15. An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories Vol. 2 (Ivan Brunetti et al, Yale University Press)/Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*! (Art Spiegelman, Pantheon)/Love & Rockets: New Stories #1 (Gilbert, Jaime, and Mario Hernandez, Fantagraphics); MOME Vols. 10, 11, and 12 (Gary Groth and Eric Reynolds, editors, Fantagraphics)/Nocturnal Conspiracies (David B., NBM)/Pocket Full of Rain and Other Stories (Jason, Fantagraphics)

I love short comic stories (duh), and this year offered a bumper crop.

14. Tales Designed to Thrizzle #4 (Michael Kupperman, Fantagraphics)

Hilarious, but also amazingly drawn, which I think people miss.

13. The Mage’s Tower (Lane Milburn, Closed Caption Comics)/Powr Mastrs Vol. 2 (C.F., PictureBox Inc.)

The avant-garde fantasy slot. As with early Roxy Music or Björk, the familiar genre constraints give them the freedom to really run wild with style, tone, and effect.

12. All Star Superman (Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely, DC)/B.P.R.D. and related titles (Mike Mignola, John Arcudi et al, Dark Horse)/The Immortal Iron Fist (Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, David Aja et al, Marvel)

Fine, personal superhero comics.

11. Look Out!! Monsters (Geoff Grogan, self-published)

Powerful, political collage.

10. Water Baby (Ross Campbell, DC/Minx)

Sexy, sleazy, and sad.

9. I Live Here (Mia Kirshner, J.B. MacKinnon, Paul Shoebridge, Michael Simons, et al, Pantheon)

Eye-opening, soul-crushing work.

8. Boy’s Club 2 (Matt Furie, Buenaventura Press)

The funniest comic around.

7. Big Questions #11 (Anders Nilsen, Drawn & Quarterly)

Dark, devastating horror.

6. Kramers Ergot 7 (Sammy Harkham et al, Buenaventura Press)

Alt/art comics’ summarizing statement.

5. Capacity (Theo Ellsworth, Secret Acres)

An idiosyncratic knockout of a debut, mesmerizing both visually and narratively.

4. Travel (Yuichi Yokoyama, PictureBox Inc.)

Thrillingly abstract, abstractly thrilling, LOL, bravura, beautiful comics-making.

3. Final Crisis/Batman: R.I.P. (Grant Morrison et al, DC)

The most gripping, formally daring superhero comics I’ve read in ages. For raw entertainment value they were tough to beat.

2. Skyscrapers of the Midwest (Joshua W. Cotter, AdHouse)

A landmark debut.

1. ACME Novelty Library #19 (Chris Ware, Acme Novelty Library/Drawn & Quarterly)

Savagely scary science fiction and equally brutal pointilist portraiture. Career-best work from the best cartoonist in the world.

Learned on Gossip Girl tonight: Chuck Bass has a mild form of clairvoyance that alerts him to any nearby sexual assaults.

* The big news in comics circles is that Diamond, the monopoly distributor of comic books to comic shops, is raising its minimum order cutoff from $1500 to $2500. Tom Spurgeon and Heidi MacDonald have both rounded up reactions and posted thoughts on the potentially chilling effect this move will have on the small press. I was particularly troubled by PictureBox Inc. publisher Dan Nadel’s comment to Tom that titles like Travel, Powr Mastrs, Cold Heat, and Goddess of War would not have made the cut. Admittedly, there are a lot of issues at work here that complicate Diamond’s decision beyond the black-hatted “aiding the powerful and popular at the expense of the independent and idiosyncratic” interpretation of this move: the cataclysmic overall economic picture; the legions of small-press companies that put out comics of dubious quality using methods of dubious reliability; the fact that it doesn’t sound like that cutoff is automatic, et cetera. Still, it’s most likely very bad news for some very good comics.

* Jim Woodring has announced the creation of a new 96-page Frank book. Everyone’s happy about it except Manhog.

* Tim O’Shea interviews John Arcudi, co-writer of the excellent BPRD.

* Marc-Oliver Frisch really goes to bat in favor of Final Crisis #6. This bit made me laugh:

One of the features of a good work of fiction is that you can pick out pretty much any element in it and find that it’s somehow plugged into the work’s larger theme. And here, indeed, the theme is everywhere. It’s in the “God-Weapon” Brainiac 5 shows Superman, “a machine that turns thoughts into things” (Hey, kids: comics?).

