Holy Sh*t! The World’s Weirdest Comic Books
By Paul Gravette and Peter Stanbury
St. Martin’s Press, October 2008, $12.95

This is the kind of book I’m actually surprised to still see – I thought “look at this weird stuff” books had been entirely superseded by the greater speed and flexibility of the Internet. (I can think of three similar sites just off the top of my head – Superdickery, James Lilek’s Funny Books, and Scott Shaw!’s Oddball Comics – and without even diving into the blog world.) But I suppose as long as there are cash registers in this world, there will be eye-catching little impulse-buy books to sit next to them and lure in the curious, unwary, or amused. [[[Holy Sh*t!]]] is a small-format hardcover, roughly six inches square, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there was a corresponding point-of-purchase cardboard display that holds six to eight of them.

The title gives away the whole point of Holy Sh*t! – it’s a collection of amusingly weird, or weirdly amusing, covers from the last sixty years or so of comics, supposedly covering the whole world but actually staying, for the most part, very close to the mainstream of American corporate comics (with regular excursions into the well-known underground movement). I should mention, to save confusion, that the UK edition has the somewhat more boring title [[[The Leather Nun and Other Incredibly Strange Comics]]].

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With the Emmy Awards four days away, much so being made of the main event although many awards have already been given out.

The 2008 Creative Arts Emmys were presented and among the winners of note include:

Outstanding Animated Program (For Programming One Hour or More went to the “Imaginationland”  special episode of South Park while the less-than-one-hour category went to The Simpsons’ “Eternal Moonshine of the Simpson Mind”.

The guest acting awards were presented to Cynthia Nixon as Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for NBC’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit; Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series went to Kathryn Joosten for ABC’s Desperate Housewives. Joosten, one of our favorite character actors, notched her second win as Karen McCluskey. Accepting her statuette, Joosten declared, “This solves a problem. I have two sons, and now they don’t need to fight over which one gets this when I die.”

Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series went to Glynn Turman for HBO’s In Treatment; and Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series went to Tim Conway for NBC’s 30 Rock.

The awards for Interactive Media were presented by Evan and Gregg Spiridelis of the online media company JibJab Inc. The award for fiction went to nbc.com’s Heroes Digital Experience. The nonfiction award went to Disney Channel Games Digital Media Event from the ABC Television Group, Creative Asylum and Walt Disney Internet Group.

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Previously on Fringe…

During an investigation into mysterious deaths aboard Flight 627, Agent Olivia Dunham’s boyfriend and partner Agent Scott is nearly killed, his body becoming translucent. Olivia recruits Walter and Peter Bishop, an eccentric father-son scientific duo, to devise a cure for Scott’s condition. Although successful, it turns out that Scott has secret knowledge of Flight 627, but he’s killed before he can reveal anything. Olivia is determined to uncover what Scott’s involvement means in relation to an enigma known as ‘The Pattern,’ and is recruited alongside the Bishops to uncover the truth. Meanwhile, the secretive Massive Dynamic corporation looms in the distance, somehow involved in the plot.

“Same Old Story,” different day…

The series kicks off it’s first post-pilot installment with “[[[The Same Old Story]]],” and it’s anything but. A woman suddenly becomes pregnant and gives birth to a baby in a matter of minutes. Upon birth, the baby grows and ages 80 years. Who you gonna call? Fringe… busters… people. Alright, they need a cooler name.

“The Same Old Story” matches the creep factor so heavily ratcheted in the first episode. Kicking the show off with a fast-forwarded version of [[[The Curious Case of Benjamin Button]]] is eerily reminiscent of [[[The X-Files]]] — and that’s certainly the effect that the ladies and gents at Fox have in mind. The computer graphics could use some work, but it’s solid as far as network television goes.

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A total of $53,455 has been raised by the Siegel and Shuster Society’s fund raising efforts after just two weeks.  The $50,000 goal for exterior repairs to Jerry Siegel’s’ boyhood home was exceeded after week two’s auction haul of $18,996.  Two more weeks of auction will proceed while t-shirt sales will continue.  Once the auction ends, work will begin on both the exterior and interior of the home.

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