[comics] Annotations to the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier — from Jess Nevins … On a parody of the London Tube Map included in the book: ‘Many puns here: Maida Jump, Court Short, Turnham Blue, Colouring Inn, Tooting Bottom, Eating Broadly, Rothernot, Pen Stroke Newington, Upper Etching, H.B. Row, Ink Staines, Whiteout City, etc. Also no wonder than Mr Moore’s line would include “Chin Topiary” “Barking” and “Very Cross”…’ [via Feeling Listless]

[comics] Coloring Comics, Old School — fabulous explanation from Todd Klein about colouring comics in the 70’s and 80’s … ‘I think the 1970s were probably the nadir of paper quality at DC. Comics from the 1940s and 50s had much better paper, and still look it today if well kept, but the company began cutting paper quality to save money some time after that, and when I started it was pretty awful. So, as you can see, any colors other than the primary ones were likely to come out mud.’

[sex] Map of Sexual Fetishes, Categorised and Interlinked … I suspect this isn’t as comprehensive infoporn as it seems… but I know now what shrimping is so it was worth a look. :) [via Qwghlm]

[comics] On Collecting Comics … some useful advice from Eddie Campbell.

[comics] Chapter 1 of Criminal Online — from Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips … ‘Whenever things begin to fall to pieces, I think of my father.’ [via The Comics Reporter]

[comics] A Wonderful Alan Moore Song — from MJ Hibbett who also did another favourite of mine Hey Hey 16K … ‘Well the entire shop went silent as everybody realised… a generations hero had caught us all buying shite.’ [via Blah Blah Flowers]

[comics] A Conversation with Writer Brian K. Vaughan — interview with the writer of Y: The Last Man as the long-running comic series concludes (link contains serious spoilers) … ‘People have been asking me for so long, “what’s it feel like to be done?” And I was like, not until I hold it in my hands will it feel like it’s going to be over. Actually, I haven’t read it yet, so there’s probably still another undiscovered stage of death. I’ll be angry over the ad placement or something.’

[funny] Out of Context — funny YouTube video of some out-of-context movie scenes … ‘My mommy hurt my head.’ [via Waxy]

[csi] How Gil Grissom got his name: ‘…series creator Anthony E. Zuiker mentioned that the character was originally intended to be named Gil Scheinbaum, but after Petersen was cast, Zuiker decided he was ‘insufficiently Jewish’ for the name and along with Petersen decided to rename the character for astronaut Gus Grissom, and Gil because of one of the actor’s hobbies, fishing.’

[blogs] What I Killed Today — the sad blog of a veterinary technician detailing what animals they had put down that day … ‘An emaciated ferret who had been fighting an auto-immune disease.’ [via Warren Ellis]

[comics] Alan Grant’s Edinburgh Lecture — Forbidden Planet Blog reports from a lecture the veteran Judge Dredd / Batman writer gave in Scotland. On Dredd: ‘Alan had been re-reading some of his own early work – something he says normal weekly and monthly comics deadlines don’t leave much time for him to do, he rarely re-reads his own work – in preparation for the talk and is still surprised and a little depressed at how much of what he and Wagner wrote ‘as a laugh’, taking then-current social trends and blowing them up to ridiculous proportions (literally in the case of Two Ton Tony Tubbs), has gone from being satirical humour (something 2000 AD and Dredd in particular has always been good at and something I’ve always relished about it) to being rather too close to the bone (the League of Fatties was hilarious in the early 80s, now he reads about childhood obesity epidemics in Britain and America and suddenly the joke’s not as funny anymore…’

[food] Dip Once or Dip Twice — a food microbiologist examines double dipping at parties as practiced by George in Seinfeld … ‘On average, the students found that three to six double dips transferred about 10,000 bacteria from the eater’s mouth to the remaining dip. Each cracker picked up between one and two grams of dip. That means that sporadic double dipping in a cup of dip would transfer at least 50 to 100 bacteria from one mouth to another with every bite.’ [via Kottke]

[comics] Alan Moore in the 1982 BJ and the Bear Annual — scans of some early professional work from a UK TV annual.

