* Quick housekeeping note first: I posted a quick guide to some of DestructorComics.com’s navigation features. I think they’re pretty neat.

* Tom Spurgeon breaks the news that Fantagraphics will be publishing Daniel Clowes-designed collections of Crockett Johnson’s Barnaby, arguably the great as-yet-uncollected classic comic. Over on Robot 6 I have a brief spiel about why I think the strip will work in the Tumblr Age.

* Also on Robot 6: Please pay Michael Kupperman, you monsters.

* Here’s more engrossing writing on life after recent developments in World of Warcraft by Bruce Baugh. I think the points he raises here about constructing a player’s early experience to maximize enjoyment in the immediate term and the impact of the story in the medium-to-long term can apply to pretty much any form of narrative storytelling.

* Moreover, as I think I’ve said before, it’s really only after reading Bruce’s posts of late that it’s occurred to me that the “line-wide event” model of superhero comics publishing developed by Marvel and DC over the past half-decade echoes the way WoW is set up. Like, okay, here’s this new expansion pack, and now everyone has to deal with the Lich King, or now everyone has to deal with natural disasters caused by a crazy dragon; here’s this new event, and now everyone has to deal with Captain America fighting Iron Man, or now everyone has to deal with President Obama offering a Cabinet position to the Green Goblin because he shot an alien on live TV. If you figure that there’s some sort of nerd collective unconscious that welcomed both these developments, you can also see why that collective unconscious has rebelled somewhat now that the events aren’t quite so all-encompassing, or indeed jostling up against one another in a way that confuses readers looking for one single direction to march in.

* Benjamin Marra on Fox News. Benjamin Marra in The New Yorker. I’ll take “Sentences I’m Delighted to Be Able to Write” for $1000, Alex. (Via Bill Kartalopoulos.)

* Speaking of which! Pitchfork’s Ryan Dombal interviews David Lynch about his burgeoning career as a recording artist.

* I really like today’s Wolverine contribution to the Covered blog from Patt Kelley simply because the header he added to the image, USE YOUR CLAWS MY BELOVED, is a band name waiting to happen. Click the link to see what he’s riffing off of.

* Matt Madden is absolutely right: This photo of Killoffer by Ana Alexandrino is one of the greatest photos of a cartoonist of all time.

And do click that link — it’s a con report on the RIO Comicon from Jah Furry, and he’s got a lot of terrific photos of what looks like a very vibrant artcomics scene.

* Finally, David Fincher should do a shot-for-shot remake of Fight Club with Justin Timberlake as Tyler, Jesse Eisenberg as the narrator, and Kristen Stewart as Marla.

* With Boardwalk Empire‘s season finale approaching, HBO is unleashing the kraken with regards to publicity for its next big thing, Game of Thrones. Over the Thanksgiving weekend, the network released hi-res versions of all the photos from last week’s Entertainment Weekly spread on the show…

* a preview of a 15-minute making-of featurette they’ll be unveiling prior to the Boardwalk Empire finale next Sunday…

* and a new minute-long teaser.

And frankly? It all looks wonderful. In particular, starting that trailer with that particular scene appears to indicate that they know what the books are about, not just what they’re about, if you follow me. As always, they’re just trailers and promo stills and therefore completely unreliable, but. But but but! (Links via Winter Is Coming and Westeros, as usual.)

* Meanwhile, I plan on finding it really weird to watch mainstream pop-culture sites cover the show–even though I myself only discovered the series this year and am far from a GoT OG.

* The enormously engrossing, uncomfortably disconcerting online first-person horror film/ARG Marble Hornets has returned after a seven-month absence for its second season. When I say “uncomfortably disconcerting” I’m really not kidding. Even though I’ve just about exhausted all the information, commentary, and parody available on the project, I still find myself freaking out a little bit when I have to go out in the dark to take out the trash. They’ve hit on a really powerful set of images and techniques. If you’ve got about a movie’s length of time to kill, start here; the latest “entry” is embedded below.

* Two of my favorite webcomics had real doozies for their most recent installments: Jesse Moynihan’s Forming and Brian Chippendale’s Puke Force. Bookmark them!

* It’s official: The Hobbit movies will be filmed in 3D. Peter Jackson seems like a filmmaker who was made to make 3D movies. Certainly more so than James Cameron!

