* 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.