Pornokitsch

Another round-up of the links that caught our eye (plus, where some of the Pornokitsch contributors have been hanging out away from here).

"I get off on taking money for making up daft analogues of existing characters, like 'Spore' instead of 'Spawn', 'Major Max' instead of 'Captain Marvel', or 'Doctor Nemo' instead of 'No-Man'...These are twice-removed analogues — copies of copies — where something like Busiek’s Captain Marvel stand-in, the tuxedo-wearing Gentleman, becomes Earth-34’s L’il Abner-lookin’ Good Guy. Where Rob Liefeld’s Wonder Woman knock-off, Glory, turns into Earth-35’s Majesty, Queen of Venus and so on. Riffs upon riffs of riffs. It’s like guitar feedback." - Grant Morrison being extremely meta, but The Multiversity sounds awesome.

"Under the Radar: The Books that Pinged" - another best of year list from Justin, Mahvesh and Jared, this time focusing on books that might be overlooked (and what might cause that sort of thing).

Did you know that Tom at Freaky Trigger is writing about every single UK #1 single? It is... rather spectacular. Here's ATB's "9 PM (Til I Come)" as a sample.

Anne and Jared were both guests at The Book Smugglers' Smugglivus - Anne highlighted some of her favourite 2014 covers and Jared picked out some of the SF/F community's 'hidden heroes'.

New York Times obituary of Sy Berger, who created the modern baseball card. Really neat history of the collectible.

"Books that aren't pretentious crap" - a reading list from Drew Magary.

"I think that the hardest part of starting out is being afraid of making the wrong decisions or choices.  From where I am now, I feel that there are no wrong choices - just different right ones.  Make a decision, and then react to it.  Move forward, don’t get stuck second-guessing yourself.  Turn your choices into the right ones by your actions and commitment to being the best you can at what you are doing.  No one can tell you if you are going to be a success or make it, all you can do is put in the work and not let your brain drag you down while you are doing the best you can at the moment." - Jeffrey Alan Love has advice for starting illustrators

Molly Tanzer's "Herbert West in Love" - a free short story in The Lovecraft eZine.

Patrick Ness on Midnight in Karachi.

"The Walking Dead’s producers go to great lengths to portray what a zombie apocalypse might be like. They are especially keen to show us the nasty bits: what it really looks like when dead people don’t die, what it looks like to kill the undead, and the evil it spawns in those left alive. It’s gruesome. The show is a gore orgy. But armpit hair on women? Apparently that’s just gross." - Realism vs Gender ideology: women in apocalyptic fiction shaving their armpits