blogging about blogging is a sin

In which Mike has had some minor technical issues.

filed under Categories blogging about blogging is a sin

I’ve had bit of a computer problem here at Progressive Ruin Headquarters, which thankfully is not serious (i.e. nothing expensive needed replacement, and no irreplaceable data was lost), but the end result is that I’ve spent quite a while reinstalling system software and programs, and as my computer is held together pretty much by hope and prayers, I’ve been doing some juggling to make sure everything is working together the same way it was before. So, if some of you were wondering why “Sluggo Saturday” was so late yesterday…that’s why. (I ended up posting that one from work.)

Ultimately, “Operation: Get Mike’s Computotron Running Again” hasn’t left me with any time to put together the “Other Things Arisia Was Saying” follow-up post. I’ll try to get it up Monday, so if you had any of your own entries you wanted to send in, you’ve got a day’s extension.

So I’m gonna call a “time-out” for this site today, while I continue to get my computer back in fightin’ shape. Thanks for reading, and I’ll talk to you tomorrrow.

Blogging about other people’s blogging, as well as my own, is a sin.

filed under Categories blogging about blogging is a sin

Pal Tom is retiring his weblog, which is a darned shame, but I’m sure you’ll all join me in wishing him the best. Plus, he’s on the Twitter, so it’s not like we’ll never hear from the guy.

Tom was one of the four founding members of what I liked to call the Associated Comics and Pop Culture Webloggers of Ventura County, CA, and Outlying Environs (ACAPCWOVCCAOE for short, natch), along with pal Dorian, pal Ian, and myself. I’ve added a few folks to the collective, some of whom I realize haven’t updated in a while. But Tom, Dor, Ian and I were the charter members of this alleged organization, and it is a little sad to see one of the Inner Circle decide to retire.

So good luck, Tom! Enjoy your life free of feeding the blog, what with your “going outside” and “having friends” and “enjoying life” and all that jazz. Why, you wouldn’t catch me doing any of that.

In other news:

  • You may have noticed that I finally used tags on one of my posts. You can now click “sluggo saturday” at the end of a Sluggo Saturday post and get a faceful of Sluggo. No need to thank me.

    As pal Dorian told me regarding this, “welcome to 2005,” so yeah, I’m a tad behind the curve when it comes to this sort of thing. I just haven’t been looking forward to going back and tagging all 3,000 posts, and I’d been putting it off until I upgraded to a more robust blogging platform. But, who knows when I’ll do that, so there you go. Enjoy some tagging.

  • Some follow up to a couple of questions I was asked via my comments sections, but never got around to answering:

    Flossin wondered

    “Also: Mike, are you an Andy Kaufman fan? I saw some Amazon ads for ‘My Breakfast with Blassie’ here and was just wondering.”

    Yes, I am quite the Kaufman fan. I always appreciated that he either 1) kept audiences wondering what was a put-on and what wasn’t, and 2) just outright aggressively tested their patience. I realize that, like most comedy, it’s not for everybody, but I thought he was brilliant.

    Roel asks

    “…Isn’t 500 considered a bigger event than 600? Why would they ignore 500 but return to the old numbering for 600? That seems backwards…”

    I’m not entirely sure…issue 500 would have been near the middle of the 1998 Cap series, so the “new #1” sales bump would have been over, and I doubt they knew that the series was going to end at #50 by that point, so that wouldn’t have been a consideration. Maybe they just plain didn’t feel like it, that the series was doing well enough without having to restore the original numbering to generate an Extra-Sized Issue.

    The again, they did just do that on Thor after only about 12 issues, a series that’s still selling fairly well, so who knows. Just another attempt at grabbing the consumer in a rocky marketplace during economic turmoil…you gotta do what you gotta do, I guess.

Webcomics and Space Ghost.

filed under Categories blogging about blogging is a sin, comic strips, pal plugging

I finally posted a handful of links to webcomics and traditional comic strips in my sidebar (near the end, under the “other weblogs” section).

One of the strips, Nukees, is by a fella named Darren Bleuel, with whom I share a slight connection. Actually, it’s the same connection I share with pals Andy and Dan (AKA “Mojo IV” in my comments sections), not to mention pal Sean‘s new bride…a long-ago involvement in a secret organization, with its own language, and weird rituals, and bizarre initiations, and plenty of Obfuscation…sorta like the Skull & Bones Society, only without the money.

Okay, actually we were just all members of a local computer bulletin board system, back in those wild pre-easy access to the internet days, and most of us have maintained some contact with each other over the years since that board went down (via mailing lists, personal weblogs, and such). Darren even still has a link to the original version of my Progressive Ruin site on his old links page. Anyway, I’ve been aware of Nukees for a while, and it’s always very funny. Darren’s a smart guy, and it comes across in his strips.

