mike sterling's progressive ruin

Saturday, December 11, 2004

Just on a whim, I did a Google search on the phrase
"I'm chalk," just to see what would pop up (given the frequency that particular phrase occurs on this site), and I ended up discovering that a lot of people use the phrase "I'm chalk-full" instead of the correct "I'm chock-full."

Yeah, I know, exciting.

Friday, December 10, 2004

My Day with Dorian 


  • D: "You know what we need? We need more gay comic bloggers."

    (pause)

    M: "Um...why are you looking at me?"

  • You know what's fun to see? Girls trying to flirt with Dorian at the store. And no, no one ever tries to flirt with me...aside from Dorian's boyfriend. I'm not sure what conclusion I should draw from that.

  • M: "You know, if they do make a new Superman movie, they should just skip the whole origin sequence thing. Everyone should know it by now."

    D: "No, they don't. Most people don't know anything about Superman."

    M: (eyes widen in shock; monocle goes flying off) "WHAT? Superman's like one of the most recognized fictional characters in the world! Maybe they don't know the exact details, but at least they know the 'strange visitor from another planet' business!"

    D: "You know it because you manage a comic shop. Comic fans, maybe little kids who watched the cartoon, and that's about it. The majority of the audience doesn't know or care."

    M: "Buh-buh-buh" -- and that's when the gunplay started.

1. Regarding that link to the article about Japanese animation I posted
last night: if you can believe it, that was actually on Yahoo's front page as a featured news story! Okay, I know not everyone is as mired in this stuff as I am, or as most of you are, so it's likely news for a lot of people somewhere, but it was still amusing.

FARK seems to have picked up on this as well, and the accompanying discussion is the "anime is kewl" / "anime is teh suck" debate that you're probably already imagining.

1a. Speaking of news articles related to our hobbies: when was the last time any of you saw a "BAM! POW! Comics Aren't for Kids!" (or "BAM! POW! Comics Are Big Money!" or whatever) headlined news story in the wild? I don't mean ironic uses in the comics press...I mean in, like, an Associated Press article, or in a local weekly paper, or anywhere else that doesn't balk at using references to a 40-year-old TV show* when writing their headlines. I think it's been a good decade since I've seen a headline like that...but then, I haven't been looking.

2. There's this Metafilter post regarding the comics market boom and subsequent bust, with a link to someone relating his experiences as a comic dealer during said boom/bust.

As someone who rode out that particular period, the one thing that sticks in my head is the large number of people asking for "comic book Becketts." The Beckett guides, for those of you who don't know, are prices guides focusing on sports cards. For some reason, people were leaving the sports card hobby in droves and diving headfirst into comics as the "hot, new collectible."

I also remember getting asked a lot about what comics would be good "investments." My general answer was that they should buy comics they like to read, so that they'll always be worth something to them. But not enough people listened, I'm afraid.

3. Yesterday at work, pal Dorian was looking at the latest San Diego Comic Con update flyer, and read aloud the phrase "John Cassaday, best known for his work on Astonishing X-Men...." I responded that this was probably a fair statement, since more people are reading Astonishing than Cassaday's other major project, Planetary.

However, which series do you think people will still be reading in 5 years? Or 10 years? The series published by the company whose parent company has shown a long-term commitment to their trade paperback program, or the company who has let even their most recent paperback releases go into spotty availability? Plus, as soon as the new hot writer and/or fad comes along and sends the X-titles into yet another direction, support for the older "new" directions will drop in favor of the new "new direction."

Of course, it helps that Planetary, when it is done, will be a self-contained unit. Contrast that with Astonishing, which will be just a sequence of chapters in the ongoing serial of the X-titles.

3a. I don't intend this as a criticism of Whedon and Cassaday's Astonishing X-Men run, honestly. Cassaday's art is, as always, stunning, and Whedon...well, the comic's not aimed at me, but I can tell that Whedon is at least attempting to tell a story sans the usual Claremontisms and continuity baggage, and with a light sprinkling of wit. As X-Men comics go, it's not a wire hanger in the eye.

4. Recently acquired at the shop: a big ol' pile of Classics Illustrated and several Dell and Gold Key comics of the '60s and very early '70s, plus a smattering of Marvel monster books and some of your standard-issue nutty ACG comics. Expect to see some of these popping up over the next few weeks, both here and on Dorian's site. I've got a good one for tomorrow, so be sure to tune in.

