I wrote about “Vogue” by Madonna for my music tumblr, Cool Practice. The pre-sexual dreams of a starstruck sixth grader are invoked.

I encourage you to listen to the song and watch the video from beginning to end, especially if you haven’t done so in a long time. It’s remarkable how much anticipation and excitement she packs into that thing. It’s a curtain being drawn back on a new world.

* The Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival was this past Saturday. I missed it because I was busy throwing a surprise 60th birthday party for my mom, which went great, thanks, but it’s still a bummer to miss the best comics show I’ve ever been to. Tom Spurgeon liked the show a lot; Robert Boyd did not. To this outside observer it appears the show has reached the “victim of its own success” tipping point, where those not favorably predisposed to attending or exhibiting may be turned off by increased overcrowding, venue issues and suchlike inherent to the show picking up steam from year to year that veterans and enthusiasts are more able to gloss over or ignore. But since the acknowledged strength of the show is its organization, in terms of presenting a thoughtful and rewarding selection of exhibitors, panels, satellite events, and special guests in order to entice attendees and make them feel glad they came, I’d imagine the organizers will be able to use that same intelligence to fix logistical problems. This isn’t something that could have been said for, say, the MoCCA Festival when it reached its own tipping point a few years back, since in retrospect that show did as well as it did because it was the first (and only) of its kind in the area. (For what it’s worth, they handled growth really well by expanding to two days and multiple floors in the original venue, the Puck Building, then really poorly by moving it to the Amory and not preparing at all for change. Obviously exhibitor relations left a lot to be desired as well.) Anyway, for an idea of what I missed, here’s what Leah Wishnia bought there. (Man, is that ever a BCGF haul photo!)

* Related: BCGF co-organizer Bill Kartalopoulos launched his Rebus Books imprint at the show.

* Al Feldstein and the estate of Harvey Kurtzman are filing to reclaim the copyright of various 1950s EC Comics titles on which they worked, including MAD Magazine.

* WHOSE RESPONSIBLE THIS? My friend Rob Bricken, bless his heart, is leaving Topless Robot, the caustic nerd-news site he created and edited since its inception, for a gig at io9. I got a lot of enjoyment out of what Rob did there over the years. In true Topless Robot fashion, Rob signed off by posting lists of his eight favorite listicles, five least and five most horrifying fan-fiction posts, and five favorite things about the site overall. I was always very very happy with the few things I wrote for TR, particularly the music posts.

* Eventually my current headlong retreat inside myself only to find I can barely stomach anything in there either will come to an end and I’ll read all the comics I have lying around. At that point I will then read the following reviews: Chris Mautner on Ron Régé Jr.’s The Cartoon Utopia and Theo Ellsworth’s The Understanding Monster. Katie Haegele on The Cartoon Utopia. Grace Krilanovich on Charles Burns’s The Hive. Marc Sobel interviewed Ellsworth, too.

* “Operation Vaporizer” by Jordan Speer is one of the best webcomics I’ve read all year, and I’ve read plenty.

* Jesse Moynihan’s Forming is delivering knockout after knockout.

* Mr. Freibert’s in a really good place with Weird Road right now.

* I’m always glad to see a new Conor Stechschulte comic — his Water Phase debuted at BCGF. No one textures pages like he does.

* Goodness, Space Face Books is a promising new publisher. I mean, it’s all but made good on its promise already. Forsman, DeForge, Hanselmann right out of the gate.

* Fucking hell, DeForge.

* When evaluating the recent work of Jonny Negron, please do not overlook the cementing of his signature style — meaning, literally, the style of his signature.

* Also, XOJane’s Annie Kreighbaum discovers what you look like when you use Jonny’s colors as your makeup palette.

* Yuko Shumizu’s drawing of Shirley Manson from Garbage pretty accurately captures the appeal of Shirley Manson from Garbage.

* Carrie Battan’s article on the creation of indie-flavored pop music by Solange Knowles, Sky Ferreira, Charli XCX and others is a fascinating look at how some fairly tasty sausage gets made.

* Jessie Ware’s album Devotion has quickly become one of my favorites of the year. I’ll never not be a huge mark for sophisticated late-’90s dinner-party music, and this is that at both its most sonically refined and most emotionally raw. And my my my my my this video.

* Finally, it occurred to me I never linked to Meghan “Moneyworth” Garvey’s astonishing hip-hop Illuminati illustrations when she and I got in touch a few months ago. She’s great; they’re great.

* It’s wonderful that we’ve had going on two solid weeks of non-stop Chris Ware Building Stories talk on the comics internet, though it’s also sad that I haven’t participated in any of it because I haven’t had the time to read the book yet. (I know, I know, be the change you want to see in the comics internet, but it’s a lot easier in terms of time, energy, and attention to blow through a few chapters of an inconsequential Secret Avengers arc and suchlike in dribs and drabs over the course of a couple weeks than to sit down and work your way through a 14-chapter box set by your absolute favorite cartoonist.) Stuff I’ll certainly be checking in on once I’ve done my due diligence: The Comics Journal’s massive series of Building Stories essays; Joe McCulloch’s suggested reading order for the “book”‘s 14 individual volumes; Joe McCulloch, Chris Mautner, Tucker Stone, and Matt Seneca’s podcast about the book; and Douglas Wolk’s review for The New York Times.