A strip I found during my random searches was Doomed unto Eternal Vigilance Forever, which strikes me as really, really funny for no good reason I can explain. This strip just about killed me. That particular revelation probably says a great deal about my personality.

Anyway, please keep the suggestions coming, and I’ll keep checking them out.

In other news:

So yesterday, pal Dorian, Kid Chris, and I were discussing that, with the apparent interest in the forthcoming “serious” Space Ghost series, what we need are more serious takes on classic cartoons. Like, for example, a dark and gritty Underdog, featuring a realistically-painted beagle* wearing red longjohns. Or Mighty Man and Yuck: will Mighty Man ever truly understand Yuck’s deep, unrelenting pain of being the World’s Ugliest Dog? Or Captain Caveman: the only thing that could reduce the Captain’s despair at being ripped away from his own time and all the people he loves…is capturing the heart of Teen Angel Taffy – but she must never know his true feelings.

With all that said…yeah, I’m probably going to at least look at this new Space Ghost comic. I’m a big hypocrite. But, really, there’s just something about it…a curiosity about what Joe Kelly and Ariel Olivetti are going to do with the characters after they’d been treated about as seriously as they deserved for so long. Tim has a little more common sense than I have in regard to this particular funnybook.

* Or whatever. What kind of dog is Underdog, anyway?

Sick day referrals!

filed under Categories blogging about blogging is a sin, sick day

Due to illness, I’m not going to be doing my usual new-comics-Wednesday round-up…I’m shooting for tomorrow. However, so you don’t leave empty-handed, here are some unusual internet search referrals that I’ve received over the last week or so:

kryp+tuck – You have no idea how many searches I got for this.

funny+spiderman+dancing+on+street+corner – Uh, what?

Reasons+to+visit+Saturn – Why, to get away from the funny Spider-Man dancing on a street corner, of course.

explain+superman+209 – No one can explain.

progressive+ruin+chalk+swamp – It just amuses me that someone who wasn’t me was looking for this. God bless that person.

print+runs+for+marvel+masterworks – Actually, I’m kind of interested in that, myself.

ruin+marvel – I can only take partial credit for ruining Marvel, thank you.

I’ve+got+a+handful+of+vertebrae+and+a+headful+of+mad – Someone’s looking for the Doom comic, I betcha.

femforce+slash – Sigh.

necronomicon+warning+in+front+cover – “WARNING: Not a real historical volume. Created only to part gullible people from their money.”

Green+Lantern+181+Spoilers – SPOILER WARNING: It stinks.

green+lantern+racial+sensitivity – “I been readin’ about you…how you work for the blue skins…and how on a planet someplace you helped out the orange skins…and you done considerable for the purple skins! Only there’s skins you never bothered with –! …The black skins! I want to know…how come? Answer me that, Mr. Green Lantern!” – from Green Lantern #76 (April 1970) by Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams

werewolves+nazis – …Make for great comics.

hitler+logo – I really should stop mentioning Hitler in my weblog. I don’t even like the guy.

monsieur+mallah+loves+the+brain – Yes…yes he does.

Comics+Slave – Aren’t we all?

vixen+comic+fabio – I’m sure there’s an explanation…but keep it to yourself.

killed+sue+dibny – No I didn’t!

And because some of you are dirty, dirty people:

bubble+gum+fetish – I wish I could say this surprises me, but alas, it doesn’t.

animated+toplessness – Because static toplessness is so boring.

erotic+elfquest – Isn’t that redundant?

naked+adrienne+barbeau – At last, a nekkid web search I can get behind.

betty+and+veronica+nude – Ah, the eternal quest continues….

kerry+washington+goes+topless & erica+durance+topless & Erica+Durance+nude+pictures – Pretty much any time you mention any actress or female athlete on your webpage, you’re gonna get hits from people looking for nekkid pictures of them. So, let’s run a test: Carole Lombard Carole Lombard Carole Lombard

jessica+alba+latest+pictures+with+blond+hair – Oh, God, not this again.

In which I mention a lot of blogs.

filed under Categories blogging about blogging is a sin, free comic book day

My weblog had the highest amount of traffic ever over the last week…thanks to all you readers out there! I’ve come a long way from ten hits a day, half of which were me.

Anyway…I forget who linked to this first (I think I found it over at Fanboy Rampage), but John Byrne is posting a page a day from You Go, Ghoul on his site…the title is absolutely shameless, but the comic itself is pretty amusing. Warning: takes a while to load, even if you have that newfangled DSL-type connection.