Anyway, some of the Classics we received were some of the harder-to-find ones...the later issues that only had three or so printings (compare to the first issue, "The Three Musketeers," which went through over 20 printings). There are a couple I've never seen in all these years, such as #166 ("Tigers and Traitors").

As I was noted the printings of each of the Classics we received, I started thinking about this series...why did some issues go into multiple printings, while some (such as the Edgar Allan Poe issues) have only a couple printings, and a handful (such as Dicken's "A Christmas Carol") only have one printing? You'd think the Dickens story would be reprinted every year around Christmas for the run of the CI series, but nope...only one edition in 1948.

5. 2005 is not really shaping up to be a good year for comic book inspired films, it seems. Shane over at Near Mint Heroes posted a link to this Fantastic Four promo image which doesn't fill me with a lot of hope (not that I had any in the first place); I'm still not sold on the Sin City film; Elektra is...well, for God's sake, just look at it; and I have even lower expectations for Constantine after reading that interview with the director in Wizard. Batman Begins is the only one I'm not dreading...but we'll see. It's got a long way to go to wash away the memories of the previous four live-action Bat-films.**

I think I'll just stay home those nights and read a book.

EDIT: Pal Tom points out something I missed at the above Fantastic Four link:
"Marvel's first family of comic superheroes takes the world by storm as the longest running comic book series in history comes to the big screen."

As Tom says...what about Action? Or Detective? Maybe they meant Marvel's longest-running series.

* Admittedly, it's a cool 40-year-old TV show.

** Well, okay, three for me...I still haven't seen the fourth one, since just its trailer was warning enough.

Thursday, December 09, 2004

New comics day (SPOILERS, don'cha know):

Hulk/Thing: Hard Knocks #4 - nice wrap up to the series...surprisingly low-key, probably the only time the Hulk/Thing battle was mostly just them having a debate/discussion. Yes, there was the occasional punch thrown, but the action was more psychologically-based. Wish it wasn't in a $3.50-a-pop mini-series, though. Ah, well...onward to Peter David's return to the character!

B.P.R.D.: The Dead #2 - now are we learning more about Abe Sapien's pre-fishy existence, or is it just a ruse on the part of the evil being investigated? I wouldn't think that Mignola would want to spoil one of the Hellboy mythos' great mysteries, so I'm inclined to think there's more to it than what we're seeing. Also, the humor from the previous issue is maintained, mostly in the relationship between Roger the Homunculus and Captain Daimio. Fun stuff, with moody art by Guy Davis. ("Moody art by Guy Davis" - now there's your redundant phrase of the day.)

JSA #68 - I tend to enjoy Alex Ross' work more when he's painting the Golden Age DC heroes, and this cover isn't bad. Power Girl's...um, busting out all over, as it were, but I suppose that's consistent with her...characterization. The inside of the comic deals with the JSA's forced retirement in 1951, and how the current time-manipulating shenanigns of the greatest Golden Age villain ever, Per Degaton, are intent on keeping that retirement permanent. A very interesting set-up...we learn one of the true tasks of one of DC's long-running time-traveling superheroes, which also sets up what is sure to be a forthcoming additional revelation about said character. There's also a surprisingly violent sequence regarding an attack on a JSA member's family. I'm sure we'll be hearing more about this in the near future.

Action Comics #822 - for all the bad rap Chuck Austen has been getting on pretty much everything he touches, I think his Action is a fun read. It certainly lives up to the title, anyway...and I'm enjoying his just slightly smart-alecky characterization of Superman.

Mad Magazine #449 - it's the 20 Dumbest People, Events, and Things of 2004 issue, and the feature article is bound to offend someone of any political stripe. Comic fans may want to note the Identity Crisis spoof cover used at entry #18. Also, there are two covers on this issue...the Janet Jackson cover is amusing, but the one to get is the Drew Friedman cover, with Alfred E. Neuman as Lynndie England. Also, because of the extended 20 Dumbest... article, we get shorted on our usual number of Sergio Aragones' Mad Marginals!

Others: JLA #109 (the actual JLA finally makes an appearance; still all set up, not a lot of action, but still interesting), Punisher #15 (I swear, Ennis is laughing his head off as he writes these scripts, just daring Marvel to print 'em; over-the-top violent, vulgar, and fun stuff), Wild Girl #2 (still not sure where this is going, but Shawn McManus' art is always enjoyable), and Fables #32 (another issue of continuing subplots, with no central driving motive; still good reading, but maybe lacks a little focus).

Other new arrivals:

A new Mad-a-like called Gag Magazine was released today, written mostly by Barry Dutter (who I know worked in the comics industry for a while, but I'll always remember him as the letter column regular who wanted to get She-Hulk booted from the Fantastic Four all these years ago). Best reason to pick up the magazine: art by Captain Jack creator Mike Kazaleh.

Bighead is a graphic novel collection of Jeffrey Brown's mini-comix superhero spoof...strange, but amusing.

I can't believe the Claypool Elvira comic is up to issue #140. I don't know what the print run on this series is, but given that even a larger store like ours only orders minimal numbers on it, I can only guess that the production costs on this comic must be extremely low to allow its continuing existence. Then again, maybe there's a store somewhere that sells a thousand copies each month. Who knows?

Powers #7 - is it just me, or did the lettering and word balloons in this issue look a little pixelated?

After about two weeks of delays, we finally got our copies of Losers #18. Man, I hate when that happens.

Wednesday, December 08, 2004

1. Let me introduce to you the newest member of the dread pirate ship ACAPCWOVCCAOE* -- the
Infinity Weblog! The army grows: hide the children and womenfolk!

2. Another weblog note...Beaucoup Kevin, who was at this Blogspot address, now has a domain name of his very own: Beaucoupkevin.com. Adjust your links accordingly, damn your eyes!

3. A while back I placed a reorder on the first issue of the recent DC Space Ghost series...at about the same time DC was announcing that it was out of print, which was my good timing. Of course, I got a response of "ON BACKORDER" from Diamond, which generally means "FAT CHANCE." Well, surprisingly, my reorder on Space Ghost showed up today. No idea how Diamond got 'em, but there they are. Say what you will about this comic (and boy, some of you have), but it sure sold well.

* Associated Comics And Pop Culture Webloggers of Ventura County, CA And Outlying Environs, in case you were wondering. And you probably weren't.

Super DC Bumper Book (1970) 


Over two decades ago, my grandmother came back from a flea market with one of these for me...a full-color British hardcover collection of 1950s and '60s Superman and Batman stories. If you look closely, you can still see the 25-cent price tag on Batman's chest emblem. And if the book looks pretty worn...believe it or not, that's more or less how it looked by the time it got into my possession.

One of the stories included is the "classic" "The Revenge of Luthor" by Supes' co-creator Jerry Siegel and artist Al Plastino. Due to exposure to Red Kryptonite, Superman splits into, well, Superman, and the younger version of himself, Superboy! Also as a result, the elder Supes gains a bad temper, while the boy Supes suddenly becomes less mentally agile. At one point in the story, Superboy ends up blundering into a trap set by Luthor (complete with sign reading "Luthor Trap to Capture Superboy") that leads to this panel:


Well said, Mr. Luthor. Anyway, Superman and Superboy are eventually forced by Luthor to fight each other for the lives of Lois Lane and Lana Lang, respectively, until we discover...well, I don't want to spoil anything, but it turns out this whole story was just a delusional dream of Superman's, caused by his exposure to the Red Kryptonite. Oh, wait, I did spoil it. Sorry about that.

A close look at that panel may show some odd coloring choices...for example, the jail is apparently made of the dreaded Brown Kryptonite, Lana is colored with yellow hair, Superman's hair has white highlights instead of the usual blue, and so on. The whole book is printed with less of a color palette than your typical U.S. comic, though the actual linework is very clearly printed on white paper, and the colors that are present are nice and bright. The color on some pages is a little off-register, but that's more of an exception.

Another coloring error pops up in the Superboy story "The Super-Dog That Replaced Krypto." In the original, the white-colored Krypto was very distinct from the coloring of the canine ursurper, which can be seen here. In this Bumper Book reprint, things are slightly different:


And yes, Krypto was colored brown through the entire story. This can cause some minor confusion, particularly when the rival dog (named Swifty) gets his own cape, and then there's a brown-colored robot Krypto that Superboy builds, and then there's the Bizarro-Swifty that shows up late in the story, and...well, it ends up with brown dogs all over the place, making it a bit hard to follow.

