OH MY GOD

* Here's an audio interview with Jordan Crane I haven't had a chance to listen to yet. (Via Mike Baehr.)

* Here's a Gilbert Hernandez superheroine comic I haven't had a chance to read yet. (Also via Mike Baehr.)

* B-Sol at Vault of Horror notes the locations of Deadgirl theatrical screenings across the country on July 24th and 25th at midnight. They shoulda thrown San Diego in there.

* I really don't care if Let Me In is "a more accurate English-language translation" of the title of the novel upon which Let the Right One In was based--it's not as good a title, and it's silly that that's what They're calling the Hollywood remake. (Via Jason Adams.)

* I have no dog in this race at all, so I'll simply say that Tom Spurgeon's argument for pulling the plug on the Harveys has me mentally singing its central proposition to the tune of "Pulling the Plug on the Party," which is awesome.

* Yes, by all means, please collect David Mazzucchelli's Rubber Blanket so I can finally read the damn thing.

* Can't remember if I've seen this before or not, but the Clive Barker adaptation Book of Blood hits DVD on September 29th.

* My pal Ben Morse makes the case for his definitive Batman stories.

* My pal Ceri B. takes a look at a pair of horror-ish comics that were part of what was once known as "the New Mainstream," The Light Brigade and various 30 Days of Night books.

* Wow: Scientists have discovered a single, massive ant mega-colony spread across Europe, the U.S., and Japan. (Via Thoreau.)

* Torture links of the day: We tortured multiple prisoners to death. Shouldn't that be a bigger deal, especially given how the torture debate has come to center not on the morality of abuse generally, but whether the way we abused people wasn't that severe?

* Adorable, animated-style Battlestar Galactica figures are pretty hilarious in the context of the series' final episodes. Speaking of, it's kind of adorable that the upcoming tv movie Battlestar Galactica: The Plan is pretty explicitly devoted to tying up plot points they never got around to covering in the series itself.

* Not Coming to a Theater Near You's Katherine Follett reviews Paul Barthel's sex-and-violence spectacular Death Race 2000. RIP, Frankenstein.

* B-Sol at the Vault of Horror praises Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel's Deadgirl. Actually, he rhetorically asks "This Year's Inside?", which isn't exactly the way to convince me I need to see the movie, but I get his point. It's funny: The Missus saw the trailer for this thing ages ago and immediately wrote it off as yet another meditation on what violently sexualized misogyny does to the men who perpetrate it rather than to the women who suffer from it. I think she probably has a point, but it's tough to say without seeing the film.

CLIVE BARKER will hold a brief conversation with GRANT MORRISON before the signing.

WHO: GRANT MORRISON

WHY: Signing Batman and Robin and his latest Hard Cover Book

WHEN: WEDNESDAY, JULY 1st, 2009

MUSIC PROVIDED BY: iheartcomix.com & DJ Franki Chan

DRINKS: ASAHI & TIBETAN TEA

6:00 PM to 9:00 PM @ MELTDOWN
7522 SUNSET BLVD, L.A., CA, 90046

(hat tip: David Paggi

* Ta-Nehisi Coates talks about Michael Jackson, separating art from artists, and Jeffrey Dahmer.

* Renee French's art is unnerving.

* Josh Simmons's art is unnerving.

I'll Be There in Twin Peaks from Mashed in Plastic on Vimeo.

Michael Jackson and Twin Peaks fans, prepare to get knocked flat on your ass.

* Coincidentally, Ta-Nehisi Coates, a blogger who's getting so good I was already going to link to him today simply to say "Ta-Nehisi Coates is a really, really good blogger," wrote two pieces on Michael just a couple of days ago that you should read. Andrew Sullivan's post is just beautiful, too.

* While we're at it, I'm still pretty proud of the essay I wrote about the influence of "Thriller."