* Bruce Baugh‘s post about how ruins-based World of Warcraft settings make him feel like his place needs cleaning made me chuckle.

* My Bloody Valentine 3D? Sure, I’ll eat it.

* Whoa man: Kent Williams’s Wolverine: Meltdown Covered by Renee French.

* God I love the rainbow of Lanterns. Now in toy form! (Look out for a Blackest Night spoiler at the link, though.)

* Sorry, Tilda: Bowie does it better.

* Speaking of Bowie, here he is with a little fat man who sold his soul.

* Finally:

—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mephis, Tennessee, April 3, 1968.

What do you think it was like for the Edge when he came up with that riff? Like, he’s sitting around with his guitar, trying this, trying that, and then suddenly that riff comes out. Then he’s like, “Hmm. That’s…that’s something, alright.” And he calls the rest of the band in and he’s like “Hey guys, check this out, what do you think of this?”

It’s kind of amazing to me that music like that is actually the product of some human being’s trial and error, you know? I mean, when you hit on something like that, how must that feel?

Anyway, today is a wonderful, wonderful Martin Luther King Day.

* WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD. Don’t read this entry unless you’ve seen last night’s episode of Battlestar Galactica.

* Your BSG must-read of the day: The Chicago Tribune’s Maureen Ryan has assembled a series of lengthy interviews with head honcho Ron Moore, writers Bradley Thompson and David Weddle, and director Michael Nankin about last night’s episode. One thing they bring up again and again is that everyone involved believed the episode, the last to be filmed before the writers’ strike shut down production, would be the last BSG episode ever, and consciously gave their all with that in mind. Just make sure to watch out when Ryan chimes in with her thoughts at the end of the piece, because she throws in a major, major spoiler for The Shield out of the blue.

* SciFi Wire interviews Kandyse “Dualla” McClure about her final episode, while the LA Times speaks with Kate Vernon about her return as Ellen Tigh and the reveal of Ellen’s status as the Final Cylon.

* The House Next Door’s Todd VanDerWerff returns to resume his strong weekly recap/reviews of the series.

* Jim Henley has my favorite take on last night’s big Final Cylon reveal: in essence, “It’s so crazy it just might work!” I’ve never been much for the “Who are the Final Five?” mythology mystery, but I have to say that solving it this way really impressed me. First of all, I can’t imagine very many people had “Ellen Tigh” in their Final Cylon office pool–any of the major, obvious candidates would have felt anticlimactic, but this was a genuine and welcome curveball. Secondly, it makes Michael “Col. Tigh” Hogan the emotional lynchpin of the remainder of the mythology, a decision akin to how the producers of Lost decided to center their show around Michael Emerson, i.e. a brilliant one. I sure am glad, however, that the “next week on BSG” promo spelled out who exactly was the Final Cylon, because otherwise the Ellen/Starbuck debate would be raging right now.

* Finally, both Variety and the LA Times have tons of interviews and features on the show. While away the hours.

You know what? It does.

Thanks, Shaggy!

On sale for freaking $8.98! Even with shipping it’s like $15, which is the best price for a t-shirt you can find.

Dear Sean,

Thank you for shopping at Hottopic.com!

Note that orders are processed Monday through Friday. Please allow a processing time of 1-2 business

days before your order is shipped.

Your Hot Topic order number is: XXXXXXX

Order date: 2009-01-16 20:57:58

Status of your Hot Topic order: Sent to Warehouse

(Via David Paggi.)

Beyoncé makes the world a better place.

(via – hat tip)

* Sean news one: the official ToyFare blog reminds us that I’m going to be joining some of my colleagues on the New York Comic Con’s Twisted ToyFare Theater panel. So go check it out!

* Sean news two: Just making sure that everyone caught “A Real Gentle Knife”, a comic based on a song by Golden Boy and Miss Kittin, written by me, and drawn by Josiah Leighton, over at Top Shelf 2.0.

* Battlestar Galactica returns tonight, and to celebrate, SciFi Wire has put together a pretty terrific feature in which virtually the entire cast talks about their favorite moments in making the series. Michael “Colonel Tigh” Hogan’s is a goddamn doozy:

“The whole cast was there because we were burying the soldiers. It was the funeral,” says Hogan. “Adama talks about how we have to be responsible for the things that we have done, and at the end of that … We didn’t really know each other, any of the cast members, and didn’t really know what to expect, especially as far as acting, because this was first day of principal photography.

“Adama finishes this speech and then says, ‘So say we all,’ and I guess we sort of mumbled, ‘So say we all.’ Eddie [Olmos] kind of looked at all of us and said it again, ‘So say we all.’ Well, we weren’t ready for that, so we said, ‘So say we all.’ And he looked at us and said, ‘SO SAY WE ALL.’ And he got us all going, and it was a chilling, chilling time. It was like, ‘Whoa,’ and by the end of it the whole room, the hundreds of us, are just yelling, “SO SAY WE ALL!” And that wasn’t in the script. When that was over you were kind of, ‘Whoa boy, we’re in for a ride now’…”

* Meanwhile, The House Next Door’s Todd VanDerWerff talks to the director of tonight’s BSG premiere, Michael Nankin. It’s a really interesting conversation if you’re interested in the process behind BSG, but also for learning about life as a journeyman director who fell into TV from features and what he’s learned from both.

* The Watchmen lawsuit has been resolved, and They’ve agreed to various boring business/money things, and now I’m done blogging about this movie barring something amazingly awesome until the thing comes out. (You’re welcome, Frank.)

* Jog casts a semi-skeptical eye on Final Crisis #6. For what it’s worth, I think the balance between “bog-standard” superhero event-comics moments and real head-scratchers is what makes the comic so durned innarestin’, as the fella says.

* Jason Adams runs down his Top 25 films of the year. Jeez, Jason sees a lot of movies! Sigh, I wish. Then again I reviewed around 140 comic books, so I guess I’m okay too.

* At the Inkstuds radio show, critics Tom Spurgeon, Douglas Wolk, Paul Gravett, and host Robin McConnell discuss the year in comics.

* Dark Obi-Wan? Sure, I’ll eat it. (You’re welcome, Matthew.)

* I love Hot Topic. I am totally serious. I’ve never understood why we hold it against teenagers that they don’t live near a major legit font of underground culture, so where else are they gonna go? Walking into a Hot Topic makes me feel like I’m entering the nerve center of kids who get called faggots by other kids, which brings back memories. It’s like coming home. Anyway, here’s a Watchmen hoodie on sale at a Hot Topic near you. Last time I was there they had a kickass Final Crisis T-shirt, too, but not in my side, dammit.

* My pal Kevin Mahadeo got himself a nice little get: An interview with Grant Morrison about the fairly momentous events of Final Crisis #6 on the day FC #6 was released. I particularly liked this exchange:

On the soap box side of things, for me, there’s been a long [stretch] of comics trying to be about the streets and about realism and dealing with the Bush Administration. We wanted to follow more popular culture, which is going in a more psychedelic direction, to use the want of a better word. I think things are starting to get a bit crazier again and people are enjoying stuff a little bit more—the fantastical and demanding of the imagination. I think that’s what we’re trying to do. Final Crisis #7 is almost inventing a new style. We had widescreen comics and decompression and super-compression. This is channel-zapping comics.

For every comic and series you tackle, you always ask questions about what the character means and where the character can go. Is that what you’re seeing in Final Crisis, where can comics go?

MORRISON: Yeah. In particular with superhero comics. Once you’ve seen “Iron Man” and “The Dark Knight,” why bother doing realistic superheroes because now the movies can do them better than anyone. I kind of feel that what it does is free up comics to be a little bit wilder. We’ve got great artists who can sit there with their pencils and draw anything. They’re not limited by budgets. We shouldn’t be following the storytelling techniques of Hollywood because they can do it really well. Comics can do all kinds of other things. They can be really crazy and wild and can really stretch the imagination and be really progressive.

* Speaking of the comics one assumes Morrison was speaking of, there’s been a lot of talk on this blog and elsewhere about the tone-deafness of Secret Invasion and Dark Reign, specifically how rapacious asshole and obviously batshit-crazy evil serial killer Norman Osborn was appointed King Shit of SHIELD Mountain by Barack “Change We Can Believe In” Obama in his first act as the Marvel America’s President. For me at least, this undercut the quick cash-in Spider-Man thing they did for the rubes where Barry gives Spidey dap. However, somebody or other told me that if the solicits for Thunderbolts are any indication, Obama’s role in that infamous Osborn decision–its actual depiction limited, if I recall, to coloring the hand of the otherwise off-panel President brown–is going to be or has already been retconned, and that upcoming storyarcs will feature Obama’s attempt to thwart his predecessor’s decision to put the Green Goblin in charge of stuff while GG will attempt to assassinate Obama. For what it’s worth.

* Some top-notch comics people have posted their Top Comics of 2008 lists. Here’s Frank Santoro’s. Here’s Douglas Wolk’s.

* Speaking of Top Whatever of 2008 Lists from top-notch people, Jason Adams–my favorite horror blogger, when he blogs horror–lists his top horror movies and top indelible (mostly horrific) movie moments.

* Maybe the Watchmen mess will get resolved today? (Sorry, Frank.)

* Gossip Girl prequel series? Sure, I’ll eat it. And while we’re on the subject, X-Men movie written by Josh Schwartz? Sure, I’ll eat it.

* Radiohead re-releases featuring extra discs compiling all those b-sides and EP tracks I never bought except Airbag/How Am I Driving? Sure, I’ll eat it.

* Murder saves lives! Learn how one lucky bird owes its continued existence in part to my Matt Wiegle-designed mini-anthology (available for purchase for the low low price of $3!) in this comic by Sarah Louise Wahrhaftig.

* Chris Mautner shelf porn! Oh, built-in bookshelf walls, how I love thee.

* Quotes of the day:

“We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani.”

—Judge Susan J. Crawford, convening authority of U.S. military commissions.

“Waterboarding is torture.”

—Eric Holder, Attorney General-designate.

* J.R.R. Tolkien continues to do his best Tupac Shakur impression: Tolkien’s The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, “a volume of rare Norse epic poetry,” will be released in May. The Children of Hurin was excellent, fwiw.

* Battlestar Galactica returns on Friday and will run an extra 3 1/2 minutes, so a lot of websites are saying to adjust your DVRs, but in my experience they usually pick up on this sort of thing automatically. I dunno, it’s publicity, I guess. Also, that prequel webisode series The Face of the Enemy has wrapped up and I rather liked it. Not for the squeamish, mind you. Or for, I dunno, Rick Warren.

* The hardcover collection of Marvel’s adaptation of The Stand, which I believe will contain some supplemental items courtesy of yours truly, will only be available in comic shops.

* Via everywhere, part one: Samuel L. Jackson says he and Marvel Studios have not come to a salary agreement regarding his returning as Nick Fury, the character basically drawn for him to eventually play, in subsequent Marvel movies like Iron Man 2 and The Avengers. You have to imagine the possibility of a likeness lawsuit is a possible bargaining chip here, no?

* Via everywhere, part two: Warner Bros. and Fox appear close to a settlement over the rights to distribute Watchmen.

* Via everywhere, part three: Covered, a new blog launched by comics artist and animator Robert Goodin and featuring various artists doing cover versions of their favorite comics covers. Here’s Jeffrey Brown doing Mike Zeck’s Secret Wars.

* Pat Johnson is the new head honcho at big-deal literary comics publishing imprint Pantheon. (Via Heidi Macdonald.)

* The Spanish first-person zombie movie [REC] was just alright for me, dawg, but if you’re into it, you can finally legally purchase a playable DVD version of it via Amazon.ca as of January 27th.

* When good movies happen to good posters: Jason Adams reports that The Broken, which spawned the memorable poster below, was actually pretty good. Nice to know.

* Speaking of good posters, this little number for the upcoming Crank 2 is just about as ridiculous and wonderful as one imagines the film itself will be. (Hat tip: Adam Tracey.)

* Marc-Oliver Frisch takes another swing at the “how to read and review event comics” piñata.

* Oooh, look, someone mapped the Star Wars galaxy! My Rebel Alliance insignia tattoo is glowing. (Via Topless Robot.)

* Finally, here’s Kate Winslet flashing her underwear. Eternal Sunshine indeed.