* A judge just handed the family of Superman co-creator Joe Shuster a major defeat in their battle to reclaim the character’s copyrights from DC Comics and Warner Bros. It’s an ugly situation where a 1992 agreement made in large part for Shuster’s sister to receive an annual pension which in today’s dollars amounts to less than an assistant editor makes in exchange for her claims to a billion-dollar character that gave birth to an entire genre of fiction is now being used against her. Read the link above for the best explanation of what happened, then read Tom Spurgeon for impassioned analysis. As Tom always points out, DC/WB’s treatment of the Superman creators and their heirs is a choice, one they make anew every day, and one they could reverse whenever they wanted to. Individual people have decided they don’t want to.

* Ben Katchor’s satires of late capitalist society for Metropolis are merciless. Fun fact: He’s got a collection of these strips called Hand-Drying in America and Other Stories coming out in February 2013! That’s gonna be a beast.

* The AV Club talks to Los Bros Hernandez at length. I love hearing them talk about how they spurred one another to improve in the early Love and Rockets issues.

* Matt Fraction looks back on his fine tenure on Invincible Iron Man, which is just about to wrap up. That’s one of the best superhero runs of the past half-decade.

* Andy Serkis (Gollum, King Kong, Ian Dury) is directing an adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. That’s exciting.

* I came up with the topic for Tom Spurgeon’s latest Five for Friday reader-participation feature: Name five female comics-makers and their best male characters.

* Mostly music critic Brandon Soderberg interviews the great horror comics creator Josh Simmons. No one goes as far out as he does.

* Mostly music critic Tom Ewing reviews Sean Howe’s Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, the other big recent comics-related book release I haven’t read yet.

* My blogfather Bill Sherman reviews Courtney Taylor-Taylor and Jim Rugg’s odd Kraftwerk/Gang of Four/Bowie in Berlin/Baader-Meinhof Gang comic One Model Nation.

* Haw, Benjamin Marra made a trashy funny-animal comic called Ripper & Friends! This oughta be a hoot.

* Simon Hanselmann’s Truth Zone is to comics today what Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butt-head was to music in the ’90s: a parody of criticism that ended up being among the best actual criticism around.

* Mr. Freibert has leveled up.

* Effortlessly sexy teenage dreams from Jillian Tamaki’s Supermutant Magic Academy.

* This is my favorite Jonny Negron piece of the last little while.

* An Uno Moralez work in progress.

* Let’s find out what’s going on with Charles Forsman’s Oily Comics line.

* This 14-page downloadable pdf comic by Olivier Schrauwen is beautiful.

* One of the best things about Matthew Perpetua’s BuzzFeed Music is that you get a lot more Matthew Perpetua music writing. Here he is on two wonderful albums of recent vintage, Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s ‘Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! and Bat for Lashes’ The Haunted Man. These both make for excellent late-October listens, if you’re interested in that sort of thing, though I’m more in an emotional place for the former, which features a 20-minute instrumental metal epic named after a Bosnian Serb war criminal, than the latter, the key lyrics of which include “Thank God I’m alive” and “Where you see a wall, I see a door.”

* Also on BuzzFeed Music: Jayson Greene’s harrowing essay about being ceaselessly bullied. As a newish parent this shit really gets to me now, more even than as a former bullying victim. I get to toss my daughter into this maw? Fucking terrific.

* Katherine St. Asaph digs deep into the rise and apparent fall of “Call Me Maybe” singer Carly Rae Jepsen, whose album Kiss is Kylie/Robyn-level delightful but not selling.

* I’m with Noz on the quasi-parody rap critic Big Ghostfase. The schtick is overwritten, more than a little condescending, and ultimately unrewarding.

* The best horror writing you’ll find this Halloween month comes from Matt Maxwell’s bite-sized posts on George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, which are all illustrated by absolutely gorgeous screenshots. Here’s one of them.

* Someone played The Shining from front to back and back to front simultaneously and claims the overlaps are meaningful. They’re meaningful only by coincidence, but they’re beautiful coincidences.

* Plenty of good writing on last weekend’s terrific Homeland episode out there, if you’re in the market for it: Willa Paskin, Alyssa Rosenberg, Matt Zoller Seitz (he and I are really in sync on this season), Alyssa Rosenberg again.

* Vulture’s Gwynne Watkins profiles Elio García and Linda Antonsson from Westeros.org. Those two mean the world to me and I just love this profile.

* Kimberly Kane talks to Zak Smith and Mandy Morbid about art, sex, porn, polyamory, chronic illness, death, and true love for Vice. Provocative and moving.

* Mark Bowden writes very well about how the military-intelligence apparatus tracks down and kills enemies of the state — this was true in his absurdly engrossing Killing Pablo, about the rise and fall of Pablo Escobar, and it’s true in this lengthy Vanity Fair excerpt/adaptation of his new book about the death of Osama Bin Laden. That said, if you believe the bubbemeise offered up here that Barack Obama wanted to capture Bin Laden and try him in court, but the Navy SEALs called an audible on the ground, established a “shoot all adult males on sight” protocol all on their own, and plugged a wounded and unarmed Bin Laden in the head where lay despite the entire national security team’s express wishes to the contrary, I’ve got a fucking bridge to sell you.

* The justification of America’s drone-strike policy offered by TIME columnist Joe Klein as discussed in this Glenn Greenwald post is so soul-deadeningly horrifying, so sick even by the degraded standards of America’s normal discourse on this issue, that I thought it bore special mention.

KLEIN: “I completely disagree with you… . It has been remarkably successful” —

SCARBOROUGH: “at killing people” —

KLEIN: “At decimating bad people, taking out a lot of bad people – and saving Americans lives as well, because our troops don’t have to do this … You don’t need pilots any more because you do it with a joystick in California.”

SCARBOROUGH: “This is offensive to me, though. Because you do it with a joystick in California – and it seems so antiseptic – it seems so clean – and yet you have 4-year-old girls being blown to bits because we have a policy that now says: “you know what? Instead of trying to go in and take the risk and get the terrorists out of hiding in a Karachi suburb, we’re just going to blow up everyone around them. This is what bothers me… . We don’t detain people any more: we kill them, and we kill everyone around them… . I hate to sound like a Code Pink guy here. I’m telling you this quote ‘collateral damage’ – it seems so clean with a joystick from California – this is going to cause the US problems in the future.”

KLEIN: “If it is misused, and there is a really major possibility of abuse if you have the wrong people running the government. But: the bottom line in the end is – whose 4-year-old get killed? What we’re doing is limiting the possibility that 4-year-olds here will get killed by indiscriminate acts of terror.”

Tribalism at its most repellent; a willful rejection of empathy for other human beings, even children, with cruelty so casual it’s astonishing to behold.

* Klein should be quite excited to learn of the Obama Administration’s “disposition matrix,” a codification and systematization of pervasive surveillance and extrajudicial killing, conducted in secret and intended to become a permanent fixture of the executive branch. The object of power is power. Won’t it be fun to vote for these people anyway, because this election is like choosing between cancer and a less aggressive form of cancer?

* In happier news, I still like Beyoncé.

* Finally, here’s someone playing “Cherub Rock” by Smashing Pumpkins on the piano and giving me chills and making me giggle with delight.

I wrote about Ned’s Atomic Dustbin and the coolest kid in high school for my music tumblr, Cool Practice. I still love everything about this band — totally inerrant melodic instincts, and that lead bass sound is singular, and the lyrics could not be more practical for the unlucky in love.

(The answer to the above question is Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, but Ned’s is a close second.)

* One’s temptation to crumple the entire comics internet up and throw it in the garbage decreases considerably when everyone starts writing about Chris Ware. The Comics Journal is doing a whole series on Ware’s astounding new collection Building Stories; highlights so far include Joe McCulloch’s thoughts and Chris Mautner’s interview with Ware.

* Mike Mignola, John Arcudi et al’s excellent B.P.R.D., long an ongoing series in all but name, will make it official beginning with “issue #100.”

* Ware was one of the human highlights of the recent iteration of SPX, and unsurprisingly Tom Spurgeon has the best con report. One thing that happened there that had never happened to me before was that total strangers came up to me to compliment me on this blog four or five times, which was wonderful and uplifting, so thank you, strangers.

* If you’re looking for comics to try you could do a lot worse than to use Jessica Abel & Matt Madden’s list of Notable Comics from Best American Comics 2012 as your guide.

* Or you could read all of the Kevin Huizenga comics that have been posted online.

* I’m digging Mr. Freibert’s new style.

* Michael DeForge’s “Leather Space Man” is as good at depicting the weird un-logic of urban legends and pop-culture mysteries like “Paul is dead” or “Andrew W.K. is an impostor” as Kevin Huizenga’s Ganges #2 was at depicting the weird un-logic of Mario-style video games. Meanwhile “Manananggal” is as strong a horror/SF thing as he’s ever done and “Splitsville” is the same for the sex-comic category and Ant Comic remains the best webcomic going. It’s a shame he abandoned Open Country, that awesome minicomic series about astral-projection art, though. Michael, don’t abandon/destroy your comics anymore. They’re good!

* Jonny Negron draws David Lynch and a woman in the woods. Those colors!

* Jeez, Simon Hanselmann.

* Josh Simmons made a minicomic called Flayed Corpse for Chuck Forsman’s Oily Comics line that I’d like to read, and he also drew this tribute to Hans Rickheit’s Cochlea & Eustacea and this one-panel gag comic.

* Wow, look at this comic “Sparring” that my collaborator Isaac Moylan made.

* Ben Max F. Urkowitz made a very nice comic here — a little Tim Hensley, a little Gilbert Hernandez, a little pre-Maus Art Spiegelman even. Click to read the whole thing.

* Go buy a whole bunch of troubling, compulsively drawn comics by Heather Benjamin, who’s really got everyone else in comics beat in terms of interview attire and candidness.

* Uno Moralez gif/image gallery gloriousness.

* Once you’ve learned the grim true story behind the making of The Birds, this gif, which I’ve thought for years and years now is Hitchcock’s single most revealing-of-self moment, takes on an even more troubling new meaning.

* I once wrote an oral history of Marvel Comics with a 13,000-word first draft for Maxim, yet I’m still absolutely enthralled and regularly enlightened by the clips I’ve read from writer Sean Howe’s forthcoming book Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. Here’s a bit on the ’90s boom and Image defection, and here’s a justifiably internet-famous bit on the freewheeling, acid-dropping ’70s.

