To help celebrate the 75th anniversary of Jim Henson‘s birth Archaia Entertainment debuted the first 20 pages of their upcoming graphic novel, Jim Henson’s Tale of Sand, which is based on a screenplay that was written by Jim Henson and Jerry Juhl.

Archaia timed the preview to coincide with search giant Google’s own home page tribute to Jim Henson, which takes the form of a cool-as-heck interactive graphic that has six different Henson-esque puppets which respond to your mouse-clicks and follow your cursor around the screen when you press their associated button.

The Blu-ray Edition for the 1980s Jim Henson films Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal are on sale right now at Amazon for only $7.99 each.

Both films have a list price of $19.95 each on Blu-ray, so you’ll be getting 60% off with this deal.

The Blu-ray Editions for both movies come with special features (see list below), which is especially great if you’re a fan of Jim Henson puppetry.

No word on how long this deal will last, so grab it while you can.

The Gold Box spotlight deal of the day over at Amazon today is Fraggle Rock: Complete Series Collection for $37.49 (that’s (63% off the list price of $99.98).

Note, this deal is for today only until midnight PST while supplies last.

This 20-disc DVD box set collection contains all 96 episodes and 100 original songs from the 4-season run of the Jim Henson television series Fraggle Rock, which aired on HBO from 1983 to 1987, and includes over 8 hours of bonus content.

This version of the box set looks to be the 2008 Lionsgate repackaging edition, where each box is assembled all by hand (it takes two hours per box!) and special printing and techniques were used so that the colors match those of the Fraggle Rock world.

Back in August of last year, Jim Henson‘s son, Brian, revealed that Fraggle Rock and a sequel to The Dark Crystal were very much alive and in developmental stages.

A sequel to 1982’s Dark Crystal had been talked about for as long as can be remembered, but with little successful movement to show for it. When we last heard about it in the link above, all that was shared was that the sequel would be called The Power of the Dark Crystal, and it would take place centuries after the first film. Story-wise, it would be about a girl named Thurma — who is made of fire and lives at the center of the planet — who is on a mission to obtain a shard of the crystal in hopes of re-igniting the dying sun.

Now comes word via a press release sent out today that not only is the movie still alive, but it has a new director(s) and a new writer on board to make it happen. Brothers Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig have been signed to direct the movie, and Craig Pearce has been tapped to rework the script based on an earlier draft.

These videos have been around for a long time and were special features on the DVD release of the Jim Henson classic, The Muppet Movie. But it wasn’t until Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer posted it on his blog that I became aware of their existence.

The videos are basically just Henson, Frank Oz, and director Jim Frawley doing camera tests for the 1979 movie, and the result is almost 14 minutes of fantastic Muppet improvisational fun. Most of the time it’s Kermit the Frog and either Fozzie Bear or Miss Piggy, with a mention and appearance of some other Muppets.

These videos (especially the second one) are must-watch for any fan of the Muppets, so drop all your important adult business and click on over to the other side for some surely much-needed happy time!