Comics Alliance has process sketches from the forthcoming Strange Tales II hardcover..

Great collection of the rough sketches created as indie cartoonists interpret the Marvel Universe. Kate Beaton and Ivan Brunetti roughs!

Serialized ASCII pixel-art portraits on Twitter.

I recently stumbled into the world of these twitter art accounts – this is my favorite so far (You need to be logged into Twitter for them to align properly in the web interface). Pretty soon I’ll need a separate account just to aggregate these art posts…

Postal Experiment: What happens when you mail two envelopes full of crackers to yourself – one marked “Fragile,” the other marked “Handle Carelessly?”

Answer here. Personal postal experiment regrets: I never did try affixing postage to a Taco Bell Chicken Quesadilla envelope. Perhaps soon.

John Darnielle of Mountain Goats auctions a one-of-a-kind song for Japanese Earthquake Relief.

The auction is for an old demo that was recorded directly onto a cassette – Darnielle says he won’t make a copy before sending. I love the concept of that singular performance as a unique artifact – a weird echo of the early days of the record business, when performers would sing the same song over and over again for each individual copy.

Movie Streaming Startup Zediva is able to undercut Amazon and iTunes ‘rental’ prices by selling access to a stream of an actual, physical DVD being played.

I love this.

“MC5 – A True Testimonial” filmmakers clear final legal hurdles, now raising money to license the music in the film.

I’ve seen it, and it is one of my favorite documentaries. It’s a shame the filmmakers can’t show video to bolster the Kickstarter campaign, but the number of lawsuits this movie has already earned them has likely taught them not to tempt fate.

Batman is SO pissed..

No idea if this is real, but I hope it is.

“Lessons from 11 years of community.”

Metafilter’s Matt Haughey provides a peek behind the curtain of how the site runs so smoothly. In putting together this video, he also proposed a great future feature for keynote that would easily enable documenting presentations like this.

Video of Jason Shiga’s presentation on Interactive Comics.

Shiga has been doing some of the most innovative work in the medium, but much of it is already out of print. So: this video summary of his work is very welcome.

The Chris Ware-designed facade for 826 Chicago is for sale on eBay.

Proceeds benefit 826.

Astro-Man Ad Nauseum is a blog documenting each and every vinyl release issued by 90′s Surf-Punks Man… Or Astro-Man?.

There were a lot of them.

Full episode of an unofficial Russian version of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

The bots are replaced by a dog named ‘Ketchup’ and an emperor penguin named ‘Fidel.’

Father and daughter inspired by Banksy’s ‘Exit Through the Gift Shop’ come up with a non-illegal street art project of their own.

This is the best.

Fantagraphics Editors Enthusiastically Debate the Merits of Dilbert.

“As in most cases, I am right and you are wrong.”

Legoland California imagery in Google Street View.

High quality imagery, too. When browsing Legoland within Street view, Google’s ‘Pegman’ marker on the map is replaced by a LEGO minifig.

LEGO Reducing box sizes.

The obvious reason for their historically oversized, air-filled boxes was as a psychological tool to justify the pricetag for a bunch of bits of plastic. With this news, it is clear that LEGO co. are comfortable that the value of Legos is universally evident.

Quimbys Bookstore celebrates their 20th Anniversary with a limited Chris Ware print.

The print features the design drawings used to create their iconic sign.

“People often ask us if Quimby’s Bookstore is named after Mr. Ware’s Quimby the Mouse character. No, we are not named after that character. In a weird coincidence, both the name of the store and Ware’s Quimby the Mouse character were serendipitously created at the same time without the knowledge of each other’s creation. But both Steven Svymbersky (the original owner of Quimby’s) and Eric Kirsammer (the current owner of Quimby’s) are friends with Mr. Ware. And he was kind enough to design signage for us.”