I’d hoped to do another proper post today, but exhaustion is getting the better of me (for some reason I didn’t sleep last night, and I’ve done a couple of longer-than-normal days at work this week). I also owe p(il)lo(c)k at least two comments and an email, which will have to wait until I’m coherent…

From the Grauniad – Vicar has ‘horrifying’ statue of crucifixion removed from church:

“We’re all about hope, encouragement and the joy of the Christian faith. We want to communicate good news, not bad news, so we need a more uplifting and inspiring symbol than execution on a cross.”

I’m sure I’ve heard that before…

Amypoodle at the Mindless Ones has an absolutely astounding extrapolation of one panel from Batman #666, detailing the Joker of the future. Which reminds me, I must get back to my own thoughts on Batman – it’s been a little while again…

The great Rick Veitch has been posting drawings over at his blog. Here’s one of his dream comics (and I *must* write about those, too, at some point) involving Alan Moore, while here is Dave Sim’s cubist period.

The blogging platform Livejournal has just sacked half its staff. This is a shame, as LJ is in many ways the blogging platform/social network with the most possibilities, but it’s been consistently mismanaged for years – there’s a reason I’ve stopped using it, and rarely even look at my friends list any more (a shame as there are actually some great people on there, some of whom I’ve linked on my blogroll).

Kevin Church has an excerpt from ‘Marvels 3

And finally, there’s the Convention On Modern Liberty, which I would be promoting even were my mate Dave not organising the Manchester branch of the event (although watch out for the page if you’re on a slow machine – there’s a ton of embedded Youtube videos that slowed my old laptop down so much I had to drop to terminal mode to kill the browser). This looks like the biggest conference on human rights and liberty issues in the broadest sense for decades, bringing together every major group and publication from the liberal left and libertarian right. The main partners are NO2ID, Amnesty International, Liberal Conspiracy and Unlock Democracy, but everyone from the TUC to the sodding Countryside Alliance of all people is involved, by way of the Grauniad, the Fabian Society, Private Eye and the Campaign For An English Parliament. I may even go down to That London for this rather than go to the Manchester event – it looks like it could be a major, major event.