Recently in Meandering Diatribes Category

Short Film by Mark Ryden and Marion Peck. yeah, that Mark Ryden.

Not... really sure what that was. It's not what I'm used to from Ryden, to say the very least. But I watched it like five times, so I guess I probably like it.

Hi, guys. Sorry I haven't been blogging lately, but there's a lot to do with the second book being prepped for print, and my feeble attempts to close the gap on updates. They've been a little more regular, and I'm only a week behind, now! I hope to catch up completely by Saturday.

For those who don't read the comic unless I blog the updates, Ben's just been chewed out by Dr. Bash, and he's taking it... strangely. Lots of pages to catch up on.

And as I've been mentioning to anyone who'll listen to, the second Templar trade, The Mob Goes Wild," is now being solicited in Diamond's Previews!

These postcards go out to every comic shop in creation this afternoon to encourage orders. If you'd like to order the book through Diamond, give your retailer the code MAY08 3931.

...or you could wait for the PRE-ORDER PAGE to go up on Tuesday or Wednesday or thereabouts.

More later!

You know what you need to do?

You need to get a nice Russet potato, and stab it all over with a fork so it's full of holes. Then, you need to coat it in a thin layer of olive oil, and sprinkle on some kosher salt.

While that's baking at 350 degrees for about an hour (or until squeezable), sitting directly on the rack, you need to get a peeled, sliced-up banana and a heaping handful of blueberries out of the freezer... you do keep a few smoothie-friendly fruits in the freezer, don't you?... and toss 'em in the blender with a cup of water, and liquefy that until it's drinkable and a radioactive shade of purple-blue. Then, when the potato's done, you need to slice it open lengthwise, mash up the insides, sprinkle on some more kosher salt and paprika and onion powder and black pepper, and top it off with a few spoonfuls of plain yogurt.

Mix it up, so the yogurt gets all liquid-y.

And then, you need to EAT. Oh, yeah.

....

Anyway, this is that update I've been promising you guys. The long one.

Last weekend was Wizard World Chicago, which was the best con I've ever had a table at, hands down. I had a lot of visitors, I sold a lot of books, and most strangely of all, I got a lot of work done. I'm not really a con report sort of person, because I'm skeptical as to how interesting those things are to people who never went. But I'll post a few links to some people I met, caught up with, and so forth.

Becca, for example, sat to my right, and spent the con drawing commissions! (I got a chance to be helpful when someone commissioned a portrait of their Draenei from World of Warcraft, but provided a black-and-white printout for Becca to work from; she didn't know Draenei were blue.) Sarah and Corrine sat to my left; I already mentioned them, right?

I was also kept company by Peter G., a game programmer who commissioned a portrait of the heroine of Diner Dash. Very unusual subject matter, but it actually came out really nice.

SEND ME A SCAN, PETE!

Several rows over were BMAN and Alisa, selling prints and copies of BMAN's graphic novel Soul Chaser Betty (Which you can read for free over on WCN. Updates every weekday. Hint hint.) Directly behind me (or was I behind her?) was Ashley Woods, who handed me an extremely slick copy of her first comic in exchange for one of mine, and had her mom with her for go-fer duties and table babysitting. That is just... crazy supportive.

Lynn Lau came by, bought a book, and turned me on to Hugo & Bana, her comic on WCN. (Which is only the merest fraction of her repertoire, by the way.) And a lot of other people visited besides, saying they knew about my comic already and just wanted a book, which gave me big ol' butterflies. Thanks, everyone.

In non-con news, unless there was weirdness associated with the order, ALL of the original (and new!) $15.00 Templar orders are out the door, and the commission orders start heading out next week.I'd like to get all of the orders done by the time the second chapter and intermission wind up, so I can do a fresh pre-order with some amount of decency. Thanks for your patience, guys.

One of you knows this man.

I don't know how well, but he's seen my comics. He says you showed him.

I love you, mmkay? <3 Even if you're responsible for that humiliating I MADE A POOPIE grin on my stupid face.

The man's name is Neil. He's holding a painting I made him, which is creepy and obsessive and reduces his bandmates to faceless shadows in the far background. No restraining order yet, though, so I think it went pretty well.

One of the nice things about being freakishly preoccupied with a band that doesn't play fifty jillion person arena shows is that you don't have to be a supermodel to get into the green room. You just have to paint them something. Ineptly. I suggest trying it out on your favorite band, see where it gets you!

And You-Know-Who-You-Are, thank you for making this the best concert I've ever been to. Ever.

Comics shortly.

Okay, first off: My readers are awesome. Fact.

You guys didn't just make Templar, Arizona in print possible with your flood of pre-orders, but you're all just incredibly cool, generous people. You go out of your way to be nice about things. Not just the emails, which I read and appreciate so much, but actual gifts. GIFTS. I mean, WOW. They're just so awesome, I really do hafta show 'em off. I hope the senders don't mind.

