{"id":486,"date":"2010-03-10T21:39:35","date_gmt":"2010-03-11T03:39:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.superdoomedplanet.com\/blog\/?p=486"},"modified":"2010-03-10T21:45:25","modified_gmt":"2010-03-11T03:45:25","slug":"links-to-things-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.superdoomedplanet.com\/blog\/2010\/03\/10\/links-to-things-8\/","title":{"rendered":"Links to Things"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>\n<p>The amazing comics site <a href=\"http:\/\/whatthingsdo.com\/\">What Things Do<\/a>&#8212;which features complete stories by Sammy Harkham and John Porcellino, among others&#8212;is serializing <a href=\"http:\/\/whatthingsdo.com\/comic\/what-am-i-doing-here-2\/\"><cite>What Am I Doing Here<\/cite><\/a> by <a href=\"http:\/\/whatthingsdo.com\/authors\/abner-dean\/\">Abner Dean<\/a>. I was introduced to Dean&#8217;s long-out-of-print work by an article in <cite>Comic Art<\/cite> #9, and it floored me&#8212;it&#8217;s surrealism in the style of classic <cite>New Yorker<\/cite> cartoons.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/toobusythinkingboutcomics.blogspot.com\/\"><cite>Too Busy Thinking About My Comics<\/cite><\/a> is a blog I discovered from a link in the comments here. The author (I feel weirdly unsure whether it&#8217;s okay to use his name&#8212;he signed his comment here, but his blog seems to be anonymous) writes about superhero comics and British pop culture. Admittedly, those aren&#8217;t the kind of comics I read these days, but I have fond memories of Keith Giffen and J. M. DeMatteis&#8217;s <cite>Justice League<\/cite> and sometimes I still like to read <em>about<\/em> them. But It wouldn&#8217;t matter if I didn&#8217;t, because this is the best kind of criticism: sharp writing, and musings and insights that hook you even if you thought you didn&#8217;t care about the cultural artifact the writer is riffing on. I recommend <a href=\"http:\/\/toobusythinkingboutcomics.blogspot.com\/2010\/02\/intrusion-of-fantastic-into-mundane.html\">&#8220;The Intrusion Of The Fantastic Into The Mundane No 1: The Thunderbirds Of Edinburgh&#8221;<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/toobusythinkingboutcomics.blogspot.com\/2010\/02\/invention-of-loneliness.html\">&#8220;The Invention Of Loneliness: What Green Lantern Can Teach A Boy That Starro The Conqueror Can&#8217;t&#8221;<\/a>, both of which managed to move me.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>At the other end of the same topic, I once checked some of the later <cite>Justice League<\/cite> comics out of the library and my basic reaction was &#8220;What <em>is<\/em> this crap?&#8221; I couldn&#8217;t follow the Grant Morrison issues at all, and I speak as someone who mostly understood <cite>The Invisibles<\/cite>. <a href=\"http:\/\/mightygodking.com\/index.php\/2010\/03\/04\/wait-what-for-justice\/\">It sounds like <cite>Justice League<\/cite> has now gotten about as dumb as it possibly can<\/a>. But at least the MightyGodKing blog got a hilarious review out of the deal.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.locusmag.com\/Perspectives\/2010\/03\/cory-doctorow-making-smarter-dumb.html\">&#8220;Making Smarter Dumb Mistakes About the Future&#8221;<\/a> is an article by Cory Doctorow about why so many old science fiction futures were so wildly wrong. It focuses on three common mistakes which Doctorow characterizes as &#8220;Like Today, But Moreso,&#8221; &#8220;Just Enough, And No More,&#8221; and &#8220;That&#8217;s Not Weird, It&#8217;s Dumb.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.believermag.com\/issues\/200309\/?read=article_perrottet\"><cite>The Believer<\/cite> chronicles ancient Roman poetry slams.<\/a> Apparently they were pretty horrific deals. Juvenal classed them as health hazards.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<blockquote>\n<p>A hectic calendar of literary competitions soon sprang up. At first, the Sebasta in Neapolis (Naples) was the most prestigious event, luring the Emperor Nero himself to compete before a crowd of thousands. The audience was not permitted to leave the auditorium during the thirteen-hour recital; it was said that a woman gave birth during the performance, and one old man feigned death so he could escape to the bathroom.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<li>Finally, here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/idlewords.com\/2010\/03\/scott_and_scurvy.htm\">a fascinating essay on scurvy, and how we gain knowledge, and lose it, and gain it back again<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The amazing comics site What Things Do&#8212;which features complete stories by Sammy Harkham and John Porcellino, among others&#8212;is serializing What Am I Doing Here by Abner Dean. I was introduced to Dean&#8217;s long-out-of-print work by an article in Comic Art #9, and it floored me&#8212;it&#8217;s surrealism in the style of classic New Yorker cartoons. Too &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.superdoomedplanet.com\/blog\/2010\/03\/10\/links-to-things-8\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Links to Things<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3,17,9],"tags":[198,35],"class_list":["post-486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-comics","category-people-have-always-been-just-as-crazy-as-they-are-now","category-speculative-fiction","tag-books","tag-science-fiction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.superdoomedplanet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.superdoomedplanet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.superdoomedplanet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.superdoomedplanet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.superdoomedplanet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.superdoomedplanet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":489,"href":"http:\/\/www.superdoomedplanet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486\/revisions\/489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.superdoomedplanet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.superdoomedplanet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.superdoomedplanet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}