* In her Bloggingheads.tv show “Critic Proof,” Alyssa Rosenberg, who is one of my favorite TV critics, talks to Willa Paskin and Todd VanDerWerff, who are two of my favorite TV critics. Paskin is just a mercilessly efficient and effective critic, man, jeez.

* I’m looking forward to listening to four excellent comics talkers, Tucker Stone, Matt Seneca, Joe McCulloch, and Chris Mautner, talk about Love and Rockets at length in their podcast.

* Vanessa Pelz-Sharpe is probably the best sex writer I’ve ever read. Her advice in that post makes for excellent sex scenes in addition to excellent sex IRL, too.

* LISTEN TO CARLY RAE JEPSEN

* Please read this marvelous, harrowing true story about the coolest kids in the author’s hometown. Blood Sugar Sex Majik is a hell of a drug. (Via Molly Lambert.)

* Ta-Nehisi Coates presents an escaped slave’s furious response to an infuriating letter from his ex-master’s wife demanding he pay for the horse he rode off on. Incandescent writing.

* Coates is actually responsible for some of the best political writing I’ve read in ages himself: “Fear of a Black President”, his magisterially angry essay on the reaction to the Obama presidency that dare not speak its name.

* Conor Friedersdorf on the debilitating psychological effects of living life in constant terror of American drone attacks. Think about this every day, please.

* I don’t really know Zak Smith beyond liking his writing on gaming, art, and fiction and exchanging the occasional tweet or comment, and I don’t know his girlfriend Mandy Morbid at all, so I felt weird trying to talk to either of them about the issues raised in this post directly, so instead I’ll tell you to read Zak’s profoundly moving and blunt post on Mandy’s chronic, intensifying illnesses and living with death as a presence in your life and leave it at that.

* A very happy belated birthday to Jack Kirby, the King of Comics and one of the greatest artists, of any kind, of the 20th century. That link takes you to this year’s Kirby tribute gallery by Tom Spurgeon, an annual comics-internet highlight.

* Finally, I like Beyoncé.

I wrote an essay on growing up on Long Island and my resulting love-hate relationship with Billy Joel for BuzzFeed Music. I kind of can’t believe it either.

James Franco started a band with an art-school classmate (and Smokey Robinson) and I talked to them (not Smokey) about it for Rolling Stone. If you were wondering, he was extremely nice and soft-spoken and appears to do all the different things he does not out of ego but simply because he really enjoys working.

I wrote a list of 23 things John Bonham did during the quiet part of “Stairway to Heaven” for BuzzFeed Music. It is ridiculous, and yet I believe an accurate portrait of the John Bonham gestalt. It does not include this astonishing performance of “Kashmir” but you get it here anyway.

Led Zeppelin – Kashmir by bobjd78

I also wrote about “Teenage Kicks” by the Undertones for Cool Practice, my tumblr about music and coolness. Blueballs in music form.

I wrote an article on the chill-inducing phenomena of ASMR and musical frisson for Buzzfeed Music. I’ve gotten chills from certain musical passages for as long as I can remember but never thought about why until very recently. Sourced reporting from evolutionary psychologists and choral composer Eric Whitacre, the works, baby.

I’m honored to be a part of the site’s launch day!

Andrew White and I made a comic about Drake called “Hottest Chick in the Game.” We hope you enjoy it.

I listed my 100 favorite albums from 1996-2011 for the People’s List at Pitchfork. The image above is a spoiler.

* The 2012 Ignatz Award nominees have been announced. Insofar as Jaime Hernandez’s work in Love and Rockets: New Stories #4 is recognized adequately, or even at all, this cements the Ignatz as the United States’ best comics awards slate. Psyched to see SuperMutant Magic Academy by Jillian Tamaki get a nod, too.

* Major comics creators’-rights lawsuit news: Tony Moore is seeking co-authorship of The Walking Dead in federal court, referring to his former collaborator Robert Kirkman as “a proud liar and fraudster who freely admits that he has no qualms about misrepresenting material facts in order to consummate business transactions”; and the federal judge providing over the Shuster/DC Superman lawsuit has canceled a coming hearing in order to proceed directly to ruling on the case without first hearing oral arguments.

* Portland-area residents in particular may wish to contribute to the Kickstarter for The Projects, a new model for a comic con based around actually making and displaying work at the show rather than just selling it.

* Obviously I’ve been waist deep in Breaking Bad for weeks now; the better pieces I’ve seen on it include Alyssa Rosenberg’s review of this past week’s episode and essay on the issue of Skyler White, emotional abuse, and culpability, and Maureen Ryan’s hour-long podcast interview with Vince Gilligan, who as always seems like just about the nicest, most unassuming, most candid a showrunner can get.

* This news has been out and about for a while in various forms, but it’s official: Secret Acres will be debuting The Understanding Monster Book One by Theo Ellsworth at this year’s must-attend SPX.

* But did we know that Aidan Koch’s The Blonde Woman would be collected and released in September 2012, or is that new news?

* Alright, a new Cindy & Biscuit strip by my collaborator Dan White!

