Thursday morning notes

• Well, it's official - I'm officially free of Comic World News in any real capacity. Not like I was doing much - between work, family and getting my portfolio together, I haven't had time for much else. I may still do the odd interview with independent comics creators, and I've promised to e-mail nasty missives to everyone still involved in some kind of "advisory" capacity. Added side benefit - I can talk much more smack on stupid comics people now, without fear of tainting anyone else's "reputation."

• Also, Shawn Hoke is now the Columns Editor for the aforementioned site. That much I knew. But, shit, when did he get so funny? This week, Shawn becomes the anti-Pipeline with his look at the behemoth known as Previews. Some highlights:

Stormbreaker: the Saga of Beta Ray Bill #2 (Page 38): Why the hell has Thor turned into a donkey and why is he crying?

X-Men Phoenix: Endsong #3 (Page 59): This is a touching cover with Wolverine about to kiss a dead woman. Another Greg Land cover, and the 50th Marvel cover in this book to feature Wolverine.

Shawn also points to some comics he's actually interested in, including Kramacher and A Strange Day from Alternative Comics, Ed The Happy Clown reprints (yay!) from Drawn & Quarterly, Essential Luke Cage from Marvel (I'll be buying this as well), and some other various and sundry comics. Also, he makes particular mention of an upcoming issue of The Comics Journal:

The Comics Journal #266 (Page 276) Alright fanboys and Marvel geeks, this is your chance to see what the rest of us love about TCJ. The cover interview is with Brian Michael Bendis. I promise you it's more than the usual three-page interview published each month in Wizard. Just fork over the $10 bucks for this one, kids. Actually, stay tuned, because maybe I'll be giving this issue away to someone who has never read the Journal. That might be a good contest.

I'm hoping this ends up reading like Gary Groth's interview with Todd McFarlane.

• Update your side-bar thingies: BeaucoupKevin got his own domain name: BeaucoupKevin.com. Pretentious assfuck¹. Also, he looks at Birth of a Nation and Howard Dean.

• 20th Television are a bunch of bastards. For some reason, Ally McBeal isn't on DVD in the US. This is poop. I love Ally McBeal to a level I can't express. I'd be ashamed to admit that, if my love wasn't so strong. However, the first four seasons are available in the UK, on some different region coding thing I don't actually understand, but fellow geeks hooked my ass up, and I'm incredibly grateful.

• I'm finally getting off my lazy ass and picking up my backlog of comics this week. I haven't bought anything for a month, and I'm starting to feel guilty about it. So I may actually talk about comics for a change. I'm not even sure what I've got in that stack, so it will be a surprise. I have decided, though, to kill the majority of my pull list, and to start buying the Previews thing to order stuff on a case by case basis.


1. I kid, of course. Yay, footnotes!