taking people’s money. She is not the first person of roughly my generation to draw a Bowie sketch emphasizing his Labyrinth-era bulge, and she will no doubt not be the last.

Seth: Was there any doubt which era Bowie Seth would pick? This is one of those sketches that makes people say “Whoa” in a hushed voice.

Geoff Grogan: Geoff, who came out of nowhere with one of my favorite comics of 2008, Look Out!! Monsters, really took his time with this sucker, and produced one of the few Bowie sketches I’ve gotten that emphasize David’s androgyny. I’m really fond of it.

Scott Campbell: Scott C. did that terrific "Building with the Bowies" drawing that went around the Internet a few weeks ago, so when I found out from my pal Rickey Purdin that he was at the show I got psyched to get a sketch from him–and when Scott found out from Rickey that I was at the show, he got psyched to give me one. Unfortunately this happened as I was on my way out the door on Saturday evening. But I ended up returning on Sunday and tracked him down toot sweet. Then, like a jerk, I rushed him so that I could get on line for David Mazzucchelli (who, it turns out, wasn’t doing sketches). He did a terrific job anyway.

BONUS SKETCH FROM NEW YORK COMIC CON 2009!

Ross Campbell: I originally used this sketch as my debut post over at Savage Critic(s), but of course I want to show it off over here too. I was very, very excited to get a Bowie sketch from Ross at NYCC, but not having anticipated the demand for sketching, he didn’t bring a pencil. I loaned him my pen, and he was concerned about not being able to make a mistake, but drew this anyway. This was done entirely without photo reference, which amazes me–he NAILED that Labyrinth hairstyle. As you can see, he wasn’t happy with the hand, but he’s being entirely too hard on himself.

* Tom Spurgeon’s latest post on MoCCA points out the dysfunctional aspect of comics culture whereby complaining about anything is seen as meritless whining that spoils everyone’s good time rather than an attempt to redress legitimate problems instead of simply saying “thank you sir, may I have another.” He also reprints a lulzy thank-you letter from MoCCA that seems to indicate that the organization doesn’t grok the seriousness of the problems with this year’s show even at this comparatively late date. Or maybe they just didn’t feel like the thank-you note was the appropriate place to address those problems, I dunno. It’s not a good look given the climate, I can tell you that.

* Jog has posted a nice long comics-centric MoCCA recap, if you’re looking for something on the upside.

* This may be the most insulting thing anyone has ever said about the work of Brian K. Vaughan:

[Shia] LaBeouf tells Wizard magazine that [BKV’s Y: The Last Man protagonist] Yorick is too similar to his “Transformers” role of Sam Witwicky.

“You take Sam and you put a monkey on his shoulder,” said LaBeouf of Yorick’s sidekick Ampersand. “I don’t know if it’s that big a differential. It seems like he’s the ordinary guy in an extraordinary situation again.”

This guy really is as big of a tool as he seems, huh? (Via Jason Adams.)

* These days it seems like if I wrote up every terrifying shooting by some thug with a deranged political agenda I’d be blogging about nothing else, but there’s something uniquely horrifying about a World War II veteran turned raving anti-Semite, Holocaust denier, and old-school Illuminati conspiracy theorizer murdering people at the Holocaust Museum.

* Torture Link of the Day: London cops are under investigation for waterboarding suspects in a marijuana case. Torturing people over pot. Western values!

* But you know what, let’s end on an up note with a gratuitous picture of young Patti Smith. Homina homina. Mapplethorpe wasn’t tough to look at either if that’s what you’re into. (Via Elvis Depressley.)

* The Comics Blogosphere in two sentences:

The writer J. Caleb Mozzocco notes the wind-down of Marvel’s Ultimate Universe effort, and points to The Ultimates Volume Three as perhaps the worst comic book ever. He starts reviewing individual issues with #1.

* Corporate superhero comics in one sentence:

This summer Marvel Comics is in the process of ending their Ultimate line of comics, with the intention of relaunching the line as Ultimate Comics.

* I think Heidi MacDonald’s MoCCA wrap-up is particularly worth reading after Kiel Phegley’s report for CBR. Heidi’s welcome point is that the show had serious problems that need serious fixes. However, dig the quotes that Kiel collects from MoCCA museum director Karl Erickson on the show’s inability to open on time on Saturday:

“It was one of those crisis of being much more successful than we anticipated…A lot more exhibitors had shipped their books to us so it took a lot longer to load up the truck. And in a New York summer, there were all sorts of street festivals on our planned route here, so those two things combined [caused the delay].”

…and on the oppressive heat in the venue:

“We’re sorry about the heat as this happens in the city in the summer with thousands of people in one room.”

They seem to treat obvious facts of life for the show (it’s popular and it takes place in the summer in New York) as excuses for this year’s screw-ups rather than easily anticipatable and surmountable factors that should never have been allowed to become screw-ups in the first place. Now, these quotes were taken from day-of on-the-floor interviews as far as I know, so maybe MoCCA officials hadn’t gotten a sense of the big picture yet. And my guess is that after arguably the first bad post-show buzz MoCCA has ever experienced (because seriously, this show is usually MAGIC), Erickson and the other honchos will take a much closer look at things. But for now those quotes, and a similar vibe Heidi says she detected, don’t exactly inspire confidence.

* Tim O’Neil expands upon his previously stated fondness for the Star Wars prequels. You know, the more I think about this the more torn I feel. I don’t hate the movies at all, I enjoyed them all a lot (particularly Revenge of the Sith), I think they all have moments of great visual poetry and usually in that “spectacular representation of emotion” way I love so much, yet they seem to obviously lack a certain spark that the first three movies had no matter how much you can pick apart elements of the prequels for praise. I can say they’ve never made me regret getting that Rebel Alliance insignia tattoo back in ’97, though.

* Torture Links of the Day: The Lieberman-Graham legislation to permanently suppress the release of more detainee photos has been squashed, so Lieberman and Graham are threatening to shut down the Senate until it’s un-squashed. I guess that in much the same way as sex is something so dirty and sinful you should only do it with someone you love, “enhanced interrogation techniques” are so legal and effective and in tune with America’s values that we should never allow any evidence of them to see the light of day?

Jason’s Spider-Man story from Marvel’s Strange Tales MAX exclusively previewed…at the Fantagraphics blog.

* Now is the time where everyone links to everyone else’s MoCCA wrap-up reports.

* Tom Spurgeon compiles the most pertinent info and opinion, good bad and ugly, coupling it with a reminder that despite the good, the bad was probably actually bad and don’t let’s deny it. He notes something I’d meant to mention myself: there were actually empty tables this year, which seemed weird.

* On that point, he links to a comment from professional parade-rainer Evan Dorkin, who provides a useful rejoinder to the people who were saying “it wasn’t that hot in there” (I promise you, it was that hot in there) and makes mention of some perpetual problems I’d just taken for granted: how badly the festival is promoted on MoCCA’s website and how inaccurate and out-of-date the exhibitor list ended up being. (For example, if I had a nickel for everyone who came up to me desperately searching for Kate Beaton, I’d have two bits easy.) On the other hand I think it’s pretty churlish to compare the Armory to some personality-free high-school gymnasium.

* While we’re mining for comment-thread gold, here at ADDTF Cheese Hasselberger of House of Twelve notes that the early-bird price for a table at next year’s MoCCA will be a whopping $400; he can only speculate how much more exorbitant the full price will be. I can’t imagine how that doesn’t price most of the minicomics makers and self-publishers right out of the show, no? Couple that with all the administrative snafus and the potentially kiln-like venue and folks could stay away in droves, seriously. And that would be really sad because MoCCA done right instills confidence in comics as an art form like no other show.

* I enjoyed Heidi Mac’s Saturday-night report, which contained the interesting factoid that the more flush shows and events at the Armory rent ACs. I really can’t get over how MoCCA could book a venue with no air conditioning after several brutally hot years at the old location, including the immediately preceding year.

