P.S. Hi the rest of you guys. It is so, so nice to see you all again.

Rio,

this:

[link]

P.S. Hi the rest of you guys. It is so, so nice to see you all again.

How have you been? How are your hips? Do you love your neighborhood?

Thanks, you guys! I've been pretty good. My hip acts up sometimes but basically it's all right. I have taken up skateboarding. I have a dog who has a lot of problems. I have been enjoying my neighborhood more since the High Line arrived. How 'bout yous guys?

How 'bout yous guys?

Jeez, I haven't talked to you in a while. Let's see: last year Emmett's all-star baseball team won the state championship. (This year, nsm.) He included Matilda in all his championship banner shots.

But Matilda's a big girl now.

Parenting's fun.

My Dad died in the spring. I took Emmett with me to a trip through the South for his memorial service, and we met my Mom's side of the family. (Emmett with my sister's puppy. He turns 13 next week and is in his last year of middle school.

I'm doing some writing for the Hilobrow website.

JZ remains fetching. She's writing. Working at UCSF.

RIO!!!! (Wow. It really does feel like your name should be shouted in all caps!)

Questions for Joss:

• From "Buffy to Vampire Slayer" to "Firefly to "Dollhouse" ... are you trying to find the point you can break network executives' heads with concepts? What happens in meetings when you pitch ideas like this? Has there ever been a case of TV executive seppuku associated with one of your shows?

• In "Astonishing X-Men," you returned the popular character Kitty Pryde to a starring role --- a character you've claimed was a model for Buffy Summers -- only to jettison her into space at the end of the story line. Do you find the "if I can't have her, no one can" of this a little ... stalkerish?

• Is it true that the character Moist in "Dr. Horrible" is based on a Fox programming exec?

• If you were given a chance to resurrect one Marvel Comics franchise, which would it be, and why. (I'm rooting for "the Defenders.")

• Are there any video games you can defeat Nathan Fillion at?

JZ & David, your kids are GORGEOUS. Not surprising of course.

Thank you, victor, and nice to """""see""""" you again!

An interview with a rather puckish Alan Moore:

I was noticing that DC seems to have based one of its latest crossovers [Blackest Night] in Green Lantern based on a couple of eight-page stories that I did 25 or 30 years ago. I would have thought that would seem kind of desperate and humiliating, When I have said in interviews that it doesn’t look like the American comic book industry has had an idea of its own in the past 20 or 30 years, I was just being mean. I didn’t expect the companies concerned to more or less say, “Yeah, he’s right. Let’s see if we can find another one of his stories from 30 years ago to turn into some spectacular saga.” It’s tragic.

[link]

Oh, Alan. Don't ever change. We love you just the way you are.

But seriously, what I think Alan is missing here is that, those stories he wrote in the '80s were read by people who are creating comics now (mostly Geoff Johns) who sat there and said, "Why did no one ever pick up on this!" It's not so much DC being out of ideas, as creators going back to the stories of their youth, and expanding from there. (That's a lot of what Bendes is doing over at Marvel, too, thus the focus on characters from his youth, such as Ms. Marvel, Spider-Woman and Luke Cage. Everything comes back around again with each new generation of comics creators.

If you read the whole thing, they discuss the fact that the people writing comics now were fans 20 years ago. And how that's part of the problem. That's actually what leads into the bit about Blackest Night.