But who's going to voice Iorek?

According to Variety, Nicole Kidman's signed on to play Ms. Coulter in The Golden Compass. I don't think she's ever played a villain before. Should be interesting. And am I the only one who read the description of Coulter in the books and thought "it just sounds like she looks like Nicole Kidman." Apparently not.

And finally

There's a new comic up at The Atrox, if you're into that sort of thing. Hopefully we'll be back on schedule this week.

In the Air Tonight

Miami Vice is a good movie. It's not brilliant, it's not going to change the world or anything, but it's a perfectly serviceable action/thriller, and we get so few of those these days that I have to make note of it. Emory didn't care for the Gong Li/Colin Ferrell scenes, but I had no real problem with them. The final gunfight is awesome. And the cinematography is beautiful, but this is Michael Mann we're talking about. The movie's also got a ton of HBO alums in its cast. Look for Blasinov from Deadwood in an early scene.

Anyway, decent movie. Hope to see Little Miss Sunshine soon. All my friends who've seen it have been raving about it. And speaking of good movies, Brick comes out on DVD next week. You better believe I'm going to buy that shit.

Comic Con - Saturday

Mike compared Friday to Empire Strikes Back, so I guess that means that Saturday was our Return of the Jedi. And you know what that means! Chirping, hooting teddy bears!

But not really.

Anyway!

This was the latest we were to the Con the whole weekend, so I just had time to get to the Convention Center, get Corey Lewis to sign my Sharknife, watch Bryan Lee O'Malley sign Lindsay's Scott Pilgrim book, grab a quick lunch, and then head to the DC: One Year Greater panel. And then that panel sucked! Seriously, I thought maybe they'd let the wide array of talent up there talk a little bit, but no, it was straight to the Q&A. I beat a hasty retreat back to the floor.

I finally, finally got Steve Purcell to sign my Sam and Max collection. He was really pleased that my copy was so worn. He did a li'l Sam sketch and signed it and I was super happy. I also snagged a sweet FLCL shirt. I headed back to the DC booth to get Grant Morrison's to sign stuff again, but it turned into a crazy nightmare. I'd get into details but I don't want to bore you so let me just say that I waited in a line that wasn't real, Morrison was 20 minutes late, I thought the real line was closed, and then wound up in the real line completely by accident just as they opened it up to more people. So I got the first issues of New X-Men and All-Star Superman signed, so that was all right.

There was a large group of well-dressed Batman villains circling the DC booth at this point, and I was greatly amused to see a guy dressed as the Joker chatting up a girl in a wheelchair dressed up like Oracle. NERD IRONY. I also noticed Misty Lee due to her signature top hat. And because she's, y'know, gorgeous.

I was pretty beat from the Con overall so I decided to hit Ballroom 20 early to sit back and wait for the Veronica Mars panel. I wound up seeing this TV Guide panel that I had known nothing about beforehand, but wound up featuring Jorge Garcia, Jennifer Love-Hewitt, David Goyer, Jeph Loeb, Frank Spotnitz, and the head of programming at the Sci-Fi channel, among others. The panel was still pretty dry, though.

Finally the Mars panel got underway, and Matt and I had decent seats. Rob Thomas did most of the talking, which was fine. Ryan Hansen did a backflip. Michael Muhney's a hambone. Francis Capra said maybe one thing the whole time. Apparently next season Tina Majorino will be a regular, and that's an idea I can really get behind. And during the Q&A a guy claimed to have a package for Kristen Bell that had been delivered to him because he was living in one of Bell's old apartments. "I think it's a foot massage," he noted. After a bit of back and forth, he gave the package to security, who gave it to Bell, who opened it, looked up and said "It's from my agent. Who apparently does not realize I moved two years ago." Good times.

