Blogosphere

We don't know who came up with it, but it appears the heartbreak of crotchleg has been with us for a while and seems to be here to stay.

This isn't really a huge news item but it's nice to see the leading cultural blog Boing Boing add an official comics reviews column and for added good news, it's by Brian Heater, Daily Cross Hatch founder, so the reviews cover stuff like Katie Skelly, Joseph Remnant and Zak Sally. Monthly isn't frequent enough but its a start.

Created by designer Roberto Salvador. Open to submissions.

On the "authority" scale, the idea of New Yorker cover editor Françoise Mouly launching a blog about New Yorker covers and art would rank....very high. And so Blown Covers, which she describes as a personal blog. Although it's unafiliated with the New Yorker, she's holding weekly themed New Yorker cover contests and is "always on the lookout for good ideas and great artists." So yeah, this is an audition.

James Kochalka has a new tumblr called KOCHALKALAND and it includes doodles and noodles in the Tumblr way, such as the above piece of art for an iPad sequel to Kochalka's video game Glorkian Warrior. The sequel is called Glorkbot’s Mini Adventure, for iPad and other platforms. The game is being developed by Kochalka and Pixeljam.

Unless you have been living under a rock, you've seen Tom Spurgeon's essay on facing a life threatening illness, an illness which led to his unexpected blogging absence earlier this summer, and which still affects him, although he's recovering. Since looking death in the face usually prompts some inventory of life, Spurgeon does just that in an astonishing essay that covers his life and his life in comics, if there is a difference. That a man fighting for his life should spend that time thinking about the Green Lantern movie is both ridiculous and awesome -- Tom's thoughts on why we chose the comics life and why we stay there speak for me about 80% of the time. It's not that we have on choice, but rather why would we WANT to leave a field that is full of such honest, unpretentious work and creative, life-loving people?

Since going on a nearly month long hiatus from blogging, Tom Spurgeon has left indie comics readers in serious withdrawal from golden age comics reprints, indie comics art dumps, old photos of cartoonists doing things, and of course, insightful commentary. Luckily as of today Tom is back to blogging today, with a San Diego preview, and a look at why it may have been time for the Xeric to go. Sadly, the elements that caused the hiatus have also prevented him from making the San Diego trip, but we're sure that he'll give better coverage from afar than most of us could do from the ground.

Douglas Wolk is blogging about Judge Dredd . The author of "Reading Comics," has presented us with several specialized comics blogs in the past -- like his amazing 52 Pickup analyzing all the metadata of DC's 52 -- but now he's wading right in to the world of the ultimate law, and one of Britain's most popular native characters:

What is the most uninteresting topic that The Beat covers? VOTE NOW!

It seems there is a new sheriff in DC's digital town, and she goes by the name Molly Merrell. This new member of DC Online has just delivered a smackdown on rowdy posters at DC's Source blog:

"On a November day in 1957 I found myself standing in front of Miss Grosier’s first grade class in Hillcrest Elementary School in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, trying to think of a really good word. She had us play this game in which each kid had to offer up a word to the class, and for every classmate who couldn’t spell your word, you got a point--provided, of course, that you could spell the word. Whoever got the most points received the coveted gold star."

Major changes, the Twiter brain drain affects one cartoonist, and farewell to an original.