* One of my favorite music writers on one of my favorite bands: Tom Ewing reviews the Roxy Music Complete Studio Recordings box set. I think it’s just about dead on in every particular: the choice to emphasize and celebrate Ferry right up front, holding up Avalon as at least the equal of even the best of the first five records, rightly locating Manifesto and especially Flesh + Blood as first drafts for the subsequent masterpiece, and especially calling attention to the tracks where the full band “reach full steam.” Seriously, Roxy could really tear the shit out of a song when that was what they were going for — for pure power, on tracks like “Editions of You” or “Mother of Pearl” or “Out of the Blue” or the almighty “Virginia Plain” they could go toe to toe with just about anyone.

* Then, because it’s my birthday or something, Ewing runs down his four favorite tracks (aka the “Mount Rushmore” meme) for Roxy Music, T. Rex, Led Zeppelin, and the Beatles.

* Sheesh — this Mark Richardson piece on being terrified out of his wits as a kid by The Elephant Man proves, if there was any doubt, that Mark Richardson is really good at writing about David Lynch. He should seriously consider going full monomania about it.

* Zach Baron’s Grantland piece on Matt Damon’s Bourne trilogy and its Jeremy Renner-starring follow-up The Bourne Legacy is thoroughly fine; this passage is particularly fine.

In The Bourne Identity, director Doug Liman drew on his dad’s experience prosecuting Oliver North in the wake of Iran-Contra to make a film, only one year after 9/11, that is still one of the best and most thoughtful visions of Americans abroad in this century — Damon’s Bourne was a man in a foreign country with a gun in his hand and no idea how it got there. The Robert Ludlum source novels, Gilroy once said, “were about running to airports.” But Liman, with Gilroy’s help, made a movie about lost identity: an action film in which killing is the symptom of the problem, rather than the solution to it.

It’s also worth noting his take on Renner’s performances in Dahmer, The Hurt Locker, and The Avengers, even if you disagree with it. (For what it’s worth, my review of the Matt Damon Bourne movies and the Daniel Craig Bond movies is one of my favorite bits of film writing I ever did.)

* Tom Spurgeon had a big 50th birthday blowout for Stan Lee & Steve Ditko’s Spider-Man the other day; highlights include Spurgeon’s 16-point meditation on Amazing Spider-Man #1-150 and Kiel Phegley on Spider-Man’s cultural ubiquity.

* Captain America by Rick Remender, John Romita Jr., Klaus Janson, and Dean White: a character I like written by a writer I like, pencilled by a penciller I like, inked by an inker I like, and colored by a colorist I like, but man is the plot a departure from the Ed Brubaker material that made the Joe Simon/Jack Kirby character work as well as, if not better than, he’s ever worked before.

* Domitille Collardey’s Wreckhall Abbey is off to a very strong start.

* Kali Ciesemier’s take on Josie Packard for the Damn Fine Coffee Twin Peaks zine is reliably beautiful.

* Why not take a look at a Ross Campbell drawing of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fighting some Mousers?

* Lingerie Witches: some dumb fun smut from Simon Hanselmann.

* I’m glad the video for A$AP Rocky’s “Purple Kisses” came out on the same day I put up that picture of Jonny Negron’s new book.

* Jason Adams reviews David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis and sums up Alfred Hitchcock in one gif.

* Finally, we’ve gotten some terrific Destructor fanart from Aviv Iscovitz and Jordan Shiveley. We’re always up for more.

I wrote about “Pay No Mind (Snoozer)” by Beck for Cool Practice, my tumblr about music and coolness. What a scathing song.

* Behold: the greatest photo in the history of comics. Top row, from left: Gary Panter, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Phoebe Gloeckner, Ivan Brunetti, Seth, Danniel Clowes, Alison Bechdel, Gary Lieb, Justin Green, Chris Ware, Robert Crumb, Ben Katchor. Bottom row, from left: Joe Sacco, Françoise Mouly, Art Spiegelman, Hillary Chute, Lynda Barry, Carol Tyler, Charles Burns. Photographer: Jason Smith.

* Pope Hats #3 by Ethan Rilly, coming soon from AdHouse! That book will burn up the alt-comics festival circuit this fall, that’s for sure. The first two were lovely, and good reads.

* I’m not sure why this hasn’t been a bigger deal — I was pretty sure this was one of Hollywood’s great mysteries for decades now — but Tippi Hedren says Alfred Hitchcock tried to blackmail her into sex and smothered her career when she refused him

* Matt Madden, Jessica Able, and Françoise Mouly have released the table of contents for this year’s Best American Comics. Some strong work in there, including excerpts Joyce Farmer’s Special Exits, Anders Nilsen’s Big Questions, Sammy Harkham’s Crickets, and Jaime Hernandez’s “The Love Bunglers.” That last inclusion gives me another opportunity for an smh moment regarding the lack of major comics awards consideration given that work, a failure of judgment that borders on scandal. Oh well, looking forward to the Ignatz sweep.