* Wow, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark had a rough opening night. Like, rough enough that I wonder if someone–the creators, the performers, the audience, the newspapers, Bono, someone–was just joking. Bitter experience and Avatar have taught me that I have no clue whether or not something will be a for-the-ages flop/demonstration of classical hubris; that said, the story of this show has been completely mesmerizing, and not for the reasons one imagines Julie Taymor, Bono, the Edge, and Sony or Marvel or whoever want it to be. On a qualitative level, my appreciation for Taymor’s glam weirdness is offset by my disgust with the leaden pretension of the U2 music I’ve heard from the show, so I don’t know how to feel about it in that regard either.

* Chris Mautner’s Comics College column tackles Hergé. Since all of his Tintin work is in the same format and working basically the same genre and tone, he’s one of the great “where to begin?” artists in comics. Well, here’s where to begin!

* Sean P. Belcher was a good deal more sympathetic to last night’s episode of The Walking Dead than I was. Basically we agree about its strengths, but differ in the weight we place on its weaknesses.

* Spurge is right: This Deborah Vankin profile of Joyce Farmer’s new memoir Special Exits makes the book look and sound great. I won’t spoil the really revealing quotes from and about R. Crumb, either.

* Trouble with Comics had a bit of an RSS spasm over the weekend, but it brought Christopher Allen’s thoughtful critique of Jack Kirby’s OMAC to my attention, so I’m glad it happened.

* Hawt stuff from Brandon Graham. (Via Agent M.)

* Very much looking forward to Ryan Cecil Smith’s Two Eyes of the Beautiful II, on sale at the BCGF this weekend.

* I’m digging what I’m seeing from Alex Wiley’s Hugger-Mugger Comicx. I like the cute-brut linework and citrusy colors.

* Wow, 102 pages of unpublished comics from James Stokoe!

* Real Life Horror: Every time I think about it, I am freshly amazed that Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri are still at large nine years after the 9/11 attacks they orchestrated. (And that we’ll probably never be able to try and convict Khalid Sheikh Mohammed because the Bush Administration tortured him, but that’s a different matter.) The AP has a fascinating, if somewhat depressing, report on the lucky breaks that have kept al-Zawahiri out of American clutches and/or crosshairs. Here’s hoping that once all the money we save by freezing federal employees’ salaries singlehandedly ends the recession and persuades Republicans to put aside their differences and become good-faith allies of the President, there’ll be enough left over help catch this murderous fuck.

* This is one of those days when I want to link to everything that Ta-Nehisi Coates writes. Money quotes:

I’d love to see someone make the argument that private sector managerial experience entitles you to run the NYPD.

—on incoming NYC schools chancellor Cathleen Black

What scares me is how this sort of crime-fighting, post-9/11, basically justifies itself. So we’re at war with terror. A war means we need to find and isolate the bad guys. So we send agents provocateurs to areas where bad guys might frequent and, essentially, employ a version of buy-bust theory to smoke them out.Then we announce their neutralization via arrest, thus proving that….we’re at war with terror. Rinse. Repeat.[…]Indeed, I suspect one could declare war against racism and just as easily employ provocateurs to cyclically “prove” the problem of violent white supremacists.

—on the FBI sting of would-be Christmas tree bomber Mohamed Osman Mohamud.

* Rest in peace, Irvin Kershner and Leslie Nielsen. The Empire Strikes Back and The Naked Gun are two of the movies I’ve absorbed completely enough to have a hard time imagining how I would think and speak about certain things without an array of quotes from them at my disposal.

* Finally, as I mentioned earlier, DestructorComics.com is up and running. Matt Wiegle and I will be updating it on Mondays and Thursdays. I can’t wait to share these stories with you!

* Ooh, look, Jeet Heer uncovered the cover for Paying for It, Chester Brown’s prostitution memoir! Check the comments to watch noted comics aesthetes recoil.

* The way this excellent Dan Nadel essay on Jack Kirby’s California years for Vice magazine is spread across six hitcount-whoring pages is irritating, to be sure, but don’t let that stop you from reading it. It’s a beautifully written appreciation of Kirby’s art and anti-war humanism. One thing I come back to a lot when thinking about Kirby and about Grant Morrison is Tom Spurgeon’s contention that Kirby’s idea of Anti-Life (essentially, war) is a lot more challenging than Morrison’s (essentially, being a fascist creep). No reasonable person can think up reasons to support Morrisonian Anti-Life. Kirbyan Anti-Life, on the other hand–well, you know.