Afterwards we all met up and headed back to the hotel for dinner and to freshen up for the remainder of the evening's escapades. Lacking an extra shirt to change into, I donned my new FLCL shirt and cursed myself for not bringing anything nicer. I also got a head start on drinking, downing a SoCo and Coke before heading out, and preparing another one for the road. We hit up the masquerade first, meeting Corinne, Aimee, Laurel, and Jenni. We kicked back at our corner table and drank a bit. The masquerade seemed lamer than last year, so Leslie took off early with Jenni, and Lindsay, Paul, and Frank wandered off to the Hyatt. I was pretty drunk by this point, but I did notice Mike was actually drinking again. That boy's going to develp a problem.

The dance party started up earlier this year, and they actually turned down the lights, so that was an improvement from last year. There was a bit of dancing and then we decided to find our friends at the Hyatt, but only after having to pry some strange guy off of Liz. Scandal! On our way out Corinne tried sliding down the bannister, but slid right off and ate it. Landed right on her tailbone. Painful for her, hilarious for others.

(All memories at this point are through the filter of being intoxicated. Feel free to correct me if I mix something up, folks.)

The Hyatt, is turned out, was PACKED. Why didn't we go there last year again? It took us a bit of time to wrangle everyone, and then everybody just seemed to just be sitting on these steps off away from the party, so I waded back into the crowd where I immediately ran into Meredith and Ethan. Some others from our team came over and we wandered over to a different bar at the opposite end of the hotel. I spotted Grant Morrison and various other comics professionals. Finally we headed up to Meredith's room to relax a bit. Frank and Lindsay were MIA at the Hyatt bar (turns out they were both being hit on). Laurel and Meredith tried to order room service, but were on hold for half an hour. Paul, Mike, Corinne, and Aimee went home. I met a few of Meredith's co-workers. Frank and Lindsay finally made it up to the room and they were BOMBED. Eventually hotel security threw us all out. (Not us specifically, just anyone who wasn't a hotel guest. They were sweeping the whole floor.) I had sobered up by this point and was pretty tired (it was around 2 or 2:30), but Lindsay kept bugging me the whole car ride back to the hotel until I flew off the handle. And that's really all I have to say about that. Matt's attitude the whole way back was pretty hilarious. "Just gettin' us home! Not going to be involved! Just driving the car and smiling!"

So that was that. The next day we packed up our stuff and headed back to LA. On the drive home I read Lost Girls, which is a really literate, sophisticated piece of fiction where the characters just happen to have graphic sex every few pages. Ah, pornography.

Uh, the end, I guess.

"It's not a jewel, it's some horrible, dried-up piece of crap."

If you haven't already watched the pilot for The Amazing Screw-On Head, I encourage you to do so. The writing's quite wry, and the voice-acting is superb, particularly David Hyde-Pierce as Emperor Zombie. I mean, it's a robotic screw-on head fighting the forces of darkness on behalf of President Lincoln. That's something I'd like to see on my TV every week, thank you.

Oh, hell yes

Dave's Long Box, apparently gunning after my readership specifically, has started Alternate Reality Where Everybody Dies Week, a week in which the focus is on comics stories about... well, hopefully you get it.

Guys, I am such a huge sucker for stories like that. Be it the classic X-Men tale "Days of Future Past", Grant Morrison's future JLA story "Rock of Ages", or even that Buffy episode "The Wish", I have a gigantic blindspot for Alternate Realities Where Everybody Dies. It is a weakness that will doubtlessly someday be used against me.

Olympos

I finished Middlesex a few weeks ago, and I needed a new book. When I was out getting food last night I remembered that Olympos must have come out in paperback by now, so I swung by Borders and THERE IT WAS.

Veteran readers will perhaps recall my enthusiasm for Ilium, a sci-fi re-imagining of the Trojan War, with some bits from The Tempest thrown in for good measure. Olympos is its sequel. Here's the first sentence: "Helen of Troy awakes just before dawn to the sound of air raid sirens."

If you need me in the next few days, I will be GLUED to this motherfucker.

Christ, I'm freezing

It's cold in my office.

I mean, sorry, but it is.

DeNiro + Grodin = Excellence

Y'know, Midnight Run is kind of a perfect movie.

Comic Con - Friday

It is here that Mike's and my tales diverge. The memories slip through my fingers like droplets of rain! Let the recounting continue!

Friday, Friday... what did I do? When I first got to the Con, I wandered past the Oni booth and noticed a little line and immediately figured out that it was for Bryan Lee O'Malley. Perhaps you are familiar with my fondness for his work. Anyway, I got him to sign my Scott Pilgrim volumes, and he did a cool sketch of Kim Pine in Vol. 2. Really, it's fine that I didn't have my Vol. 1 with me, since Vol. 2's my favorite anyway.

As of Friday I opted to eat lunch alone because a) it allowed me to not be involved in the herding of a large group of people, thus not taking hours and hours for a simple meal, and b) there was stuff I wanted to see going on during lunch time. I feel it was the right call. I hate eating in a group.*

So I had an early lunch at Wendy's and then headed to the comics blogging panel, since I actually knew who most of the panelists were. It was pretty interesting, especially when the panelists would disagree over certain issues. The best was when Tom Spurgeon noted that blogging was not hard. At all. His job at the foundry was hard. I thought that was pretty awesome. I'd talk more about it, but I know that no one reading this gives a damn. Maybe Liz.

I tried to get into the Galactica panel, but there was a giant mob outside ballroom 20, and after several clautrophobic minutes I beat my way past the throng and retreated downstairs. Sorry to have missed it, but I was a bit panicked.

I opted then to hit up the Wildstorm panel since I knew Grant Morrison would be there, and I learned a bit about the new Wildstorm titles. I beat feet when the Q&A started. Nothing worse than comics Q&A.

After wandering the floor a bit, I headed back to the DC booth where I knew Morrison would be signing. Despite getting there early I was still near the back of the line that rapidly formed. The DC booth guys had apparently not anticipated the Morrison demand and the line for his signature snaked out into the con. The DC guys limited his signing to only two items, so I had him sign JLA #1 and Seven Soldiers #1, and hoped to catch him the next day. Lindsay and Mike were nice enough to wait in line with me for awhile, but they took off after a bit. I could hardly blame them. While in line I chatted with this couple in front of me. At one point the girl ran off towards a crowd in the middle of the DC booth and then came back saying "I got a picture of the guy they were all crowding around," and asked her boyfriend who it was. He said he had no idea so she checked with me. "Oh," I said, "That's Bryan Singer." Good ol' Comic Con.

After Morrison I met Frank in the massive line for Hall H and the Snakes on a Plane panel. Matt and Emory had headed in there sometime during mid-day, so they had decent seats, but only one saved seat. I gave it to Frank and found my own single seat a little farther in the back. The panel was all about New Line, so there was some stuff about Final Destination 3 (guys, Mary Elizabeth Winstead is damn cute) and the Tenacious D movie (they showed the opening rock opera sequence, and if that doesn't sell you on the movie, nothing will). The whole panel was hosted by Keenan Thompson, so that was cool. I was pretty impressed with the way they kept the panel moving, especially once the SoaP portion started. First they brought out the director, then the snake wrangler, then a bunch of snakes (one had to be held by five people), and then they showed a ten-minute clip from the movie. At the end of the clip the screens all went black and then from the darkness boomed "I want these motherfucking snakes OFF this motherfucking plane!" and the lights came up to reveal Samuel L. Jackson on stage. It was rad. Jackson was awesome. He was joking around and clearly having a great time. When one of the audience members asked if he thought the snakes deserved to die, Jackson took the bait and bellowed "Yes they deserved to die and I hope they burn in hell!" Pandering? Possibly. Awesome? Most definitely. Even if you were someone who was sick of the Snakes hoopla, I really can't imagine anyone not having a good time at this panel. Everyone was just so jazzed.

After the panel Emory, Matt, and I met up with Laurel and then went to dinner with Corinne and Aimee. We ate at O'Hungry's and I got a half-yard of beer, which is basically this long beaker that is one part awkward and two parts awesome to drinnk from. They made a good burger, too. It was a blast.

Afterwards we headed back to the hotel, bought some beer, and sat around kicking it. Finally Team Paul arrived to join us, having had their own wacky adventures. A nice evening, all told.

Next: Saturday! Drinking! Masquerade! For future reference, the Hyatt is where the party is!

I assure you, men are constantly kneed in the chest

I'd tell you how awesome the action in Tom Yum Goong, the latest Tony Jaa movie, is but Chris Sims already did so, plus he has screenshots.

Guys, the restaurant sequence is UNBELIEVEABLE. You will watch it and you will FREAK.

Way down in the hole

In anticipation of season 4 starting in the fall, I started re-watching season 2 of The Wire last night. I haven't seen most of these episodes since they originally aired, and since I found my intitial feelings on this season to be ones of disappointment, I'm eager to see what I think of them now.

I just watched the first two episodes, and they're just stellar. I love, LOVE, how the entire investigation springs from the pettiness of two different characters: one we like (McNulty sticking Rawls with the bodies) and one we don't (Valchek wanting to stick Sobotka over their dueling stained-glass windows). Of course McNulty initially just wants to piss off Rawls, but once the addtional 13 girls show up he decides the case can't be handed to the port authority so he goes to great lengths to prove that the girls must have died in Baltimore city proper, so that his old homicide division will pick up the case. I love that stuff, the little details of it all. Then there's that great moment when Bunk and Freemon wind up stuck with the case and they head down to talk to Officer Russell, who found the bodies.

RUSSELL: You from homicide? You must know Jimmy McNulty.
BUNK: Yeah. He's dead to us.

What a great show.

I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of this season, particularly knowing that the Barksdale plot pays off in season 3. On an initial viewing it just looked like the show was refusing to abandon its characters. Always nice to know the show-runners have a plan. I'm still a bit nervous about how good season 4 will be, but the quality of season 3 does a lot to assuage my fears.

COMIC CON - Wed and Thurs

We've got to dole this out over time, I think. Long post ahead, anyway.

I was hoping to have my Bunnim and Atrox shirts before going, but no, UPS opted not to actually get them there when I asked. They tried delivering them Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, however. THANKS, UPS!

Anyway, we left Wednesday afternoon. It was me, Matt, Emory, and Leslie in one car (TEAM MATT), and Paul, Liz, Mike, and Frank in another. We made it down to the hotel first because Paul drives like a grandmother. After checking in we immediately headed over to Preview Night.

After standing in line for like an hour last year, we straight-up breezed through the line this year. The new bar code system totally works. Mike didn't have his own badge, so he posed as me on Paul's pass. So we were both Jeff Stone for a few days.

Unlike Mike, I did not think ahead and bring stuff to get signed on Wednesday night, so I just kind of wandered around taking in the sights. I mean, there's some things to look at. Mostly I just found out where all the publishers were so that I could hit them up over the next few days. Lindsay showed up, having driven down after work, and we all went and had dinner at Dinney's. DENNY'S!

Oh wait, here's a funny story. I noticed that Top Shelf was selling Alan Moore's new book Lost Girls, and convinced Emory and Leslie that they should buy their copy right away in case they sold out. Now the thing about Lost Girls is that it is pornography. Literate, well-written, heartbreaking... but porn. So Emory and Leslie headed over there and Emory walked up to the woman behind the books. Now what Emory and Leslie did not know was that the lady was Melinda Gibbe, the artist of the book and Alan Moore's wife. So Emory walks up, slaps down his credit card, and says "We've come for your porn!" And Gibbe just takes this in stride, says "Well, I can't take all the credit for it," and notes to the guy next to her "They've come to purchase our smut." It only dawned on Emory when the guy opened up the wrapping on the book so that she could sign it. Maybe Alan Moore will hear that story.

On the way back from Preview Night, we noticed this strip club called Pure Platinum had a big silver balloon sign saying "Comic Con." There was a smaller banner saying that on Friday or Saturday you could get in free with your Con badge, and that the strip night would be hosted BY WOLVERINE. We were sorely, sorely tempted to go. But we didn't. SHOCKER. Still, can you imagine?

