Items!

1. Aphex Twin is to release his first full album of new material in five years. Apparently, this is a collection of his oddball Rephlex releases from last year.

2. Frank Miller and Neal Adams on All-Star Batman And Robin The Boy Wonder? Warren Ellis recycling a 1999 proposal in the Ultimate Galactus trilogy? Kevin Smith not paid for his super-late Spider-Man/Black Cat series? Rich Johnston has the details.
3. Muslim superheroes saving the Arabic world? Touchy territory, even for a local boy, as the New York Times reveals in this piece about the upcoming The 99.
4. Flickeur takes random Flickr photos, adds creepy ambient music, suddenly your toddler’s birthday party is a Tod Browning film.
5. The Swedish female pop duo West End Girls do two things of note. The first is that they only perform song by Pet Shop Boys. The second is that they follow the ABBA/Ace of Base template of having a blonde woman and a redheaded woman in your band. You can view their first two videos here.
6. Speaking of my favorite pop duo, they’ve gone and remixed Madonna’s new single “Sorry,” and a very nice job was done, indeed. It’s got a big boshing beat, Neil adding a bit of vocals here and there, and a really strong vocal and lyric on the pop maven’s part. It comes out officially on February 28th here in the States, along with versions from Oakenfold, Green Velvet, and Man With Guitar.
7. Joe Sacco did an 8-page comic for The Guardian about the abuse of Iraqi Prisoners, and you can read it here if you’re patient and will allow the PDF to download. (I wish they’d have just done a .jpg version, but that’s me being fussy.)
8. While I’m on the subject of Sacco, Chris Butcher manages to shame me greatly with his mention of the above and the rest of his excellent links-and-comments entry from yesterday, where he also goes into detail about why it’s so hard to get a copy of From Hell lately.
9. Publishers Weekly has two items of interest in this week’s email. The first is that New Jersey book wholesaler Bookazine has launched Popazine, a dedicated pop-culture, graphic novel, and trade paperback wing. Hopefully, this means more indie bookstores will have a broader selection of graphic novels and the like in areas that aren’t serviced by “proper” comics shops.

   The second, unfortunately, is pointless shilling for the supremely awful “reviews” that G4′s Blair Butler does for Attack Of The Show. Basically, all you need to know is: they really like the taste of Marvel and DC’s private parts. A lot. I always hate it when I smell Corporate Synergy at work.

Finally, thanks to David Campbell reminding me of its existence with an email: