The Caped Crusade by Glen Weldon

Based on his self-description in The Caped Crusade, Glen Weldon and I are close in age. Unlike Weldon, the limited selection of broadcast television channels in my rural community did not present 1960s Batman series. My childhood impressions of the Dark Knight came almost exclusively from the comics. My favorite version of Batman is the “World’s Greatest Detective” (when I came across his team-up with a very old Sherlock Holmes in Detective Comics 500, I had to have it). I’m also fond of the adventure hero who hues close to his pulp roots—basically the Shadow or Doc Savage in a bat suit (I also had to buy Batman 253, in which the awestruck superhero acknowledges the Shadow as an inspiration).

I suppose that I staked out my position on Batman because that is partly what Weldon’s book is about, the contradictions between Batman the character and Batman the idea, and the tension between stories loved by hardcore fans and stories appreciated by a wider audience who engage with Batman in diverse ways.

Weldon illustrates this tension, and the character’s shift as the pull is sometimes stronger in one direction or another, through the history of the character. He sees a cycle in Batman’s depiction. He starts as a dark loner. He becomes a father figure (most directly to Robin). He grows into the patriarch of a family (Robin, Alfred, Batgirl, and Huntress just to start a list). Then a desire to revitalize the character, get back to roots, or satisfy the core fandom returns him to the loner stage.

The hardcore fans Weldon writes of generally conceive Batman as serious. They want a Batman who is realistic and gritty. In my experience as a reader of comics, “serious,” “realistic” and “gritty” are often code words for prurience, grotesquery and gore. I’m not interested in that in comics or any other media.

These fans have a love-hate relationship with the Batman of other media (they just hate the Adam West version). The Tim Burton films revitalized public interest in Batman when the comics were in a serious sales slump. (The hardcore fans hate the Joel Schumacher movies. I’m with them on that.) In the Chris Nolan trilogy they finally got a Batman who is serious and has acceptance in the wider culture.

That culture is much wider now than ever, especially due to the Internet. Comics fandom was once very insular, and in some ways it still is. In the Internet age, many people are engaging the character and idea of Batman. Comic book fans, cosplayers, fan fiction writers, movie buffs, fashionistas, retro TV watchers, hipsters and a host of others are interacting with Batman’s stories, history, image and iconography. It is a world that some of the old hardcore fans may find discomfiting, but it may be a place where Batman can have lasting relevance.

Weldon plainly likes that prospect. In his view, the super-straight Adam West Batman and the grounded, brooding Chris Nolan Batman can coexist. They are both really Batman. People have always focused on the aspects of the character that resonated with them. They have also imposed on him interpretations that the writers and artists that created his stories never imagined. We do this with every text, but few texts have the longevity of Batman. That may be the Weldon’s other point. We can take any version of Batman as seriously as we want, or we can simply enjoy the stories. He is a fictional character after all.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in:

Amazing Fantastic Incredible by Stan Lee, Peter David & Colleen Doran

Comic Book Nation by Bradford W. Wright

The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics by Dennis O’Neil

Fic by Anne Jamison

Kirby by Mark Evanier

Men of Tomorrow by Gerard Jones

Reading Comics by Douglas Wolk

The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore

Stan Lee by Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon

The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu

Will Eisner by Michael Schumacher

Wisdom from the Batcave by Cary A. Friedman

Weldon, Glen. The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016.

Writing: Steal Characters

A lot of writing revolves around characters. For some writers, characters are central, and they’re drives, decisions, history, and idiosyncrasies move the story. A popular series character can be the jackpot for a writer, especially a genre writer.

Great characters are all around. How do you find them? Do as your predecessors in inventing great characters. Steal them.

I’m not suggesting that you actually steal characters. Nor am I suggesting that the writers I’ll be discussing stole their characters. It’s a matter of looking around in literature and life for real and fictional people then reworking them, consciously and unconsciously, into your own character.

Let me draw an illustration. Let’s take a popular character and see how other popular characters are in some way a reworking of it. These connections are my invention. I have not idea what the creators of these characters were thinking. I doubt most of them were thinking along these lines.

Let’s start with the Lone Ranger. Created by George W. Trendle (written by Fran Striker) in 1933 for the radio, the Lone Ranger saw success in several media, especially television. Before looking at the masked strangers successors, look at his predecessors. There were white-hatted cowboy heroes before the ranger. His contribution was the secret identity and the avoidance of lethal force. These heroes were white knights transformed for the gunpowder age. You might see those chevaliers as vaguely Christianized versions of mythological questers like Odysseus and Hercules.