* I also liked Brian Heater’s extremely comprehensive report, maybe the most professional picture of the show this year.

* My report’s here, if you missed it. I want to state again for the record how much I prefer the “everything in one big room” model to the “everything in a labyrinthine combination of rooms” model.

* Of course, if you prefer your MoCCA reports to contain drawings of the Golden Age Nite Owl from Watchmen by Seth, look no further than Rickey Purdin’s!

* Speaking of, Tom Spurgeon interviews Seth. Douglas Wolk flagged a passage of great interest to me:

I’m a guy who has a fake name. I used to have long silver peroxide hair. I used to walk around in a judge’s robe and welders goggles. I now walk around in a gabardine overcoat and a fedora. I named my house. Clearly I am interested in persona and self-mythologizing.

I’ve never quite figured out how to square that aspect of Seth’s gestalt with his old-timey aesthetic, which seems to be as much about authenticity as anything else. Watching him draw live and in person was sort of revelatory–his line “makes sense” to me now in ways it didn’t before–so I’m going to try to delve into his work a bit more and see what I can come up with.

* Torture Links of the Day: American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee have been “convicted” of “spying” in a North Korean “court,” meaning they could be subjected to the very torture techniques American interrogators cribbed from NoKo and ChiCom torturers via our military’s SERE training. Elsewhere, ABC News interviews Lakhdar Boumediene, the Red Crescent worker captured, tortured, and held without charge by America for nearly eight years for the crime of…absolutely nothing. (Via Glenn Greenwald, who provides context in terms of how the fact that Guantanamo is full of innocent men like Boumediene is nearly always elided by both sides of the debate over detainee policy.)

* A Heavy Metal remake with segments directed by James Cameron, David Fincher, Gore Verbinski, Zack Snyder, and Jack Black & the guy who did Kung Fu Panda? As announced by Kevin Eastman to FilmSchoolRejects.com? Yeah, color me skeptical. (Via Topless Robot.)

* Finally, the new, needlessly-well-animated-by-Alex-Kropinak episode of Marvel Superheroes: What The–?! is up! I LOL’d, and not even at one of the gags I wrote.

Bitching first:

* Why on earth would the MoCCA organizers book a venue with not just inadequate air conditioning, but no air conditioning? The number-one complaint (certainly my number-one complaint) about the old venue was that it was too hot, until they added the seventh floor, at which point the number-one complaint became how long the elevator took to get you up to the seventh floor, which was too hot. So they go through the trouble of moving the festival to a building with no air conditioning in New York City in June? So weird. It was seriously beastly in there, and I spoke with one big exhibitor who thought reports and/or experience of the heat on Saturday kept Sunday customers away. And as The Missus just put it to me, it could easily have been 100 degrees instead of 80 degrees this weekend, which would have made it probably literally unbearable for many potential customers. Why pay money to come and be uncomfortable when you can shop online? The word of mouth is going to be murder on this issue, so I really hope MoCCA does something different next year.

* Meanwhile Saturday morning was a big mess. It’s not just that MoCCA brought over a bunch of publishers’ books too late and had to postpone opening by an hour, leaving people on line in the hot sun (I had to wait on the line and I got there at 12:15!), it’s also that communication about this was so poor that people on the line barely had any idea why it was opening late, and I spoke with at least one exhibitor who didn’t even know the opening was delayed in the first place–he just thought it was really slow for that first hour! Then it screwed up all the panel times and the signage was inadequate about that. So yeah, overall, not a good year for MoCCA as an organization.

* That said, in theory I like the new place. It was a nice walk over from Penn Station, it’s still in a weird old building rather than a bland convention center or hotel, and having everything in one room improved navigability in much the same way that SPX’s similar move did.

* All the big publishers I spoke with said that sales on Saturday were phenomenal. Webcomics Row was always absurdly crowded too, and lines for guys like Adrian Tomine and David Mazzucchelli and the Humbug legends were of rock-star length. (Randall Munroe of xkcd fame didn’t have a line per se–he was simply constantly mobbed.)

