Well, today there was this about the Marvel-themed restaurant (/bar). I'm trying to come up with drinks based on characters, but it's harder than it seems.

Sitting around the fire, telling stories. Hosted Marc for a brief visit, with plenty of comics and comics-making talk. He's promising more new stuff soon.

The new string is online and it features the latest installment of Raised By Squirrels. Sequential Tart says, "I really loved the way this was drawn, beautifully done." We'll be posting it here soon — but to find out what happened after Rose and Tyler stowed away, download the string #16 PDF.

Andy just sent a link to an article about how the recent DC — AND THEN FOLLOWED IT WITH THIS LINK HOLY SHEEP DIP WE ARE ALL DOOMED — wait, OK … that's actually pretty important DC news that got buried there. And the whole Diamond thing? Remember, Disney's already got publishing and distribution …

(Yes, as Monica noted, Andy scooped me on io9. I read weekday mornings, and then catch up sometime over the weekend.)

Harder than I thought it would be: Cheese or Font?. Via Adland.

"Wolverine newt" via Jeff. That's one badass amphibian.

"Fast-paced, exposition scenes are handled in an in-and-out fashion, adding to the tension of the story and the eventual climax." From a review of The Darkness From Warsaw at the Paper Dream Productions Blog. The writeup's by Jay Sternitzky, half of the team behind the indie comic Short Stack — a truly unique take on superheroes.

New Fat Pony!

Today, a few thoughts on the power of storytelling. Humans, we're narrative creatures, we can't help but find find patterns and meaning — it's how we learn and pass along knowledge. And, as much as we like the hyperlinked world, we live and move through time linearly …

From an io9 interview with author Paul Melko: "I like the idea that we as a species evolved with story as a part of intelligence. When we see disconnected facts, our brains try to piece it together as narrative. This works to our advantage — we can reason and strategize — and disadvantage — we end up making stories … to fit the facts. But in any case, we're hard-wired for prose, and that will not change."

From the WSJ, on Disney's acquisition of Marvel: "Meanwhile, perhaps what is most significant about the deal is that Disney is doubling down on character-based content at a time when the Internet is casting a long shadow over the real value of content in the entertainment business."

From an old equity strategy white paper from DrKW that Andy sent me (and I feared lost for the longest time): "…in a mock trial situation, when the prosecution presented the evidence in a story ['when the evidence was ordered in a temporal and causal sequence'] order, but the defence presented in witness order, 78% of the jurors found the suspect guilty. However, when the formats were reversed, only 31% of the jurors found the suspect guilty!"

Via Danny, a riff on Wally Wood's 22 Panels That Always Work by Jon Morris: 16 Panels That I Don't Think Work All That Well. Probably guilty of a few there, but I don't entirely agree with him on all points …