Now imagine that the Lone Ranger is an antihero, his bullets are deadly lead and he uses a lot of them. You might picture something like Jonah Hex. John Albano and Tony DeZuniga created Hex in 1971. He is a scarred frontiersman who roams the West, not necessarily protecting the innocent, but collecting bounties or dealing deadly justice.

Maybe you like that the Lone Ranger avoids deadly force. Let’s keep that, but make him a pulp-era vigilante. That is what Trendle and Striker did in when they created the Green Hornet for the radio in 1936. They even made the Hornet a distant relative, though not a descendant, and imitator of the Ranger. The Hornet is darker, though. Instead of riding a white horse, he drives the Black Beauty. He sometimes pretends to be a criminal, but it is mainly to allow him to infiltrate gangs and break them apart from the inside. In spite of this, he avoids killing just as his predecessor did (I guess Seth Rogan didn’t notice that).

What if the Lone Ranger was a costumed superhero? He might be Batman, created by Bob Kane in 1939. Bruce Wayne’s identity isn’t hidden from the audience, but his costumed crusade against crime could have been modeled on the horseman. Batman writer Bill Finger gave Batman a code of ethics that would have made the Ranger proud. Not only did Batman eschew deadly force, he rarely used a gun at all. In appearance, at least, Batman resembles Zorro more than the Lone Ranger. (Batman comics tie him to Zorro, too. Several authors have depicted it as the move the Waynes had just seen when Bruce’s parents were killed by a criminal). Zorro himself might be taken as a Latin American spin on the Ranger, except he was created 14 years earlier by Johnston McCulley.

Not all of these ostensible progeny are as good as Batman. Put the Ranger in a talking car and you might end up with something like Knight Rider. Put Jonah Hex on a motorcycle in a futuristic megacity and you might get Judge Dredd. (The Judge Dredd comics weren’t bad, just not my cup of tea. The Sylvester Stallone movie was bad.)

The Lone Ranger is an archetypal hero, which is how we can so easily draw connections between him and characters that came before and after. It doesn’t denigrate Trendle and Striker to say they drew on archetypes, or even specific characters or people, in creating his own character. It’s a compliment that they created a character that was so popular, enduring, and inspiring to other writers.

Think of your own twist on the Lone Ranger archetype. You might have other characters you love that you could call on. Take your favorite romance heroine and put her in a completely different setting (Charlaine Harris put Sookie Stackhouse in a Louisiana full of vampires). You could put a detective in the far future (Isaac Asimov did in Caves of Steel). Bring a dragon into the atomic age (yeah, Godzilla). You could make a dragon a slave to the boilermakers in a steampunk fantasy—hey, maybe I’ll do that.

Wisdom from the Batcave by Cary A. Friedman

Friedman, Cary A. Wisdom from the Batcave: How to Live a Super, Heroic Life. Linden, NJ: Compass, 2006.



Rabbi Friedman finds serious ethics taught in stories delivered through a medium that is not always taken seriously: comic books. Friedman’s hero of choice is Batman.

After the introduction, each chapter is a short essay on some ethical subject; the author is a teacher of ethics and the Torah. To illustrate his points, he draws on stories from the Batman comics.

Most chapters have a literal illustration drawn from a comic featuring Batman. These are directly related to the text.

The author finds no irony in using the Batman as an example. He says that as he studied ethics, in both secular and religious settings, he found many of the concepts he was studying were already familiar from the comics he had read as kid. He sees value in such stories where ethical lessons can be taught by slipping past the defensive wall people put up when they sense a lecture coming.

The subjects covered in the book are wide ranging. A selection includes family, the role of adversity, hard work, inspiration, moral principles, forethought, and the little ways we can fight evil every day.

The author’s style is sometimes tongue-in-cheek, as one might expect from someone dealing with such serious subjects by referring to popular entertainment. However, his incites are informed by his work as a rabbi and his consultation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation on ways to help law enforcement officer cope with the stress of their jobs.

The book is short, less than 100 pages, but not light on material. In fact, one of the chapters deals with not saying to much, but valuing speech and making the words one uses count. To close, here is what the author says about his purpose, “I hope this book serves as a reminder that there are countless opportunities around us—opportunities that we encounter in our everyday lives—to be heroic.”

