AROUND THE BLOGOSPHERE

This week, I'm digging deep into my Firefox bookmarks to present to you a taste of my daily blog reading. This isn't all of them, by any means, but it's a good cross-section of the comics stuff. Why don't you check out some of these this week? If you haven't been there before, they all have big fat archives you can peruse.

Professionals:Mike Wieringo - The best artblog I'm reading. Currently, Wieringo is redrawing his childhood creations.

Peter David - Follows various TV shows, occasional lefty politics, and enough good stuff about comics to keep me amused.

Steve Lieber/Mercury Studios - Not too quick with the updates, but plenty of pictures and artwork to be seen. And don't forget to check out Jeff Parker's blog while you're at it.

AiT/PlanetLar - It's the propaganda arm of Larry Young's empire. If you want to see links to reviews of books from AiT/PlanetLar or interviews with their creators, this is the place to go. He also occasionally gloats over baseball scores. It's odd, but you have to realize that his people were in the desert for nearly a century. They need to grasp every drop of humidity they can find. It's sad, really. . .

Sun of Gelatometti - This is the WildStorm group blog. Led by Jim Lee, it's a good place for WildStorm artists to post their work, most often sketches and unfinished bits of business. There's plenty of commentary to go along with them, so there's also the chance you might learn something.

Mauricet - He's a Belgian BD artist. He threw up a bunch of sketches of Marvel characters just last month, in addition to previews of his next work, a basketball-themed series. There might be a couple of sketches in there rated PG-13, so be warned.

Neil Gaiman - I don't get to visit this one nearly as often as I should, given that it's probably the biggest and busiest blog on the comics blogosphere. I'm not entirely the target demographic for this blog, so my visits are limited. Still, there's usually something of interest on a daily basis.

Brian K. Vaughan - Not the busiest, but good to hit a couple of times a week to see what's new with his bajillion books and personal appearance schedule.

Drew Geraci - Behind the scenes with the comics inker. Hunt through the archives for some good stories and self-analysis.

Mark Evanier - This one should be Must Reading for every comics fan. The comic book content might not be the most prolific, but it's worth reading for Evanier's looks at Hollywood from an insider's perspective.

Evan Dorkin - Fearless, honest, and occasionally ready for a fight. Dorkin holds nothing back, which is a refreshing change of pace in a comics world in which everyone plays politics and doesn't want to offend anyone. With a self-deprecating sense of humor, Dorkin pulls it all off.

Meanwhile, in California. . .Tom the Dog - I read it mostly for the television rants and reviews, but there's enough comics commentary in there to justify its inclusion in this column.

Postmodern Barney - Written from the perspective of comic shop clerk Dorian Wright. Lots of great retailing horror stories, analysis, and reviews. Having worked a cash register in my life, I know what it can be like to deal with the public. Some problems are universal, as it turns out. Others are unique to comics shops.

Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin - Mike works with Dorian of Postmodern Barney fame, as part of the infamous collective, ACAPCWOVCCAOE. (Did I get that right, Mike? Close enough.) Click on the blog and you can see what that alphabet soup all stands for in the right hand column. Again, you'll get more retailing horror stories, but also lots of Swamp Thing loving, bizarre comic book panels and covers, and even some reviews.

Back to the rest of the world. . .Fanboy Rampage - The master blog of them all. The ultimate web site for snark, humor, and comics evisceration. It's not for everyone, but it has its own culture and the running gags to go with it. If nothing else, it keeps you up to date with the big news of the day in the comics world, not to mention the message board hijinks of fanboys on the rampage.

Comic Weblog Update - Through the magic of web architecture, every blog update can be tracked through a central web site. This is the place to go to if you want to check which comics blogs have been updated recently. It's an invaluable resource, and one that's helped me discover new blogs.

The Great Curve - This is a group blog founded by ex-Newsarama/WIZARD writer Alex Segura, before he fattened his resume by going to work for Archie. It features a round robin of contributors, including the likes of Lea Hernandez, Alan David Doane, and Tim O'Shea. It seems that people come and go, though. One week, you'll get a dozen entries from one person before they drop off the face of the earth for the next week. There's always something new up there, though.

Cognitive Dissonance - Johanna Draper-Carlson's blog includes links a'plenty, the original PREVIEWS snark, and reviews galore. She's also one of the few places on the 'net to find reviews of ARCHIE Comics. I'd say she's the only one, but I'm sure there's an ARCHIE specialty site out there that I just don't have a link for.

ADD - The father of Comic Book Galaxy, Alan David Doane, links around to various less-seen titles and creators. He also virtually stalks Abhay, linking to many hilarious message board posts the much-missed columnist makes. I'm not kidding. He did it again this weekend. Someone call the cops.

Also keep an ear out for his nascent podcast. Not only does he have an opening sting, but he has a great voice for this kind of thing.

Dave's Long Box - Recently named in NEWSWEEK Magazine, it's single-handedly responsible for the deaths of several AIM members in riots near Qurac. I'm mixing universes now. I'm such a geek.

Dave does wonderful writeups of comics pulled almost at random from his long boxes of comics. They're funny, thoughtful, and even occasionally snarky. For a great recent example, check out his recent review of a 90s DAREDEVIL issue.Neilalien - The original comics blogger, and a man with a DOCTOR STRANGE fascination. He also likes to name years in Y10k format. As a computer programmer, I am forced to admire that. His posts link to interesting stories around the 'net, often with succinct and well-reasoned commentary.

Polite Dissent - It's a doctor's take on comics, looking at the mistakes and the proper use of medicine seen in comics, both from the writers and the artists. Don't draw a nasal canula wrong, or he'll be all over you.

Savage Critic - Super Retailer Brian Hibbs reviews the week's books, along with co-conspirator, Jeff Lester. You also get links to his latest writings, the weekly new release list, and more.

The Comics Reporter - Mandatory daily news reading. Plus, there's a column on European Comics on the sidebar that covers a vastly underserved market amongst English language web sites.

Monitor Duty - Another group blog. Very superhero centric, particularly towards DC. There's also some general pop culture geek links in there. It's a little too STAR WARS obsessed at the moment, but I'm sure it'll pass.

The Pipeline Podcast returns this week (subscribe to the feed), though the delayed holiday week shipment means it may not be up until Wednesday night instead of Tuesday.

You can still hear last week's podcast through the MP3 file. (Roughly 9 minutes, ~4.5 MB)

This past week was another insanely busy one for my blog, Various and Sundry. Really, just click over and you'll see what I mean. It's beautiful, in an odd way.

The Various and Sundry DVD Podcast continues to look at the week's DVD releases, every Sunday afternoon (or so). Those of you with a podcasting program can subscribe to it right here. Shownotes are posted each week on Sunday afternoon.

All political discussions have been pushed off to one neat side at VandS Politics.

You can e-mail me your comments on this column, or post them for all the world to see and respond to over on the Pipeline Message Board.

More than 500 columns are archived here at CBR and you can get to them from the Pipeline Archive page. They're sorted chronologically. The first 100 columns or so are also still available at the Original Pipeline page. I haven't had that account in years, but they've yet to delete the page space. Go fig.