The Simpsons on Hulu

I've now got a Hulu beta account, so here's "Husbands & Knaves," the recent episode of The Simpsons that featured Alan Moore, Art Spiegelman & Dan Clowes as The League of Extraordinary Freelancers (complete with ads).

New This Week: November 29, 2007

New comics arrive Thursday this week, I guess because Thanksgiving was last week? No, it doesn't make sense to me either.


Boom! have a trade collection of their rather enjoyable Talent mini. While the story by Christopher Golden and Tom Sniegoski reads like the pilot for a television series, it's a rather good one, and the art from Paul Azaceta works well. (I reviewed issues #1, #2, #3-4.)

There's a third collection of Eric Shanower's retelling of the Trojan War, Age of Bronze. I haven't finished the second one yet, which means I'm a good-for-nothing slacker.

The first Popgun anthology is 400 full-color pages of stories from some nifty comics creators; a good bargain which some very likely good stories within.

DC have the third collection of Douglas Rushkoff's Testament, a comic which seems so tailored to my reading interests that it's no surprise that hardly anyone else is reading it; and Garth Ennis's Midnighter: Killing Machine, which I thought was good for what it was, and has art from the always-nifty Chris Sprouse.

Speaking of Ennis, he and Gary Erskine resurrect Dan Dare for Virgin Comics. (Last resurrected by Grant Morrison & Rian Hughes, so they have a lot to live up to.)

Other floppies of interest include Casanova (#11), Madman Atomic Comics (#5), Jack of Fables (#17), and All Star G-dd-amm Batman and Robin (#8)

Tons of manga this week, though not from the usual suspects (although Viz have a handful), but rather from Seven Seas, NetComics, Digital Manga, Del Rey and Dark Horse. And Fanfare/Ponent Mon have Ice Wanderer, a collection of six man vs. nature stories by the master manga-ka Jiro Taniguchi.

Why Isn't Previews Free Online?

Why isn't Diamond's Previews catalog available online for free? Seriously, they could just create a PDF file from the InDesign (or whatever program they use) file and let people download it. Sure it would be a large PDF, but so what? Then more comics and graphic novels would get exposed to those who don't get the paper version, and people who never set foot in a comic store may find something they like. Most comic stores I know of either provide Previews for free to their regular customers, or sell them at cost; so they could save on shipping charges by not having to get multiple boxes of the print version. Seems like a win-win-win situation to me.

(Of course, the information from Previews is already out there each month from the various online comic shops; but a PDF version provided by Diamond would I think be more user-friendly.)

New Library Comics: Week of November 19, 2007

Here's a list of the comics we added to our library collection last week:


Cohen, Michael, 1950- Strange attractors / Bellingham, Wash. : RetroGrafix, 1993-1997. no. 8

Moore, Terry. Strangers in paradise / Houston, TX : Abstract Studio, c1994- nos. 5, 8

Oakley, Mark, 1970- Thieves & kings / Toronto : I Box Pub., 1994- nos. 1, 3, 4, 7, 9, 10

Smith, Jeff, 1960 Feb. 27- Bone / Worthington, Ohio : Cartoon Books, 1992 nos. 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 19

Smith, Jeff, 1960 Feb. 27- Bone holiday special / [Lombard, IL : Warrior Publications], c1993.

Smith, Jeff, 1960 Feb. 27- Bone sourcebook. / Anaheim, CA : Image Comics, 1995-


This listing is now available as an RSS Feed!

New This Week: November 21, 2007

While last week saw the release of some great OGNs, this week is the Week of the Floppy at your local comics store.


Topping the list is the first issue of Angel: After the Fall, the officially blessed Angel Season 6 comic. If this sees even half the sales of Dark Horse's Buffy continuation, it will probably be IDW's best-selling comic ever.

Pulling in at a close second is the latest issue of my favorite romantic comedy super-hero comic, Thom Zahler's Love & Capes (#6).

Matt Wagner returns to his most famous creation, Grendel, in the first issue of Grendel: Behold the Devil.

Also in new issues are the librarian sci-fi/fantasy/action/humor comic Rex Libris (#9); The first issue of the ongoing Hawaiian Dick; Groo: Hell on Earth (#2); Ex Machina #32; Castle Waiting II (#9); Gødland (#20); Captain America (#32); and Powers (#27).


So go grab yourself some comic books, and spend the four-day weekend reading your favorite stories!

YAFQ: Do You De-Bone Your Comics?

Last week when I ranted about Marvel's extra ad pages I mentioned without explaining a process that I call de-boning. So what exactly is de-boning?

You know how your magazines usually come with one or two (or more) cardstock inserts (usually subscription cards) that bridge the saddle? I find it very hard to read with that cardstock flopping up, so I tear them out.

I do the same thing to my comics, and not just the occasional cardstock insert. I take out those bound-in eight-page advertainment comic-like things too.

When DC adds extra ad pages, it's usually in the form of an extra four-page signature that's bound in; it quite often is of a slightly different paper quality, and you can tell by the fact that each of the four pages has an ad. I rip those out too. I can slim a DC comic down to its natural 32-page size.

One of the reason why I hate it when Marvel adds extra ad pages is that hey do it in such a way that you can't be-done the comic without tearing out story pages; a sheet will have three ad pages and one story page on it. Boo.

I know that some people would be shocked and horrified at this, as the comic is no longer near-mint or whatever. I decided that I don't really care; I buy comics for reading, not collecting, and it's easier to read without extra ads in the way.

So, after that long explanation, my Yet Another Friday Question to you is this:

Do you de-bone your comics?

Empty Graphic Novel Shelves

The comics & graphic novels shelves are empty, because Google has come to take them away for scanning. (They'll be back in a week or so.) Not sure how much useful they'll be having been scanned; they cannot be presented online because they're under copyright, and I imagine that the OCR for searching on the hand lettering in most comics will be hit-or-miss.







(For info on the Google Scanning and the Michigan Digitization Project, see http://www.lib.umich.edu/mdp/)