The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics by Dennis O’Neil

O’Neil, Dennis. The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics. New York: Watson-Guptill, 2001.

Denny O’Neil has been writing and editing comics for decades. He is particularly known for his work on comics featuring Batman. He has also written novels and taught writing.

As the title of the book suggests, the focus is on writing for comics. Comics are unique in using both words and drawings (and sometimes only drawings) to tell a story. A comics writer must write with pictures in mind and, unless he is one of those talented people who can draw well as well as write, be ready to describe to the artist the pages, panels and images he will create to bring the story to the page. Comics are inherently a collaboration between the writer and the penciller.

O’Neil’s style is very informal and is advice is direct and practical. As and insider, he can frankly lay out the difficulties of writing for comics and the expectations a writer should have.

Even so, he is quick to point to point out there is no exact formula. A comics writer must be prepared to do what works. Even in scripting, there are two major types: plot first a full script. (Editors will probably prefer full scripts from new writers). Even when writing a full script, there isn’t a standard way. O’Neil reproduces pages from several scripts. They all contain the same type of information, but they all look a little different in their particulars.



O’Neil deals with writing both the single-issue story and the multi-issue story arc. As the editor of Batman titles, he oversaw one of the most long and ambitious story arcs in superhero comics. There is an economic advantage for writers and publishers in that good story arcs can have a longer life reproduced in trade paperbacks (or even hardbacks). Even in a long story, every issue has to be good and offer a point of entry for new readers.

To some degree, what makes a good story is the same in any medium. If someone is looking for a short, readable book on fiction writing and the practical matters of keeping readers interested and managing a complex tale, in comics or other media, this book will be useful.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
The Golden Age of DC Comics: 365 Days by Les Daniels, Chip Kid & Geoff Spear
How to Write Mysteries by Shannon OCork
How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card
Stan Lee by Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon

The Spirit by Darwyn Cook

The Spirit. Written by Darwyn Cooke and Jeph Loeb and drawn by Darwyn Cooke. New York: DC Comics 2007.

This book collects the first six issues of DC’s new line of The Spirit with writing and penciling by Darwyn Cooke and the one-shot Batman/The Spirit written by Cooke and Jeph Loeb with pencils by Cooke. The Spirit was created Will Eisner and originally ran as newspaper insert in the 1930s and 1940s.

I think Cooke handles The Spirit well. To fans, the character is almost as iconic as the likes of Superman. However, Superman has been continually published since his creation with contributions for many writers and artists. The Spirit ceased publication over 50 years ago and has only appeared in reprints. This could pose a problem for some. Do you keep the character historical, do you modernize him, and how do you make it work?

Cooke handles it the way most comics with such long-lasting character do, he ignores it as much as possible. He has kept what is distinctive and great about The Spirit and his supporting cast and simply written and drawn very good new stories.



The Spirit stories are hardboiled detective tales with a touch of superhero adventure and a big dose of humor. The stories cover a wide emotional range, but the tendency is toward the lighthearted. This is in keeping with Eisner’s work and done well by Cooke, who seems to be involved in several detective-oriented comics projects.

Cooke’s drawing style differs from Eisner’s, though I suspect he could imitate Eisner well if he wanted to. Where the new Spirit resembles the old is in it use of design and layout. This is one of those things Eisner brought to The Spirit that made it great and that Cooke does very well. The layout and design element produces two things. First, it results in some stunning and interesting images. Second, and probably more important, it creates a strong integration of image, action and story. This is something all comics should do, but it is done especially in Eisner and Cooke’s Spirit tales. A great example is the first few pages of Batman/The Spirit. A visually interesting device smoothly transitions an opening dialogue to an action sequence. The action builds to an image that cleverly integrates elements from previous frames that is both a dynamic part of the action and static graphic that serves as something like title page. The effect is magnified because it is presented after the turn of a page.

The fans of the original Spirit stories will find much to enjoy in the new ones. For someone unfamiliar with The Spirit, but liking action-filled detective stories, you’ll find some of the finest here.