* For the little guys, minicomics folks, self-publishers, that sort of thing, though, the folks I talked to said it was just alright. I think when you had big expensive books like You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation, Tales Designed to Thrizzle, Asterios Polyp, George Sprott and so on debuting, that’s where people’s money went and there was less to spread around.

* My spending was a little different than normal this year: I kind of knew going in I’d be buying a lot of things, and I pretty much walked right in and tracked all that stuff down immediately. The Hanks and Kupperman books from Fantagraphics, Mat Brinkman’s Multiforce and the new Frank Santoro/Lane Milburn Cold Heat Special from Picturebox, Tom Gauld’s The Gigantic Robot from Buenaventura, etc. This was probably stupid because I then had to lug those mothers around all day yesterday, but I wasn’t going to risk not getting them.

* On the other hand, there were a lot of books I was pleasantly surprised to see. Kaz Strzepek’s Mourning Star Vol. 2 from Bodega, Chrome Fetus #7 from Hans Rickheit, a bunch of new minis from Partyka, a five, five dollar, five dollar hardcover of abstract comics from Henrik Rehr called Reykjavik…plenty of happy discoveries along those lines.

* The European contingents could really eat your wallet right up, and there were more of them this year than ever before. Between Nora Krug’s cool-looking suite of Red Riding Hood Redux books and a thick black book of Lorenzo Mattotti sketches of couples in bed, for instance, I plunked down a lot of cash at the Bries table. I think the international flavor helps set MoCCA apart from the other indie/alt/small-press shows.

* Overall I spent more money here than I had at any MoCCA since that insane year when Blankets, Kramers Ergot 4, and The Frank Book debuted. Got more Bowie sketches than ever before, too, I think–more on those to come, of course!

* Somewhere there exists a photograph, taken by Tim Hodler, of me, Jog, and NeilAlien.

* MoCCA is always a highlight of my comics year, probably THE highlight of my comics year. I love it. Make sure to come next year!

* If you’re looking for me at MoCCA tomorrow, I will be wearing a red Partyka t-shirt and sporting longish hair that sorta curls outward on the sides like Pippi Longstocking. I’m also a bit on the beardy side at the moment, unless I get fed up and shave tomorrow morning.

* Of all today’s MoCCA previews and guides, I like Chris Mautner’s the best since it’s the most squarely focused on “books to buy/people to see.” The Panelists show at Giant Robot Saturday night also looks like it could be pretty sweet.

* I’m really glad Marvel has finally announced its long-gestating altcomix superhero series Strange Tales MAX. You’ll be seeing a lot more from me on that particular project.

* Hey, artist Sean Gordon Murphy’s art for the upcoming Grant Morrison Vertigo comic Joe the Barbarian. Looks like a Morrisonian take on Toyland is afoot.

* Tom Spurgeon reviews Gilbert Hernandez’s Luba. ‘Nuff said.

* Edward James Olmos reminds us that Battlestar Galactica: The Plan is on its way in September. I kind of always thought it was weird that they’d release a two-hour movie after the series finale, doubly so after how final that finale ended up feeling.

* Matt Maxwell notes that Agents of Atlas sales increased for the series’ third issue according to Paul O’Brien’s Marvel month-to-month sales analysis for April. A welcome development following the cancellation of Captain Britain and MI-13.

* Tim O’Neil passionately defends the Star Wars prequels. There are a couple of great (though probably not likely to be Lucas-approved) bits in there if you’re like me and walked out of those movies thinking “I was supposed to hate these?”

* CRwM reviews the Battle Royale franchise’s every iteration, pretty much. I still have the complete set of the Tokyopop/Keith Giffen adaptation of the manga sitting around at least 50% unread. I’m gonna sit down and plow through them at some point–I remember them being enjoyable trash, Giffen’s tics notwithstanding. As for CRwM’s take on it, how’s this for a chilling aside in the post-Handley era?

