D&D Themed Sports Team Shirts (Geeks are Sexy)

Biggest Diablo News Ever At BlizzCon (That Videogame Blog)

Soon Neptune Will Complete Its First Orbit Since Discovered (Discovery News)

The ABCS of Lame Marvel Villains (Comics Alliance)

A Deleted Scene From Neil Gaiman’s Dr. Who Episode (Neil Gaiman)

Korean StarCraft Addicts Treated With Drugs (Kotaku)

Space Food Over the Years (BoingBoing)

(picture via Game Informer: Portland Bike Lanes Power-Up With Mario Symbols.)

It’s not everyday you see the Associated Press link to Neil Gaiman‘s blog. So what’s all the fuss about? Yesterday, a federal court judge ruled that Spawn creator Todd McFarlane owed royalties to the Sandman writer, over three derivative characters—Dark Ages Spawn and shapely warrior angels Domina and Tiffany—based on Gaiman’s own “Medieval Spawn” characters, created when he guest wrote issue #9 in 1993.

We recount the case’s history, which stretches back over seven years, after the break.

I’ve never bought an issue of Action Comics before, but that’s all set to change. October’s issue is going to have a very special guest star: Death herself.  And yes, according to The Source, Neil Gaiman approves.

Death is the second oldest of the Endless, and a major character in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, which, though neither Vertigo or DC mention it very often, is a part of the DC Universe.  Apparently, she has a date with Lex Luthor.

At the beginning of this week we were saddened by the news that Guillermo del Toro will no longer be working on The Hobbit movie. Among other things, we were really looking forward to seeing his Mirkwood, and to watching Weta Workshop‘s triumphant return to Middle Earth. But we are comforting ourselves by imagining all the other projects he is now free to pursue.

Below, we outline four of our Guillermo del Toro dream projects, and a few bonus projects that, you know, might actually happen.

How many of your everyday book clubs have the author just pop in to answer your questions? Aside from maybe those who follow Oprah, I’d wager not that many. Unless you’re, at the moment, on Twitter. Reading American Gods. Like right now. What happened to my postliterate society?

Neil Gaiman, as a part of the ongoing One Book One Twitter event, went down into the trenches for an hour Q&A session this morning with the masses reading and tweeting about his novel, answering questions about characters, his writing process, future plans, and whether or not he’d like to be deified.

When someone puts a general poll on the internet, we get Lara Croft Way and Computer Engineer Barbie; in other words, wonderful things happen.

In this spirit, we’d like to give you some links to the more than 2 dozen geeky and geek beloved people on this year’s list of 200 vying for a spot in an issue of Time through open internet poll. If it’s going to be mostly unscientific anyway, let’s tilt it in our favor!

Leave it to MTV to forcibly reference Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” while spreading juicy gossip about a potential adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. Turns out Kick-Ass director Matthew Vaughn is very, very interested.

During an interview back in January with Comic Book Resources, Vaughn, who previously adapted Gaiman’s Stardust, announced that the world needs more Neil:

I think Neil deserves to have more stuff made. I think it’s weird that hardly any Neil Gaiman stuff has been made. The idea that no one has made “Sandman” yet is weird.

It is weird, isn’t it?

But seriously, any director willing to take on the Herculean task of adapting The Sandman for film risks red-shirting their career:

When was the last time you heard someone say, perhaps while in line at the comic store counter, “I don’t normally read this title but I had to pick it up this week. ______ ______ is my favorite letterer?”

Not recently, huh? Todd Klein‘s series of alphabet prints have made me wish that it would happen more often. Klein was responsible for the lettering on Watchmen, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Swamp Thing, Fables, Top 10, and a good deal of the comics that made me like comics, including Batman: Year One, and Sandman. For Sandman, specifically, Klein created seven distinct styles of lettering for the voices of each of the Endless, from Destiny‘s hard italics to Delirium‘s candy colored balloons.

Klein is currently doing a series of alphabetically themed prints showcasing his talent and the talents of some of the biggest names in comics; letters A through E have been completed.

In a gesture of appreciation to the readers and writers of the magazine SFX, Neil Gaiman has shared some very exciting news with them: He is writing an episode of Dr. Who.

We can’t decide whether we’re more surprised that this is happening, or more surprised that it hasn’t happened already, really.

In his own words, “As anyone who’s read my blog knows, I’m a big fan of a certain long-running British SF TV series. One that started watching — from behind the sofa — when I was three.” 

Quick: what do Neil Gaiman, Wil Wheaton, Cory Doctorow, Lawrence Lessig, Bruce Schneier, Jason Kottke, Phil Plait, MC Frontalot, and many more have in common? Answer: they’ve all teamed up to make a new “We Love xkcd” video, where they sing their love of the Internet, cryptography, your sister, and more, in homage to the classic xkcd strip “xkcd Loves the Discovery Channel.” Video after the jump: