* I’m not a big user of The Lost Internet since I don’t go in for hardcore theorizing, but I do enjoy Whitney Matheson’s “Best of the Comments” round-ups, which usually includes a few connections and callbacks I missed or theories I wish I’d come up with; I thought this week’s was a strong batch.

* I also really enjoy The House Next Door’s weekly recap/reviews, this season being handled by Todd VanDerWerff, who’s been ably tackling Battlestar Galactica as well. Again, I thought this week’s was a strong write-up.

* Speaking of BSG SciFi Wire talks to creator Ronald D. Moore about tonight’s episode–his directorial debut–and about the BSG prequel series Caprica and prequel TV movie Battlestar Galactica: The Plan. Interestingly, Moore says that he and his fellow writers are handling all the Cylon mysteries in BSG and won’t carry any of that into Caprica, which given both recent revelations and Caprica‘s storyline, “How did they create the Cylons?”, is rather curious.

* The Supreme Court has shot down the Child Online Protection Act, which if fully enforced would probably have had the effect of “protecting” a lot of consenting adults from “objectionable” content. It’s the kind of law that brings out the “sneer quotes” in everyone. I can’t decide if the last time I was this delighted by the demise of something inimical to free speech was when the Gordon Lee case was dropped or when Jesse Helms died. (Via Dirk Deppey.)

* Spencer Ackerman runs down three areas where he’d like to see follow-up in terms of the Obama Administration’s crackdown on torture and other illegal and immoral practices regarding captives: Interrogation techniques that will remain classified and/or are a part of the problematic Appendix M of the Army field manual; how to determine whether or not countries we use for rendition torture or not; and how long the CIA is allowed to hold prisoners. To his list, per Rachel Maddow last night, I would add the question of the prison at Bagram, which has history of prisoner abuse similar to the more infamous Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay facilities.

* Chris’s Invincible Super-Blog tackles Grant Morrison and Doug Mahnke’s Final Crisis: Superman Beyond #2, and in so doing nails maybe the thing I like about Grant Morrison: “[Morrison] treats us like we’re grown-ups who know how lowercase-f fiction works.” I’ve never read a Grant Morrison comic that made me feel like he thought I was probably a little slow, or spent a lot of time apologizing for itself and laying out ground rules we can all follow. Morrison assumes we all came to play, as it were.

* As every nerd site on the Internet noted today, Monty Python DVD sales are supposedly up 23,000% thanks to Python’s new-ish YouTube channel . This is not an issue I’ve spent a ton of time thinking about because my own habits w/r/t DLing stuff for free and subsequently purchasing it are probably outside the norm, but personally I don’t think this actually says anything more about the overall viability of using free content as a booster for pay content than did comparable initiatives by Radiohead or Nine Inch Nails, because my hunch is that in all three cases the groups in question a) have insanely devoted self-reproducing fanbases that can be counted on to purchase things from them provided they know they exist; b) are really fucking good and create things worth paying for. Mainly I’m just happy people are buying Monty Python DVDs. (Via Topless Robot, my nerd site of choice.)

* Anders Nilsen and sea monsters: Two great tastes that taste great together.

* This is the only ticking time bomb scenario I believe in.

* Finally, Happy 3rd Birthday, Monster Brains!

In “Sean on dead tree” news, the latest issue of Maxim–boasting two different covers featuring swimsuit models Jamie Gunns and Sarah Mutch, and I swear I didn’t make those names up–features a piece I did on Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim series. It explains the basic premise and plugs mainly the upcoming fifth volume Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe but also the currently-gathering-steam Edgar Wright film adaptation Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. I hope you like it.

Meanwhile, issues of Marvel’s comic-book adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand continue to feature the pieces I’ve done on the book for Marvel.com, so be on the lookout for those, too.

Also, I’m a constant contributor to ToyFare magazine’s long-running, Robot Chicken-inspiring action-figure parody strip Twisted ToyFare Theater, as well as the occasional random gag or cool-thing plug. I have the vague impression that TTT has a reputation for just being “toys with word balloons spouting dick jokes”–heck, that’s what I myself believed. Then I read it and it turned out to be very, very sharp and funny, which I thought long before I had anything to do with it. I’ll be on a panel discussing the strip on the Saturday schedule for New York Comic Con–hope to see you there.