In fact, there are several scenes that, given current US laws concerning the illegality of even drawn representations of explicit underage sex, make the book too questionable to risk owning, in my opinion.

* Torture Link of the Day: Looks like liberal House Democrats are blocking the passage of the Graham-Lieberman-sponsored, Obama-supported bill to permanently block the release of any more detainee-abuse photos.

* When I worked at Wizard there were entire areas of the office’s physical plant dedicated to nothing but the bizarre ephemera accumulated by the various magazines from their, uh, readers, I guess is the word? This bizarre letter was definitely a highlight.

This is my favorite live recording of any song, ever. As you’d expect, Bootsy Collins kills it on the bass, particularly toward the end, but the real star here is his brother Catfish and his astonishing guitar solo. I don’t want to oversell it, so just listen, and get back to me after the moment horns kick back in after the solo.

* Dread Central presents a long, entertaining interview with Teri McMinn, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre‘s Pam. If, like me, you’ve seen that movie enough times to be able to appreciate questions about specific shots (and in McMinn’s case you know the ones I’m talking about), this is pure gold.

* Big news from PictureBox: Mat Brinkman’s Multiforce will be available at MoCCA! Full specs here. Brinkman is the author of one of my all-time favorite comics, Teratoid Heights, but he’s spent the last several years joining Dave Cooper and Marc Bell in the “great cartoonists we’ve lost to the goddamn art galleries” club, so a gigantic new Brinkman comic (of material serialized between 2000-2005, but still) is a thing of great joy.

* The two-hour pilot for Battlestar Galactica impresario Ronald D. Moore’s new Fox series Virtuality (ugh) has been consigned to the Friday Night Death Slot. Oh dear.

* My pal Kiel Phegley interviews Batman and Robin artist Frank Quitely. Meanwhile, Jog reviews Batman and Robin #1 and its fellow Grant Morrison comic Seaguy: Slaves of Mickey Eye #3.

* MoCCA is this weekend! I haven’t missed one since the festival’s inception and this year will be no exception, though I will most likely waste at least part of it wandering around the empty halls of the Puck Building wondering where everyone went after heading down there on autopilot. (They’ve relocated the show to here.) I think I’ll have some comics available for purchase courtesy of the Partyka crew and Matt Rota. And if you see me, be sure to say hello–I’d tell you what my hair is going to look like but that’s anybody’s guess at this point.

* Also on the MoCCA beat: Tom Spurgeon suggests 25 things to do at the show, while local yokel Heidi MacDonald recommends some restaurants and bars in the new venue’s neighborhood.

* Clive Barker has a Twitter! On it, he breaks the news that Martyrs director Pascal Laugier is no longer attached to the Hellraiser remake. (This is the second time that the remake has lost the director of a high-profile extreme French horror movie–last time around it was Maury and Bustillo, the guys who did Inside.) He also complains about the obstinancy of Morgan Creek, the studio that cut Nightbreed, either lost or sat on the deleted material for years, and refuses to allow the creation of a Director’s Cut now that it’s been found: “NIGHTBREED will always be ‘that dumb movie where Barker tries to make the monsters the good guys because he’s queer.'”. Mostly, however, it’s a stream of awesomely Barkerian musings about the eroticism of his grandmother’s Bible and suchlike. Go, follow. (Via Bloody Disgusting.)

* Speaking of Barker, The Vault of Horror’s B-Sol shakes his fists at the heavens over the shoddy treatment Barker has gotten from Hollywood recently with projects like The Midnight Meat Train and the proposed Nightbreed Director’s Cut. Barker’s career is littered with similar coulda woulda shoulda incidents, from Nightbreed‘s original handling to the dissolution of the Abarat deal with Disney. I think the sad fact of the matter is that Hellraiser‘s modern-classic status and Stephen King’s endorsement notwithstanding, Barker is simply not a mainstream taste, even by horror standards. I’m sort of amazed his work has as large a following as it does.

