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1 March 2009
[comics] (Fake) Frank Miller is on Twitter‘HOPE ROB LIEFELD DONT SAY BALLS NASTY. FRANKY, HE NO SHIV, HE SAY RELAX, MY MON.’
2 March 2009
[comics] Legendary Comics Writer Alan Moore on Superheroes, The League, and Making Magic‘I had DC buying the company I had just signed contracts with, which is flattering in one way and very creepy in another. It’s like being stalked by a very rich demented girlfriend who can just buy your entire street in order to be close to you.’
3 March 2009
[comics] Alan Moore, the man with a graphic vision … the Observer profiles Alan Moore …‘As novelist and Watchmen fan Susanna Clarke puts it: “He took something very American – the superhero comic – reinvented it [more than once] and sold it back to them.” And, one might add, didn’t even want to keep the profit he made on the deal.’
4 March 2009
[lmg] LMG’s Ninth Blogiversary … nine years?! I must be mad – it doesn’t help that my enabler nearest and dearest sends me blogiversary cards …

how-many-blogs

5 March 2009
[comics] rorschachsdiary … if Rorschach had a blog it would be on Livejournal… ”yet another example of government oppression: hear scans_daily down for good. irritated; will not have to pay money to find out how the black freighter spin-off turns out. expect veidt behind it…” [via jzw]
6 March 2009
[comics] Review of the Watchmen Movie by Pádraig Ó Méalóid … a real Alan Moore fan reviews Watchmen … ‘There is a scene in the film where Doctor Manhattan is being interviewed in a television studio, just before he abruptly leaves the Earth to go to Mars. He describes something – I don’t recall what at this point – as being as useful as a photograph of Oxygen would be to a drowning man. And this is actually the most apt description I can think of for this film: It looks a lot like the original Watchmen book, but has none of its grace, or beauty, or subtlety, or sinuously beautiful timing.’
[comics] Who Makes The Watchmen? … A illustrated guide to the tortured history of the production of the Watchmen movie … ‘Hurm. Snyder and Tse seem to have faithful adaptation. Minus the squid. But keeping the violence. Fine with me.’
7 March 2009
[comics] Watchmen Links on LMG — just a reminder that I’ve posted a ton of links to interesting Watchmen stuff on the internet in the past. I recommend: A PDF of a few Pages Alan Moore’s Script for the comic, Something Awful Photoshops Watchmen and A Reconstruction of the Tales of the Black Freighter Comic. Finally, if you haven’t already – go and buy the comic book. You won’t regret it.
8 March 2009
[sushi] Kaiten (conveyor) sushi time in real Japan … sweet video of a camera doing a lap on a sushi restaurant conveyor in Japan … (more…)
9 March 2009
[comics] Tom Spurgeon Reviews Watchmen‘Unless you were playing book bingo, there was little that was transcendent or particularly memorable about any of the moments from movie. I’m having a hard time latching onto anything a mere 10 hours after sitting in the theater watching it, a single moment like that weird shimmy that Heath Ledger did in the nurse’s outfit in Dark Knight or Robert Downey relishing a hamburger while announcing a major life decision in Iron Man or Clark Kent getting out of his own head for a moment by racing a train in Superman.’
[fun] Massive Timewaster: Definitive List of The 99 Things You Should Have Already Experienced On The Internet Unless You’re a Loser or Old or Something.
10 March 2009
[comics] An Interview With The moderators of Scans_Daily‘I went through my bookcase at the weekend and looked at all of the stuff that I would never have discovered without scans_daily. I had Irredeemable Ant Man, My Faith in Frankie, Marvel Knights Fantastic Four (read the predictably unpredictable team-mates scene in “Wolf at the Door” and tell me that that isn’t exactly what Reed Richards should be like), Ex Machina (which is now an obsession and I’m taking First Hundred Days to my grown up book group as a change of pace from Tale of Two Cities and The Kite Runner), Five Fists of Science, The Order (I managed to market that to a few people on the community), The Immortal Iron Fist and Spider-Man loves Mary Jane. Of course, that’s just one person and evidence like that won’t convince anybody.’
[books] New York’s bright young man grows up … an interview With Jay McInerney …‘Bright Lights, Big City turns 25 this year.’
11 March 2009
[comics] Grant Morrison: Final Crisis Exit Interview [Part 1 | Part 2] … Grant explains everything … ‘Every time I read about the agonizing pains of ‘event fatigue’ or how ‘3-D hurts my head…’ or how something’s ‘incomprehensible’ when most people are ‘comprehending’ it just fine, it’s like visiting a nursing home. ‘Events’ in superhero comic books FATIGUE you? I’m speechless. Admittedly they do tend to be a little more exciting than the instruction leaflets that come with angina pills but… ‘fatigue’? Superhero comics should have an ‘event’ in every panel! We all know this instinctively. Who cares ‘how?’ as long as it feels right and looks brilliant?’
12 March 2009
[comics] A Serial Killers Guide To faking Human Emotions … from All Knowledge is Strange

serial-killers-guide

[comics] Amateur crimefighters are surging in the US … [via As Above] …

‘There are, according to the recently launched World Superhero Registry, more than 200 men and a few women who are willing to dress up as comic book heroes and patrol the urban streets in search of, if not super-villains, then pickpockets and bullies. They may look wacky, but the superhero community was born in the embers of the 9/11 terrorist attacks when ordinary people wanted to do something short of enlisting. They were boosted by a glut of Hollywood superhero movies. In recent weeks, prompted by heady buzz words such as “active citizenry” during the Barack Obama campaign, the pace of enrolment has speeded up. Up to 20 new “Reals”, as they call themselves, have materialised in the past month.’

13 March 2009
[funny] Motivational Wolf Says… ‘If You Never Give Up… You Never Lose.’
14 March 2009
[comics] Man dressed as the Joker from Batman films shot dead by police‘The dead man, who was said to be obsessed with the character, was wearing full costume and makeup when he was challenged by officers in a national park in Virginia, according to legal documents.’ [via Warren Ellis]
[life] Why Systems Fail and Problems Sprout Anew‘Stated as succinctly as possible: the fundamental problem does not lie in any particular system but rather in systems as such. Salvation, if it is attainable at all, even partially, is to be sought in a deeper understanding of the ways of systems, not simply in a criticism of the errors of a particular system.’ [via Robot Wisdom]
15 March 2009
[books] Review of The Black Swan … from Dan Hill‘Those of us who have struggled through nearly 20 years of hearing that the market was the best way to run everything – from schools and hospitals to childcare, housing, energy generation and transport infrastructure – have this recent ‘performance’ of the financial system itself as an additional indication that, well, it patently isn’t that simple. It’ll take some time for those purveyors of that mindless rhetoric to take on board that ever freer markets are not the only solution – much of this book would quickly help with that understanding, even if it is written from the perspective of someone who lives in, and loves at some level, those markets.’
16 March 2009
[comics] Advice Rorschach Says…

Advice Rorschach Says...

17 March 2009
[comics] Quotes on Comics … Bill Clinton: ‘When I was 13, I made a very foolish short-term business investment: I set up a comic book stand and sold two trunks full of comic books. Made more money than I had ever had in my life. But if I had saved those trunks, they’d be worth $100,000 today.’
[weird] Computer programmer from Finland has lost finger replaced with USB drive‘Using a traditional prosthetic finger Jerry has been able embed a ‘USB key’ – like the ones used in traditional flash drives – giving him the world’s only two gigabyte finger. The finger is not permanently attached to his hand meaning it can be removed when plugged into a computer.’
18 March 2009
[watchmen] Charlie Brooker On Watchmen: ‘Fun as a massive great spectacle, but it surely can’t make any sense whatsoever to anyone who hasn’t read the comic; it was a bit like watching an impressive animated version of a collection of snatched memories of what the comic was like, if you see what I mean.’
19 March 2009
[comics] Just Imagine… Social Media’s Watchmen … a twitter from Ozymandias via BeaucoupKevin.
20 March 2009
[comics] Grant Morrison Talks Brainy Comics, Sexy Apocalypse

‘We know we’ve fucked up the atmosphere and doomed the lovely polar bears and we can’t even summon up the energy to feel guilty anymore. Let the pedophiles have the kids. There’s nowhere left to turn and no one left to blame except, paradoxically, those slightly medieval guys without the industrial base. What’s left to believe in? The only truly moral, truly goodhearted man left is a made-up comic book character! The only secular role models for a progressive, responsible, scientific-rational Enlightenment culture are … Kal-El of Krypton, aka Superman and his multicolored descendants!

So we chose not to deconstruct the superhero but to take him at face value, as a fiction that was trying to tell us something wonderful about ourselves. Somewhere, in our darkest night, we made up the story of a man who will never let us down and that seemed worth investigating.’

22 March 2009
[comics] Advice Rorschach Says… ‘American Love – Like Coke In Green Glass Bottles… They Don’t Make It Anymore.’ (more…)
23 March 2009
[comics] The Electrick Hoax Revisited… Brendan McCarthy revisits some of his earliest work and his first collaboration with Peter Milligan …

mccarthy-electric-hoax

[comics] Hollywood super-hairo: the comic book genius who won’t make a penny from £65m Watchmen … Alan Moore as viewed through the lens of really poor tabloid journalism … ‘The movie adaptation of his comic book Watchmen has raked in more than £65million since its release this month. But writer Alan Moore will not receive a penny – although it looks as if he could do with a pound or two for a trip to the barber. The eccentric writer lives in a modest terrace house in Northampton and remains a recluse amid the hype surrounding the Hollywood blockbuster.’
24 March 2009
[twitter] A list of things that will get you removed from my Twitter list‘Saying good morning, hello, good night to your followers. This is not your personal radio show. This is not an AOL chatroom from 1995. We’ll know when you’ve woken up, because you’ll start twittering. We’ll know when you’ve gone up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire because you’ll have gone quiet, or possibly will have indicated something circumstantially relevant before you went (e.g. “Bugger this, there’s nothing on television: I’m going to bed”).’
25 March 2009
[comics] The 20 Best Movies Adapted from Comic Books … interesting list to ponder … ‘American Splendor (2003. USA) Welcome to the esoteric life and times of Harvey Pekar, a cranky file clerk from Cleveland whose cult-fave self-published comix used to get pimped back in the day on the David Letterman show. Paul Giamati does a fantastic job of portraying Pekar, and even more eerie is how dead-on some of the supporting cast are at channelling Robert Crumb and Tobey Radloff. Pretty much a perfect movie about one of the most important autobiographical comics to ever come out of the underground.’
[twitter] Salam Pax is on Twitter‘and to add irony while I sit here listening to bombs going off left’n’right.. Iraqi tv is showing a report about how security is better.’ [link]
26 March 2009
[tv] Descriptions of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” episodes from the DirecTV guide‘Sexual re-education poster boy is slain.’
[comics] Big Numbers #3 … the complete issue of Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz’s unpublished Big Numbers #3 has been posted to Flickr …

panels from Big Numbers 3

27 March 2009
[comics] Eddie Campbell on Big Numbers: ‘Another thing I remembered, and I don’t think I ever mentioned it to Alan, but I always felt a certain resentment that Billy the Sink got Big Numbers and blew it while i was stuck drawing Jack the bloody Ripper for ten years (I once described it as a penny dreadful that costs thirty five bucks). I stand by my opinion that Big Numbers was the superior idea and would have been Alan’s masterpiece.’
[comics] Pádraig Ó Méalóid (aka Livejournal’s Glycon) reveals the story behind Big Numbers #3 making it’s way to the internet‘Anyway, the story I heard was that Al Columbia completed this issue, had it sent off for lettering and then went a little crazy and refused to release the art for publication … In any event, this art did exist long enough for it to be photocopied.’
29 March 2009
[comics] Five Kinds Of Serial Comic Books I Prefer To Buy Right Now Over New Ones … another interesting comics list from Tom Spurgeon … On Kirby Comics from the 70’s: ‘…it’s like reading comics brought home by a father who is taking sales trips to an alternate dimension full of crazy people.’
31 March 2009
[comics] Dave McKean is on Twitter‘@stephenfry Surpised you are enjoying Watchmen, so many wonderful comics published since then without silly costumes. Hope you will try…’ [link]
[comics] Rejected Rorschach Blots … from Kyle Baker. [thanks Tam]