Tomorrow we’ll be receiving our Free Comic Book Day stock…that’ll be a lot of funnybooks, given that we’re carrying every single darn free item that’s gonna be available. I hope next year if Marvel pitches a fit about the timing of FCBD, every other participating publisher tells them to take a hike. It’s not like Marvel’s free comic is ever all that good anyway. Like pal Dorian said, we had an awful lot of people ask about FCBD back in May…not so many now, even with the huge FCBD logo painted in the window.

Also, he said with no transitional flow whatsoever, I’ve added a couple new links to the weblogroll over there. Two of them I blatantly stole from Cognitive Dissonance — The Comic Queen and Precocious Curmudgeon — and another is the oft-mentioned pal Corey, who can be found at Captain Corey. And then there’s Thrillmer, an adventure strip weblog that I was pointed to by my Great White Northern twin, Flat Earth.

And, then, suddenly, this:




Lawbreakers Suspense Stories #15 (1953)

Bloggers, books, and beriodicals. Er, periodicals.

filed under Categories blogging about blogging is a sin, dc comics, publishing

1. Okay, so I’m a doofus: when I listed the other webloggers who answered this questionnaire, I unfortunately did not mention some of my other favorite webloggers who also answered the questions, for which I apologize. So, in addition to Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat, Comic Book Galaxy, Motime Like The Present, Johnny Bacardi Show, and Otto’s Coffee Shop, we also have Legomancer, Chris Brown (thanks for the kind words!), Near Mint Heroes, and the inimitable Ringwood.

EDIT: Miraclo Miles, too.

2. Pal Dorian and I both forwarded copies to ourselves of the forthcoming DC trades e-mail I mentioned here, so there may be some overlap in discussion. (You can also find the list here, via Thought Balloons, who also points to Comics.212‘s commentary.) Anyway, I did want to point out a couple things:

  • The Vertigo book My Faith in Frankie is manga-format for $6.95. Nice to see DC putting some thought into what actually might appeal to your basic manga buyer, rather than just pumping out superhero trades in smaller formats and hoping they fly.

  • Oh dear: the cover price on JLA: Another Nail is $4.90 less than the cover price for all three issues of the mini-series.

  • That DC Rarities Archives I mentioned previously is a pretty hefty volume at 348 pages…given that the New York World’s Fair comics are 100 pages apiece, and The Big All-American Comic Book is 132(!), it’s a necessity. The other archives are about 200 to 220 pages, for comparison.

  • Swamp Thing: Bad Seed, reprinting the initial storyline of the new series, is only $9.95. I like this trend of starting off Vertigo trade paperback series with a nice, low introductory price. I hope this continues.

  • Gen 13: Ordinary Heroes: seems a little late in the game to be putting out Gen 13 books, but since this one has Alan Davis art and thus will most likely be cross-marketed with Another Nail (and it doesn’t hurt that he’s got a high-profile assigment at Marvel), it makes sense to release at least this volume, I suppose.

  • Starman: Grand Guignol is, I’m pretty sure, the last of the Starman trades…hopefully, that’ll jumpstart sales on the other books in the series, as sales on them have stagnated around here. A shame, really, since it’s a fine comic…drags a little in places, but nicely illustrated and quite thoughtful. Plus, it took a couple of your dopier Golden Age villains (Shade and the Mist) and made them interesting.

  • …and, looking at the rest of the list (lots of Humanoids, 2000 AD, Elfquest books, and so on) it almost makes DC look like a real publisher, with a wide range of products aimed at different markets. Whether the people in those different markets will come looking for them is another matter altogether.

3. New comics day: I hate when new comics day is pushed back a day due to holidays…it really throws me off. Don’t really have much to say about the new funnybooks: Superman: Birthright #11 opens with Lois spouting some dialogue that might as well have been “hey, you, reading this comic! Here’s what happened last issue!” It doesn’t seem terribly likely that anyone is starting this series with the next-to-last issue, so a little less exposition would probably be called for. Plus, it’s going to look darn awkward when the whole thing’s collected in that $29.95 hardcover. I do like this series, don’t get me wrong.

Girl Genius #11 – hey, it’s bigger! It’s magazine-size now, and that’s fine (even though everyone complained today that they won’t be able to file it with their other issues…look, we all survived the Great Eightball Size Shift, we can survive this too), as anything that emphasizes Phil Foglio’s fantastic art is okay with me.

Why must three of the four current Fantastic Four titles ship out on the exact same day?

4. My Canadian blood-brother Flat Earth has been on a Turok binge lately, of which I wholeheartedly approve. Go visit and hunt some honkers with the man. He even interviews Gary Panter about Turok…now that’s cool.