Thursday morning we got up bright and early and hit the Con proper. I wandered the floor a bit then went to the Telltale Games panel, which focused on the videogames based on Bone and Sam and Max. Steve Purcell, the creator of Sam and Max, was there, as well as Dave Grossman, who used to work at Lucasarts games and was the co-creator of Day of the Tentacle (along with Tim Schafer, the greatest videogame maker to ever live). The panel was a little dry, but it was just nice seeing Steve Purcell and catching some footage from the Sam and Max game. I brought my Sam and Max book for Purcell to sign, but didn't get around to it that day.

I went to find JH Williams III's booth so he could sign my Seven Soldiers #0, but when I went to his table I found Bruce Timm there instead. Timm was selling original sketches and I had to splurge and get one. I went with the Joker, because it is simply a killer design. Oh, and if you don't know who Bruce Timm is, he was the designer of all the big DC animated shows in the 90's and 00's, like Batman, Superman, and Justice League Unlimited. He is simply the SHIT.

Later that day was the epic Deepak Chopra/Grant Morrison panel. It was awesome. They seemed to really get along. Frank got up to ask a question, but they didn't even get close to him because both of those guys tend to go on a bit once they get started. I've been working on a Grant Morrison impression, and it's pretty much grounded by the way he says "Superman." Maybe I'll do it for you sometime. Paul's right that those guys are long on ideas and short on practicalities, but it's nice to bask in some optimism every once in awhile.

Morrison/Chopra ran long (shocker), so I didn't go to the Dan Clowes panel, but I caught up with Mike and Lindsay afterwards so I could get him to sign my copies of Ghost World and Ice Haven. We were pretty close to the end of the rather sizeable line, so we were worried he wouldn't get to us, but it all worked out. Clowes seemed impressed with my old and rather battered copy of Ghost World that I had bought back in college because I am CUTTING EDGE.

Mike developed a crush on this girl a few people behind us, but didn't talk to her despite Lindsay's and my encouragement. I can hardly blame him. She was cute, though. Mike has good taste.

That night we all wound up eating at this Crab Shack behind the convention center. Mike and I got the popcorn shrimp and it was delicious. About 20 feet away from us was this table of loud twenty-something kids. They started having a whipped cream food fight in the middle of dinner. At this point Leslie's friends Hilary and Andrew and their friend Karen(? I'm so bad with names) had joined up with us. Andrew was energetic, to say the least. And this song came on in the restaurant and Andrew jumped up and he and Frank started dancing, and then someone at the other table yelled "Queers!" and the fun just dissolved. But then Emory suggested that we buy the other table a fruity rainbow drink so Andrew flagged down the waiter and bought the fruitiest rainbowiest drink ever made and asked the waiter to deliver it to the guy at the other table. I thought it might spark an international incident, but it all turned out okay. He got the drink as I passed by their table on the way back from the bathroom, and I think the guy wanted to start some shit but his friends wouldn't let him. In the end he just raised his glass to us and thanked us. Emory and Andrew should team up more often.

Next: Friday! I drink beer from a long glass tube!

Con photos

Actual post to come, but I've put up my Con photos (click on the Comic Con 2006 folder). Sorry they're so shitty.

For other photos by someone who kind of knows what she's doing, check out Leslie's photos. In the very least she was much closer to Grant Morrison than I was.

That Con documentary again

Now Quin and Mandy's piece has wound up on Yahoo. I put up a direct link that'll hopefully last, but right now it's right there on the main homepage (along with a still of Asa and Jesse).

Nuts.

More on this year's Con soon.

Achewood

I'm going to be gone starting tomorrow, all the way until next Monday, so in my absence, why don't you read some Achewood? Here, I'll even link you to ten of my favorite strips (that I haven't linked to in the past, so no Marmaduke or Cathy, Alan).

...Boned?

Wicked sack (Phillippe has been possessed by the spirit of Billy Idol.)

Ass in your pants!

Notorious L.I.N.C.O.L.N.

Gunny sack (Phillippe is running for President.)

The assassination of Lincoln as presented by Roomba, the robotic floor vac.

The results are in!