* More Vice: Nick Gazin interviews Chip Kidd on his new book of superhero pop-culture ephemera, Shazam!, as a part of his latest comics review round-up. I like how he pretty much openly sticks it to Jon Vermilyea and Koren Shadmi, as if that really were the role of the critic after all. (Maybe he’s kidding, I dunno, it’s Vice and the dude says he hates cats so there’s obviously something wrong with him. Also, add the damn comics-only RSS feed already.)

* This is a pretty terrific interview of Charles Burns by the Onion A.V. Club’s Sam Adams. The bits on color and William S. Burroughs’s Interzone were especially interesting. (Via Tom Spurgeon.)

* Jeremy Renner really has no idea what his role as Hawkeye in Joss Whedon’s Avengers movie will be like. What an odd experience it must be to sign on to one of these big movies-by-committee without knowing much more than your character’s name.

* Here’s a trailer for Moon director Duncan Jones’s new movie Source Code. Two thoughts: 1) Wow, he sure knows what he likes, huh? 2) Inception sure opened some doors, huh? 3) The quality of this film notwithstanding, I wonder how much longer “watching major forms of transportation blow up in trailers” will last as a thing.

* Matthew Perpetua assembles a mix that shows the softer side of the Smashing Pumpkins. Well, it includes “Drown” and “Rhinoceros” and such, so “softer” is relative, but you get the idea.

* Lots to chew on in this Tom Ewing piece on Kanye West’s new album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Some of it’s even about the music!

* Curt Purcell liked last night’s Robert Kirkman-written episode of The Walking Dead a lot more than I did.

* Today on Robot 6: Box Brown on the COEXIST bumper stickers.

* Hellen Jo sure can draw.

* A new Marc Bell comic called Pure Pajamas is coming from Drawn & Quarterly in 2011! Marc Bell’s comics are great. So excited about this. Suck it, fine art world!

* Strange Tales II #3 are popping up everywhere. Robot 6 has James Stokoe and Michael DeForge, the Beat has Toby Cypress and Harvey Pekar/Ty Templeton, and Comics Alliance has Benjamin Marra, Eduardo Medeiros, and Nick Gurewitch/Kate Beaton.

* John Allison pops up in the Robot 6 comment thread to clarify some of the ideas expressed about artcomics in his Indie Comics Manifesto.

* Wilson: The Movie.

* Still no permalinks, but please do read Gabe Bridwell’s third report on the ACA residencies of Paul Pope, Craig Thompson, and Svetlana Chmakova. My favorite tidbits from this one: Paul invited his mother and girlfriend to work with his students, as well as Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti, who Bridwell says gave the best critiques of anyone he’s ever known.

* Music video of note #1: Watch Grant Morrison murder his way through My Chemical Romance in “Sing,” the second clip from their new concept album Danger Days.

* Music video of note #2: The Klaxons have a Cronenbergian orgy (really no other way to put it) in “Twin Flames,” the second video (I think) for their new album Surving the Void. (Via Pitchfork and the Quietus.)

Klaxons — Twin Flames (NSFW) from Mark Twain on Vimeo.

* Today on Robot 6:

* Very nice programming line-up at the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival–Anders Nilsen, Jordan Crane, Brian Chippendale, Sammy Harkham vs. Françoise Mouly, Charles Burns vs. Lynda Barry…

* John Allison’s Indie Comics Manifesto. Allison conflates being a crowd-pleaser with artistic merit in a way that makes me pretty uncomfortable, and there’s some crawl-into-your-grave-and-die-old-man rhetoric that doesn’t really help either. That said, he’s also got some common-sense financial advice in there.

* Comment-thread bonus: Here’s a list I came up with of a dozen great “art-damaged visual tone-poem[s] about the inside of [the artists’] psyche[s],” the kind of comic Allison would like to avoid but without which I wouldn’t really want to read comics anymore.

* Is Marvel — for our sins — collecting Mark Millar’s Trouble?

* Comment-thread bonus: links to every issue of David Tischmann, Darko Macan, and Igor Kordey’s Cable/Soldier X run, available to be read on Marvel’s Digital Comics Unlimited.

