>> A Picture of Stan Lee in the 1970s.

[books] The Origins of Raoul Duke… How Hunter S. Thompson created his alter-ego. ‘Although Duke played no real part in this breakthrough book about the infamous motorcycle gang, his name was casually included in a list of outlaws near the end. Readers at the time must have been baffled, as this was the first time Thompson had ever used that name. However, it was not the first time that the words “Raoul Duke” had appeared next to each other in print. The improbable appellation had popped up in a series of articles in December 1965—a month when Thompson was furiously scouring newspapers from across North America in search of material for his book, which he considered a meditation on the media as much as the biker gang. In the midst of his press binge, he more than likely stumbled upon a series of stories about an unassuming businessman from Calgary by the name of Raoul “Duke” Duquette…’

[tv] ‘We were two tortured idiots trying to make TV’: The Adam and Joe Show, 25 years on … ‘One of the most striking things about rewatching The Adam and Joe Show is how well most of it has aged (there are notable exceptions, including a debate about the relative merits of vinyl versus CDs). That’s partly because – comfortingly or depressingly, depending on how you look at it – mainstream entertainment hasn’t actually changed that much. The subjects of their parodies – Star Wars, Friends, Loose Women – remain ubiquitous. People Place, their very funny pastiche of daytime TV programmes that “take on these really massive subjects but do them in a huge hurry, and involve members of the public and just rush them all the time”, as Cornish puts it, remains painfully spot-on.’

[comics] Ditko League of America! …

[xmas] How to make your own Die Hard Christmas tree ornament … ‘ If you really want to go for it, you’ll probably need to go find one of these foil gift boxes to cut up. Otherwise, you can do what I did and use tin foil and a cereal box. You’ll also need scissors, tape, a cereal box, a color printer, and a toilet paper or paper towel tube.’

[xmas] The Christmas Sandwich Reviews … Feeling Listless is reviewing pre-packed Christmas sandwiches and it reads like a much more personal, tougher (and expensive!) blog project than I ever might have imagined. I think how he feels about festive sandwiches at the end of this will be interesting. ‘When I told the check out person that I’d travelled all the way from Liverpool to visit Booths near Burscough (I’m terrible at small talk) and she gave me the requisite bemused interest, I knew it was probably a good thing I didn’t mention it was just to buy a sandwich because that would have been silly. But nevertheless for the purposes of this survey I did indeed travel to Ormskirk then walk for three quarters of an hour to a non-descript retail park just off the A59 in order to taste what this particular supermarket had to offer in the way of a festive butty…’

[xmas] ‘It looks like fresh sewage!’: We taste test Christmas dinner flavoured foods – from soup and crisps to sarnies … Stuart Heritage reviews festive food. ‘Costa sells mac and cheese boxes all year round, and they generally taste like something that gets slid underneath prison doors during budget cuts. But now that it is Christmas, Costa has unveiled its pigs in blankets mac and cheese, which is – brace yourself – regular mac and cheese, but with some cocktail sausages balanced on top. First, this isn’t remotely Christmassy. It’s the sort of thing that restaurants put on children’s menus for kids who don’t yet know how to chew. Second, eating it made me so miserable that my soul gave up and left my body. Thanks a lot, Costa. How nice is it? 1/5’

[comics] Blocky Mania: The Perfection of Artist Mick McMahon … A nice overview and gallery of the art of Mick McMahon. ‘Few other artists have illustrated Judge Dredd, Tank Girl, Batman (in issues of the fondly-remembered Legends of the Dark Knight anthology series; McMahon has said that he drew it for the money, and he thinks it shows in the finished pages), and Sonic the Hedgehog, but McMahon’s run on the latter character is as important for a generation of readers as his Dredd was for their parents. He also got into design work for video games and toys, and started introducing digital tools into his process. McMahon never stopped moving forward, no matter what.’