* Here’s a short but impressive list of like-minded alt/art/underground comics anthologies currently operating, as recommended by Leah Wishnia, editor of the likeminded Happiness Comix effort. One thing that the contretemps over Dan Nadel’s anti-SP7 editorial brought to light for me is — well, it’s actually two things. The first is that the community of (mostly) young cartoonists making resolutely uncommercial comments is growing much faster than I can keep up with. To be honest I’d long flattered myself with the idea that I was keeping nearly all this stuff on my radar, but there’s so much I’m missing, so much I don’t even know I’m missing. I doubt that as a critic I’m on their radar, either, although who knows. The second thing spins out of that last sentence: I don’t think any critics are working this beat with any regularity. Maybe Rob Clough, since he reviews everything? Maybe someone I don’t know I’m missing either? But as best I can tell, aside from certain breakout talents I don’t think this cohort has critical champions or interlocutors. Which could explain some of the anger directed at Dan when he said he had no idea what “underground comics” means in 2012, ’cause these folks do, I’d guess. Anyway, I think that if a generation of cartoonists comes of age without criticism, that will have an effect on both cartooning and criticism.

* Related: Tom Spurgeon on the value of Nadel ripping the band-aid off these issues.

* “Where You Are King” is an impressively icky comic by Ian Sundahl for Study Group. The lettering is tremendous.

* Domitille Collardey’s new webcomic Wreckhall Abbey is indeed very new, but it’s the kind of comic that makes you nod your head and go “yep, there it is” — the moment a cartoonist finds the project her interests and talents were tailor-made to create. It appears to be a boarding-school strip in the vein of Jillian Tamaki’s excellent Supermutant Magic Academy; I think the internet’s plenty big enough for both. The layout seems super-considered and labor-intensive, too. Well done.

* I liked this Mark Richardson piece on associating the work of David Lynch with his own real-life brushes with fear and violence. This is an underdiscussed characteristic of Lynch’s work, his ability to accurately convey the sensation of proximity to violence that renders you powerless, and the terror of that. It’s usually overlooked in favor of the stuff to which the adjective Lynchian is more often applied — narrative ruptures, surreal horror, little people doing weird things and so on — but it’s absolutely a core element of his work, and one I’ve seen enough people bring up when discussing trauma from their own lives to know I’m not alone in detecting. You’d be hard pressed to find a better depiction of the impact of losing a classmate than the pilot episode of Twin Peaks, for example, or a better depiction of the psychic toll of sexual violence than Fire Walk with Me. Lynch’s “supervillain” characters, for lack of a better term, get the attention, but they really exist so that we can personalize the trauma in a way large and frightening enough to be commensurate with the size and impact of that trauma.

* Chris Mautner’s Comics College routine tackles the all-time-great Phoebe Gloeckner.

* My friend and collaborator Matt Rota has some gorgeous work in McSweeney’s #41.

* I don’t know much about the Spanish-language comics anthology Argh!, but I know it has Mike Diana in it and that this Jorge Parras cover is very striking. (Via Tom Spurgeon.)

* Real Life Horror: They bomb funerals and it’s an outrage, we bomb funerals and it’s crickets chirping.

* Oh look, it’s Jessica Paré/Megan Draper from Mad Men singing “Just Like Honey” and “Sometimes Always” with the Jesus and Mary Chain, because I’m now Franklin Richards and can bend reality to my will, apparently.

What do you think of this, ’90s high-school drama-club goth Christina Hendricks?

I wrote about “Rubber Rocket” by Electric Six for Cool Practice, my tumblr about music and coolness. The phrase “post-millennial Steely Dan” is used.

* Drop what you’re doing and download Matthew Perpetua’s 8-disc Fluxblog 2008 Survey Mix. Ooftah, the first half of disc 2.

* Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit is now a trilogy. Whoever tells me this and expects me to complain, he understands nothing about Sean, nothing.

* The Secret Acres hivemind weighs on in the Comics Journal/Kickstarter/SP7 fight in high Secret Acres thinkpost style, while Dan Nadel clarifies a couple of his points from the middle of what’s either the best-timed or worst-timed internet hiatus in comics history.

* Another day, another enormously dispiriting interview with Grant Morrison about (among other things) the legal issues surrounding Superman and Watchmen. This one sees Morrison go full Barkley, saying “I’m not a role model” while not-so-subtly mocking Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons for the shitty contract they signed in “hey, I got mine” fashion, in addition to positioning his own refusal to stick up for Siegel & Shuster in any way besides celebrating their artistic accomplishments as a noble refusal to treat them like victims. Yeah, it’s a bummer alright, especially coming from a guy who argues that superheroes are contemporary mankind’s greatest and most inspiring artistic exemplars. Given that his goal is for all that to rub off on the culture to which he exposes them, it’s weird that he finds it so baffling his readers would expect some of that to have rubbed off on him as well.

* Semi-related: Ghost Rider creator Gary Friedrich is appealing the appallingly punitive decision against him in his copyright fight with Marvel.

* A pair of fine reviews of very important collections are up at The Comics Journal: Nicole Rudick on Gloriana by Kevin Huizenga and Brandon Soderberg on The Furry Trap by Josh Simmons. “The Sunset” in the former and “Cockbone” in the latter would make a list of my top favorite short comics of all time; “The Sunset” would top it in fact.

* Dan Clowes is going to make a show called The Landlord for HBO with the directors of that nightmarish-looking Ruby Spears thing.

* I’m kind of the opposite of Tom Spurgeon here: I knew Fantagraphics would be collecting the Ignatz series New Tales of Old Palomar by Gilbert Hernandez, but apparently I never said so on this blog, if my search function is to be believed.

