Let’s keep this brief.

• Neal Adams is widely regarded as one of the most significant comics artists of the Silver Age, and if you started reading comic books when artists still bothered to draw feet, chances are that Adams was responsible for your mental image of Batman and Superman. And who is Adams collaborating with? Scott Kurtz, on the PvP Christmas storyline. I’ma go out on a limb here and guess that for Kurtz to be more excited, it would take Jack Kirby coming back from the dead and adding some krackle to a Skull fart gag.

  Actually, that would rule.

• T-Rex auction to benefit Child’s Play (which, as of earlier today, is up over US$1.2 million this season; what economic meltdown?). Fine hug-receptable manufacturer Squishables is putting up for auction a fine representation of the late Cretaceous haps-asker, complete with accessories:
  

  [N]ot only do you get a Squishable T-rex, but you get all of the things from the comic that Squishable T-Rex wants to squish:

  • A big blue car!
  • A moderate sized log cabin!
  • A tiny tiny woman!

  How about a print-out of the original design document for this awesome squishable? How about if Ryan [North, creator of Dinosaur Comics] and Zoe [designer from Squishables] both sign the print out? Would that be cool enough for you? Yeah, we thought so.

  As of this writing, the auction is up to a paltry US$81, but there’s about six days to go. Get cracking.

• New book from A Softer World! Launch party for the new book from A Softer World! The fun (and, if ASW scribe Joey Comeau’s past behavio[u]r is any indication, ball-punching) next Monday, December 14th, at 7:00pm in Montréal’s Drawn & Quarterly Bookstore/Librairie Drawn & Quarterly.
• Finally, most significantly, Anders Loves Maria is hurtling towards conclusion, and Rene Engström has gifted us with a six-page update. There is annoyance at juvenile antics. There is the sudden realization that it’s happening, now. There is the need to know what’s happening. There is the fearful realization that in this life nothing is guaranteed, a new life, and the terrifying realization that you can be powerless in the face of something so small and helpless.

  These characters that feel so real, that have loved and fought and fucked and fucked up and reconciled and broken themselves and each other, their journey with us is coming to an end. Not all of those ends are going to end well. It’s still not certain that our principals will decide they want each other more than they don’t. Whatever happens to Anders, Maria, and their child, I suspect that I will end up some degree of heartbroken, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.