Four to Read for Tuesday, March 25

Items of interest from around the Blogosphere:

* Comics Worth Reading: FCBD Questions Unanswered

* The Comics Reporter: ComicsPro '08 Vegas Meeting Round-Up

* Shuffleboil: Jessica Abel interview (via Dirk)

* WeinWords: It's an Honor Just to be Nominated (via Heidi)

Five to Read

Today's five posts of interest from the blogosphere:

* Occasional Superheroine: The "Bad" Comic Shop (via Dirk)

* Jog - The Blog: This post is your internet Easter bonnet. Put it on your head.

* The Comics Reporter: Best of 2007

* Comics212: CAT-EYED BOY: Bringing the Umezu classic to North America

* Dave's Long Box: EL CAZADOR Crossgen Comics

Pittsburgh, Pie, Pi, and Pirates

I found myself stumbling through the streets of Pittsburgh, PA recently and had a
surprisingly good time. I say "surprisingly" because PBurgh isn't the sort of place one might normally choose as a holiday destination. But it is one of those places that, once you have a good reason for going there (like business, a convention, escaping the law,) you are glad you did.

I was asked by the fine folks who run Toonseum – a cartoon art museum inside the Children's Museum – to emcee a thing called Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School. The group started in Brooklyn, but now has dozens of satellite orgs all over the planet. What happens is that burlesque-style performers and models do a song or dance for a few minutes, then freeze in poses for various lengths of time while audience members draw them. As MC, I vamped and entertained in between poses and drew funny funny cartoons on a big pad of paper. As if that weren't enough fun, there were also prizes, beer, pie, and shenanigans of all sorts.

The theme was Piraro, Pie, Pirates, Pi and Pittsburgh. It was March 14th (3.14 is both the date and the math thing), I put pieces of pie in my cartoons almost daily, I have a book of pirate cartoons coming out in a few months, and the names of both the city and myself start with the letters "p,i". What more do you need for a theme?

Here's your MC for the evening, dressed in some
semi-piratey gear. I dress this way fairly often,
but it was nice to have a legitimate excuse for once.




The non-stop goofy goings-on on stage looked something like this. If you're wondering if the evening included monkey business, the answer is yes.


Here, in true pirate style, I am hugging a bottle of spiced rum.


One of the beautiful and talented performers signs my leg. I really wish I could remember her name. Was it "signy"? No, it was not.


This is a crazy artist dude who lived in the artist-loft-studio-former-brewery-dilapidated-warehouse place where the event took place. I think his name is Ray, but I can't be certain. I was distracted by his hat. That's some of his work behind us.


Lastly, I must share this amazing sculpture at the children's museum. It is made of plastic pieces from old gas station signs. As you can see from the closeup, they are sort of stitched together with wire. The whole thing has a stained glass look resulting from the translucency of the plastic. It's dandy as hell, I tell you.

Thanks for sharing my fun time in Pittsburgh with me. I hope you enjoyed it and will savor the memory for the rest of your life.
Smooches,
3ThighsP

Friday Night Fights: Angel vs. Ape

(From Angel and the Ape #1 (1991). Story by Phil Foglio. Art by Phil Foglio & Keith Wilson.)

Round Eleven? Yes Ma'am!

When Will Amazing Spider-Man Catch Up with Action Comics?

Now that Amazing Spider-Man is being published three times a month, when will it catch up in its numbering to Action Comics?

Assuming that ASM keeps its thrice-monthly publication, and that Action continues to come out once a month (not a guarantee, especially lately...), we can do a little quick back-of-the-napkin algebra:

Issue #554 of ASM is the last one published in March; Action didn't publish an issue in March (see what I mean!) though #862 came out in February. So, let x = the number of months until the two titles reach numbering parity, and we get:

554 + 3x = 862 + X
2x = 308
x = 154

So in 154 months; or 12 years, 10 months from now; i.e. January 2020, with issue #1016.

This has been your useless comics math calculation of the day :)

Comics in Google Books

Now that Google has finished scanning our library, some of the comics & graphic novels scanned have started to make their way into Google Books (and its local equivalent, MBooks). A quick search of Mirlyn (our local catalog) shows at least 375 so far, with more sure to come.

Of course, with most of these scanned items still in copyright, they are only available in search mode; which means that you can search the text of the books (and see 'snippets' where the search terms appear) but not actually view the pages of the books themselves; for that you'll still need to go to your friendly local comic store (or public library!)

As might be expected, the quality of the OCR when dealing with hand lettering can be rather poor. Take for example the Google scan of Avengers: Emperor Doom, with 'key words and phrases' that include 'THROUÖH', 'RI&HT', 'THINÖ', and 'AVENÖERS'--we can infer that Google's OCR had difficulties with letterer Bill Oakley's 'G'.

So I'm not exactly sure what the utility will be of having these scans available, but it does make for an interesting curiosity.

Review: Suppli, vol. 1

Suppli, vol. 1
by Mari Okazaki
Tokyopop, $9.99

Twenty-seven-year-old Minami is unhappy in life. Her relationship with her boyfriend of seven years is stagnating and she barely sees him due to her job. But her job at an advertising agency is unsatisfying; Minami wants to create exciting, unconventional ads, while the clients just want the same, safe advertising. By the end of the first chapter (and I don't think I'm giving away anything here) Minami's boyfriend dumps her and her life starts spinning out of control. Luckily for Minami she's a plucky manga heroine, so despite numerous setbacks she starts to live life again.

Suppli is another josei manga, intended for an audience of young professional women. I can't say that the story grabbed me, though that may differ for you if you're part of the target audience. Certainly it's refreshing to see a manga targeted at women where the protagonist has interests other than finding a man; one feels that Minami's professional challenges are as important to her as her romantic ones, perhaps even moreso.

The best part of Suppli is Okazaki's art, which features inky lines that never overwhelm, excellent character design, and a strong sense of graphics and storytelling. While the story may not have held my complete interest throughout, I continued to go through the volume to enjoy the artwork. I pre-ordered this book based solely on the cover, figuring if the art inside was half as good then it would be worth it; happily the interior lives up.

So a mild recommendation to at least pick the book up and look through it; give it a chance to see if the story appeals to you.

Rating: 3 (of 5)

(Other reviews: David Welsh; Katherine Dacey)