[comics] Alan Moore on the Shadow … early Alan Moore text piece from 1970 – another scanned rarity from the Glycon’s Livejournal … ‘Apparently Gibson (who, I might add was also a professional magician) had written the story, and all that was left was for S&S to find a suitable cover. The only one they could find however, with anything like a shadow featured on it showed an inscrutable oriental type cowering against a wall. The Shadow, it seems, was his own. (Damn clever these Chinese!) Unfortunately, Gibson’s story didn’t feature any orientals, so naturally rather than give S&S the trouble of finding a new cover, Gibson rewrote the whole thing. (Rumour has it that Gibson invented the Shadow at five o’clock while he was shaving).’

[comics] Garry Trudeau Submits Doonesbury Cartoons Featuring Senator Obama Win … Trudeau: ‘Fivethirtyeight.com, the most respected of the polling analysts, is now giving McCain a 3.7% chance of winning (and that’s without factoring in the huge lead Obama’s taken in early voting), so I guess I like my odds. Still, we supplied our clients with a week of reruns, just in case.’

[comics] Steve Ditko’s Birthday! … fabulous Scans_Daily post celebrating Ditko’s 81st birthday … ‘You may recognize the name Ditko as the creator of many of your favorite comic characters such as… ah, the names escape me… Spider-something or other. Anyway, he’s a comics legend, an innovator, and he’s still making comics. I have cobbled a few of my personal favorite Ditko pieces, some not seen too often and others never to be reprinted elsewhere…’

[funny] Dolphins Evolve Opposable Thumbs; ‘Oh, Shit’ Says Humanity’ …

“I believe I speak for the entire human race when I say, ‘Holy fuck,'” said Oceanographic Institute director Dr. James Aoki, noting that the dolphin has a cranial capacity 40 percent greater than that of humans. “That’s it for us monkeys.”

[funny] The secret of happiness is t…

[funny] Can you take a velociraptor with a crowbar? … ‘So it happend that you pissed of a Velociraptor. You where lucky to bring a crowbar to the fight, but the Velociraptor is fast, fearless and racist. Can you take it?’

[billoboards] Evening Standard: Bad News … [more…]

[comics] Local: theories and defences … a chapter from Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly’s collected comic series … ‘Crossing genres as it crosses the country, Local examines Megan McKeenan, a young woman who sets off from Portland, OR with nothing but a backpack and a bad case of wanderlust…’

[comics] Steve Bell RSS Feed … official Guardian feed of all Steve’s current “If…” and editorial cartoons. Does anybody know if there is an unofficial feed with inline images anywhere?

[movies] Dog Day Afternoon … a page about the Al Pacino movie Dog Day Afternoon which includes a Life Magazine article about the real robbery which inspired the movie … ‘Inside the bank is bedlam. Bank robbers and hostages listening to live radio coverage of the caper. Phone calls going out, phone calls coming in. “I hope they kill you all,” a voice, at the end of the line tells bank manager Barrett. “Make your move now,” whispers another voice, calling every 15 minutes.’

[comics] Japan PM complains he’s too busy to read his comics … ‘Aso, who takes comics on trips abroad, said he finished reading two weekly magazines last week but has yet to find time to read two others. “It’s hard to read comic books as my time is now restricted,” a smiling Aso told an audience of hundreds in his first street speech since taking office on September 24.’ [via ¡Journalista!]

[comics] Grant Morrison on All Star Superman:

‘In the end, I saw Superman not as a superhero or even a science fiction character, but as a story of Everyman. We’re all Superman in our own adventures. We have our own Fortresses of Solitude we retreat to, with our own special collections of valued stuff, our own super-pets, our own “Bottle Cities” that we feel guilty for neglecting. We have our own peers and rivals and bizarre emotional or moral tangles to deal with.

I felt I’d really grasped the concept when I saw him as Everyman, or rather as the dreamself of Everyman. That “S” is the radiant emblem of divinity we reveal when we rip off our stuffy shirts, our social masks, our neuroses, our constructed selves, and become who we truly are.’

[comics] Jonathan Ross on Watchmen … ‘But what makes this a genre-transcending bona fide masterpiece is that, alongside the pulse-pounding action and suspense, the soap-opera style romantic dilemmas and the story of some good but misguided people trying to apply simple remedies to complex maladies, Moore and Gibbons also manage to deliver a devastating critique that cuts to the very heart of the pitiful, timid male fantasy that is the superhero genre at its purest and worst: muscular men and busty women in tight costumes solving all the world’s problems with a well-placed punch or a blast of super-breath.’ [via Forbidden Planet’s Blog]

[comics] Comica 2008 Schedule … ‘London’s International Comics Festival returns to the ICA and other venues, including an exhibition in the ICA Concourse Gallery, between November 14 and 26, 2008.’

[space] Ten Mysteries of the Solar System … ‘Why does Uranus rotate on its side? Strange planet is Uranus. Whilst all the other planets in the Solar System more-or-less have their axis of rotation pointing “up” from the ecliptic plane, Uranus is lying on its side, with an axial tilt of 98 degrees.’ [via Robot Wisdom]

[comics] Alan Moore CD Covers … a collection of the covers of Moore’s musical output from the Glycon blog (a must-visit site for anybody interested in Alan Moore rarities.)

[tv] In “Stop the Pigeon” – the cartoon with Dick Dastardly and Mutley – what was it that the pigeon was carrying that was so important that it had to be stopped? … ‘I remember from a book I owned as a child that eventually Dick Dastardly got hold of the pigeon’s bag and found it to contain birdseed.’

[funny] ‘I Am Under 18’ Button Clicked For First Time In History Of Internet … from the Onion … ‘In an unprecedented and historic event Monday, the “I Am Under 18” button, an Internet security device which if selected restricts access to websites featuring adult content, was clicked for the first time ever. “I knew I could simply claim to be over 18 and continue onto my desired destination, but I also realized that I would have to live with that lie for the rest of my life,” said local resident Garrett Kinley, 17.’

[blog] Ask LMG: Does anybody know what happened to the Linkbunnies blog? It’s been unavailable for at least a couple of weeks and I guess there are a couple of readers scratching their heads wondering what happened… (Update: The Answer)

Go Watch: Massive Landslide Caught on Webcam … via Robotwisdom … [more…]

[movies] The Way Movies Were in the Seventies …

[blogs] Sad Guys on Trading Floors … ‘Turning the economic crisis into one of those clever internet memes.’

[comics] Top 10 graphic novels by Danny Fingeroth … ‘For my top 10, I decided to take the crème de la crème, the graphic novels that I most enjoyed. These are graphic novels, some famous, some less well-known, that do what all great literature does, in that they give you such a pleasurable experience while reading that you’re simultaneously eager to uncover the ending, yet also dreading it, knowing that the experience will then be over.’

[funny] I guess this has happened to us all at least once: You Fell Asleep Watching A DVD. [via Waxy]

[twitter] Stephen Fry’s Twitter … ‘Golly, crumbs, heckamighty and all the powerful legal swears and cusses Twitter will allow…’

[gmail] How to Embed Images into a Gmail … useful tip and I always forget how to do it! … ‘Drag your mouse across the image so the whole image gets selected or highlighted (it would turn dark to indicate that it is successfully highlighted/selected). don’t miss that part. then while it is selected/highlighted, right-click your mouse over it, then from the menu which appears, choose COPY. (It works in Firefox too. You just have to make sure you “COPY” NOT “COPY IMAGE”.)’

[london] In Case Of Civil Unrest … pavement stencil from the Wooster Collective

[banks] The Money Meltdown … nicely-done one page website explaining the credit crunch.

[comics] Brown Now! … a comic interview with Chester Brown looking at his libertarian political beliefs. [via Mondo A-Go-Go]

[fun] The Sound Effect Generator … fun webpage from the Surrealist … [via Neilalien]

biff ^{*HONK HONK*} tink-piffle ni izzzz brrrring izzzz brrrring