“He’s not you typical western hero, but he was a lot of fun to draw”: That’s Thomas Boatwright talking about the main character in his Zeke Deadwood: Zombie Lawman in this article about a public library’s local author’s night. Five North Carolina authors were invited to participate, and Boatwright was one of them. He was also first graphic novelist to participate in the program.

There’s a verb form of “meatball?”: One of the coolest jobs on the planet, in my estimation, must be being one of the people who gets to think up headlines summarizing weekend box office performance, as it seems to mostly entail thinking up hilarioulys bad puns based on the titles of new movies. I think this one from Time, indicating that Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs out-performed The Surrogates last weekend, is like the worst one ever though. The article stresses Surrogates‘ comics routes and that was something that should have been part of “a recipe for minting money.” I wonder how many movies based on comics that will be perceived as box office failures there will have to be before Hollywood steps off that particular bandwagon, or if the occasional Dark Knight or Iron Man will keep comics a viable source for film adaptation, even if everything from Punisher War Zone on to Surrogates is perceived as not being a hit? (I say this without actually crunching the numbers or even looking very closely at any of them,  as I’m only talking about the perception of success or failure. Fair or unfair, even when movies end up making a profit, if they fail to meet certain, often arbitrary public expectations, they seem doomed to the perception of failure).

“This book will have you thinking about your own identity and may inspire you to start carving your own path, rather than go with the flow that everyone else follows”: That’s the Daily News on Abby Denson’s Dolltopia. They sure liked it.

“Sale makes sure everyone looks great, but that can’t hide the fact that the designated writer has the proportional spunk and gumption of an actuary on quaaludes”: I think that’s the first time I’ve ever seen the words “spunk,” “gumption,” “actuary” and “quaaludes” in the same sentence. Anyway, Noah Berlatsky just got around to reading Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s The Long Halloween, and he did not much care for it. It’s been a while since I’ve read any Loeb/Sale Batman stuff, so I’m not going to argue with Berlatsky or anything, but I thought his response was of note in that the conventional wisdom has always been that Loeb’s best work was his stuff with Sale, particularly Long Halloween and Dark Victory, right? No? At any rate, I still crack up every time I re-read that scene at the end of Dark Victory where Robin makes his first in-costume appearance, taking the Joker out with a bad joke and a club on the teeth.

“Of course, Geoff Johns has showed a facility for turning a weak story around with a very satisfying ending …but, well… that doesn’t make the story as a whole good”: Johnathan of Living Between Wednesdays has not been enjoying DC’s Blackest Night event as much as he thought he would, and last week he set about trying to come up with possible theories as to why this might be. Then on Wednesday, he read a Geoff Johns-written portion of the event, and realized the problem may just be the spin-offs weren’t as good as the spine.

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