Link maintenance and you

.....At the risk of sounding like a military training film about hygiene, I've decided that before I return to regular posting that I take a serious look at the few regular features of the blog. The template is fine, and in fact I am reluctant to fiddle with it because my absences here that have resulted in long gaps during the summer have been enough of an interruption to continuity. So, the template stays.
.....My icon stays as well. I spent a great deal of time here as well as commenting on other blogs and sites using generic blank icons before adding the Sandman illustration by P. Craig Russell. If I could figure out how to make a more DP-specific icon for this blog alone and use the Sandman elsewhere I would. The DP's connection to the Sandman is tenuous at best (it would be easier to connect them to Kevin Bacon) and I am reasonably certain Russell has never drawn any of the Patrol characters, even as a pin-up or trading card, ever. (My Russell collection is about as extensive and complete as my DP collection and almost as well documented. I'm pretty confident that he never drew them.) My reason for using this is because the art comes from a commission by the American Library Association for a poster to promote reading in schools and is not generally available commercially. It's one of a handful of Russell works I haven't managed to acquire. Having found a virtual copy online and pasted it here, I can look at it everyday. I am able to use a different icon on npr.org and may rotate through other things in the future, but for now the picture stays in the kid.
.....I have just finished checking all of the links on the left under the heading "If You Don't Follow History..." and as of today they all successfully lead to pages that are up and running. Some may not have been updated in a while but that's a glass house at which I'm not prepared to throw stones. This blog should have marked its first birthday earlier this month with something more festive than silence but it seemed a little hypocritical given its (my) recent inactivity. If you're feeling nostalgic/masochistic you can click on the first link to read this blog's Mission Statement. After that you can wake yourself up by clicking on the link to D-D-D-D-Doom Podtrol!, the audio blog (podcasts) of fans' direct reactions to reading Doom Patrol stories. Unlike here, they jump around in chronology, reviewing both current and original series. In one podcast they eschew the format to do an overview of Cliff's career. They also offer a choice of formats for listening. Along with mygreatestadventure80 (aka Doom Patrol), Doompedia and this LGC: Doom Patrol blog, there is now a pretty well founded community for DP fans that didn't exist just two years ago. As long as we don't all get blown up simultaneously, things ought to be pretty good for the foreseeable future.