Sci-Ence! Justice Leak!

So I’ve been away for a week, and confirmed every opinion I already held about going on beach holidays (they’re really not for me). Before I went, I listed a load of possible posts I might make, and asked which ones people were interested in. One that more people seemed to want to see than I had thought is a guide to my blogroll, so here it is… I’ve split it into several posts, as it got huge.

My blog is rather unusual in that I have several different groups of readers, who’ve come from different sources – most of you are comics people, I think, but there are also a chunk of you who are Doctor Who fans, a few I know from music discussions, quite a few Lib Dems, and a few personal friends (as well as some who fit into multiple categories), with relatively little overlap between these groups. As such, many of you will know exactly who (for example) the Mindless Ones are but have no idea who (say) Millennium Elephant is. So I’m going to give a very brief description of every blog in my sidebar, so you can know if they’re your kind of thing.

A word on how I put together my sidebar, incidentally – it’s completely random. Everything there is a blog I read regularly, but there are some I read *as* regularly that I don’t list there, including some by very close friends. It’s just a sampling of things I think people who read this might like. Anyway, the list…

A Trout In The Milk is Pillock/Plok, who often comments here. I started reading this for his posts about Steve Gerber’s 1970s Marvel comics, but he also posts on many other subjects, in an idiosyncratic writing style, and with more insight than most. More importantly, he also seems to be a truly decent person.

Andrew Rilstone is probably my very favourite blogger, but he’s not updated since March. He writes intelligently and articulately on a whole range of subjects, from Doctor Who to the works of C.S. Lewis, via Richard Dawkins, Dave SIm, Wagner and the Daily Express. I hope he comes back soon.

Brad Hicks is one of the best political commentators on the net, for US politics. He’s a mainstream Democrat, so several thousand miles to the right of me, but one of the sharpest minds out there. His occasional writing on science fiction is also worth reading.

Cerebus, A Diablog is a project by two people to go through my all-time favourite comic, Cerebus, issue by issue, though they seem to have stalled a month or so ago…

Charlotte Gore is a Libertarian member of the Liberal Democrats, my own party. I often disagree profoundly with her, but she always argues her case well.

Chicken Yoghurt is Justin, an extremely good liberal blogger (and one who uses 2000AD panels at the top of his blog, always a good sign), who hasn’t been posting much recently but who’s always good when he does.

Chris ‘Mightygodking’ Bird is a Canadian humourist who mostly writes about superhero comics, but also about Canadian politics, TV shows and the usual pop-culture stuff, but more intelligently and with a lighter hand than most.

Debi ‘Innerbrat’ Linton is a paleontologist who writes about identity politics, DC Comics (especially Black Canary), and other stuff she’s interested in. She’s one of my very favourite people, and when she’s on form she’s a sharp, intelligent writer who’s also not afraid of subjecting her own views to scrutiny.

Doctor K is a comics blog by a professor from South Carolina. including features such as “Gil Kane Punch Of The Week”.

Emily Short writes interactive fiction (text adventures) and also writes about interactive fiction. Her work is absolutely fascinating for anyone who’s interested in narrative and the possibilities of computer narrative.

Final Crisis Annotations is what it sounds like – Douglas Wolk’s annotations for Grant Morrison’s comic Final Crisis.

Gad, Sir! Comics! is an absolutely wonderful comic blog that has unfortunately not updated in eighteen months.

Grant Morrison‘s blog is great, as you would expect, but requires you to sign up to read it, which is irritating.

Helium Flash is my wife, Holly, who doesn’t post as much as she should. (She does post more on her personal blog, but I’m not linking that as quite a bit of it is discussion of our private lives for her friends, and I’m not as comfortable as she is with my private life being in the public domain). She should post more, as she’s one of the best writers I know (I fell in love with her online, and it was her writing I knew first).

Investigations of a Dog is my friend Gavin Robinson, who as well as being one of the best bass players around (and a friend of mine for a decade now – shocking how time flies) is also a military historian. He doesn’t post all that much – maybe one post of substance a month – as he has RSI, but what he does post is fascinating. Recent posts include a review of an old Ladybird book about Oliver Cromwell, a discussion based on something I linked to of the syntax of the verb ‘to cuckold’, and an explanation of why Achewood got it wrong about 17th-century pornography.

Jennie Rigg is great. She’s a Liberal Democrat and a fan of Doctor Who, especially the Sixth Doctor. The quote I gave her for her sidebar sums it up pretty well – “I find myself agreeing with Jennie more than almost any other blogger, especially when she says I’m always right. She is in possession of uncommon sense (much rarer than the common kind) and gets annoyed at all the right things.”

And Jog is pretty much universally regarded as the best writer on comics as a medium (as opposed to just a superhero content-delivery mechanism) out there. He doesn’t post as much to his blog as he used to now – many of his posts go instead onto group blogs like the Savage Critics – but everything he posts is worth reading.

Part 2 tomorrow.