MONDAY LINKS TEAM UP (RETURNS)

-One of the best record stores in Baltimore dwells in the back of a comic store turned Yu-Gi-Oh tournament space, Celebrated Summer is filled with really awesome hard to find punk and hardcore, some old soul and rap and lots of Japanese rarities. Just check out Tony's--nicest record store owner on Earth--crucial Balzac collection. And you thought comics collecting was tough?-s

-I've been playing a lot of music lately, hence my lack of activity on the blog, and reading a lot of metal blogs. Metal Sucks list of Ten Great Bands That Inadvertently Helped Ruin Metal is pretty infuriating and spot on at the same time. Don't worry, it's comics related, there's a picture of Two-Face. My guess is a "Ten Great Comics That Inadvertently Helped Ruin Comics" list would be similarly fun/infuriating.-s

-All of these "covered covers" are really incredible, it was hard to chose one image to capture them all so I went with Baltimore great Brian Ralph. Some artists do almost exact reproductions of the covers just in their own style while some take every artistic liberty possible. It's got everyone from Johnny Ryan to Tom Neely, some of the pieces are even available for purchase!-s

-Just some really good Pokemon art for those who enjoy that sort of thing. -j

- RASL #7 comes out this week and Jeff Smith posted a preview on his blog. I don't know if anyone else is reading RASL, but you really should be. Issue #6 was great and explained a lot about the RASL universe. Nothing beats universe traveling and existential sadness in my book.-j

-Internets has been buzzing about the Scott Pilgrim movie, but there's also a video game coming out. Internet Legend Paul Robertson--see video above--will be working as art director for the game. With new "old school" side scrolling 2D--while being sorta 3D--games like Megaman 9, The NEW Super Mario Bros., and the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog 4, side scrolling is back, this thing's going to be big.-s