* Well this has got to be my favorite review of the month: Not Coming to a Theater Near You's Adam Balz tackles The Running Man with an utterly straight face ("Richards is brought on stage, introduced to the live audience against a thunder of jeering – he is, after all, the Butcher of Bakersfield, a lie that is reinforced through doctored video of him firing on the unarmed crowd – and set down in a metal cart that will deliver him, at an unimaginable velocity, through underground tunnels, into the massive, 400-square-foot arena."). I have seen The Running Man more than any other of the '80s' many ultraviolent sci-fi action movies, largely because it was the one I watched as a kid. Heck, it was all but designed for a kid, modeled as it was on the visual language of pro-wrestling--but with killing! So this review really has it all for me. There's a list of the varied career paths of the many, many non-actors who star in the film (Family Feud host, titular member of Fleetwood Mac, son of Frank Zappa, future governor (twice!), football/lacrosse legend, etc etc etc), a tidbit about Stephen King/Richard Bachmann's writing process, a leisurely stroll through a couple of the movie's adorably gigantic plot holes, a Slavoj Zizek reference, a comparison to Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator, you name it. If any of that sounds appealing to you, please read it.

* Now, if you'd told me earlier that I'd find a review today that I'd actually like better than Jog's take on Greg Rucka & J.H. Williams III's Detective Comics debut, I wouldn't have believed you. Funny world, innit? Still, this thing's very good--better than the comic, I think. (Did anyone else think it was funny that between the main Backup story and the Question backup story, there were two virtually identical scenes of a lesbian crimefighter in her civvies walking into a room and chatting with her late-middle-aged sidekick as he works on the computer?)

* Over the past few years Fantagraphics has truly brought out the format geek in me; I think it was their amazing softcover digest-plus re-release of Love & Rockets that did it, but the design and format of their Jason books has been killer too. So it's fascinating to me that they're repackaging Jason's black-and-white/two-color books (some for the third time!) in the hardcover format they did for Low Moon. I'm actually not 100% sure how I feel about this--part of the appeal of Jason's stuff is just how damn many books he's put out through Fanta and just how awesome all of them are, and when you boil them down to three or four volumes you lose that impact a bit--but I'm sure they'll be gorgeous things, and of course the comics are among the best in the world.

* While promoting that longer-but-still-not-complete Watchmen Director's Cut that will inevitably be supplanted by the actual full-fledged Director's Cut that he'd been describing to anyone who'd listen for months before the release of the film, director Zack Snyder said that Frank Miller really is writing a sequel to 300. Fingers crossed!

* To distract its citizens from the ongoing protests, Iran is broadcasting...The Lord of the Rings?

* Topless Robot. Transformers 2. The magic happens tonight.

* Last weekend, I think, MTV2 was doing this weird thing where they'd just show a hodgepodge of stuff MTV used to air during the '90s--sketches from The State, Beavis & Butt-Head segments, the original silent and awesome Aeon Flux episodes, actual music videos, etc. Among this melange I caught the opening installment of the in-retrospect outrageously faithful animated adaptation of Sam Kieth and Bill Messner-Loebs's The Maxx, and wow, that thing held up. Now it turns out MTV is streaming episodes at its website. (Via JK Parkin.) The Maxx was really my gateway to alternative comics in a lot of ways--visually and eventually thematically it threw open some doors in my head that I walked through years later--and I know a lot of folks my age have a similar story.

* Frank Santoro Will Teach You To Make Comics!

* Anders Nilsen has been posting sketchbook comics like crazy lately; here's the latest. They're a little cutesier and sillier than usual.

* Behind-the-Curve Comics Theater: CF's "Vollenweider's Cave," via everyone last week. Note the uncredited cameo by the Toxic Avenger, or his face at least.

* Just the other day I was talking with my brother, who was freshly returned from proposing to his girlfriend at Disney World, about what a kickass theme park ride Lost would make. I must have been tapping the zeitgeist, because lo and behold, a rumor to that effect was recently debunked. Too bad!

* Holy moley, this gallery of 200 Dick Tracy characters is impressive. (Via Tom Spurgeon.)