[docu] The 78 Best Documentaries of All Time A great list of documentaries from Vogue. … ‘The Fog of War – Errol Morris’s Academy Award–winning portrait of Robert S. McNamara—roundly recognized (and vilified) as the architect of the Vietnam War—organizes his subject’s reflections on his life and career into a list of maxims about war and human error, with what The New York Times called “the cumulative message suggesting that in wartime nobody in power really knows anything.” It is not a film meant to reassure its viewer. “Believing and seeing are both often wrong,” goes one lesson. “Rationality will not save us,” says another. The final (and saddest) is delivered by Mr. McNamara with a smile: “You can’t change human nature.”’

[beans] Things full of Beans that shouldn’t be full of Beans … Go look at a revolting gallery of baked bean photos.

[tv] Is “Succession” the Best Sitcom on Television? … ‘What makes any good sitcom work is an ability to repeat itself with small differences. Kendall is still a wimp who swings between self-satisfaction and an insatiable hunger for reassurance, and Strong is fantastic in his portrayal of this back-and-forth. But in Season 3 he fashions himself as a woke warrior, which opens up new satirical avenues for the show. “Fuck the patriarchy,” this patriarch manqué shouts at the press on his way into a charity gala. “Another life is possible, brother,” he tells Tom, urging him to leave Logan’s camp. (“Fuck you, plastic Jesus,” Shiv tells Kendall at one point, hitting the nail on the head.) He is also obsessed with tracking the public’s response to his newfound reputation as a whistle-blower, asking Greg to “slide the sociopolitical thermometer up the nation’s ass and take a reading.” The hapless sidekick checks Twitter and notes that Kendall is “the No. 1 trending topic, ahead of Tater Tots.”’

[xmas] Jay Rayner’s 10 Christmas food commandments … ‘Thou shalt eat trifle for breakfast on Boxing Day. It’s Christmas. The usual rules do not apply.’

[politics] Meet the man who created the ‘Christmas is cancelled’ myth … ‘Looking back 23 years on, Chubb is amazed that his team’s suggestion to promote two months of events in Birmingham city centre under the banner of “Winterval” continues to resonate. “We put it to the council, they liked the idea, and it didn’t seem necessary to explain to anyone why we did it,” he says, explaining that the programme covered everything from BBC Children in Need events to Diwali celebrations and Christmas parties. “That’s why the furore that happened afterwards was a surprise – maybe we were a little naive.”’

[comics] A Hellraiser Christmas from Kevin O’Neill … [via Twitter]

[tv] What Was the First TV Show to Reference the Internet? … ‘The X-Files had to have been among the first shows to use the web in a storyline, in “2Shy,” which originally aired in November 1995. The episode features a mutant serial killer who sweet-talks self-conscious women online, convinces them to meet in-person, then pulverizes their flesh for sustenance. (Moral of the story: Chat with strangers online and an alien will turn your body into goo.)’

[anime] Decades Later, An Animator’s Complaint Discovered In Akira … ‘At around the 38-minute-mark in the movie, there’s a Caution sign on some medical equipment. Underneath, it looks like English is written, but it’s actually Japanese that was written in the Latin script. In English, the text translates to: Why do we have to fill in this far! Knock it off! Enough’

[comics] Roscoe Moscow: Who Killed Rock’n’Roll? Parts: 1-10 | 11-20 | 21-30 | 31-40 | 41-50 |51-60 … Early Alan Moore strip from 1979-80 published originally in Sounds.

[space] Billionaires Explain Why Space Is The Next Frontier … ‘I would like to ruin space for everyone.’

[twiiter] The Most Deranged Twitter Posts of 2021 … ‘The great thing about the former Number 10 adviser Dominic Cummings is he’s not really a person, as such – he’s a late-period Aaron Sorkin character, a Steve Bannon manqué, a Hogarth of words. He is what a very, very dumb person thinks a very, very smart person is like. He is the one person who understands that – whatever happens – posting will always return to its origins. He is, in other words, a man with a blog. This post reads like someone beat Dominic Cummings over the head with a rock, and then asked him to both describe the contents of The Prince and the political events of 2021. It is unintelligible, and it is exactly what this country deserves.’