Blood in ye olde Kiss comics

• When I was a young teenage headbanger, I loved KISS. The music was heavy (for the time) and the theatrics were entertaining. I grew to like them less as time went on, but still consider Kiss Alive and Kiss Alive II pretty good live albums.
  Then after listening to the infamous Fresh Air interview with Gene Simmons, I just gave up on him as an obnoxious twit.
  I saw an interesting piece of trivia today, though. Talking about the 1977 'Marvel Super Special' comic, which features a superpowered KISS, the io9 blog notes that the actual members of the band mixed in drops of their blood with the printing ink for that issue...
  Of course, they probably did it for the publicity. But even so it is a rather interesting magickal act.
  

Brief: Iraqi metal and tapirs

• Stop Smiling has a brief report on what looks to be Iraq's only heavy metal band, Acrassicauda. At present they are in exile in Syria.
• From the sad to the cutesy, which I usually hate. But Curious Animals is an interesting blog to play around in. Here is there entry on the tapir.