* Hey, look, it's Nick Bertozzi! (Also via Spurge but I can't get the link to work)

* While the Loch Ness Monster will always hold a special place in my heart, and while I love giant squids to pieces too, I think the cryptid that really fires my imagination most is the mokele mbembe, the sauropod dinosaurs that supposedly still lurk in isolated jungles in central Africa. But what if the mokele mbembe isn't a dinosaur at all? The extinct rhinoceros relative Indricotherium would match the long-necked descriptions offered by eyewitnesses and local legend; its former habitat would map pretty neatly to the contemporary African jungles; and obviously it's a bit easier to imagine a surviving pocket of slightly prehistoric mammals than it is to imagine a bunch of dinosaurs running around millions of years after the fact. Finally, HOLY CRAP LOOK AT THIS AWESOME PICTURE

* I Deserved That Part 2: Tom Spurgeon says "Where's your god now, Moses?" to those of us who defended Final Crisis #1's chart placement behind Secret Invasion #2. I don't see the connection he's trying to make between the commentariat's take on its performance and that of the dire May 2009 sales chart--no, we're not defending the relative health of the top books this month, but that's because they aren't healthy. Still, in retrospect, defending the failure of the first issue of an event comic by top talent from a Big Two publisher to hit #1 in a marketplace designed specifically to get first issues, event comics, and top talent from Big Two publishers to #1 does seem like so much weaksauce. I think maybe Grant Morrison is telling a story between the lines when, in interviews, he proudly and correctly points out that Final Crisis and Batman R.I.P. were the bestselling books of the year for DC. (Pick the phrase to emphasize in that sentence.) Whatever, they're still awesome comics and I'm still twelve kinds of skeeved out by the idea that I should think of them as artistic failures because they didn't do Civil War numbers.

* Behold, The Immortal Iron Fist is becoming, at least for five issues, Immortal Weapons, and you can see a sketchbook preview here. The recently revived and expanded Iron Fist mythology is sort of the foundational text for a quartet of rewardingly outside-the-usual-territory Marvel books that includes The Incredible Hercules, Agents of Atlas, and the unfortunately cancelled, possibly-to-be-revived-digitally Captain Britain and MI-13. I hope Immortal Weapons is good and does well.

* Speaking of the debt we owe to Ed Brubaker these days, my goodness the upcoming Criminal: The Deluxe Edition is an eye-catching object.

* Well, here's a swell idea for a regular column: The AV Club presents Gateways to Geekery, a guide to the kinds of things you hear great things about but seem too daunting to dive right into. This go-round, Tasha Robinson recommends Stephen King gateway texts. I pretty much agree with all her recommendations: Where to start, must-reads for the newly broken-in, and books you should probably stay the fuck away from. (Hello, Dark Tower series!) (Via Whitney Matheson.)

* I know it's a cash grab by Capitol Records, but these double- and triple-disc reissues of Radiohead's back catalog--soon to include Kid A, Amnesiac, and Hail to the Thief--really scratch an itch I've had for over a decade. I remember enviously eyeing that Japanese import EP with "Killer Cars" on it at the campus record store for ages but never quite having the guts to spend the cash on it, and now all I have to come up with is around $10 when these every-B-side-remix-and-live-version collections hit the Amazon used listings and I'm good to go!

* There's really nothing about the idea of Beck doing a quick-and-dirty cover of the entirety of The Velvet Underground and Nico and releasing it online song by song that I don't like. Ditto the runner-up album for the honor, the Digital Underground's Sex Packets (which I was just listening to on Wednesday!).

Aaron Diaz @dresdencodak
Act-I-Vate @act_i_vate
Alison Bechdel @abechdel
Andy Runton @owly
Becky Cloonan @beckycloonan
Billy Mavreas @billy_mavreas
Box Brown @boxbrown
Brett Warnock (Top Shelf) @brettwarnock
Bryan Lee O'Malley @radiomaru
Cameron Stewart @cameronstewart
Chip Zdarsky @zdarsky
Chris Onstad @achewood
Chris Radtke @radtke327
Chris Staros (Top Shelf) @chrisstaros
Chuck BB @chuckbb
Colleen Coover @colleencoover
Corey Lewis @kenby
Dan Goldman @dddangoldmannn
Dan Nadel (PictureBox) @dannadel
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David Heatley @heatley
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David Malki @malki
Dean Haspiel @deanhaspiel
Drawn & Quarterly @dandq
Dustin Harbin @dustinharbin
Dylan Horrocks @dylanhorrocks
Elijah J. Brubaker @elijahbrubaker
Evan Dorkin @evandorkin
Faith Erin Hicks @smuu
Fantagraphics @fantagraphics
Graham Annable @grickle
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James Jean @processrecess
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Jason Little @beecomix
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Kate Beaton @beatonna
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Salgood Sam @salgood
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Zack Soto @secretvoice

For the record, I thought the thriller component of the first film was enormously effective--my pulse was pounding!--in no small part because of the smart acting choices made by Jay Hernandez and, I suppose, by Eli Roth's direction of him.