Other stories include the Batman and Robin story "Prey of the Alien Hunters" (a prime example of the "Batman's Time Travel Crimes on Venus" stories of the '50s), "The Lone Wolf Legionnaire Reporter" (in which Jimmy Olsen searches out news scoops in the Legion of Super-Heroes' time), and the Lois Lane story "Courtship, Kryptonian Style!" (where Lois and the still-blonde Lana travel to the bottle city of Kandor).

Some non-fiction articles are interspersed throughout the book, such as a look at turn-of-the-century car racing, an article on the origins of Lifeboat Service, and a page of illustrations of vintage guns (illustrated by the Mick Anglo studio - Mick Anglo being the cartoonist responsible for Marvelman).

Also featured were several text stories that no one ever read; though, let's face it, with a title like this:


...how can any story live up to it? (And watch your hands there, Batman!)

Tuesday, December 07, 2004

"Mon Dernier Jour Avec Toi" 

AiT/Planetlar's Demo, by Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan, has been much ballyhooed and championed by the comicsweblogosphere over the last year, due in no small measure to the promotional efforts of AiT/P's head honcho, Larry Young. And all that acclaim is not undeserved...Demo is one heck of a series, nominally a superhero comic written for the indie-comics crowd, but with a depth and emotion lacking in the "mighty Marvel manner" mutant comics which seem to be one of the series' inspirations.

Due out tomorrow is issue #12 of this series, the end of the run, and the issue is essentially Wood and Cloonan telling the reader "goodbye," as the story follows a couple that are spending one last night together, before "leaving forever." And, without giving too much away, the repeated "super-power" gimmick from previous issues shows its purpose. Had this been a 100% down-to-earth series, with no fantastic elements whatsoever, the conclusion of the story could only be read as tragic; the possibility that we are seeing the super-power for this story come into play at the conclusion completely reverses that, leaving us with a sense of hope. What could have been a definitive ending is now left vague, which fits nicely with the (mostly) open-ended conclusions of the previous eleven issues.

The story itself reads quickly, as there's no dialogue, no narrative captions - simply "lyrics" (as the credits put it) complementing the melancholy present in the images. It's a fast goodbye, as the story is over before you know it...but it's beautifully drawn, and the emotion of the story sticks with you.

For the short second feature, "Marie and Mike," Cloonan takes over the scripting chores, and Wood puts pen to paper, as we visit with another couple. In nine pages, this story seems to sum up the series in a nutshell - mundane situation, unusual power, emotional reaction to said power - as well as a repeat of the theme from the previous story, a desire to say goodbye to their current surroundings. It's a little lighter than the issue's main feature, but it functions as a reminder of what made the entire series so special.

Undoubtedly this series will be collected at some point, but that seems almost unnecessary...I'd said before that Demo was the comic that felt like a trade paperback. Just as a physical object, each issue feels a lot more solid than some of its four-color counterparts, due to the thick paper stock. I could make some kind of extended metaphor about how the contents of each issue are also more solid, et cetera, et cetera, but I think you get the point. At any rate, putting these in a sequential order beneath one cover wouldn't improve the reading; the issues are linked thematically, not narratively, and having each story exist as an independent object supports, in an odd way, the prevailing feeling of alienation the "super-power" gimmick introduced.

This was a good series, which could only be improved by taking all the super-powered characters from the previous issues and forming them into the Demo League of America!

Oh relax, I'm only joking. But this was a good series...not every issue was as successful as the next, but overall this was probably one of the very few comic series to take the industry's prevalent superhero genre into a genuinely new direction. Nicely drawn, sparsely but effectively written: fine work, and I'm glad to have read it.

Demo #12 should be out in your local comic shop tomorrow, and the previous eleven issues should all still be available for reorder.

Here's
an article I found the other day regarding religion in superhero comics, inspired by the revelation a couple years back that the ever-lovin' blue-eyed Thing is Jewish. The article includes a reference to a Stan Lee-written panel, which pal Dorian had reproduced here a couple months ago.

Monday, December 06, 2004

Well, that's it, I'm out of things to say... 

...yeah, right. You should be so lucky!

1. Thanks to everyone for the kind wishes on this weblog's first anniversary yesterday...yes, it was bit of a "hey everybody, look at me!" kind of post, but eh, what the heck. If you haven't read my anniversary post yet, please go check it out...pack a lunch first, though, since I ran off at the mouth even more than usual.