Fluff my hog

Getting Phillippe to eat healthy

Tim Simmons in: The Dude Has Got No Mercy

Why yes, I did finish all my work for the day. Why do you ask?

Happy birthday to me

DC's solicitations for October has three things that make me very happy indeed.

First and foremost, Seven Soldiers #1 has at last been resolicited. Finally, my soul can know peace.

And on the Morrison front, looks like his relaunch of The Authority starts that month, too. Sure, the Authority is pretty played out at this point, but if anyone could breathe life into it, I like to think it'd be Morrison. Plus the art is by Gene Ha, so in the very least it will be the prettiest book in all the land.

And finally, Planetary #26 will hit the stands, and Ellis has said that this is the big climax issue, with #27 serving as an epilogue to the series. Just to offer a little perspective on Seven Soldiers, Planetary started in 1998, which means it was originally supposed to wrap up by 2002 (it was bimonthly). So yeah, always happy to see a new issue of Planetary.

Woo! Comic Con!

Dammit, O'Malley

Bryan Lee O'Malley now says he WILL be at Comic Con this year after all. Of course, this is after I've lent my copy of Scott Pilgrim Vol. 1 to Kim. NATURALLY.

Pop quiz

If you, the reader, and I were on a team together in a game of Celebrity, and we were on the part of the game where you can only give two-word clues and I said "Wizard kid," what would your first guess be?

If you said "Harry Potter" then I can guarantee that your name isn't Frank Smith, Liz Miller, or Lindsay Hollinger.

I think the other best part of the game we played Saturday night was when Frank yelled at us for like five minutes to explain the miming he had done to convey "Charles Grodin," which to me looked like he had sold his intestines for money and then been flown to a location where he was then placed in the electric chair.

Ah, that was an enjoyable evening.*



*Not sarcasm.

Sleep = stupid

If you know me, you probably know that I have a grudge against sleep. The vast majority of people I know think I am crazy for thinking this. So here's a bit about what sleep is like for me. Mostly I don't remember my dreams, so most nights sleeping is like a really long blink. Blink! Eight hours are gone! Magic! On the rare occasions that I do remember my dreams, they fall into two categories.

1) Dream where something awesome happens - wake up to find that dream was not real and am disappointed and depressed.

2) Dream where something horrific happens - wake up distressed, disturbed, and/or depressed. Seriously, the other night I woke from a nightmare and my stomach was in knots.

I'm also bad at sleeping with others. There's always the old "what to do with your other arm" problem, but I also snore and have been known to talk and/or move around or kick in my sleep. I am, in short, a poor bed companion. You do me no favors, sleep. I wish you weren't required.

It's official

Caffienated water, as a concept, freaks me the hell out.

For your reading pleasure

The last of our Reign of the Christopher Reeves reports is now up at The Atrox. This one focuses on the Cyborg Reeve. I swear, there's something fishy about that guy...

New stuff

You know the drill. There's a new Atrox strip at The Lair.

Those damn CW ads

Those print and bus ads for the CW are TERRIBLE.

When I saw the ad for Gilmore Girls I thought "Is that Alexis Bleidel or just some random girl?" I really couldn't tell. Couldn't tell from the Smallville one, either. And I didn't know what the One Tree Hill cast looked like, so that one didn't help. I genuinely believed The CW had just taken photos of random people excited for their shows. I was only convinced they actually featured the actors when I saw the Top Model ad and it was unmistakenly a picture of Tyra Banks. God, those are TERRIBLE PHOTOS. Everyone looks awkward, or washed-out, and the pictures look like they were blown up from wallet size, or something. They're really blurry.

So not a great start for The CW.

(I was worried for a bit, becuase as of two days ago the only "big" CW show that I hadn't seen an ad for was Veronica Mars, but then on Monday my bus home from work had the promo plastered on its side. Always nice to see confirmation that it will indeed exist in the fall, although Kristen Bell's "I'm an ickle widdle girl" expression makes me want to throw up a thousand times.)

More Comic Con

You'll just have to bear with me until it's over, folks.

All the programming for the show is up, and there are much fewer panels this year that I have an active interest in. I'll definitely hit up the Veronica Mars panel this year, since Kristen Bell will atually be there this time out, and there's no way I'll miss the Grant Morrison/Deepak Chopra panel (because, WHAT?), but most of the "big ticket" Hall H panels don't really do it for me. Then again, I only went to maybe half the panels I planned on going to last year, so I doubt I'll be bored. And I have to schedule out when I'm getting my few signatures, too. Fortunately, Clowes seems to be signing at the Fantagraphics booth a lot.

Just a week now. Good times.

So, my life

I haven't actually talked about myself on here for like ten days! The blogosphere doesn't know what to do with itself!

Sorry I said "blogosphere."

What have I been doing? Let me try to part the mists of time, and have a glance at my memories of the last week and a half. There was... a wedding? No, that's too far back. There was the fourth of July. Right. Anyway, a short list.

- I went to three different BBQs over the fourth of July "weekend" (I had to work Monday WHATEVER, JOB), including one at Carrie's friend's boss's house, one at Sam's, and one at Rob and Yaiza's. They were all delightful.

- A group of us watched Heroes of the East, aka Shaolin Challenges Ninja, which proved to be a delightful romantic comedy on top of a fine kung-fu flick. Gordon Liu just flat-out rules.

- We saw Dr. Strangelove at the Hollywood Forever cemetery, which proved just as great as one might hope. And unlike Butch Cassidy there were no necking couples to block my view. Excellent! Then we went to Laurel and Trumbo's to hang out, which was fun, and Laurel got all drunk and loopy, which was funny.

- This past Friday night I wound up doing nothing at all. I stayed at home and wrote. Good for me, I guess.

- Saturday night I had dinner with Lindsay, Frank, Paul, and Liz, but then when we were finished up at 11:30 everyone was like "Unh, I have to get up early," "I'm tired," "I hate spending time with Jeff," etc. So I called Alan and found that he and some other people were at a party not too far away, so I hopped a bus and met them there. Then we went to another party and then back to Hollywood House. Some of us wound up sitting in a kiddie pool freezing our butts off at 5 in the morning for reasons that were unclear then and are even more unclear now.

- Sunday we saw Pirates 2 at a matinee, and it was just fine. Like Pirates 1, only with some better action and an awesome-looking Davy Jones. Then we went back to Llama School and watched Deadwood, which was BAD ASS. I love that show so damn much.

Last night's Deadwood

You do NOT fuck with Dan Dority.

And that's a FACT.

Reign of the Christopher Reeves!

With all them Christopher Reeves running around, it's best to stay informed. Today's update: The Boy Reeve.

Don't miss a minute!

Also, HOLY DAMN THERE'S A NEW ATROX STORE, complete with two T-shirt designs that I can't imagine you not wanting.


(I know I'm breaking character, but I can't stop giggling at "Put it on Boy Reeve's tab!" Frank deserves some kind of medal for these pieces.)

Woo! Comic Con!

Oh man yeah! Only two weeks away!

Current list of stuff to bring and hopefully get signed:
Something by Dan Clowes, probably Ghost World
The Fate of the Artist by Eddie Campbell
Sam and Max: Surfin' the Highway by Steve Purcell
Seven Soldiers #0 and All-Star Superman #1 by Grant Morrison (and if JH Williams and Frank Quitely are there too, well, all the better)

Anything will be better than lugging my Absolute Planetary hardcover around like last year. But Cassaday signed that shit!

I am PSYCHED.

Yet more Atrox

The new comic is up over there. This one was Emory's idea, with a bit of me thrown in.

Sorry to be only shilling the site this week, but I've got actual work on my plate this week, so a substantial blog post has been out of my reach. Perhaps later today? We'll see.

Stay up-to-the-minute

The Reeve of Steel is now profiled over at The Atrox. Who is this masked mystery man?

Expose

Over on the prose page at The Atrox, we've got a very special report. Please read our piece so you can get all the facts.



(And if the reference is a little outside for you, might I suggest reading this?)