* Tom Adams of Bergen Street Comics on the onslaught of Thor comics. Is that what killed Thor: The Mighty Avenger?

* No permalinks unfortunately, and the least user-friendly scrolling interface I’ve ever experienced double-unfortunately, but artist Gabe Bridwell has in-depth reports on the Atlantic Center for the Arts residencies of Craig Thompson, Paul Pope, and Svetlana Chemakova. I found the stuff on Craig and Paul (admittedly two of my favorite people in comics) really revealing–Craig’s group did the most physical playing-around, Paul basically dances around and attacks the bristol board like a painter dancing around and attacking the canvas. Also, looks like the great Dave Kiersh was in Craig’s group. (Via Paul Pope.)

* Ron Regé Jr. talks about his Cartoon Utopia concept/project with the international altcomix publication Gazeta.

* Burn of the Day #1, via Tom Spurgeon: “There isn’t a lot in 2011 that compels from a ‘Battle Of Conventions’ standpoint, and neither one has anything to do with Wizard’s Big Apple show Vs. New York Comic-Con, which wouldn’t be a fight held at the same time in the same building.” It really is the case that Wizard’s Con War battle plan inflicted a massive friendly-fire wound on the company, which couldn’t have damaged its own reputation worse than it did by trying to force the industry to take sides during a major economic downturn if one of the Shamuses had strolled through the con hotel lobby with a prostitute on his arm.

* This bit in the Mindless Ones’ annotations for Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #6 set off a lightbulb over my head with the word “DUH” written on it in magic marker: “‘Did Darkseid release something… from any kind of box?’ Diana, with her origins in greek myth, would be all too familiar with the kind of nastiness that crawls from evil boxes.” Well done, Amy.

* Burn of the Day #2, via Rich Juzwiak: “[Rihanna’s] voice is not very interesting either, although on her fifth album Loud, she does interesting things with it. Not Diamanda Galás-interesting, but interesting in the way zombies are interesting — when something that once lay flat gets up and starts doing stuff, it’s remarkable.”

* Bruce Baugh walks you through the status of World of Warcraft’s Cataclysm event circa now–where it’s at, where it’s headed, what he’s up to, and what he’s planning.

* Real Life Horror: Embassy bomber largely acquitted because evidence derived through Bush Administration torture is inadmissible; conservatives demand trial by jury be replaced by telephone poll of Bristol Palin’s Dancing with the Stars supporters.

* “You shouldn’t go to jail for an idea, even an abhorrent one.”

* Finally, Entertainment Weekly has a photo gallery and set report from Game of Thrones. (Via Winter Is Coming and Westeros.) Looks pretty good! I mean, so what — the Dark Is Rising adaptation looked good when it had cast Christopher Eccleston and Ian McShane and released that first photo of the Rider — but hey, I’ll take it. I sent the link to a coworker who I hooked on the books and she popped out of her cubicle to tell me she was now in love with Jaime Lannister, so there’s that.

* Here’s the trailer for the Green Lantern movie. I think it looks good as far as the notoriously unreliable medium of trailers goes. Iron Man In Space strikes me as the right tone to establish for civilian audiences.

* This is just a great interview with Lisa Hanawalt by Ken Parille. I had no idea she’d done a Boy’s Club tribute strip! One thing I’ve always wondered, and it’s one of the few questions Parille doesn’t ask, is why she publishes mainly in print vs. online. I feel like an I Want You weekly webcomic would get a lot of attention.

* Grant Morrison updates my pal Rick Marshall at MTV Splash Page on several of his film projects, including We3, Joe the Barbarian, and the BBC series he’s working on with Stephen Fry.

* Christopher Allen on the Blakean blend of innocence and experience that is CF’s Powr Mastrs Vol. 1.

* Benjamin Marra draws ROM Spaceknight! Draws the shit out of him, too.

* Michael DeForge’s new comic Spotting Deer made me a bit nauseous just now.

* The shirt Simon Pegg is wearing in the poster for his new movie Paul features the Death Ray from Daniel Clowes’s Eightball #23, which leads me to ask the question, why doesn’t Fantagraphics make t-shirts? Is it a hassle to get the individual creators to go along with it? Did they used to do it in the ’90s and got burned when their t-shirt distributor went under? Because seriously, wouldn’t a line of Maggie and Hopey shirts basically be like backing up the money truck to the Fanta front door?