This is a TAMA CD. From Japan. Airmail. I included a shot of the note that came with it, because even after all these years on the Intarweb, Engrish still cracks me up.

Remember my post not too long ago, where I was asking around about the song in the animation at the top of this page? (I'd link the actual animation, but YouTube deleted it.) well, that song's on this CD. And I still love it. This was sent to me my a reader who lives and works in Japan, out of the kindness of her heart.

Bad. ASS.

This next one will probably seem really weird if you don't know what I consider entertaining. But trust me, this is spot-on.

Pictured: The cover of a book I received as a birthday present from Brenna. (I'll name her, cuz I know she won't mind gettin' called out n' stuff.) It's old, it's illustrated, and the text is... well, it's this.

Oh GOD what a perfect phrase.

"Fistulous Withers." Sounds like a email spammer's name, or an experimental noise band from The Tenderloin in San Francisco. I'd pay five bucks to watch 'em open for The Residents, anyway.

And hey, if that wasn't enough: This was the card that came with the book! Right up my stupid, esoteric alley, this is. And Brenna pre-ordered a Templar book-n-commission, and asked for me to draw her the conjoined twins on the card! It's almost enough to make up for the Hensel Twins refusing to friend me on MySpace.

Sort of. :( OH GOD I JUST WANT TO LOVE YOU.

And the cherry on the sundae of Brenna's gift-giving: An open/closed sign for an imaginary fast food establishment. Perhaps you recognize it. If you don't see me proudly displaying this thing at my con tables from this day forward, feel free to march up and smack me.

Oh hey, did you know Brenna not only has a pretty rad webcomic, but also an Etsy shop where you can get your very own crafts from her direct? And t-shirts? Just sayin'.

And we close with... well, I'll let it speak for itself.

Holy. CRAP.

Okay, do you know what this is? I mean, do you have any idea? Really? No, you don't. You can't possibly. IT IS TOO PERFECT TO BE COMPREHENDED BY THE HUMAN BRAIN.

This book was on my Amazon Wishlist for about two years, possibly longer, and it fell into my lap out of the freaking CLEAR BLUE SKY a couple of days ago, gift-wrapped and everything, from a self-described patron of the arts. This makes me so unreasonably happy. The Burns Archive, in case you didn't know, is probably the finest privately-owned repository of incredibly screwed-up medical, forensic, psychiatric, and memorial photography in North America, and it occasionally puts of themed collections. This one features Civil War amputees, a really unlucky lady parachutist, anencephalitic conjoined twins, and at least one REALLY convincing hermaphrodite. And because The Burns Archive is cool like that, each and every photo is extensively footnoted.

I'd scan some of these great photos for you guys, but there is NO WAY I am stressing the spine of this BEAUTIFUL MIRACLE OF GOD. Get'cher own!

And this isn't even all of it. You guys send me rare MP3s of my favorite band, artwork, books, and a ton of other stuff, just cuz y'want to. I couldn't ask for better readers.

So, this is a THANK YOU. A king-sized one. Because it needs to be done.

Tomorrow: Hopefully a new page of comics, and the state of the now UTTERLY SUCCESSFUL PRE-ORDER PROJECT!

Hey, guys?

Please don't email me, PM me, or approach me at a con to ask me if I think your Really Neat Comic Idea is any good. Because the truth of the matter is, I have no idea. Nobody does. And nobody will ever know if your comic is any good until you actually DO IT. If you have five or ten pages of the comic finished and want an opinion on some work that's ready to be seen, GREAT. I'd be happy to take a look. But I can't judge anything based on a pitch. I don't really believe anyone can. Not reliably, anyway.

Nearly any plot or concept can be executed poorly, no matter how original or well-pitched it is. And plenty of plots and set-ups that sound exceptionally trite in theory can make for great stories.

Your plot is important, but how you plan to tell it is what will ultimately make it worth reading. And I have no idea how you plan to tell anything if all you've got for me is "It's about (x)."

Okay. It's about (x).

So?

Hurricane Katrina.
Illegal wiretaps.
CIA name leaks.
Iraq quagmire.
Full-throttle neoptism.
Escalation in Iran.
Osama, still chillin' in Pakistan.
No weapons of mass destruction. Anywhere.
Rising body count.
Falling opinion polls.
And the quiet death and removal of my very favorite bonehead website, ThenLeave.com.

o/` I TOLD you soooo. o/`

T-shirts still available! Wanna pretend you weren't one of the hoodwinked? Now's the time to buy!

And for those of you "staying the course?" Enjoy! I hope the draft gets reinstated and gas goes up to fifteen bucks a gallon. FREEDOM ISN'T FREE, YA KNOW!

AHA HA HA HA HA.

HA.