Also for the record, contra Curt's interpretation of my Hostel Part II review, I didn't have "apparently visceral discomfort with what [I] call 'the aestheticized abuse of women" in the Heather Matarazzo torture scene qua the aestheticized abuse of women. Granted, that's not necessarily my thing the way it is for much of the material Curt's Groovy Age site focuses on, but I have no problem with it in theory any more than I have an inherent problem with the aestheticized abuse of any character in a horror movie. Moreover, I'm guessing Curt took my comment that I found the Weiner Dog Bloodbath scene to be one of the most unpleasant I've ever seen to mean that I didn't "enjoy" seeing it. Enjoyment's a tough nut to crack with horror, but again, and much more so than with Curt, "unpleasant" is more or less what I'm looking for with horror!

So if neither of those points is the key, what is? It lies in this quote from Curt:

In a movie that carves out its own signature fantasy space with a distinctive hyper-realistic style, the bloodbath scene sticks out like a sore thumb with its sumptuous, soft-lit gothicisms. It's mentioned several times in the commentaries that this scene was actually quite disturbing to people on set during filming, and that's less surprising to me than Sean's reaction, because they were seeing it without all the framing, styling, cuts, editing, and post-production that so insistently reassure, "It's only a movie."

* While I'm busy touting my Marvel clout, I'm reasonably sure it was a suggestion I made among a group of my friends that led to my pal Kiel Phegley asking whether Paul Cornell & Leonard Kirk's late, lamented Captain Britain & MI-13 might be brought back as a digital comic, and Joe Quesada responding favorably, in the latest Cup o' Joe column at CBR. If you like this idea, why not say so in public, and to any of your friends or acquaintances in Marvel's employ? It sounds like if we ask for it, they'll listen.

* That Cup o' Joe interview also makes it sound like Marvel is out of the line-wide event business, or will be after maybe one more trip to the well. I think that's good for the long-term health of the superhero comics industry, but May's ginormous sales dip likely indicates it'll be a challenge in the short term. I suppose it depends in part on whether, like Marvel over the past couple years, you try really hard to keep all your plates spinning, or whether you can only spotlight one or two franchises at a time to the detriment of the others.

* James Robinson and Mark Bagley on Justice League of America? Sure, I'll eat it. I don't have the experience with Robinson that many superhero readers do, having never read Starman, but while I didn't end up liking his One Year Later Batman arc I've enjoyed his work in the Superman books recently quite a bit. Bagley, meanwhile, is not my favorite artist when it comes to drawing DC characters, but he knows how to tell a story and his work on Ultimate Spider-Man remains a woefully underappreciated component of that title's success. I remain concerned about DC putting the cart before the horse by preventing its flagship team title from including its biggest characters because they're busy elsewhere--there's a reason Grant Morrison's JLA and Brian Bendis's Avengers were/are the biggest books of their eras, and it's not because they focused on Vixen or Jack of Hearts--but still, color me intrigued. (Via JK Parkin.)

* Now this is how you write a post-artcomix-festival thank-you letter: TCAF's Chris Butcher shows us how it's done.

* The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror 2009---aka Kramers Ergot 7.5--will be guest-edited by Sammy Harkham. That line-up is effing nuts.

* It wasn't until Heidi MacDonald used the word "remote" to describe the old location of the Eisner Awards that I realized, hey, wait, yeah, that is kinda weird, isn't it? All the way at the end of the convention center by itself after the show shuts down for the evening, and you've got to walk under the sails through that deserted stretch of swag tables and autograph aisles. Anyway it's moving to the Hilton.

