Ahoy, Mateys!

Ahoy, ye scurvy landlubbers! Today be Talk Like a Pirate Day. Arrr!

New Library Comics: Week of September 11, 2006

Here are the comics we added to our library collection last week:


Creature features /Austin, TX : Mojo Press, c1994.

Tezuka, Osamu, 1928-1989. Adolf : an exile in Japan /San Francisco, Calif. : Cadence Books, c1996. vol. 2

Thorne, Frank. The iron devil /Seattle, WA : Eros Comix, 1995.

Thorne, Frank. Lann /Seattle, WA : Eros Comix, 1995.

Minicomics Monday

A grab bag this time out:

Linda Medley's untitled minicomic with lightbulbs on the cover plays with the formal visual language of comics for an enlightening little vingette. It doesn't compare to her Castle Waiting, but then it's not suppsoed to. I'd like to see more of established cartoonists using the freedom of minicomics to try out things they normally wouldn't do. (from One Percent Press)

Evan Keeling's Ataxia Overdrive (vol. 1 pt. 1) resembles a scene from Run Lola Run, if Lola was being chased by creepy monsters in cloaks. Keeling produces a fun little action scene, but there's no story to go with it--it's begun in media res and just stops before any sort of conclusion. But since it looks like this mini is meant as a trailer for his Webcomic I guess that's okay.

Eleanor Davis's I've Lost My Spots will probably remind you of one of those children's picture books with holes in the pages, where you peek through to the next page and it melds with the image of the page you are on. Davis applies this technique to a fun little mini comic.

Monkey Covers

Sunday is Monkey Covers day here at YACB. Because there's nothing better than a comic with a monkey on the cover.

Joe Kubert let's us known that "You Can't Pin a Medal on a Gorilla" on the cover of Star Spangled War Stories #126.

(Standard disclaimer about gorilla NCOs not really being monkeys applies.)

Image courtesy of the GCD. Click on the image for a larger version.

YAFL2 Week 1

Here are the results from Week 1 of Yet Another Fantasy League 2:


www.rickgebhardt.net 48
Kickers Inc. 78

Superteam 32
Star City Archers 78

Flex Mentallo 72
The Defenders 68

Delphi Oracles 40
Power Pack 38


Current Standings:

   Team                 Record  Pct    Points  Streak
   -------------------- ------  -----  -----   ------
1. Kickers Inc.          1-0-0  1.000  78.00   W-1
1. Star City Archers     1-0-0  1.000  78.00   W-1
3. Flex Mentallo         1-0-0  1.000  72.00   W-1
4. Delphi Oracles        1-0-0  1.000  40.00   W-1 
5. The Defenders         0-1-0   .000  68.00   L-1
6. www.rickgebhardt.net  0-1-0   .000  48.00   L-1 
7. Power Pack            0-1-0   .000  38.00   L-1 
8. Superteam             0-1-0   .000  32.00   L-1  

Week 2 Games:

Star City Archers
vs.
Kickers Inc.

Delphi Oracles
vs.
www.rickgebhardt.net

Superteam
vs.
The Defenders

Flex Mentallo
vs.
Power Pack


Good luck to all!

(In my other fantasy leagues, I won 57-53 in my friends & family league; won 67-57 in my public league; and scored 296.40 points in my pass & kick league, good for 3rd place. I also lost 4-5-1 in the first round of fantasy baseball playoffs.)

New This Week: September 13, 2006

Based on the NCRL list for this week's comics shipping from Diamond, here are a few things to look for at the local comic shop today:


The Pick of the Week is Yukinobu Hoshino's adaptation of James P. Hogan's The Two Faces of Tomorrow (from Dark Horse). If you're a fan of hard sci-fi manga like Planetes, you should enjoy this.


In other comics:

Alias have the extremely affordable B&W collection of ArmorQuest: Genesis.

Boom! have the third issue of the highly entertaining Talent.

Buenaventura Press have the 6th Kramer's Ergot.

DC have Musclebound, the fourth collection of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol, featuring the Secret Origin of Flex Mentallo, Hero of the Beach! They also have new issues of 52 (week 19), DMZ (#11), Ex Machina (#23), Fables (#53), and Firestorm (#29); a collection of the new Jonah Hex series; and Brian K. Vaughan's new hardcover OGN The Pride of Baghdad.

Fantagraphics have a new issue of Love & Rockets (vol. 2 #17) and the fifth volume of Mome.

First Second unleash their second have of GNs; unlike some other bloggers I didn't get preview copies of any of them, but they all look nice, especially Journey into Mohawk Country.

Image have new issues of Casanova (#4), Girls (#17), and Phonogram (#2).

Marvel have a collection of Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man; and new issues of Thunderbolts (#106) and Ultimate X-Men (#74).

Oni have the third issue of Wasteland.


You could very easily unload a ton of cash at your FLCS today, so hold on tight to your wallet!

More TokyoPop & Viz Charts

Following up on my post from earlier today about the volume number counts for TokyoPop & Viz:

I ran the numbers from the August & July Previews as well. Here are the histograms (you may need to click to see the larger version to read them fully):

TokyoPop:



Viz:



Series 1 (blue) = September
Series 2 (red) = August
Series 3 (yellow) = July

For TokyoPop:
September: Count: 39; Median: 3
August: Count: 42; Median: 2
July: Count: 39; Median: 3

For Viz:
September: Count: 38; Median: 8.5
August: Count: 31; Median: 9
July: Count: 35; Median: 9

(Note: for both publishers, I did not count books/novels, just manga volumes.)

With three months of data, it looks like the pattern is holding; TokyoPop produces more manga with low volume numbers, and more new titles each month than Viz.