Intersting Stuff June 29, 2010

Annie comic strip has final day in the funnies
Batman Issue No. 700 is a keeper
Brooklyn Bridge getting a $500 million makeover
Fantasy artist Frank Frazetta passes at age 82
How ancient China was built on sticky rice, literally CNNGo.com
Howard the Duck back in quack
Interesting Stuff May 12, 2010
Little Orphan Annie comic strip canceled after 85 years
Little Orphan Annie ending
Marvel leads the $3.99 charge with 70 titles this July
Oil Inspectors on Meth?
Robert Crumb Genesis museum exhibit
Scott Pilgrim vs the World evil exes movie posters
Vatican beatifies Blues Brothers…well almost
Vatican newspaper: Blues Brothers is a Catholic classic

Interesting Stuff July 7, 2010

19. The Time Traveler’s Wife popped by to gloat. (I liked this book, too.)
DARPA BaTMAN & RoBIN projects
DC redesigns Superman in 1974
Interesting Stuff June 29, 2010
The Latest Employment Report: Construction Jobs Get Hammered
Math genius can solve a riddle but won’t accept a prize
New Wonder Woman Costume
Review Wonder Woman costume change
Robot Eats Rubble, Excretes Bricks
San Jose considering plan to sell water system

The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore

Wonder Woman is one of most popular comic book characters. Because she is about to be featured in a film that will bring Batman and Superman together in epic battle, and is expected to be featured in a film of her own, the Internet is already beginning to buzz with concern over how badly she may be portrayed and hopes that the filmmakers will get her right. She has starred in some great stories, but often the stories about her have disappointed for various reasons. The difficulty of depicting a woman superhero has its roots in sorting out the roles of women in society, something we’re still working on. It is a struggle Wonder Woman was born to fight.

Jill Lepore explores the birth of this female superhero in The Secret History of Wonder Woman. In one of her various comics origins, the demigoddess was formed from the mud of Paradise Island, but Lepore describes how she was formed in the suffrage and feminist movements of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, and an unusual family with strong ties to these movements.

Wonder Woman first appeared in print in 1941. When she became the title character of her own comic, her creator came from behind his pseudonym, with some fanfare, and revealed himself as psychologist William Moulton Marston.

Marston’s lifestyle is known now, but it was a closely held secret during his lifetime. For all practical purposes, if not legally, he had two wives. Surprisingly, both women were feminists. They both loved Marston and found in this arrangement a way to live the lives they wanted. They had a pragmatic, flexible feminism that was accepting of the unconventional. I can hardly do it justice in a few words, but Lepore explores the early days of feminism that shaped the arrangement Marston had with these two women.

Marston met Elizabeth Holloway while they were undergraduates, he at Harvard and she at Mount Holyoke. They were both advocates of women’s suffrage. They married in 1915. Marston received a doctorate and Holloway a master’s degree. Holloway claimed to be deeply involved in Marston’s early research. The Marston household became full of writers and editors, and overtime attribution became a matter of convenience or marketing rather than identification of individual authorship.

Olive Byrne met Marston as an undergraduate at Tufts, where she became his research assistant. She quickly became more and moved into the Marston household. Eventually they worked out the arrangement that Holloway would work full-time (over time she had several jobs as an editor) while Byrne raised the children (each had two children with Marston). Byrne eventually felt the need to contribute the finances and in the 1930s wrote for Family Circle as Oliver Richards (Richards from the marriage and widowhood she faked to obscure the parentage of her children). Byrne, like the Marstons she joined, had ties to the feminist and birth control movements. She was the daughter of Ethel Byrne  and her aunt was the more famous Margaret Sanger.

Holloway, Byrne, and even Sanger, were to varying degrees the models for Wonder Woman. She was to be feminist propaganda, and under Marston’s pen she was. One would guess that this would have attracted criticism, but it was not the feminism of Wonder Woman that most stirred up critics.

Bondage was depicted on almost every page of Marston’s comics. In addition, Wonder Woman’s costume was skimpy. Lepore links the bondage in these comics to the use of bondage as a symbol used by suffragists and feminists. Sometimes Marston drew very consciously on images associated with these movements. In addition, the bondage represented notions of domination and submission rooted in Marston’s theories of personality and the relationship between the sexes. Bonds, and the breaking of them, represented the misappropriation of power by men and the power of women to free themselves and take their place as leaders in society. Similarly, Wonder Woman’s bare limbs were emblematic of her athleticism, strength, power and essential equality to make heroes. It’s hard to say that the depiction of Wonder Woman is completely free of sexual undertone, Marston wanted her to be beautiful. Lepore shows the clear link between the symbolism of Wonder Woman and the symbolism  of suffrage and feminism that Marston consciously referenced.

