Links! Happy Valentine's Day!

The following aren't really Valentine's related, but I've got a lot of good stuff for you this week that I hope you'll consider a kind of Valentine, from me to you.  Awww...

* We'll start with your Must Read of the Week: Jog on late period Steve Ditko.

* A massive, two-hour audio interview with Al Columbia at Inkstuds.

* Speaking of interviews, this one with Christopher "C. F." Forgues , conducted by Matt Seneca, is among the best cartoonist interviews I've ever read.

* These have been online for a little while now: Chip Kidd is interviewed by both Vice and Comic Book Resources on the subject of his new Captain Marvel book, which I reviewed last week.  I liked the book more than I think came across in that review.

* The awesome manga blog Same Hat! has posted a terrific profile of cartoonist Go Nagai from an old issue of Epic Illustrated, as well as a Nagai story from that issue.  I love reading about artists like Nagai and being reminded of the depth of manga's publishing history and how relatively little of this sort of material we've seen translated, even with all the manga out there.

* Nothing real new or revelatory in this Erik Larsen interview about the new direction of Savage Dragon and an upcoming anthology comic book by Larsen, but I'll take any opportunity to mention The Greatest Superhero Comic Currently Being Published I can get.

* Roger Ebert's blog is always worth reading, but I found the elegiac tone of this latest entry to be particularly moving.  God, that last paragraph.  That last sentence.

* Finally, I kept forgetting to link to this amazing gallery of VHS horror movie box art at Monster Brains while it was being posted.  Now it's all online for you to go and stare at.  (via Sean Collins)