[funny] Fuck Planet Earth — funny spoof of BBC’s Planet Earth series on YouTube. [via Sore Eyes]

[comics] A List Of How David Banner Got Angry …

47. Being stuck in a cab in New York rush hour traffic – “You don’t understand,… I have to be there by 4.00!” – “Hey, mac, it’s rush hour, we ain’t gettin’ there til five, so relax.” – “BUT I HAVE TO BE THERE BY FOUR!!!”

Why I can’t use Facebook anymore — or rather, why using Facebook is like getting every annoying round-robin email from the last 10 years again … ‘1 how evil are you invitation’ [via Reddit]

[tv] The Wire: Four Seasons in Four Minutes — I’ve only watched a couple of minutes of this to avoid spoilers but looks like a great summary … ‘McNulty has a Drink.’

[comics] For Sale on eBay: Queen and Country #1 from Greg Rucka and Steve Rolston.

[comics] The Strangeness of Brendan McCarthy — all-new blog from one of my favourite comic artists.

[pants] Paxman raises smalls problem with M&S — Jeremy Paxman on the awful spectre of widespread male gusset anxiety … ‘[Jeremy Paxman] is so concerned about the declining standards of men’s underwear that he has written to Sir Stuart Rose, the chief executive of M&S, detailing his “anxiety” about its gussets, which he said no longer offered “adequate support”. “Like very large numbers of men in this country, I have always bought my socks and pants at Marks & Sparks,” he wrote. “I’ve noticed that something very troubling has happened. There’s no other way to put this. Their pants no longer provide adequate support. When I’ve discussed this with friends and acquaintances it has revealed widespread gusset anxiety. I do feel that someone should take up this mighty battle. The other thing is socks…”‘

[life] RulesofThumb.org — a user-contributed collection of Rules of Thumb … ‘To estimate the length of time a person has been dead, take a rectal temperature. If it is above room temperature, subtract from 98. The answer is the number of hours since death.’ [via Lifehacker]

[comics] Well Hello There, Robin … amusing behind-the-scenes photo of the 1960’s Batman TV Show.

[comics] Horror in the Nursery — fascinating scans of an article with Frederick Wertham attacking crime comics from Colliers magazine in 1948…

[comics] 17 Sensational, Free and Downloadable Graphic Novels — some great stuff here to take a look at including the start of Y: The Last Man, DMZ and Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol (all highly recommended).

[web] Oblique_Chirps — twitter feed of Oblique Strategies … ‘Remove a restriction’

[comics] A Storytelling Thing — interview with Paul Grist, the creator of Kane and Jack Staff … ‘I went and printed out… I think I ended up printing 3000 copies of the first issue [of Kane]. Then I decided to try and sell them. That was a matter of sending out a sample copy to all the comic shops in the UK and selling it directly to them. And from that I found that, out of the hundreds of comic shops in the UK, there were about 15 willing to sell something like that.’

[comics] England their England: Monsters, Maniacs and Moore [Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4] — Alan Moore’s view of the world from a 1987 Central TV documentary now available on YouTube. (I’ve embedded the first video after the jump.) … ‘My names Alan Moore. I write comics.’ [more…]

[comics] Dave Sim – the Song, not the Singer — fair-minded examination of why Dave Sim’s comic Glamourpuss is worth looking at … ‘Sim as he comes across in print is dogmatic, rude, paranoid, believes women to be subhuman and evil, and holds political and religious views which, to the extent that they’re comprehensible at all, are totally incompatible with humanity. He’s read the Bible as a struggle between Good and Evil and thought that Evil sounded like a good idea. Which is what infuriates me, because he’s destroying the reputation of the finest creative mind of his generation, and I’m sick of trying to defend someone who I find (as an essayist – again, no judgement of him as a human being implied) utterly repellent and inimical to everything I hold dear. But I have to, because he’s that good. Even was Sim’s comic writing as bad as his prose would imply, I would still want to read anything the man did just because of his technical skill.’ [via Meowwcat]

[comics] Doonesburyland — Radio 4 looks at Doonesbury. Includes an interview with Gary Trudeau and contributions from Steve Bell and Martin Rowson. (This should be available for about a week from now – so check it out.)

[batman] The OTHER Brian Bolland Batman story — creepy Batman story spotted on scans_daily … ‘I don’t consider myself a Bad Person…’