* Because the original Red Dawn is a) a gonzo artifact of its time; b) a John Milius fever dream; c) TOTALLY AWESOME, I'm not sure I've said word one about Their plans to remake the movie, because why bother? But Latino Review is reporting that Tony Gilroy, Oscar-nominated writer/director of Michael Clayton and screenwriter of, I think, the last two Bourne movies is writing the Red Dawn remake. Suddenly this project got a lot more interesting. Incidentally, Red Dawn has recently joined Atlas Shrugged as a key text for the Obama era in the minds of some prominent and semi-prominent conservatives, so it should be interesting to see how they react to the prospect of the film being remade by the pen of a writer whose thrillers are generally perceived to tilt left.

* That Red Dawn link was via SciFi Wire, but I'm not linking to them again until they knock off their obnoxious habit of putting spoilers in their article headlines, above the by-now-pointless "spoiler warning" tag.

* B-Sol reviews The Blob. That scene where it eats the old man's hand really was horrifying to watch as a kid, wasn't it?

* These are two years old at least, but no less awesome for that: Marvel go-to cover artist Marko Djurdjevic redesigns He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Dig this Marilyn Manson-esque Skeletor! But the Mer-Man is more representative of what the redesigns look like overall. (Via Monster Brains.)

* I have no idea what the deal is with this photo from Rob Zombie's upcoming Halloween 2, and I'm unlikely ever to find out first-hand, but damn what a great character design. It's almost criminal to consign it to some other monster's movie. (Via Arrow in the Head.)

* Finally, my pal Chris Ward talks to Jazma Online about Political Power: Barack Obama, his upcoming comic from Bluewater (yes, the "Female Force" people--Chris wrote the Condoleezza Rice issue). I'm trying to think how to put this...Chris is an interesting choice to write this project, or to write anything that you don't want to read like the work of a crazy person, which is what Chris is. I think the interview speaks for itself. And it also has some juicy tidbits about life at Wizard.

* As mentioned earlier, I've also created Fuck Yeah, T-Shirts, a new tumblelog dedicated to pictures of people wearing t-shirts I like. I'm pleased to welcome my friend and Twitter deity Ryan Penagos aboard as my partner in this venture. We're off to a good start:

* Sean Nerd Crack Part 1: Tim O'Neil discusses the career of David Bowie in terms of Batman. This post is one Hellraiser reference away from making my face fall off.

* Sean Nerd Crack Part 2: Curt Purcell discusses torture porn, also in terms of Batman--Knightfall, to be specific. It was at this point that I wondered if I'd actually woken up this morning. Best of all, like Tim's Bowie/Batman post, this is just the first in a series.

* Sean Nerd Crack Part 3: Taste the rainbow of San Diego Comic Con-exclusive Green Lantern action figures!

* Sean Nerd Crack Part 4: I can't imagine actually spending my and my wife's collective hard-earned money on a G.I. Joe: The Complete Series box set, but I sure can imagine staring at this picture of it for hours at a time. This is like the nerd answer to that Fort Thunder collection I linked to yesterday.

* Sean Nerd Crack Part 5: China Mieville defends J.R.R. Tolkien and holy shit this part reads like I wrote it myself seriously I raised my hands up and cheered:

In his abjuring of allegory, Tolkien refuses the notion that a work of fiction is, in some reductive way, primarily, solely, or really 'about' something else, narrowly and precisely. That the work of the reader is one of code-breaking, that if we find the right key we can perform a hermeneutic algorithm and 'solve' the book. Tolkien knows that that makes for both clumsy fiction and clunky code.

And in his five-point defense of the entirety of Tolkien's work, one entry is "The Watcher in the Water." I mean, seriously, am I in some kind of psychogenic fugue? (Via The One Ring.)

* Back on the Batman beat, The Mindless Ones' The Beast Must Die talks about Morrison & Quitely's Batman & Robin #1 in terms of all the things that have defined his involvement with Batman over the years: the Adam West TV show and its theme song, Tim Burton's first blockbuster Batman film and its t-shirts and Prince soundtrack and Danny Elfman score, Frank Miller's ever-evolving Bat-mythology from The Dark Knight Returns to the years-ahead-of-its-time The Dark Knight Strikes Again to All Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder...it doesn't quite track my own involvement with Batman in every particular (I didn't read comics as a kid, I wasn't into Batman before the movie), but it's close enough to give me chills.