When Marston passed away in 1947, Wonder Woman fell into the hands of writers and editors who did not share his vision. She hasn’t been the same since. After World War II, the feminism she represented was not welcome in the broader culture or by the men who wrote her comics. Even after the second wave of feminism adopted her as an emblem in the 1970s, she’s not been quite at home. Perhaps we’ll have trouble getting Wonder Woman right as long as we have conflict about the roles of women in our culture.

If you’re interested in either comics or feminism, I recommend Lepore’s book. It is thoroughly researched and thoroughly readable.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Comic Book Nation by Bradford W. Wright

Kirby by Mark Evanier

Men of Tomorrow by Gerard Jones

Miss Mizzou by J. B. Winter

Reading Comics by Douglas Wolk

Stan Lee by Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon

Superman versus the Ku Klux Klan by Rick Bowers

The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu

Will Eisner by Michael Schumacher

Lepore, Jill. The Secret History of Wonder Woman. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014.

200 Books Reviewed on Keenan’s Book Reviews

First Time Reviews

365 Thank Yous by John Kralik
The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis
Acts
American Splendor by Harvey Pekar
Batman created by Bob Kane

Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov
Change Your Brain Change Your Body by Daniel G. Amen
The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics by Dennis O’Neil
The Drunkard’s Walk by Leonard Mlodinow

The Essential Engineer by Henry Petroski
Exodus
Finding Your Writer’s Voice by Thaisa Frank & Dorothy Wall
God’s Secretaries by Adam Nicolson
The Gospel of John

The Gospels
Have a New You by Friday by Kevin Leman
Histories and Fallacies by Carl R. Trueman
How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life by Alan Lakein
How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster

How to Write & Present Technical Information by Charles H. Sides
How to Write Horror Fiction by William F. Nolan
I Can Make You Thin by Paul McKenna
In the Beginning by Alister McGrath
Jonah Hex created by John Albano and Tone DeZuniga

Judge Dredd created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra
King James Bible
Little Shifts by Suzanna Beth Stinnet
Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs
Newton and the Counterfeiter by Thomas Levenson

Numbers
On Becoming a Leader by Warren Bennis
Our Cancer Year by Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner
Paperboy by Henry Petroski
The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan

The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel
Romans
Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life by Bryan Lee O’Malley
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World by Bryan Lee O’Malley
The Sherlockian by Graham Moore

The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu
Thanks! by Robert A. Emmons
True Blood by Charlaine Harris
The Ultimate Weight Solution by Phil McGraw
Vital Friends by Tom Rath

Walk Away the Pounds by Leslie Sansone
War Against the Weak by Edwin Black
Wide as the Waters by Benson Bobrick
Writing for Comics with Peter David
Zorro created by Johnston McCulley

Additional and Expanded Reviews

The Holy Bible
Into the Depths of God by Calvin Miller
The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek
Simple Pictures are Best by Nancy Willard, illustrated by Tomie de Paola

Continuation of list of 200 books reviewed

First 25 Reviews
Reviews 26-50
Reviews 51-75
Reviews 76-100
Reviews 101-150

Level Up Your Life by Steve Kamb

Life is not a game, but you can learn from games to make your life more adventurous and fulfilling. Steve Kamb, a gaming enthusiast who turned his attention to physical fitness, used concepts of gamification to change his life. He describes the process in Level Up Your Life.

Throughout much of his childhood and into his early adult years, Kamb spent much of his free time playing video games. It was an escape for a life he didn’t always like. On the down side, these nearly addictive games were not helping him achieve a life he really wanted. He began to look for what made games so satisfying and how that could be adapted to making life more satisfying.

It is surprisingly simple. Our brains enjoy making progress, and it triggers our internal reward centers when we get feedback that lets us know we’ve progressed. Designers build incremental progress and associated rewards into the structures of most video games.

Much of the middle part of the book deals with goal setting. It is not much different from the advice you might find in other self-help or popular psychology books, except for the gamification spin. Imagine your idea life (Kamb calls it your “Level 50” life). Choose some challenging, inspiring, big goals (quests). Break them down into smaller, doable goals (specific timelines help). Create systems of accountability and rewards to encourage yourself to stick to it. Find a group, or groups, of people who can help and encourage you along the way.