Finally, I still don’t have a copy of The Comics Journal #295, featuring my cover-story career-spanning interview with Brian K. Vaughan, but I’m told by reliable sources that it’s out there in a lot of places. Let me know what you think!

Before

After

* Good news on the torture front from the new administration…

President Obama is expected to sign executive orders Thursday directing the Central Intelligence Agency to shut what remains of its network of secret prisons and ordering the closing of the Guantánamo detention camp within a year, government officials said.

The orders, which would be the first steps in undoing detention policies of former President George W. Bush, would rewrite American rules for the detention of terrorism suspects. They would require an immediate review of the 245 detainees still held at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to determine if they should be transferred, released or prosecuted.

And the orders would bring to an end a Central Intelligence Agency program that kept terrorism suspects in secret custody for months or years, a practice that has brought fierce criticism from foreign governments and human rights activists. They will also prohibit the C.I.A. from using coercive interrogation methods, requiring the agency to follow the same rules used by the military in interrogating terrorism suspects, government officials said.

…and from the majority of the American people:

A majority of Americans in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll oppose the use of torture in terrorism investigations, backing Barack Obama’s pledge that “under my administration, the United States does not torture.” But there’s an even split on whether he should investigate whether laws were broken in the way suspects were treated under the Bush administration. [It’s actually 50-47 in favor -STC]

Overall, 58 percent support the prohibition Obama declared before taking office, but there’s a wide gap across party lines: 71 percent of Democrats and 56 percent of independents in the poll said torture should never be used, but most Republicans, 55 percent, said there are cases in which the U.S. should consider using torture against terrorism suspects.

Note that last bit, because it perhaps explains the behavior of some GOP senators in the confirmation hearings for Attorney General-designate Eric Holder: They’re playing to their torture-enthusiast base.

* I oppose torture but not the Darwin Awards, so it’s a shame that this story about al-Qaeda operatives dying en masse of their own bubonic-plague experiments is most likely bullroar, since otherwise it would manage to be both horrifying and hilarious in one fell swoop. Either way, no word as to the presence of the Walkin’ Dude at or near the training camp. (Via Ta-Nehisi Coates.)

* Bryan Alexander tracks the Onion’s pretty shockingly horrific Bush Administration send-off pieces from the past few months.

* Curt Purcell catches that that much-discussed piece by former Starbuck Dirk Benedict on the supposed awfulness of the current Battlestar Galactica actually dates back to May 2004, before all but the initial miniseries had aired. Benedict says a lot of things in the piece that are stupid and loathsome regardless of when he said them, but this does at least excuse some of his egregious misreadings and mischaracterizations of the show and its characters. It also makes the whole kerfuffle make more sense to me, since I recalled seeing Benedict happily chatting and smoking stogies with Katee “Stardoe” Sackhoff in a behind-the-scenes featurette on one of the BSG DVD sets. On the other hand, it speaks pretty poorly of either Benedict or the right-wing entertainment-ressentiment site Big Hollywood or both that they thought it appropriate to dredge the piece up and post it again.

* Legislators in the UK are moving to increase restrictions on drawn and computer-generated representations of children engaged in sexual conduct. This is a bad idea for reasons I’ve gone into before; it’s of a piece with Europe’s illiberal attitude and legal climate regarding unpleasant or controversial speech generally, but that doesn’t mean it can’t and doesn’t happen here, as the Christopher Handley case (going to trial February 2nd) demonstrates. The people and art and speech involved in all these cases may or may not be distasteful or even outrageous, but they are people and art and speech deserving of protection. Bad law is bad law. (Links via Tom Spurgeon, Kevin Melrose.)

* Newsarama’s Michael C. Lorah talks to David B. (in French AND English) about his dream-comic collection Nocturnal Conspiracies, one of my favorite books of 2008. (Via Dirk Deppey.)

* Kurt Busiek politely explains the uses and abuses of shared-universe, continuity-based superhero storytelling to a largely skeptical audience of Noah Berlatsky. I really liked what he has to say here, which I don’t think will surprise those of you who’ve followed my recent explanations of my own approach to such comics. (Also via Dirk Deppey.)

* Shelf porn from my pal Ryan Penagos of Marvel.com! I’ve seen this in person, and it’s freaking impressive.

* Which is the most awesome part of this Hammer horror poster: the image, the title, or the tagline? U DECIDE!

* Finally, here’s rising altcomix star Jon Vermilyea’s video for Animal Collective’s “My Girls.”

SPOILER WARNING

* A lot to swallow. Maybe too much? Maybe they should have just done an hour? Not that I’m complaining, really, but it was a little hard to get a handle on any kind of “story unit” flow because it was two separate episodes crammed together rather than a two-hour premiere. The breakneck pace established now that we’ve done away with flashbacks and flashforwards and are doing all-plot episodes contributes to the feeling that we’re just seeing a lot of stuff happening.

* Last night I told a friend that I thought a lot fewer people were going to complain about the show dividing the cast this time than they did during the beginning of season three, because this time both halves of the story were so crazy and action-packed. But sure enough, there’s someone on my Tori Amos board complaining about how boring the Sayid and Hurley stuff is. You really can’t please everybody!

* My one beef/quibble/beefquibble with the time-travel storyline is that it would have been nice if, like, back in season two or something, we’d had maybe one random encounter between a character and a time-anomaly version of someone. Heck, even that same character, perhaps. I mean, maybe we HAVE, but it wasn’t anything obvious. I’m mentally comparing it to a scene from Savage Dragon where the Dragon suddenly flashes forward into a post-apocalyptic future, and his as-yet-unborn son wearing a space suit appears to him and says “Dad?”, and it wasn’t followed up on for literally YEARS. I’d like for something like that to have happened relating to the time-travel storyline much earlier in the show–something that really stuck out, like Libby showing up in Hurley’s asylum, but then they don’t explain it for season after season. Trying to shoehorn it in after the fact–as with Faraday’s meeting with Desmond, which Desmond had never been shown to remember until last night–doesn’t cut it.

* Now that I think about it, it seems reasonable to assume that the mysterious eye that peers out of Jacob’s cabin’s window the second time Locke goes to visit it is in fact Locke himself. So maybe I’ve got nothing to complain about. But that’s something we’ve all filed away in the “Jacob’s cabin is crazy” file, not the “time travel paradox” file. Also, I’m hearing people say that maybe the whispers are the sound of people elsewhere in the time stream, and that when Locke initially discovered the crashed plane he had a flash-vision of the actual crash and then inexplicable leg pain, which would seem to connect to his Billy Pilgrim routine last night, so there’s that stuff too, I suppose.

* It’s good to see Sun becoming a cold-hearted bastard because she’s always been a bit annoying and she’s always had that side to her personality. And I was pleasantly surprised to see her stick the knife in Kate over her “I’ll go get Jin” move on the freighter, which I had totally forgotten about but at the time was like “Way to go get Jin there, Freckles.”

* I liked seeing Ana Lucia, and I liked the shout-out to Libby and the unspoken remembrance of Eko and his brother with the plane crash (even though Locke’s mental associations with it would most likely be the death of Boone and Charlie’s heroin addiction, at least WE can remember Eko and his brother). I like it when the show acknowledges the existence of the non-Bernard Tailies and acts as though that whole storyline actually made a difference even though it really didn’t. I hate when external factors like negotiations with actors and scheduling conflicts and so on force changes on the storyline–the actor who played Eko not wanting to live in Hawaii anymore, for example, or the rumor that Libby and Ana Lucia’s DWIs hastened their departure. And I always assume that otherwise unexplained gaps in the story in terms of actors playing a part and then disappearing are related to such external concerns–the stewardess who joined the Others, the tribunal Other woman who the creators now claim died during the Others’ ill-fated attack on the beach camp even though we never saw her, why they’ve taken so long to follow up on Libby’s story, why Michelle Rodriguez didn’t show up again until now, why Eko hasn’t made any more cameos, whether Matthew Abbadon is now stuck in Fringe purgatory and won’t be coming back–and it drives me fucking nuts. So yeah, happy for all the Tail Section-related stuff last night.

* Always happy to see Rose and Bernard, too.