* I’ve really been enjoying Dorothy Berry’s posts on Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy for Comics Workbook, like this one about how rare Nancy is as a fictional female child who is neither a tomboy nor a girly-girl. My daughter is young enough to still be in that limbo state where she dresses more or less like a girl because we buy girl’s clothes for her but her behavior is essentially genderless, and I can tell you that in flipping through the Nancy Is Happy collection, I see a lot of that kid in her.

* The Mindless Ones’ Bobsy gives the business to Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples, a comic I did not like at all.

* Gabrielle Bell has wrapped up her July Diary series for the year. If it wasn’t quite the revelation that last year’s effort was, it still contained a freaking zombie comic, and a two-panel autobiography that just slays me.

* The Burning Brothel, a Raymond Pettibon tumblr, is a delightful resource for an increasingly influential-on-comics artist.

* Eleanor Davis is laying it on the line in her comics and sketches these days. Don’t miss it.

* Well, Arsene Schrauwen #1 by Olivier Schrauwen sure looks good.

* I think every artist should be required by law to do a series of Batman character portraits, and I will be introducing this legislation as the Bill Finger Bill. Jordan Crane caught Michael DeForge’s stab at it, which I’d never seen before and which is awesome. Who’s the smiley guy next to the Joker, though?

* Jonny Negron.

* I always enjoy it when Frank Santoro works a little blue.

* Nice little comic by Mr. Freibert.

* Jordan Crane’s been posting processy glimpses of an upcoming contribution to the next issue of the Fort Thunder-centric Monster anthology (! did we know this was on the way?) to his tumblr, and I know this’ll come as a huge surprise but it looks gorgeous.

* Go buy comics from Andy “q v i e t” Burkholder’s Bigcartel store. Guy’s talented. (Via Michael DeForge.)

* Jeez, C.F. makes a lot of comics.

* Real Life Horror: This is what policework in America looks like now.

* Glenn Greenwald, inspired by Chris Hayes’s book Twilight of the Elites:

I see no evidence that “rich people are very, very afraid” — at least not by their actions. And that, to me, is the problem. That fear — a lot more of it — is necessary. Their ability to rope themselves off from the society they are degrading, combined with the para-militarization of domestic police forces (aggressively displayed in response to the Occupy movement and related protests), and the rapidly increasing domestic powers of surveillance and detention (designed to intimidate the citizenry and thus deter and guard against mass protests), have convinced them, I think, that they need not fear any protest movements or social unrest, that America can and will become more and more of a police state to suppress it. An elite class that is free to operate without limits — whether limits imposed by the rule of law or fear of the responses from those harmed by their behavior — is an elite class that will plunder, degrade, and cheat at will, and act endlessly to fortify its own power.

*Attention A Song of Ice and Fire fans who’ve read all five books: This EXTREMELY SPOILERY George R.R. Martin interview is unusually informative on various obscure but fervently debated plot points.

* I am allergic to watching anything Olympics, but I understand the opening ceremony, directed by Danny Boyle and music-directed by Underworld, was quite something — basically a tribute to socialized health care, rock and roll, and children’s literature. Most of the people I know from the U.K. feel about the place the way I feel about the U.S., but those people should take comfort in knowing that it’s unimaginable, unimaginable for America to conceive of itself in terms that humanistic. Anyway the soundtrack, Isles of Wonder, is out, and though most of the big famous songs I understand were in the production don’t show up here, there’s still a whole lot of terrific Underworld music, so I’m happy.

I wrote about “Little Earthquakes” by Tori Amos on Cool Practice, my tumblr about music and coolness. I’ve been doing a lot of that kind of writing lately where you feel so strongly about a thing that you find yourself at a loss for words, so then you realize you have to make up the words for it.

Go here to download the entire Fluxblog 10th Anniversary Spectacular at Housing Works from Monday night in podcast form, featuring me, Matthew Perpetua, Emily Gould, Heather D’Angelo from Au Revoir Simone, Mark Richardson from Pitchfork, Amy Rose Spiegel from Rookie, Amanda Petrusich, Dick Valentine from the Electric Six, and Rob Sheffield from Rolling Stone talking about songs we love. It sounds terrific, arguably even better than how it sounded live, and it sounded pretty great live. Don’t miss the mix of all the songs we talked about, also available for download at the link — it works alarmingly well as a mix in and of itself.

Recently I wrote about “Voodoo-U” by Lords of Acid and “Born Slippy .NUXX” by Underworld for my tumblr about music and coolness, Cool Practice.

(I used to call all fast-paced electronic dance music “techno” — was that a common thing, like how all non-punks used to refer to all punk and post-punk people by shouting “DEVO!” at them?)

* Double congratulations to Matthew Perpetua, my favorite music critic, for his new gig as music editor at Buzzfeed and for his wonderfully well done Fluxblog anniversary show last night. I had a marvelous time, photo evidence of which is available below. Click here to download a playlist consisting of all the songs that Matthew and the guests (Emily Gould, Heather, D’Angelo, Mark Richardson, Amy Rose Spiegel, me, Amanda Petrusich, Dick Valentine, and Rob Sheffield) talked about; mine was “Leaving Hope” by Nine Inch Nails.