In the final chapters, he deals with supporting concepts about overcoming fear, supporting your goals with good health and fitness, stirring up you sense of adventure, travel tips, and making the sacrifices you may need to make to live the life you desire and respond to a higher calling. He takes inspiration from fictional heroes of popular culture: Bruce Wayne (Batman), Jason Bourne, Indiana Jones, and Katniss Everdeen. He also lists several resources, both web sites and other books. If you’re inspired by adventure stories (in games, books, film or other media), you may find in Kamb’s book a framework for building the life you want.

I like that Kamb emphasizes that life, like a game, should be enjoyed. We should enjoy the process as well as the achievement. We should be flexible and open to the adventures we may discover along the way; they can enhance our lives and may prove useful to our quest in surprising ways.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Epic by John Eldredge

The Organized Mind by Daniel J. Levitin

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

Small Move, Big Change by Caroline L. Arnold

Succeed by Heidi Grant Halvorson

This Year I Will... by M. J. Ryan

Wisdom from the Batcave by Cary A. Friedman

Kamb, Steve. Level Up Your Life: How to Unlock Adventure and Happiness by Becoming the Hero of Your Own Story. New York: Rodale, 2016.

Interesting Stuff April 7, 2010

100 Books. 100 Journeys. (Someone reading the top 100 novels of the 20th Century. It’s not for me, but there are many who would truly enjoy it. I like reading novels, though my blog focuses on nonfiction.)
5 Minute Marvels (Families draw favorite comic book characters)
And Thou Shalt Super-Size
Bada** Babes Bracket (for those with March Madness withdrawal)
Batman kills
Batmans goofiest gadgets
Cheech Marin crushes Anderson Cooper on Celebrity Jeopardy
Chuck Norris turns 70
Interesting Stuff March 11, 2010
Who writes the bills in Congress?

Interesting Stuff Feb. 8, 2010

1808 – 1908 – 2008: National Planning for America
Covered posts reenvisionings of comics covers by various artists
-A cool graphic take on New Mutants
-Something whimsical
-This makes me laugh
-This Spider-Woman cover is pretty cool
DC Comics First Wave
-More about First Wave, Doc Savage, The Spirit
Disney Princesses You Won’t Be Seeing
The Geek Teamups of Sherlock Holmes, From Batman to Doctor Who
Gumby Creator Art Clokey Is Dead
Hey, Oscar Wilde! It’s Clobberin’ Time! is an art blog with a literary bent
-Here are several takes on Dashiell Hammett
I don’t stay up late much anymore, but I say, “Keep Conan. If I’m staying up that late, I won’t be watching Leno.”
-Big Money at Stake If Conan O'Brien, NBC Divorce
-Conan O’Brien to lose characters
-Conan O’Brien, NBC settlement
-Conan O'Brien Rips NBC in Monologue
-Conan O'Brien Says He Won't Budge for Jay Leno (You go girl!)
-Conan Pays the Price for NBC Chief's Lack of Vision
-David Letterman invites Conan O’Brien
-Dear NBC: Just Let Jay Leno Go
-Jay Leno, Letterman marriage joke
-Jimmy Fallon speaks up
-Jimmy Kimmel sabotages Jay Leno
-Late-Night Hosts Gang Up to Pummel NBC
-Why We're on Team Conan O'Brien
Interesting Stuff Jan. 5, 2010--Happy New Year
Superhero Versions of 80s Album Art by Cliff Chiang
Why Leno & Letterman hate each other

Interesting Stuff March 11, 2010

Action Comics No. 1 Sells for $1 million
Are you ready for the toilet of the future? (Some day, I shall enjoy a Toto.)
Batman Briefly Tops Superman’s Rare Comic Book Record
Generosity said to be Contagious
Gov. Nixon appoints David Clewell Poet Laureate of Missouri
Gov. Nixon proclaims first week of March as Math, Engineering, Technology and Science (METS) Week
Interesting Stuff Feb. 8, 2010
Jobs rely on transit, campaign chief says
Mailbox Monday/In My Mailbox (March 7-8)
Midday naps help the brain, study finds (I’ve long been an advocate of naps. Thanks for sending this to me, Connie.)
The Power of Building Codes: Chile Death Toll Less Than 1% That of Haiti
Retiring Nukes in Tennessee
Springfield Punx (favorites depicted as Simpson’s characters)