Better Lat than never: Here’s a New Straits Times cover story on Malaysian artist Lat that’s well worth a look.

“All you have to know about Battlefields: Dear Billy is that it’s one of the best comics you will ever read and one of the high points in the legendary career of writer Garth Ennis”: I can’t imagine Dear Billy is quite as good as Jerome Maida says it is in the Philadelphia Daily News, but now I’m a little more eager to read the trade collection of it than I was before.

Good news!: Kate Beaton apparently now has a book.

This week is Wolverine Week at my second favorite blog with the word “Wednesday” in the title: The team behind the new and improved Living Between Wednesdays has been counting down to the release of Wolvie’s big movie with a special Wolverine-themed week, and so far, so great. Here, for example, is a rundown of some of the strange Wolverine-related merchandise available, and here Wolverine faces the judgment of Rachelle Goguen as part of her “Rating The Superhunks” feature. Turns out he’s twice as hunky as I would have guessed.

Mark Waid on almost everything he’s ever written: Pretty much everyone who links to things on the Internet has already linked to Mark Waid’s interview at Ain’t It Cool News, but I’m going to go ahead and link to it here too, in case you somehow missed it. Why?  Because it’s the very definition of a must-read piece. The long-time editor, writer and editor and then editor again talks about his career and some of the guys he’s worked for over the years, and he does so a lot more frankly that you usually see in the comics industry. Meanwhile, over at Savage Critics, David Uzumeri picks up on some of the things Waid says about his most recent time at DC and folds it into a review of Neil Gaiman’s “Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?” two-parter.

Speaking of Savage Critics…: Chris Eckert reviews a handful of new releases, and comes up with some extremely depressing statistics about regarding the latest issue of Justice League of America. Check it out:

—It’s twenty one issues in.

—It began with Justice League of America Wedding Special #1, in which no one got married.

— That first issue tied into the relaunch of Green Arrow/Black Canary, and his run has subsequently been used as a tie-in depository for Salvation Run, Tangent: Superman’s Reign, Suicide Squad: Raise the Flag, Final Crisis and the forthcoming Justice League: Cry for Justice, a book that won’t be out until July at the earliest.

—Pursuant to these tie-ins, seven out of twenty one issues have been written, in whole or in part, by someone else.

—There have been sixteen pencillers and twenty three inkers so far, and at least one more of each in the next couple issues, if solicitations are to be believed.

Yikes. I knew from flip-throughs and keeping an eye on the solicitations that the title has been creatively…chaotic, but I didn’t realize it had gotten that bad. Even more depressing? JLoA is one of DC’s best-sellers, sometimes the best-selling title, depending on what’s up with Batman during that particular month.

“It’s a waste of trees, of shelf-space in my store, of resources on DC’s part.  Not everything is worth collecting, not everything is worth a larger audience”: I linked to it the last time Christopher Butcher of The Beguiling liveblogged his ordering from Previews, and I’m going to link to it again, because it’s pretty funny and, if you’re interested in comic as an industry from the retailer’s perspective, it’s also kind of fascinating. That quote is in response to the existence of a Terror Titans trade paperback. I’ve always wondered about why everything seems to get a trade now, especially poor sellers that seem extremely unlikely to find a wider, more appreciative audience outside the direct market. Also , Butcher’s comments on DC’s variant cover scheme for Batman and Robin #1 are especially worth paying attention to. Here’s part one, and here’s part two.

Why if it weren’t for him, Green Arrow might have never grown a goatee!: I really enjoyed this interview with longtime writer and editor Denny O’Neil, whose influence over modern comics can occasionally be hard to overstate. I enjoyed the pictures of O’Neil that ran with it even more though.

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