Interesting links spotted over the past week.

Art, webcomics and humor:

• Calamities of Nature: Bad Investments looks back at the comics speculator boom and bust of the 1990s.
• Comic Critics: Please Turn the Dark Back On takes on the hazards of the Spider-Man Musical.
• The Alarmingly Specific Comic Book Ratings You Won’t Be Seeing at ComicsAlliance
• Gutters: DC Drops the Comics Code Seal (NSFW Language)
• Comic strip mashups by Ryan Dunlavey
• Batman Vs. The Internet by Caldwell Tanner and Kevin Corrigan on CollegeHumor
• Huge round-up of fan art at Comics Alliance.

Reviews:

• Review: DC Super-Pets Books 1-6 at Trade Reading Order. (The Fastest Pet on Earth is about Wonder Woman’s kangaroo? OK, I can see the cheetah connection, but talk about a missed opportunity! On the plus side, they have Dex-Starr…)
• Flash Mego Retro Review by That F’ing Monkey
• Review: Born to Run at Trade Reading Order

Other:

• Original 1959 ad for The Flash at Comics Should Be Good.
• The Beat on the end of Wizard Magazine and Toyfare
• DC Comics Characters in Need of Showrunners at Television Without Pity – Imagine Aaron Sorkin writing The Flash! (via @SpeedsterSite)
• The Life, Death and Life of Superheroes at the New York Times. (And for extra-coolness: they linked to my bio of Barry Allen!)
• Newsarama’s Eulogy to Wizard Magazine.
• Building a Better Digital Comics Marketplace – IGN
• John Ostrander: Exclusive Interview with Firestorm Fan
• Defending Quicksilver at Written World.

Flashy links:

• Webcomic The Gutters on Flashpoint
• That F’ing Monkey has some Flashpoint Speculation on the extended Flash family.

Other links:

• In Defense of Dots: The lost art of comic books – Four Color Process
• Superman In Four Panels by Ty Templeton
• An Interesting Effect of the Pervasiveness of Shared Continuity observed at Comics Should Be Good
• The Beat interviews the authors of Law and the Multiverse
• CBR on turning failed movie scripts into comics
• No, Betelgeuse is not likely to explode in 2012 (or even ~600 years before 2012). It could go any time in the next 100,000 years, and when it does, it’s too far away to hurt us here on Earth.

• For and Against DC Comics Presents ~ Collected Editions
• Marc Guggenheim on his Justice Society plans including Mayor Jay Garrick.
• See Something? Cite Something. (How to share content on the Internet)
• Origins of the sidekick at USA Today.
• Double Dipping: Rebuying Our Entertainment | Fandomania (to say nothing of VHS/DVD/Blu-Ray)

Flash & speedster linkblogging:

• That F’ing Monkey looks back at the first origin of the Reverse-Flash
• Bizarre! @liabrown1 finds the latest oddity for Rogues collectors: Mighty Beanz. There are also Grodd and Flash beanz.
• Awesome Velocity cosplay from SDCC updated with new photos! (Previously reported here)
• Weekly Comic Book Review tackles The Flash #8.
• Multiversity Comics proposes a creative team for a Kid Flash series.

More comics:

• Mimobot is releasing DC Comics USB Drives, starting with Batman characters. I’m looking forward to the Flash flash drive! (And yes, there’s one planned for round 2.)
• For the first time in a decade…letters columns return to DC Comics! CBR interviews Didio & Lee about the move. Personally, I was expecting DC to bring in more ads to replace the cut story pages. I’m surprised DC brought back lettercols instead.
• Law and the Multiverse discusses Costumes and the Confrontation Clause. Even cooler: it references an old Speed Force article on the DCU’s Twelfth Amendment.
• CSBG’s Committed column asks: Is Indie the New Mainstream? The comments section has gotten…rather heated.
• Newsarama tackles comics hot button issues of 2011, starting with Reaching New Readers.
• Kotaku: They’re Selling Comics On The iPad The Wrong Way
• The 50 best covers of 2010 at Robot 6
• The Wonder Woman TV series is stalled. Sadly not a surprise, but what a mess of studio politics. (via @SpeedsterSite)

General geekery:

• LIGHTSABER DAYS: Inigo vs. The Six Fingered Man (The Princess Bride remixed, seen at Once Upon a Geek)
• Tron/Scott Pilgrim fan art mashup: WWACC Tron Pilgrim by ~dyemooch.
• IO9 asks: How Does Your Hero Measure Up On Our Wish-Fulfillment Checklist?

Not comics, but important:

• The study that linked vaccines and autism was more than just wrong (as countless studies have shown over the past decade). It was outright fraud. Please vaccinate your children to protect them and their classmates from preventable diseases.