Link Round-Up: Special Non-Politics Edition!

Look for part six of my ongoing series on the liberal argument against Hillary Clinton tomorrow or Friday -- FSM willing. (Scroll down for parts one - five -- or follow that link.) In the meantime, here is a Special! New! Politics Free! edition of Link Round-Up.

Comics:

• Brad Curran has a question: why aren't more people talking about the fact that Joss Whedon is writing a web comic for Dark Horse? My guess is that it's because the web interface makes the damn thing all-but unreadable. Issue 2 is up now; but I couldn't find a link to issue 1 anywhere on the site. (Google knows all, however: here's a direct link to "issue 1", without all their crappy formatting around it and here's a direct link to "issue 2".) And it's clearly formatted for print, so even those direct links don't read all that well. It's too bad, seeing as how Joss is boss and everything.

• Zot!'s coming back! I can't tell you how excited I am about this. HarperCollins is reprinting the B&W issues of Zot! (#11 to the end of the run), Scott McCloud's wonderful, charming first comic (via). Three out of four* promised volumes were printed, way back in the day -- one printing the (really skippable) first 10 (color) issues, and two printing the first 2/3 of the B&W series. But the final volume never appeared. I asked him when I saw him speak (in the autograph line) if it would ever come out... he said maybe. I didn't believe him. O me of little faith! It will be well-worth re-purchasing the first 2/3 of the series to get the end. If you haven't ever read Zot!, Scott did a web-only Zot! comic some years after the print-run. It's a lot of fun, and can be read totally independently of the earlier stuff. Check it out... and then wait for the HaperCollins volume.

(* Actually, there was a promised fifth volume, which would have collected two guest-artist issues plus all of Matt Feazell's back-up feature Zot! stories. I'd have bought that one too... but that's probably too much to hope for.)

• Today's Boing-Boing-Did-You-Click-Through?™ Link: sketchbook of famous comics artists drawing Ninja Turtles.

• Dave Sim blogging: for those who've never read Cerebus (and haven't read my oh-so-brilliant introduction to it), Dirk Deppey captures in a few words the maddening brilliance (and I mean that first word literally) of the man. Meanwhile, Noah Berlatsky thinks about the different madnesses of Dave Sim and Philip K. Dick, and about Dave Sim and the epistemology of the closet. When you hear a loud explosion from Canada, it's Sim's head exploding when he gets wind of that second post.

• I like to read Geoff Klock's blog, both for the blog itself and the commentators. This post is an example of why. I myself get into the act in comments here.

Not Comics:

• This article on "The Buffy Formula" -- talking about the formula not for any given episode (of course), but for the story arcs that form each season -- is quite interesting. Seasons 2-4 and 6 follow the formula; seasons 1, 5 and 7 don't -- though each has elements of it, "failing" in different ways. Well worth reading for Buffy-fans out there. (And the rest of you: you're missing one of the best shows ever on TV.)

• The Ladies' Home Journal in 1900 on what will happen in the next hundred years... fact checked. They were actually far more accurate than I'd have guessed. This one's fun.

• Berubé's back, and talking about Allan Bloom. For some of you, that will be 'nuff said: for the rest... Berubé's one of the wittiest writers in the blogosphere. Some assembly required. Don't miss the poem in comments (Yeats meets football).

• A kosher vending machine -- kosher food served 24/6! (Yes, that's 24/6, not 24/7.) What a wonderful, strange world we live in. (via)