Linko! LVII

* The above photo (Via) approximates how you feel after going to see "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World" in the theater. It's only another of the reasons why you should really do that this week before it's off all the screens and replaced by some garbage Katherine Heigel movie or something. Also: John Lopez at Vanity Fair has even more, better reasons to go see the movie in the theaters.

* That said, I'm not all that worried about "Scott Pilgrim's" comparatively weak box office performance either in terms of that film and its creators' long term prospects or its effect on original comics being made in to movies. Hell, look at what happened with "Kick-Ass."

* And while I'm on a Hollywood/comics kick, I saw something last week that hit home in a weird crossover way with my work on CBR. See, of late I've seen a lot of comments on my stories and other interviews on the site where our readers castigate us for not "calling out" our interview subjects on the perceived creative failures of their work. I think that line of question is stupid for a whole bunch of reasons (the short list includes: it doesn't inform anyone of anything, it's rude and unprofessional, it crosses too much criticism into what should be a largely objective journalistic exercise, and it fails to take into account the fact that just because a few kids on the message boards don't like something doesn't mean that plenty of others don't love it). While all this was going through my mind the other day, I stumbled upon this interview on Crave Online with "X-Men: First Class" producer Lauren Shuler Donner. It's really pretty fucking awful, one of those things where the reporter cornered Shuler Donner on the red carpet somewhere and then tried to get her to say that the next X-Men movie would suck before it even starts filming because some kids don't like Chuck Austen's origin for Nightcrawler. In the end, the whole enterprise tells you nothing of value about the project being discussed. In fact, all it really tells you is that the interviewer is acting like an ass hole. My favorite part is where Shuler Donner straight up tells him "You wouldn't know!" in regards to his trying to prove Matthew Vaughan can't make a movie with a big budget or some bullshit. Good on her.

* On to comics proper! I've got two weeks of links saved up to share, so rather than ramble on about them, I'll just say you should really read Superman co-creator Joe Shuster's last ever interview as well as this fine piece about Man-Thing.


* I'm kind of a wank for comics process stuff, so I found the above color guide Francis Manapul made for how the Flash's speed works on the page pretty fun. He posts all sorts of other cool art on his Twitter.

* Speaking of nice art, Darwyn Cooke did a cover for one of those new Kickstart comics, and it's up on iFanboy.

* Hey! My buddy Matt. Murray has a blog all about Smurfs called Smurfology, and in the weeks ahead he's going to be posting a bunch of interviews and other cool stuff regarding the incoming Papercutz editions of those classic comics (which he also helped put together). Worth a bookmark!

* Speaking of cool blogs to follow, I was just recently introduced to Matt Seneca and his work on Death To The Universe. Nice mix of high brow-ness and totally goofy bullshit.

* For personal creative reasons, I REALLY needed Kate Beaton's Nancy Drew comics this week.


* Yo, I've got a ton of non-comics or tangential comics stuff to share this week, including this great interview with the one and only Sean T. Collins about T-Shirts. I love how Sean is somehow a T-Shirt expert now.

* And hey...shared with me by Sean: True American Dog. It's funny.

* I know most of you probably won't need to read this to form an opinion on Glenn Beck, but here's one of several recent articles I've seen about how dude just MAKES SHIT UP. Ugh. He's got to be stopped.

* While I'm on my "liberal soap box" kick, these fake Tea Party shirts are pretty great.

* Attention Mario fans: The skeleton of Bowser has been found!

* I'm no big GnR fan or anything, but the idea that someone took recent Axl tracks and recent Slash tracks and used them to make what they thought "Chinese Democracy" should've sounded like is a pretty great one.

* Continuing on the music theme, free Cory Branan download!

* Finally, Jim Gibbons blew my fucking mind when he drew attention to the fact that a Facebook campaign brought back Surge soda in Norway.