* Now that we’ve firmly established time travel as a phenomenon, who do we think are the Adam & Eve skeletons with the white and black stones that Jack and Kate discovered in the caves way back when? A friend of mine assumed it was whoever discovered them, since that would be the most poetically fitting thing. But the fact that it was Jack and Kate who discovered them makes that seem unlikely to me because a) I think the Sawyer/Kate couple will end up prevailing, not Jack/Kate; b) I’m not convinced that they’re gonna let their main characters die on the Island, whether through foul play or because they stay there voluntarily and die of old age or whatever. So who is it? Jack and Kate? Sawyer and Kate? Jack and Juliet? Desmond and Penny? Ben and his mysterious disappearing childhood girlfriend? Daniel and Redhead Woman whose name I can’t remember ever? Rose and Bernard?

* Do you think there are any mysteries they’re just not gonna get around to explaining by the end of the show? Like how they consigned the Numbers to that stupid ARG and are now just kind of pretending that was never a big deal?

* New Battlestar Galactica on Friday, new President Barack Obama on Tuesday, new Lost tonight…not a bad week, huh?

* Just how bad will Diamond’s new minimum order thresholds hurt the alternative comic book? Pretty bad, if you ask AdHouse’s Chris Pitzer; he elaborates here. The Beguiling’s Chris Butcher is even more pessimistic.

* My pal David Paggi lists his best comics of 2008 at Wizard’s Indie Jones blog. My list is here if you missed it in all the hubbub yesterday.

* Chris Mautner adds the very powerful, very well executed, very hard to read I Live Here to his list of the year’s most criminally ignored books.

* I think many potentially interesting questions in this two-part interview with writer Grant Morrison are phrased in such a way as to leech out any potential drama and disagreement, which is a shame, but still, it’s a two-part interview with Grant Morrison:

In recent years, we’ve seen the superhero as celebrity and as super-soldier, tool of the Military Industrial Complex. The coming wave is more escapist, more psychedelic in tone. The Hero home from the War. The superhero always mirrors the emotional needs of his audience, and comic book creators adapt—sometimes quite unconsciously—to provide the kind of protector and role model each age demands.

Does the zeitgeisty success of the new Animal Collective album (officially released on Inauguration Day, no less; listen to it at the link) vindicate this theory of the New Psychedelic Age? U DECIDE!

* Morrison also mentions upcoming Vertigo collaborations with Cameron Stewart (see below), Sean Murphy, and Camilla D’Errico.

* In the battle of the Battlestar stars, I’ll take Richard Hatch’s thoughtfulness over Dirk Benedict’s grotesque, ignorant, sexist, poorly observed and argued ressentiment anytime. Faceman, we hardly knew ye.

* I’m not easily offended, but see if you can figure out how this poster for some horror movie called Babysitter Wanted isn’t just about the most misogynistic thing you’ve seen since Dave Sim’s last letter column. It’s lazy and derivative, too! All in all, a pretty tremendous illustration of how the tools of the extreme really only work in very, very skilled hands.

* How about some sexy Bryan Lee O’Malley Kim & Ramona art to cleanse the palate?

* And do you wanna see BLO’M draw Kitty Pryde? Yeah you do.

* And what about Wonder Woman Covered by Robert Goodin? I thought so.

* And hey, I bet you a nice preview website for Hans Rickheit’s forthcoming Fantagraphics graphic novel The Squirrel Machine would hit the spot too, huh? (Via Tom Spurgeon.)

* Or perhaps you’d prefer some preview art for David Mazzuchelli’s forthcoming Pantheon graphic novel Asterios Polyp? (Looks like Dash Shaw, no?)

* Or maybe the cover and Previews solicit for Grant Morrison and Cameron Stewart’s long-awaited Seaguy sequel is more to your taste? (Will there be a rainbow of Seaguy Corps?)

* Regardless, surely you can’t resist the “many faces of Rorschach” Watchmen T-shirt by Warren Hart! (Via Sean B.)

* And you can wash it all down with a mildly NSFW video for the new Antony & the Johnsons song “Epilepsy Is Dancing,” directed by the freaking Wachowski Brothers!

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.

Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more. Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint. We are the keepers of this legacy.

–President Barack Obama

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.