From his blog, talking about the original Skrull Kill Krew:

The artist for the project was Steve Yeowell, a 2000 AD veteran who had worked with Grant on Zenith. The characters themselves, however, were designed by Brendan McCarthy at Grant’s urging (and after a lukewarm reception to Steve?s initial visualizations.) Throughout most of the process of producing the series, I mainly communicated with Mark [Millar] — not only were we largely on the same wavelength in terms of the sorts of comics we liked, but I had terrible timing when it came to getting in touch with Grant. Like clockwork, every time I called him, I later found out, he had immediately previously taken one consciousness-altering substance or another, and between that and Grant’s accent, and the not-always-wonderful international phone connection, it was virtually impossible for the two of us to understand one another.

Which if anyone hasn’t seen Morrison’s infamous speech at DisInfoCon about magic and being abducted by aliens and other bizarreness that only could come from his brain and his alone, should explain that well, he’s always been like that.

For whoever doesn’t know, Morrison and Millar are two of the most prominent mainstream superhero comic book writers in the business; Morrison mainly at DC, Millar mainly at Marvel.

I’ve been a fan of Sita Sings the Blues, the animated serial that gradually became a feature work by Nina Paley for quite a while now. I missed out last fall when it came to the Austin Film Festival, and have yet to see the finished, completed work, only the five segments that were released early during its production, not counting the trailer.

Given that it was made without any advance concern about legal propriety, full distribution is apparently a problem. “Sita” makes use of songs by Annette Hanshaw, a 1930s blues singer whose work is largely obscured now, but no one wants to rely on “fair use” if you start burning DVDs.

So, in true artist to-hell-with-the-system fashion, Paley’s decided to copyleft the whole business and raise the $50,000 necessary to get “Sita” out of “copyright jail.” After which, presumably, the DVDs can be “given away” to anyone who wants one.

Good enough for me. $50 from me to bail out Sita. And you should give, too. Roger Ebert likes Sita. James Kochalka likes Sita. BoingBoing likes Sita. Heidi McDonald likes Sita.

You really should, too.

A little late, but for whoever pays attention to Final Fantasy XI and what they’re doing to combat gold farming, they recently revealed their secret weapon:

(1)RMT-PWNER V1.337
This is a tool that makes it possible for us to understand the entire flow of gil from collectors to buyers in an instant.
For example, if we enter a character into the RMT-PWNER who we have determined is involved in RMT activities through reports received from FINAL FANTASY XI players and through our own investigations, the tool will act according to the image below.

The image more or less describes, if you even buy gold (or “gil,” in FFXI terms) with real money, then you get banned. Immediately. And the tool that tracks the gil transactions has a ridiculous name.

LOL PWND.

One night only at Austin’s ZACH Theatre, it’s Richard Garriott LIVE. Only $65 per seat.

Jan. 6: Troubled magazine publisher Ziff-Davis sells video game-news Web site 1up.com to Hearst Communications-owned UGO.com, in the process declaring venerable game (print) magazine EGM will cease publishing.

Jan. 9: Hearst declares the Seattle Post-Intelligencer up for sale. If they can’t sell it in 60 days, they might gut the print staff and go digital-only.

I’m just happy to have a job, over here.

GENTLEMEN.

BEHOLD.