Feel free to shit yourself with rage in the comments, because I personally guarantee I won't care. And hey, make sure to bring up Clinton! Lord knows that's the best you guys can do, these days.

Snatched out of my forum for display on the front page: Why it's getting harder and harder to be under 35 in America.

A friend of mine, Dirk, has been reading Strapped, and is beginning to get steadily more and more annoyed with the state of affairs. Given the statistics the book offers on housing costs, childcare and insurance, I can see why. It's sort of compounded when you compare the sort of standards our parents had at our age with what we're given now.

Good jobs are hard to find, and when you do find work, you probably won't get benefits. Plenty of companies are willing to work people 35 hours a week to avoid insuring them; I know people in this exact situation. Having a kid in your 20s is a laughably ruinous proposition for every single person I know. One income used to rent a house: Now two incomes get you an apartment.

But I guess that's just because we're all "slackers." Yeah, that must be it.

I'll probably be stealing this book from Dirk when he's done with it, as depressing a read as it sounds like. And I think you guys should pick it up, too.

Hi, folks. Spike's man-thing, here, making a rare Circus post to rant about a few related things and throw some links at you.

First off, those of you who hold any kind of strong political leanings at all will want to check out BuyBlue.org. This site--and a few other sites--are performing the invaluable service of researching exactly to whom various companies are handing out campaign contributions, and summarizing the information for our benefit.

Whatever your political leanings, you're likely to find a lot of bad news on any of these sites. But the worst news for me is that Amazon.com gives 61% of its political donations to Republicans. Amazon, who I do all my goddamned Christmas shopping through, simply because of the convenience of their wishlist system.

Yeah. This is a problem.

So I've been looking into alternatives. There are a number of vendor-independent wishlist / gift registry services out there, and the one that's looking the best to me at the moment is WishCentral. It's a little bit beta, and adding items to the list is, naturally, more complicated than just clicking a single link, but the advantage of being able to choose whatever items and sources you want is pretty great. Looking through other people's wishlists, I've seen people asking for general categories of gifts like "Bath & Body Works stuff," and even things that aren't simple buy-it-off the web products, like "a visit to a neurologist." (I shit you not. Get a load of this guy.) It's also kind of cool that your friends and family can "reserve" a gift without actually having to buy it from the vendor that you suggest. That's handy for folks like my dad who'd rather buy stuff from brick-and-mortar stores (a practice which, with Amazon's system, led to my brother getting two copies of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City last year).

So anyway, I've put together my own list to kinda test the thing out, and I made the process slightly more complicated than it needed to be, checking mySimon to find cheap sources for the stuff I want, and then going back to BuyBlue.org to make sure wasn't linking any red companies (naturally, Amazon and Wal-Mart were right out).

I'm tentatively recommending WishCentral to everybody who doesn't want to make their friends and family contribute to Republican political efforts through an Amazon wishlist. Please check it out, folks, and tell us what you think about this service, or if you know of a better one. Hell, feel free to post your own wishlists, too.

This is the post where I request recommendations from all you special people out there for science fiction films where the pursuit of science isn't cast as a monumental act of hubris against God and Nature. Seriously.

Please tell me all about flims you enjoy that feature technology or scientific experimentation, but are as devoid of evil/insane scientists, researchers, or cold, faceless sci-tech corporations gettin' their comeuppance as possible. This includes rampaging genetic test subjects, out-of-control robots, traitorous AI, and the requisite Blind Science-Acolyte Skeptical to the End, who can't believe OMG SCIENCE HAS FAILED, but knows how to open the chamber/hack the Gibson/upload the virus/irradiate the gibbon-molesting room, so isn't as expendable as the rest of the guys in white coats.

At no point should the Hero announce "This is WRONG!", be poo-pooed by the Authority Figure, and then attempt to save the Authority Figure from the molested gibbons, only to JUST fail, because Authority Figure needs to die for daring to molest those gibbons when God never intended him to, and Hero needs to show what an awesome guy he is by even bothering to try in the first place. But not too hard.

I'd prefer a moral that doesn't involve things MAN, in all-caps, was never meant to do, because MAN (also all-caps) was never meant to wear underpants, rent climate-controlled re-conditioned lofts in the meatpacking district to impress their girlfirends, be immunized against polio, or live past thirty-five. The three pounds of hyperactive, sparking think-meat mashed up inside all of our skulls pretty much ensures that we get to do whatever the hell we please, and when you can make your own reality, what nature intended becomes irrelevant pretty goddamn fast. Taken to its logical conclusion, the assertion that scientific curiousity or advancement isn't what's meant for humanity means we should all still be living in trees, trying to find a comfortable way to sit on an estrus swelling and working termites out of the branches with twigs.

Unless you people have a problem with twigs now or something.

So yeah. Recommendations, please. I'll Netflix all the promising ones.