1a. I don't know who keeps posting "I'm Chalk!" in my comments sections, but it cracks me up every time. ("I'm Chalk!" is, of course, a reference to the greatest piece of Swamp Thing merchandise ever.)*

2. Since my post yesterday was all "ME ME ME ME ME ME ME!" I neglected to note the happy nuptials of Steven and Rose of Peiratikos. Congratulations to the both of you!

3. Comic book "advent calendars" are all the rage this year, and you should check Greg Gatlin's Raw Feed, Yet Another Comics Blog, and Polite Dissent for a month's worth of Christmas-themed funnybooks. I loved advent calendars when I was a kid, so this gives me a nice nostalgic feeling. I especially like Yet Another Comics Blog's method of presentation...a blank card showing the date, until you pass your mouse over it, when it then changes into a thumbnail of the cover. Well done!

4. Saturday's Justice League Unlimited cartoon was new to me, anyway, even though apparently everyone else on the planet has seen it due to it being uploaded to the internet somewhere. It wasn't bad...the Justice League encounters a team of heroes, the Ultimen, that are inspired by characters from the mostly execrable Super Friends cartoon. I particularly enjoyed how the Black Vulcan doppleganger's powers were portrayed...and having the top of the building where the Ultimen are quartered resemble the Super Friends' Hall of Justice was a nice touch. (Here's an overview of the episode.)

Another thing I'd like to note, with all respect to Laura, is the very determined attempt in this series at making Aquaman cool for a whole new generation of kids who haven't been tainted by the mockery the King of Atlantis has received over the years.

5. Your remarkably disturbing link of the day, courtesy pal Andy - the skeletal structures of cartoon characters. The nightmarish vision of a Powerpuff Girl's innards will go with me to my grave. (I seem to remember an article along these lines in a long-ago issue of Mad Magazine. Can anyone confirm this?)

(EDIT: Site down, due to being Waxied and Boing Boinged - the Boing Boing link has a sample image.)

(EDIT AGAIN: Pal Sean has found the Mad Magazine reference I was thinking of...look here for more.)

6. Mark Evanier passes along the sad information that comics writer Bob Haney has died. He wrote some of my favorite nutty DC Comics from the '60s and '70s, and I'm sorry to see him go. Maybe we'll eventually see this shelved Teen Titans story he did with Jay Stephens...from what little we've seen, it seems brilliant.

* The posting of "I'm Chalk!" in this post's comments section coming in 3...2....

Sunday, December 05, 2004

"Suddenly, one year later...." 

When I first started this weblog of mine, my intention was to attempt to post something new every day for at least one year. And here we are, one year later, and despite illness, despite weddings, despite floods and locusts and power outages and Blogger's usual shenanigans, I actually achieved that goal, and only managed to irritate one or two people along the way. Some days, especially early on, I didn't post much - maybe just a link or two - and the one day I just wasn't able to post and had pal Dorian fill in, I still managed to put in a brief appearance explaining why Dor was filling in.

Over a year of posting, I've managed to knock a little dust off my HTML skills, though some lessons took a while to learn -- like specifying exact dimensions for images so that the permalinks don't cause the page to jump all over the place as the images load. Er, sorry about that. Also, I had to find out about "hotlinking" -- I never did it, but plenty of people did it to me until I learned how to block that sort of behavior. The thought did occur to me to replace hotlinked images with something appalling, like some sites do...but decided against it because 1) I'm a nice guy, and 2) it sounded like that would be hard work.

Best of all, I managed to drag some of my pals into the weblogging world with me, including one coworker, two former coworkers, and two customers. (Okay, so maybe Sean's been a little lax lately, but the poor boy just got married, so cut him some slack!)



ASIDE #1 - THE NEVER BEFORE REVEALED SECRET ORIGIN OF
"MIKE STERLING'S PROGRESSIVE RUIN"


Well, the origin of the name, anyway. The first half of the name is easy...I'm named after my dad. I'm Mike Sterling Jr., he's Mike Sterling Sr. Now why my grandparents decided to name my dad "Mike" remains a mystery.

The second half requires a little more backstory. For about a five year span in the mid-90s, I was involved in a local mini-comics publishing concern started by my old friend Rob. The "company," named Full Frontal Harvey (after an offhand comment from an MTV veejay regarding Harvey Keitel's performance in Bad Lieutenant), published about three dozen different digest and mini-sized publications. The flagship title was an anthology book entitled Wood-Eye, and contained work by Rob and myself in all twelve issues, and also had plenty of work by future Xeric Grant winner Fred Noland...not to mention one cover by Love & Rocket's Jaime Hernandez (posted on this very site yesterday), a couple cartoons by novelist Scott Phillips, and the occasional cartoon by this weirdo.

At any rate, in 1998 I eventually took the pages I'd done for Wood-Eye up to that point, along with a couple pages from a solo book (Lookit!) I had done early on, and several new (or, at least, previously unpublished) pages, and put them all into one volume. Stuck for a title for this comic, I took the name from my original website -- "Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin!"



My original website, which I refer to as "Progressive Ruin 1.0," was first put on the web on November 8, 1996, and was basically there to, well, fill up some of the 5 megabytes of free web space offered by my ISP of the time. It was also the Official Website of Full Frontal Harvey, featuring cover scans of all our books, a downloadable mini-comic, and other goodies.

Yes, the origin of my website's name is that it's from a previous website. It's a cop out, I know, but it's still better than the ending to What Dreams May Come.

"But what does it mean," you ask? Well, it's a reference to the fact that...um, well, I'm going to grow older, my body is going to weaken, my cognitive faculties will dull, and I'm eventually going to die...and as such, any record of my actions and experiences, such as through a collection of comic strips I've drawn, or posts on a weblog, can be seen as a document of that steady decline. Or, if you will, of my progressing ruin.

See? A laugh riot, no? Oh, relax, I'm not chronically depressed or anything...I just thought it was an amusing title, an ironic counterpoint to the hopefully humorous offerings both in my old comic strips and here on my weblog. Besides, I plan on living forever, so I don't really have to worry about any of that aging or declining health stuff.




I've done some online comics discussion in the past. In the local BBS community (remember those, way back in the pre-internet days?), I was the go-to guy to run comic book message groups on various boards. I think I in charge of about four or five, as I recall, including a message board on a BBS run by this fella. And in the early days of AOL, I would occasionally pop in on the comic boards there, though the level of discourse was...um, not exactly quality, shall we say. I never participated in the Usenet thing, like a handful of my weblogging brethren (and sisteren) did. So, after the fall of the BBS scene, aside from talking with some of my friends or the occasional discussion at the comic shop, my comics talk was at a minimum. I didn't (and still don't) try to use my position at the store to excessively inflict my comic book opinions on hapless customers...I really try hard to not be one of those guys, you know?

And that's why I'm glad I now have a weblog. I can talk at length about all the funnybooks I want, without having to worry about preaching to a captive audience (like I could do at the store, were I one of those guys), and without having to bore my audience to tears (presumably, if you're reading this site...in particular, if you're still slogging through this post...you must have at least a passing interest in comic books).

And to think, when I started, I didn't plan on making this weblog comics-only!



ASIDE #2 - EVEN AT A YOUNG AGE, I COULDN'T SHUT UP ABOUT COMICS


Dave at Yet Another Comics Blog posted the cover of Superman #369 (March 1982) as part of his ongoing Christmas comic cover series. It just so happens that this issue contains my only printed letter of comment. As a preemptive measure, I shall reproduce it here, it all its horrifying glory:


Oh dear, oh dear. I was insufferable even way back then, wasn't I? I was very obviously trying to be "funny," and failing miserably at it. Plus, God may never forgive me for my slight against the late Mr. Swan. It's also one of those "recap the plot" kind of letters, which I hate. Even being 12 years old at the time is no excuse. At any rate, I'm sure they printed this letter more because it fit the space available rather than because of any perceived quality. If only they'd followed my advice to keep Cary Bates, though....

Please note that the city I lived in at the time was Port Hueneme, though whoever typeset this letter accidentally appended the state abbreviation of the end of the city's name, making it "Huenemeca." Thus, I was able to track all the mail I received as a result of having my letter printed in this comic. Fan club offers, conventions flyers, catalogs...all addressed to "Port Huenemeca." Okay, it wasn't that much mail, but it was neat to see what a 12-year-old kid could get just for having a letter pop up in a comic book.

I only ever wrote one other letter of comment, in reference to DC Comics Presents #50, which was never printed. Though, looking at the letter that did get printed, it's probably just as well. There's only so much public humiliation one person can stand!




One of the unexpected results of this weblog was getting to interact to some extent with professional comic creators, including Tony Isabella (whose Hawkman comics still remain some of my favorite featuring that character), Fred Hembeck (whose cartoon overviews of bizarre comics of the past is a definite inspiration of mine), and Scott Saavedra (whose mighty Comic Book Heaven magazine celebrated the goofiness of comics in a way that my little website can only try to imitate).

Another result I really wasn't anticipating was cartoonists, writers, and publishers sending me items for review. The first I received were the volumes 1 & 2 of the amusing children's series Sidekicks by Tom Mason and Dan Danko. Items from Ait/Planetlar's Larry Young, cartoonist Steve Lieber, and Atomeka Press were to follow. It's all part of their marketing strategies, I realize, but it still makes me feel pretty good to think that my opinion on their releases is desired, and that my little venue here is important enough to warrant being sent review copies at their not-inconsiderable expense.



ASIDE #3 - HOW I FIRST MET SCOTT SAAVEDRA


Scott Saavedra was publishing through Slave Labor Graphics a comic/magazine called Java Town, featuring his cartoons as well as several pages of found ads, weird items, and so on. In the back of issue #2 was a reproduced image from an advertisement for a board game called "The Sinking of the Titanic."

Well, I had this game when I was a kid. (You can read more about the game, and see some pictures, here.) And, when Rob, Fred, and I went to the second Alternative Press Expo in San Jose, CA (in '94, I think) to shill our Wood-Eye comic, I got my chance to meet Scott Saavedra and tell him in person about the game and how it was played. He was appalled, as any decent human being would be, and from that point on I was "the guy who had the Titanic board game." Well, I don't think Mr. Saavedra ever referred to me as such, but I'd mention it on occasion to remind him who I was, like when I'd order copies of his original self-published version of Comic Book Heaven, and he was nice enough not to tell me I was annoying him.

Okay, it's not much of a story, but it gives me an excuse to once again plug Scott Saavedra's weblog which you should visit immediately after you're done here. You should also buy the Dr. Radium trades and the Comic Book Heaven digests and collection as well.




I do have a thank you or two, or a dozen, to pass along, if you all will bear with me:

First off, thanks to the grand-daddy of the comics webloggers, the enigmatic Neilalien, who offered me some assistance early on, particularly with cleaning up the comic scans. And thanks as well to Graeme, as his Fanboy Rampage, though he doesn't know it, was the site that finally made me say to myself, "hey, maybe doing a comics weblog would be fun!"

Thanks to Rory, who was the first person I knew in real life to put a link to my weblog on her website (Baresark), and to Bill Sherman, who was the first person I didn't know to link me on his own site (Pop Culture Gadabout).

Thanks to pal Andy, who has been kind enough to link me on his essential Waxy.org a handful of times...which directly led to me being linked by Boing Boing, giving me my largest single day's worth of traffic thus far (just shy of 7,000 unique visits).

Thanks of course to everyone else who has posted links to my site as well.

Thanks to my pals Dorian, Corey, Sean, Tom, and Ian, the mighty Associated Comics And Pop Culture Webloggers of Ventura County, CA And Outlying Environs...more is definitely the merrier.

Extra thanks to Ian, whose mentions of me on the Comics Journal message boards must certainly have brought me to the attention of Dirk Deppey...which brings me to thanking Dirk, for his many kind mentions of my site on the sadly missed web version of Journalista. This post in particular, the last before his farewell message, still brings me visitors all these months later.

Thanks to all my fellow comics webloggers, who have made a fun hobby even more fun.

Thanks to the customers from our store who read my site, but still shop with us anyway.

Thanks to my girlfriend Nora, whose tolerance levels are apparently higher than any normal human's, as she's put up with my silly comics stuff for what I'm sure she thinks is much too long.

Thanks to my dad, who reads my site every day, even though I'm sure he doesn't know what the heck I'm talking about half the time, what with some of the comics minutiae I get into. I don't even know what I'm talking about half the time. And thanks to my mom, for...well, you should always be thankful to your mom, you know?

And thanks to you, the readers, who have decided that my goofy ramblings are of enough value to keep you coming back. Your readership, and your comments, are always much appreciated.

Thus endeth my most self-indulgent post ever. The only way it could have been more self-indulgent is if I posted pictures of my d...


...oops, sorry, just slipped out.

See you tomorrow!

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