Spike's Cartoons and Whinging

SDCC 2004 Con Report, a la Ginsberg.

(Ahem.)

I have seen a con hall

A giant

A Colossus of California curving with the horizon, a fat white monster lain low and bright as a star, glass and steel and pocked concrete

Stormtroopers and Goths steam in her streets

Swaddled in black velvet capes and white plastic

Rubberback corsets and woolen cowls

Burning, burning down under a summer sun

What the hell, I think I smell ham frying

So not worth the look, fellas

Robot

That is definitely a robot

The World of Tomorrow stands sentinel over this hall

But the World of Tomorrow is not a comic book

Faces, now

Friends and accquaintances and fans and comrades

Hawking and shilling and screaming, prying the cash from a shuffling crowd

Last year, we were by the toilets

Better traffic

I miss the toilets

This is Roger

He draws Hotel Fred on Modern Tales, among other things

He was sitting next to the Monkeysuit guys, and he drew a lot

See

I also saw Shaenon Dirk Karen Cara Carla Dirk's friend Ryan

(who allowed me to poke him numerous times)

Vera Dylan Jason Clio Tracy Erika Emotion Eric Chuck Merlin Jesse Scott The Marvelous Patric Glych Donna Adrianne Caveman Robot Pikachu AND THIS THING WHAT THE CHRIST

Derek won an Eisner

I screamed

Then I made Neil take a picture with me

He looked tired

NO YOU CAN'T SEE IT

There are many pictures I shan't allow you to see

Whoops, better join the mailing list

I am crafty, am I not

Also, as always, excited about making comics again

Cuz, that's the point, isn't it?

...

P.S. Found an army surplus store

My husband is a handsome cold-weather commando

Or fat suburban deer hunter with delusions of stealthiness

Whatever

Posted by Spike at 06:41 PM | Comments (6)

Back from San Diego.

Good Lord, what a con. It was great seeing all of you there. Definitely gotta expand that friends list, now.

I'm beat. Honest-to-Jesus con report later, but for now, here's me brutally molesting Caveman Robot. I own this guy a drawing, big time...

I Come from the Land of the Ice and Snow...

VALHALLA, I AM COMING.

This year's SDCC will probably my most low-key and least-frantic ever.

I'll be at the Modern Tales booth with Shaenon, Dirk, The Marvelous Patric, Glych, Marilyn Scott-Waters and Jason Thompson. It will be awesome.

If any of you are going, I plan on bringing a roll of canvas and some ink for us and random other people to goof off and paint on. 200-proof attention whoring, but that's what cons are for, really.

Also, sound the horns and beat the drums, because Girlamatic only just recently broke into Alexa's Top 100,000 Websites for the first time ever as far as total hits and page popularity goes. I know you're all reading it, now. You can't deny it. YOU CANNOT DENY THE COLD, UNFEELING LOGIC OF ALEXA. Thanks for winning GAM the bronze in the 100,000-meter dash; we're the third Modern Tales site to make it this high. Hoorj.

Anyway, that's it. I'll try to update before I leave for the con Thursday. In the meantime, enjoy some of the decorative splendor of Lincoln Park. Hope the lightpost wasn't Republican.

Atrocity Tourism: The Bobby Fischer Interviews.

Very topical, given that Bobby was just pinched in Japan.

Bobby Fischer, the hottest shit the world of international competitive chess has ever seen, is absolutely insane. Really. And if you don't believe me, you can see for yourself here, on his official webpage. Scroll down for MP3s of his numerous radio interviews concerning the Russians fixing world championship chess games, the Jew-run CIA's attempts to steal his chess boards, and his ghoulishly gleeful 9/11 "Death to America!" interview.

A Few Birds I Missed.

Yeah, yeah, it just keeps going.

-- Holy Mother of Christ does the movie adaptation of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events looks absolutely unforgiveable. I listen to audiobooks while I draw, and this book got a turn a few months ago. Despite being "young adult fiction," it was pretty entertaining, if only because of how gleefully and unapologetically dire everything was. Looks like it's been transformed into some lame Jim Carrey vehicle, on account the trailer's about 98% Jim Carrey doing the only bits Jim Carrey knows how to do. Namely, flailing around like a pants-fouling spastic and making dinosaur noises. Jesus, I won't even BitTorrent this one, I'd probably still want my money back.

-- Dear webcomic authors: Ease up on the smirking soapbox characters. Please. As a personal favor to me.

In case you were never informed, it's not fun to read comics where the obvious self-insertion character is never wrong, always has the perfect devastating comeback for any reproach, and functions as a font of irrefutable knowledge for the rest of the cast, who spend most of the strip lamenting the error of their ways once bathed in the light of The Smirker's golden, immaculate wisdom. Ayn Rand couldn't get away with that shit, and neither can you.

I understand the temptation. Really, I do. And it probably doesn't hurt to haul out the bullhorn every now and then, just for variety. But it's more important to remember that you're probably writing your comic for other people as much as you're writing it for yourself, and the less your audience rolls its eyes and groans, the better. Then again, being pat and predictable might give you a better chance at making it into the newspaper funnies, so what the hell do I know.

-- Horseflesh, beer, and seawater-flavored ice cream. Oh those wacky Japanese-ers. Whatever, s'gotta be better than those buttered popcorn jellybeans. OH HEY WOW MY FAVORITE FLAVOR MOUTHFUL OF GASOLINE.

-- Also, via Eric Millikin, Dubya flipping off protestors. AHAHAHA. Looks like Baby Bush is starting to crack under the pressure! Vote Kerry, folks. It'll be worth it just to watch this warmonger's accelerating mental collapse.