* Please read my friend Tom Spurgeon’s extraordinary essay about nearly dying, then losing over 200 pounds. Please read my friend Bill Magee’s extraordinary essay about getting mugged for the fourth time, then remaining a kind person. I hate that they both went through what they went through, but look what they did with it. Also, Tom will be serializing a book-length version of his epochal “Comics Made Me Fat” essay on his website, which is wonderful news if you like personal writing from the best comics critic alive.

* Grant Morrison says that he’s down to his final four superhero comics projects before leaving the genre for the foreseeable future: Action Comics, which he’ll stay on through issue #16; Batman Incorporated, which he’ll wrap up with issue #12; Multiversity, the forthcoming eight-issue miniseries; and an unknown Wonder Woman project. In this interview with my pal Kiel Phegley (part one of three) he also talks about Happy!, his four-issue miniseries with Darick Robertson at Image, and about Image Comics’ position in the industry as a sort of standard-bearer for a certain kind of creator-owned comic.

* Related: DC is postponing the release of Batman Incorporated #3 due to violent imagery it feels would resonate inappropriately with the Aurora shootings.

* Back to Tom Spurgeon: His San Diego Comic-Con reporting was second to none, especially but by no means exclusively in terms of covering the actual comics portion of the con in addition to the Comic-Con Experience. Here’s his final overview; here’s his roundup of the big news. It does a body good to hear that the crowd popped for Los Bros Hernandez, giants among men that they are.

* Digital Tales Designed to Thrizzle by Michael Kupperman! Great choice for their digital-comics launch by Fantagraphics — that books is very accessible to altcomedy audiences.

* I’m really going to miss Jessica Campbell, the newly departed PR honcho for Drawn and Quarterly. Easy to work with and easy to talk to at cons. But based on her exit interview with Tom Spurgeon it sounds like she’s got good plans, so it’s hard to begrudge her from escaping comics’ gravitational well. Also, her farewell San Diego photo parade is one of the best I’ve seen; here’s her pic of Spurge emceeing the Two Minutes Hate portion of the Eisner Awards program.

* Frank Santoro presents Comics Workbook, a new group blog featuring Frank, L. Nichols, Brandon Soderberg, Mickey Zacchilli, Chuck Forsman, Andrew White, Sophie Yanow and various other notables. An early highlight: this post by Dorothy Berry about connecting with Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy as a twentysomething the same way she connected with Enid Coleslaw from Daniel Clowes’s Ghost World in her teens:

The emotional transition from relating to the detailed inner life of Enid to the monochromatic punnery of Nancy is analogous to the transition from listening to an entire Bright Eyes album to just needing to hear the Beach Boys sing “Sometimes I feel very sad.”

* This week in astonishing Michael DeForge Ant Comic pages I’ve decided are homages to specific works I enjoy even though they probably aren’t: that grid fight from Hard Boiled by Frank Miller and Geof Darrow? Related: Lose #4 in September!

* Oh look, it’s the cover for Renee French’s Bjornstrand.

* And here’s the cover for its fellow PictureBox limited-release artcomic, Frank Santoro’s Pompeii. There’s something almost D’Aulaires about it.

* Eleanor Davis’s comics have been bracingly bleak lately. Hell, they’ve been lately, which is exciting right there.

* Have I mentioned that Gabrielle Bell is doing her July Diary again?

* Have I mentioned that Strangeways: The Thirsty by Matt Maxwell, Gervasio, and Jok is very pretty?

* Whoa, Simon Hanselmann’s working really blue in this Megg and Mogg strip. Blue enough to make me say “whoa.” Less so in this one. Much less so in this one. They are all so lushly colored. Where’d this guy come from?

* Kali Ciesemier’s illustration for an article about the increasing “sexiness” of women athletes’ uniforms is itself increasingly sexy. Unpack that, why don’t you.

* Jonny Negron, Jonny Negron, Jonny Negron. I often don’t even comment on Jonny’s stuff, I just post it and let it speak for itself, but I feel like his color work is radically underappreciated, including by me. Look at that green water.

* Speaking of water, Julia Gfrörer’s new Black Is the Color cover is the most solid-looking thing she’s ever drawn.

* Robert Boyd on the music of Love and Rockets. (The comic, not the Bauhaus side project.) (Via Tom Spurgeon.)

* I feel deeply, personally vindicated that Dan Bejar from Destroyer shares my love for Avalon by Roxy Music.

* Despite the usual undercooked lyrics, this Kreayshawn video is endearing and fascinating for three main reasons: 1) the sound of the song is like “What if we took one of those obnoxious sing-songy Avril Lavigne/Ashlee Simpson brat-pop songs we used to do and gave it to someone who was actually gleefully obnoxious?”; 2) Holy cow, she’s lovely; 3) I suspect the vividly colored, ersatz 3D visuals, in which typically inanimate elements are animated, were designed to simulate Ambien hallucinations.

* Three cheers for the Darkness’s new album cover. Very glad they/he are getting it going again; their second album is hugely underrated as songwriting — it starts super strong. Oh yeah, that link has the studio version of them covering “Street Spirit” by Radiohead.

* MY BODY IS READY, NEW BAT FOR LASHES ALBUM

* Oh look, it’s page after page after page of videos, photos, and miniature essays about Cindy Crawford-era MTV House of Style. It’s not even nostalgia, it’s as close as we’ll get to physically rupturing the timestream and encountering the vividly remembered past. Cindy Forever.