Like my passing comment last week, David Lewis bemoans the comics memoir: "We know there’s a power to autobiography in comics—is it deniable?—but why are so many of You susceptible to it?" Tom Spurgeon offers a snappy, but thoughtful response, of course. I still think that non-fiction comics could use some more variety. Fiction, we've got covered.

Lots of good stuff for sale at Coudal's Swap Meat. I'm partial to the Ghost Prints.

TMN has a great photo gallery up: Still Life by Martin Klimas. They're wonderful photos of statues in the midst of shattering. The martial arts figurines are particularly enjoyable.

This is one of the better monitor calibration images I've found.

A photo collection of handmade, miniaturized synthesizers from yesteryear. Those are some incredibly detailed models.

The story of Clearview, a new-ish typeface designed especially for roadway signs. The slideshow is worth a visit as well.

The reactable is a collaborative electronic music instrument with a tabletop tangible multi-touch interface. And I want one.

The Rasterbator creates huge, rasterized images from any picture. Man, I'd love to make some gigantic wallpaper. Where to begin... [via not martha]

Mental Note: Imitate Richard Weston and make a sky collection.

A couple weeks ago I flipped through The Plot: The Secret Story of the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the last graphic novel that Will Eisner created. This one covers a curious bit of history that I never knew. The topic of Eisner's book is another book, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: a forgery, a book created ex nihilo and printed to promote antisemitic values. Eisner presents a historical account of its origins. Eisner's artwork was steady and lively, not too different from any of his other work (but that's not a bad thing). The story itself isn't very dramatic or moving, but the facts are still compelling. Perhaps the best part of this book is that it exists. Yes, it's wonderful to root out antisemitism, but mostly, I just thought it was refreshing to see a non-fiction graphic novel that isn't a memoir of some sort.

Alex Ross noticed that everything is dead. What a downer.

Dorothy Gambrell has done some excellent illustrations based on the Schedule C table of Principal Business or Professional Activity Codes [p. 8-10, pdf].

I'm really enjoying the Atlanta Time Machine, a collection of juxtaposed old & new photos of Atlanta houses, neighborhoods, and skyscrapers, along with postcards, ephemera, etc. I just learned that the first Waffle House ever built is now occupied by the familiar Hunan Express.

Video excerpts from One Man Star Wars, Charles Ross' dramatically condensed version of the trilogy.

I want these curtains.

I don't like Billy Collins' poems that much, but these animated interpretations are pretty good. [via practicalist]

James Brown does a short dance demonstration. Funky chicken, boogaloo, robot, etc.

If you're pressed for time, check out the ultra-condensed summary of Beowulf and other books.

I haven't yet summoned the courage to tackle Beowulf in one of those authoritative translations yet, but I figured a graphic novel could do the trick. I tried Gareth Hinds' graphic adaptation of Beowulf. The text is in a fresh translation, so it's an easy read, but still has a noble, epic quality. I really wanted to like this one, but things didn't work out. Some weird inconsistencies threw off the whole package for me. It seemed like the art direction and illustrations took on a couple different styles over the course of the book. Some parts look hand-drawn and colored on computer, other parts look wholly of ink and watercolor. I think the paneling was a bit ad-lib, jagged, frantic--too excited for its own good. Especially in the early portions of the book, the poem is broken up into large chunks that are interspersed throughout the narrative. So, you end up with a couple of wordy pages and then a bunch of pages of pure illustration. I was a bit bothered that the action scenes were completely silent---I'm not looking for "POW" and "AARRRGGH" and "KER-THWAM"... I'm just not sure if the silence is because the original text glosses over the battles, or if it was the artist's discretion. I have to admit that one very nice touch is the latter portion of the book, dealing with Beowulf's final years. That final section is in a washed-out palette of grays, and the story has a sense of inevitability and confidence that I didn't find in the rest of the book.