Over at Top Shelf 2.0 you can now find “A Real Gentle Knife,” a comic based on the song “Rippin Kittin” by Golden Boy and Miss Kittin, written by me, and drawn by my old friend and up-and-coming comics blogger/educator Josiah Leighton. I hope you enjoy it.

* Over at the Cool Kids Table, Ben Morse has posted a series of “collect this heretofore uncollected run of comics puh-leeze!” wishlists from himself, Kiel Phegley, Rickey Purdin, TJ Dietsch, David Paggi, and one Sean T. Collins. Check it out and bug the relevant publishers.

* Get those shopping lists fired up: Douglas Wolk has put together a pretty great list of the major alt/lit/art comics releases coming out in 2009.

* Chris Mautner continues his own series of such roundups, this one focusing on my webcomics publisher, Top Shelf.

* Mautner also weighs in on the big discussion we had here the other week about how to read and review event comics.

* Tom Spurgeon lists 25 great things about being a comics reader.

* Josiah Leighton reprints and examines Katsuhiro Otomo’s pre-Akira short story “Nothing Will Be as It Was.”

* Tim O’Shea talks to Josh Cotter about Skyscrapers of the Midwest, one of my favorite comics of the year.

* Okay, fine, everyone’s got me intrigued about The Winter Men now.

* Stacie Ponder reviews Planet Terror and Death Proof, or as they were once collectively known, Grindhouse.

* B-Sol at the Vault of Horror lists the top 10 scariest paintings of all time.

* Dave Kiersh has posted a preview of his upcoming teen-drama comic, Dirtbags, Mallchicks and Motorbikes. (Via Heidi MacDonald.)

* Finally, remember when I said that I thought Watchmen was going to be a real eye-opener for mainstream audiences in terms of a type of superhero imagery they’d be seeing for the first time ever? Apparently Warner Bros. agrees, because they’re using that as the selling point for the commercial they’ve been running during NFL games and 24. (Via Topless Robot.)

Tonight I tried and failed to see Frank Miller’s The Spirit at one of the five total daily showings spread across the three remaining theaters still showing the movie on Long Island–failed because the picture quality was so bad that I got up, got a refund, and left.

When the trailers were shown in seemingly the wrong aspect ratio, I thought “uh-oh,” so I ran downstairs and asked the guy at the concession stand to let someone know to fix it. Then the movie started and while the picture didn’t look so badly accordionned inward anymore, it was still ran waaaaay past the top and bottom borders of the screen–credits disappeared right along with the top third of characters’ heads. The picture was also crooked, which I was subsequently informed was due to the angle of the screen, meaning all the movies they charge people to watch in that particular theater are at least that screwed up. To top it all off, what you could see of the picture was murky, and the surround sound wasn’t working to boot.

I know I was a film studies major, but this was in the era of VHS, so I feel like I’m not hugely particular when it comes to things like picture quality. I still don’t have a hi-def TV or a Blu-Ray player, for example. But I also feel like maybe every third time I go to the movies there’s an enjoyment-destroying, super-obvious problem with something. This time it was the picture being all screwed up. When I saw Doomsday it was the sound not being fully switched on. When I saw Let the Right One In it was the theater being north of 80 degrees. And I’m not even getting into the behavior of my fellow moviegoers. It’s to the point where each time I go to the movies, one of my favorite goddamn activities in the goddamn world, I sit down dreading whatever the hell will ruin it this time.

This is the kind of stupid extrapolation from personal anecdotal evidence that makes blogs so, so awful, but I can’t help it: Surely this sort of thing can’t be good for business? I mean, especially in this case, where the movie theater knowingly has a screen set up so that every single thing they show on it will be tilted to one side like you’re in the hideout of Frank Gorshin’s Riddler. That’s some chutzpah, my friends.

Anyway, I’m really angry that I didn’t get to see The Spirit, because I can’t possibly have a lot of time left to catch it in the theater. The end.

The Comics Journal has posted a preview of my cover-story interview with Brian K. Vaughan from issue #295, which hits stores on Wednesday soon and is already available via the Fantagraphics web store. Click the link and thrill to my scintillating questions in all their conversational, barely comprehensible, transcribed-verbatim glory–not to mention BKV’s thoughts on translating his comics into screenplays, working with franchise characters, union vs. non-union writing gigs, and more.