Got whacked by a bad allergy attack early in the week, so I’m behind on a few important things, so I haven’t been here much.

Spiral stuck this on twitter last night, a scan from (I guess) the new issue of Wizard magazine. It’s not actually a horrible picture of me.

A Highlight and Note from Warren Ellis(Twitter:warrenellis)

“What is that stuff he’s saying?” Serge asks Laura. “It’s from the Egyptian Book of the Dead,” she replies, hand pressed to her forehead as though this action alone allowed her to think. “ ‘The Book of Stepping Forth by Daylight,’ in fact, if I recognise this passage rightly.” “First thing ever written for a dead readership,” mutters Alby.

Note:but not the bloody last.

Shared on September 28th, 2010 from Kindle

C

byTom McCarthy

See this item on Amazon.com

• sadiemagazine.com – On Sisterhood in Comedy and Making People Laugh: A Chat with Morgan Murphy
  Good interview, where Morgan had space to be the smart, curious person I know. Also Morgan didn't do her hair by sticking her tongue in a light socket this time.
  (tags:peopleiknow )

Out today:

I read today from various sources — let’s send Heidi Mac the traffic, for the hell of it — that my old friend Bob Harras has been made editor in chief of DC Comics.

I was around back in the 90s when Bob Harras was editor of the X-Men group of comics, directly editing the two main titles and running a team of editors on the rest of that sprawling line. And back then it was sprawling, and we thought it couldn’t get any bigger, and then it did. And he was writing AVENGERS, as I recall, and wasn’t a shabby superhero writer. It was a difficult office to run. There was a lot of weird inside politics, a lot of egos and agendas, and a lot of vultures looking to pick off creators (and creators trying to take each other out). And, of course, the pressure of having the best-selling comics in the commercial field and needing to keep them that way. And yet Bob always seemed supremely relaxed. He and I had one or two big fights — and I was younger, far nastier and angrier and shot to kill, back then — but, no matter what names I called him, the next time I spoke to him he was always equanimous, forgiving and affable.

Then he was made a Group Editor, as Marvel was divided into The Five Families Of New York, five Group Editors doing the work of one EIC. And when that went horribly wrong, Bob was the last man standing — or reclining in his office, anyway — and became the single EIC, during some of Marvel’s darkest years businesswise. For various reasons, I think that must have been the hardest job in commercial comics.

In a tumultuous time at DC Entertainment, which I must remember to start calling it, the steady presence of Bob Harras is very probably what is required. Best of luck, mate.

• The Great Wen
  deeply peculiar pdf-magazine from London (I think)
  (tags:pdfmag )

I’ve got to keep up with this, or I’m just going to lose track of everything.

Thanks to the lovely people at Domino Records for this stack. Going to listen through it this week. Particularly looking forward to the Tricky and Clinic.

I mentioned Pears favourably back in June. Pears has a new album, SOFT PLANS, available from AMDISCS: digital release, three tracks for free, all ten tracks for five euros. Give it a listen. The previous record got heavy rotation in the office for more than a week.

Brad Rose, at the newly-redesigned Foxy Digitalis site:

…how prolific is too prolific or is there even such a thing? And to further expand on that – what are the problems with prolific-ness and what are the positive aspects? The big question I would ask is why do you think an artist being prolific is a problem?

Quality control is an obvious answer, but at the same time it seems like a lot of artists who are releasing an extreme amount of material are doing it from a perspective of sharing in the process of their art as much as anything. I still think the John Olson MethodTM is one of the best ways to go because even though he does release a shit ton of stuff… because, in a way, its like having a running dialogue with the artist – you experience what they’re up to RIGHT NOW and how they are developing their current ideas, moving toward the next “major” release. I find that fascinating and wholly worthwhile…

Ariana knocked this together last night during a discussion with friends. It’s actually pretty close.

Good morning. Let’s try not to have a week like last week, eh?

Click through to a video interview with the other Warren Ellis and Nick Cave. Scrub through to 6.10, to discover what Nick Cave thinks should happen to me. (Also, a nice plug for the French edition of my novel.)

A new EP from Kemper Norton, dealer in "slurtronic" drunken spook music, is always a good thing. Saturday is improved. You can download it for free at this link.

An overstimulated and unstable celebration of Cornish festivals. Lowender means “happiness” in Cornish.

• At MadCon, an ailing Harlan Ellison will say goodbye – Isthmus – The Daily Page
  ""The truth of what's going on here is that I'm dying," says Ellison, by phone. "I'm like the Wicked Witch of the West — I'm melting. I began to sense it back in January. By that time, I had agreed to do the convention. And I said, I can make it. I can make it.'""
  (tags:well+shit people doom )
• Building a digital library for life on Earth
  "The largest biodiversity genomics initiative ever undertaken – an international effort to build a digital identification system for all life on Earth – will be officially activated this week."
  (tags:sci computing )

From Robot6:

…this past Wednesday Walking Dead #77 not only arrived in comic shops, but also hit the Image Comics and comiXology iPad applications. It’s priced at $2.99, the same as a physical copy; previous issues have been priced at $1.99.

Image publisher Eric Stephenson spoke with ComicsAlliance about it, noting that it isn’t a one-time thing:

“In terms of scheduling, the digital version of the series has caught up to print version, so it makes sense to release both simultaneously,” Stephenson told ComicsAlliance. “With the debut of the AMC television series only weeks away at this point, our aim is to make ‘The Walking Dead’ as widely available as possible, in all formats…”

5 Celebrities And Their Twitter App Essentials

i’m scared now

The last of my notes on the closure of the Wildstorm imprint. I actually managed to say different stuff in all three of them, I think.

I wouldn’t have been able to do GLOBAL FREQUENCY anywhere else.

I am beloved by nutters everywhere.

(the second one, incidentally, was posted in response to… a Molly Crabapple poster image.)

“On a perfect comic book earth I would have a red phone that rang the moment anyone anywhere drew a comic with goats involved in airplane dogfights.”

– Brandon Graham