* If Bruce Baugh keeps WoWblogging, I’ll keep linking to it. Right now I’m digging the way the game’s makers are doing a lot of prelude-to-Cataclysm stuff, like it’s a big comic-book event or something.

* Finally, am I the only person who was at times genuinely disturbed by this gallery of children’s drawings of the monsters of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos? They look like something the police ask a victimized child to draw to describe their attacker or work through their feelings, or like the automatic drawing a child in a horror movie might do of the entity only she can see, so far anyway. (Via Chris Sims.)

* As you no doubt heard, the Beatles are on iTunes now. Good! They should be everywhere.

* Anders Nilsen has finished Big Questions #15. Comic of the decade candidate.

* Whoa, look at the cover and title for Sammy Harkham’s long-awaited Crickets #3! “Sex Morons,” people.

* Today in superhero event comics I’m interested in reading: War of the Green Lanterns is on the way from Geoff Johns and company.

* Guillermo Del Toro and David Eick are the creative team for the new Incredible Hulk TV series? I’m listening. And I say that as a major Del Toro detractor–I just feel like the constraints of the format will reign him in.

* This may be the first time I’ve ever felt a tinge of guilt for trade-waiting: Roger Langridge and Chris Samnee’s Thor: The Mighty Avenger is cancelled with January’s issue #8.

* Very glad to see that Grant Morrison’s extremely toyetic Batman run is being properly exploited.

* Joe McCulloch on David B.’s The Littlest Pirate King and Jason’s What I Did.

* Very cool, innovatively laid-out horror comic from Conor Stechschulte called Two Broken Branches.

* Here’s a great bit from Adam Serwer’s review of The Walking Dead episode 3: “Robert Kirkman’s original source material reminds us of an essential truth about violence, which is that its effectiveness has less to do with physical strength than an ability to break through the psychological barriers to inflicting pain on another human being.” As Serwer’s overall review indicates, it really is weird the way gender has come to the forefront of the show in ways it never did in the comic, usually to the show’s detriment.

* This is the strangest comics interview I’ve ever seen. Charles Burns is a good sport! (Via Matt Maxwell.)

* This really is a magnificently sexy-sleazy drawing of Boom Boom from New Mutants. Do Los Bros Hernandez have an alibi?

* Here are a couple of reports from recent George R.R. Martin speaking events at which he talked about Game of Thrones. Interesting stuff, albeit EXTREMELY SPOILERY toward the end.

* The Martyrs remake: You’re doing it wrong.

* That story I linked to yesterday about the guy who refused an x-ray and pat-down at the airport and was threatened with a $10K fine if he simply declined to fly and left the airport–after they escorted him from the security area for that very purpose? Now the TSA is planning to prosecute him. In the immortal words of Brendan Filone, “It’s like not only does he shit on our heads, we’re supposed to say ‘Thanks for the hat.'”

* Oh, Richard. (Via Matt Maxwell.)

* Finally, if there were a comics version of the Netflix Watch Instantly queue, what would you put on it? Click the link for my queue. I feel so vulnerable.

* Today on Robot 6, three quotes on three different aspects of J. Michael Straczynski’s abrupt departure from his much ballyhooed Superman and Wonder Woman runs:

* Mark Waid compares him to Sarah Palin;

* Tom Brevoort notes that he’s still working on his similarly departed Marvel series The Twelve;

* and Tom Spurgeon wonders about the messaging inherent in a high-profile writer leaving monthly comics because that’s “where the business is headed.”

* Speaking of Spurge, he catches that the San Diego Convention Center expansion will be designed by Curt Fentress, who did Denver International Airport, by far the nicest airport I’ve ever been to.

* David Bowie has no plans at this time to make more music. 🙁 (Via Whitney Matheson.)

* A New Cult Canon column on Clue? Yes please! I have every word of that film memorized and I probably haven’t seen it in twenty years. It basically did for me as a kid what a different movie about Tim Curry running around a giant scary mansion on a stormy night did for me as a teenager.

* I thought it was a little weird that the next Gilbert Hernandez pulp graphic novel had a Beto cover rather than a painted one like the first two did. Turns out it’s got a painted cover after all! My goodness.

* Jim Henley on Armistice Veteran’s Day.