* My pal Kiel Phegley speaks to Geoff Johns about Green Lantern and the upcoming event comic Blackest Night for Publishers Weekly. I really like the sell-out of all the various Lantern Corps t-shirts at New York Comic Con being used as a data point.

* Oh, terrific, They’re remaking Total Recall. Maybe they can make it less crazy! Wouldn’t that be nice! (Via Dread Central.)

* Paul Hornschemeier is taking commissions. Extremely reasonably priced commissions at that. I’ve got some ideas.

* Torture Link of the Day: Vice President Dick Cheney personally oversaw at least four congressional briefings on the torture of detainees. I’m sort of amazed at the extent to which he was really personally invested in and enthused about torturing people. (Via Marcy Wheeler.)

* Finally, I’m not nearly as hard on the Star Wars prequels as most people I know. I enjoyed all of them, I thought Revenge of the Sith was an honest-to-god great movie with tons of weird stuff going on, I think the duel at the end of The Phantom Menace is one of the all-time great movie fight scenes, etc. etc. etc. That said, there are any number of missed opportunities a hardcore Star Wars fan such as myself can point to without resorting to insulting George Lucas or Hayden Christensen or Jar-Jar Binks or whoever else you want to make into the heel. For example, the movies were set in a time where there weren’t just two or three living Jedi, but hundreds or thousands, so as a guy with a Rebel Alliance insignia tattoo on my right arm I can assure you that what people like me really wanted to see was a Braveheart-style battle of tons of lightsaber-wielding Jedi against either tons of lightsaber-wielding Sith or tons of jetpack-sporting Mandalorian knights (the Boba Fett guys). Instead there were fights with robots. This trailer for the upcoming Star Wars Old Republic MMORPG delivers something the movies could have and should have but didn’t. Which is awesome to see, finally, but a little heartbreaking that we’re seeing it for the first time in a commercial for a video game.

DOWNLOAD PART 1

Five Years / Changes / “Heroes” / Breaking Glass / Ziggy Stardust / Look Back in Anger / Fashion / Modern Love / Panic in Detroit / Rebel Rebel / China Girl / A New Career in a New Town / Life on Mars? / Beauty and the Beast / Sound and Vision / Let’s Dance / John, I’m Only Dancing (Saxophone Version) / Space Oddity / Ashes to Ashes / Subterraneans

DOWNLOAD PART 2

Station to Station / Under Pressure (w/Queen) / I’m Afraid of Americans (V1) (w/Nine Inch Nails) / Joe the Lion / Oh! You Pretty Things / Young Americans / Moonage Daydream / Blue Jean / Always Crashing in the Same Car / Be My Wife / Dead Man Walking / Time / Fame / 5:15 The Angels Have Gone / Suffragette City / Stay / Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide

Recently I discovered that a friend of mine who’d been enjoying the mixes I’d been posting had as close to zero exposure to or knowledge of David Bowie as you can get in contemporary society. I think the only Bowie song he knew that he knew (there are known knowns and unknown knowns, after all) was “Changes.” Per his request, and per my own Bowie fixation, I made the two-part mix you see above.

I’m not going to even pretend to be disinterested or objective or discerning when it comes to Bowie–I love virtually everything he’s ever done to pieces. So making a mix was tough, particularly because I couldn’t just take the big hits as read since my buddy had never heard them, or at least never put them all together with Bowie. But nor did I just want to reproduce the many Best Of collections that already exist. (I personally recommend the three-part series that spans 1969-1974, 1974-1979, and 1980-1987–strong selections and lovely art direction.) So this ended up being a combination of a goodly number of Bowie’s giant, monstrous, undeniable singles with a selection of my own personal favorites. It’s not a crate-diving project by any stretch of the imagination–no B-sides, no live recordings, a grand total of just four tracks post-Let’s Dance (including a paltry three from his immensely enjoyable ’90s/’00s altrock-god renaissance) and merely one pre-Hunky Dory, and no Tin Machine whatsoever–but I think it’s an enjoyable blend of rock-radio staples and interesting album cuts that will hopefully make my friend fall in love with David Bowie.