* There's a really robust discussion of the role of the divine in Battlestar Galactica, and the role that role played in the reception of the series' conclusion, going on in the comment thread downblog.

* Geoff Grogan announces he's secured a grant to produce Look Out! Monsters #2! Though it probably won't be called that. LO!M #1 was a terrific book.

* Elsewhere, and I missed this somehow when it went up back in March, Geoff pans BJ and Frank Santoro's Cold Heat--a rare reaction indeed, and he pulls no punches.

* Speaking of the PictureBox gang and pulling no punches, I also somehow missed this comment-thread roundelay about artists/critics reviewing works with which their own work may compete, featuring such luminaries as Gary Groth (!), Dan Nadel, Tom Spurgeon, Tim Hodler, Jeet Heer, and Rob Clough. The nice thing about the debate is that there are plenty of clear examples and apples-to-apples comparisons cited for us to work with. Should Dan Nadel review Craig Yoe's Boody Rogers anthology, given that Dan has himself anthologized Boody Rogers? Should Gary Groth review Denis Kitchen's R. Crumb publications, given that Gary has himself published R. Crumb? Should Tom Spurgeon review Mark Evanier's Jack Kirby book, given that Tom is himself working on a Jack Kirby project? Should Tom critique comics news blogs Bleeding Cool or Journalista, given that Tom is himself a publisher of a comics news blog?

I understand where Tom is coming from here--there's something potentially icky about this idea. (Icky and yucky are perfectly acceptable words for grown-ups to use, Gary!) But the key there is "potentially." As long as the context is proffered, who ultimately cares? I don't see why the situations above, or comparable ones, rule out criticism in a way that being socially friendly with the creators or publishers involved doesn't, or having worked with them or for them doesn't, and on and on and on. Granted, I sort of have a dog in this race: In the past year, and in some cases on an ongoing basis, I have written for DC, Marvel, Wizard, Top Shelf, and Fantagraphics, as well as The Savage Critic(s), The Comics Reporter, and Comic Book Resources, not to mention The Onion and Maxim and wherever the hell else. I like to think that these facts shouldn't preclude me from writing about the work produced by any of those outlets, as long as I'm up front about it, which, hey, look at that sidebar to your left. Then again I'm sure others totally disagree.

Moreover, I disagree with Tom insofar as I'm more interested in reading the criticism of a direct competitor, in some ways at least, than I am in reading the criticism of an uninvolved third party. Why wouldn't I want to hear what new-media music pioneer Trent Reznor thinks about new-media music pioneer Radiohead's new-media music pioneering? Or what Spirit comic-book guy Darwyn Cooke thinks about Spirit movie guy Frank Miller's Spirit? Or what Boody Rogers expert Dan Nadel thinks about Boody Rogers expert Craig Yoe's Boody Rogers anthology? Or what fantasy author China Mieville thinks about fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy? Or what comics reporter Tom Spurgeon thinks about other people's comics reporting? And on and on and on. It's the commonality of interest, experience, and expertise that makes these perspectives valuable. Even if said commonality may cut off avenues of exploration that a disinterested observer may have access to, it surely must open up some others that such an observer doesn't. Sure, there's potentially an element of armchair-quarterbacking at least and score-settling/sour grapes at worst, but honestly, isn't that part of the fun? We can take what they're saying with the requisite grains of salt, as we should when we read any piece of criticism.

(Phew! Original link way back there somewhere via Chris Mautner.)

* David Lynch releasing a rock album recorded during the Fire Walk With Me soundtrack sessions? Sure, I'll eat it.

* Here's a 12-minute preview of Ron Moore's new movie/series/whatever Fox wants it to be Virtuality. I haven't watched it yet--I hope it's good! (Via SciFi Wire.)

* Darkseid Minus New Gods. I threw my arms up and cheered for this, too. (Via Kevin Melrose.)