Wednesday links.
* Douglas Wolk, who’d previously run a blog annotating the weekly comic book series 52, is back with a new blog annotating the D.C. Comics Crisis du jour, Final Crisis.
* The New Yorker looks at the rise and fall of movement conservatism, while Matt Yglesias responding to Ezra Klein responding to the New Yorker has a simpler take:
There’s something to that, but I think the problem is actually much worse — the problem with the conservative movement is that it’s fundamentally malign….
The trouble is that no sensible person believes that electing conservative politicians will actually improve the situation because even though some instances of reducing the power of economic privilege would be deregulatory and conservative, actually existing conservatism isn’t interested in reducing the power of economic privilege except on behalf of some other, greater privilege. Similarly, the conservative movement is correct to say that more stable family structure would be a boon to America’s children, but its operational commitment to family values just consists of the political exploitation of anti-gay sentiment. The ideas have some merit, it’s the actual moral character of the people able to move the levers of power that are the problem — they’re not fundamentally interested in the merits of ideas, even their own ideas, they’re interested in power and greed.
* How to Disagree.
* One of the greater obscenities in this election season has been the proud trumpeting of a child’s selling their bike and video games so a vain multimillionaire can continue a failed, flawed, futile race she has already long lost.
* Astrologers say the stars are shining on Barack Obama.
* And I’ve had this one in my bookmarks for weeks, around the time every other blog in the universe blogged it: Trapped in an Elevator for 41 Hours. With video.
Captain Marvel and the zeitgeist: You can have Heath Ledger’s Joker or you can have Billy Batson in Shazam!, but you can’t have both. 
Gerry Canavan 