Umpteen Birds with One Stone.

It's been a while, and I've been meaning to write. Honest. But I can't seem to find the time, for reasons totally beyond me. So, I'll be compressing everything I've been wanting to say for a while into one post. Economical, huh? Ready set go.

-- If you've emailed me and I haven't replied, please be patient. My backlog of emails to answer grows daily, but I do intend to answer them all.

-- The mummification of Beavis the rat will be finished this week, cross my heart and hope to die. He's hard as plywood now, I've been checking. Neil, however, died a few days ago. It wasn't unexpected; the vet had mentioned he was in heart failure at the last visit. Matt and I didn't have time, supplies, or room to attempt two mummificiations at once, so we snuck out in the dead of night to the parkland by the lake and buried the little guy under a tree. Poor Neil. He nibbles yogurt treats with the angels, now.

-- If I knew you in high school and we weren't friends then, stop emailing me. Seriously. You are a stranger. Go join Classmates.com or something, talk to someone who gives a shit.

-- If you're not watching Rock and Roll Confidential TV, Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, or Paranoia Agent, that needs to change.

-- Matt and I just had our six-month anniversary, not that we noticed. My mother-in-law had to remind us, because we've both got mushy brains. Go us. We celebrated by doing nothing at all.

-- I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 a few hours after I watched Chicago's annual gay pride parade a couple of weeks ago, and thus had a weekend so liberal that several trailer park tenants in Augusta, Georgia probably bolted awake screaming without knowing exactly why. If you've never seen either, I recommend them both. I just wish Matt hadn't forgotten his camera. The leatherdaddy in Roman Centurion gear was awesome.

-- I also went to a little reading down at Quimby's, and I got to hear Dave Awl read a hilarious story entitled Love the Shirt. If you have taste, you've probably heard Dave on This American Life's "Sissies" episode, or seen him performing in Chicago with The Pansy Kings. Funny, funny guy.

-- Also finally got back to Mitsuwa, the gigantic Japanese mall on the outskirts of the city, with Dirk & Company. Bought kamaboko, kirimochi, clam jerky, gyoza, and curry-flavored Pretz, marveled at some kid who was absurdly good at DDR, and senselessly criticized a million rows of manga. Still, the last time I was in a big chain bookstore, Dirk, Matt and I found it very, very amusing that most of the aisles were abandoned, except for five kids squatting on the floor in the manga section, engrossed. Sign of the times. Marvel and DC should be very, very nervous right now.

-- Register to vote, you apathetic bastards.

That ought to do it. As always, more later.

Woah! Prophecy's Out!

Ages and ages ago, before Sparkneedle had a home on Girlamatic, the guys at Prophecy were literally the first people to recognize it as decent work. For that, I'm eternally grateful. Sparkneedle didn't end up going down that path (in part due to my own impatience), but Prophecy went ahead, not as a magazine as previously planned, but as an anthology.

I saw my first copy a few days ago. It's big, it's full color, and it looks really, really good. Check it out, it should be on the rack in the better comic shops.

Hello! I'm Here to Ruin Your Day!

I've been watching what I eat more carefully for the past couple of months. I'm not a food-group-demonizing diet Nazi just yet, but I figure choking down less garbage could only work in my favor in the long run.

Part of figuring out what's worth eating is looking up the nutritional info for crap online. A lot of restaurants (but not enough) keep pretty detailed calorie counts on their corporate websites. It's gotten to the point that I don't trust the ones that don't... Not that the high-volume chow outfits describing the naked horror of their menus in lurid, heart-stopping detail makes things any better for 'em. There are places I just don't go anymore.

Case in point: Click the Trixie.

Long ago, every once in a blue moon, I'd give in and walk the four steps to the Starbucks next door for a Caramel Frappuccino. Not anymore.

This link is practically atrocity tourism. It's always worth posting because of the shock and misery it seems to inpsire.

I'm sure nobody ordering their daily Strawberries & Creme thingamajig from Starbucks thinks of it as health food, but they probably don't think that they're sipping on a Big Mac, either.

Look up your favorite! Ride that wave of mild, nauseous terror! Never touch a caramel brownie again!

FYI: About the Leeching.

Yeah, that stops now.

The site's gotten a bit more popular lately, to the point where I have to start watching my bandwidth consumption. I used to have a pretty relaxed attitude towards leeching, but I really, really don't like what I'm seeing in the logs, lately. I was especially put off when a person I politely emailed about removing this update's image from his sig on a busy anime forum basically ignored me. So I fixed it myself.

This is still too polite, in my opinion. Even with the seizure-inducing blinking it was doing. The next offender gets obscure African parasite infestation photos. 2000 pixels across.

I don't mind people linking images for discussion. That's fine. But I don't appreciate it when someone makes something on my site their forum sig image, or their forum avatar, or a static feature on their own site. My bandwidth is finite. And I didn't buy it to spend it on you.

Now that that's over with... Beavis' mummification will be finalized on Wednesday.

Happy Fourth.

Lies I Have Told Myself Today.

-- I will play the Star Wars Galaxies trial I just downloaded for exactly an hour, and then I will get back to work.

-- Fanfic is giving me nips, but he doesn't actually hate me. My hands just smell like food. Always.

-- I am not worried about Comic Con in the slightest.

-- I will play the Star Wars Galaxies trial I just downloaded until noon, and then I will get back to work.

-- I will answer the phone the next time it rings.

-- These peanut noodles couldn't possibly be more than 400 calories.

-- I will play the Star Wars Galaxies trial I just downloaded until three, and then I will get back to work.

...

:(