Sure, happy to help plug CEREBUS IN HELL? when you do it like this:

Click it to see it non-scrunched!!

When Reporters Repeat

So, the Dave Sim / IDW press release went out wide, and several sources are specifically reporting the story as though this means that IDW is publishing a paper collection of Cerebus comics. I do not think this is correct.  In fact, I'm sure it isn't.

Read the release again, slowly -- this HAS to be for a DVD (?) collection of  the digital files, not a print book. (Edit: they've changed the title at AMOC, indicting it IS a DVD. Toldja!)

Heidi also pitches it as being "rare and expensive" from "IDW Limited", which might be one component of it -- but given that "IDW Limited" items are NOT sold in stores, and the rest of the release talks about "comic store rights", this too must be wrong.

Tom is the only one who gets it "right", but I think that's only because he doesn't commit one way or the other to what "hard copy" means as to what it might be, giving him plausible denialability.

But, here's a question: is it too much to ask that reporters not run stories without confirming the details? I don't care if you JUST run a press release, but if you comment on it, can you get it right, please?

-B

Wait, What? Ep. 89: Accidents Will Happen

Oh, I just don't know where to begin: last episode was held up on account of spinal aggravation and this episode starts with a SNAFU of the kind that had me tearing my rich abundant hair out of my head. (Hmmm, now that I think about it? I think...maybe that was neither my hair nor head?)

But that's the kind of episode this is--the one where our minds are made up but our mouths are undone. Nonetheless, Graeme McMillan and I were committed to *finally* finishing up answering your questions (seeing as we didn't answer them in the same month you asked them...or technically the same season) and talking stuff like Action Comics #10; superhero movies and the geek comfort zone; Spawn and Glamourpuss #25; the superlative Zombo; Jennifer Blood; and Sonic Disruptors.

Also, don't miss our discussion of Minutemen #1, which manages to mention The Dooce, Abhay, Brandon Graham, Internet communication, and put Graeme and I on opposite sides of the Elvis Costello lyrics (see? You weren't just imagining them!) with Graeme being: "It's the damage that we do we never know" and me being: "It's the words that we don't say that scare me so."

Oh, plus the tremendous Double Barrel #1; the best reviewed comic in the world; James Ellroy and comics; American Flagg; Zenith; Detective Comics and much more, including exciting news for Wait, What? and a request (at least one!) for listener assistance. In less than two hours? Yessir. You may say, "I don't want to hear it cuz I know what I've done." (I know, I know.)

So many podcasts to catch up on and add to your collection, but iTunes can keep you hangin' on (until you're well hung). Your mind is made up but you can listen to us below:

Wait, What? Ep. 89: Accidents Will Happen

As always, we hope you enjoy and thank you for listening. (Now, if you excuse me, I'm off to cue up Oliver's Army.)

Wait, What? Ep. 82: The Problem With Problems

Hola, chicos!

The above image is from Dave Sim's Glamourpuss #24, just one of many fine comic book hoohahs under discussion in episode 82 of the latest podcast from the brilliant (but presently ill!) Graeme McMillan and the generally slow-on-the-uptake (but mostly healthy!) yours truly.

I gotta say, we pretty much drove right in on this one, and ended up talking Action Comics #8 in the first three minutes of this two hour twenty-five minute blabapalooza, and also managed to hit topics like OMAC #8, the colorization of  Scott Pilgrim, the battles behind the TV show Community, a great blog post by Steve K. about the state of the comics Internet, Casanova #3, Supreme #20, Fatale #4, Strike Force Morituri, and that stunning issue of Glamourpuss mentioned above.

Also!  We have the first (and hopefully last) installment of Listen to Jackass, in which I respond to blog posts I haven't even read yet! It's a bit like that old Johnny Carson 'Carnac The Magnificent' sketch, except instead of cheap laughs it kinda goes more for the "feeling ashamed for Jeff and, in a way, the whole human race" kind of feeling.

iTunes?  Well, of course!  But also right here and now, ready to be cradled like a baby bird that has tumbled from its nest:

Wait, What?, Episode 82: The Problem with Problems

Oh, and I should warn you--because Graeme is feeling very under the weather, and I am feeling like I want to watch The Raid: Redemption over and over and over until they drag me kicking and screaming out of the movie theater, we won't be recording this week, so there won't be a podcast next week.  You understand, don't you?

In any event, we hope you enjoy this latest installment, and thanks for listening!

NYCC: The Dream

One of the big downsides of being sick is that you sleep a lot, but you're not really sleeping WELL -- tossing and turning all night long, waking up in pain, and the latest one, now that the antibiotics have started to work, the pain in the tonsils has switched to a sinus drip in the back of the throat, so that sleeping at night is sort of like being slowly waterboarded in your sleep. Joy.

But, last night I finally had like 6 solid hours of REM sleep, and what do you know I dream about a comics convention.

Actually, it was more like New York City itself had been turned INTO a giant comics convention, because my dream took place nowhere near the Javitts.

The first bit I remember (because I think it had been going on for a while before then) is that Peter David and I were coming back from some sort of CBLDF event (I was on the Board of the CBLDF for about 2 years, a while back), and we were meant to go to something in (of all places) Connecticut, so Peter went to go get his car, while I waited in the nearby park (I think it was Tompkins Square Park). While I'm there I'm hailed by Bryan Talbot, who, for some reason, is walking around with Piers Morgan, and a 12-year old boy with a british accent and mohawk wearing a name tag saying "Phillip Tan" (?!?!!?). I hang out with them for a few minutes before I realized that I've totally lost wherever Peter is supposed to meet me.

A car pulls up with several of my customers in it (including Shelton Yee, who used to own a comics shop in SF many years ago), and they offer to drive me around the park to look for PAD. Of course they take the wrong turn, and just as they pull away we get stuck in horrible midtown traffic (yes, we've shifted that far in dream logic) because there's an Iron Man float coming down the street to promote the movie.

In the rear view window, I see a distant PAD waving frantically, so I hope out into traffic, and dodging cars (including the Speed Racer cars, and a procession of vehicles from the new Indy movie), make it across the street, where I am now in Washington Square Park, except that it has these long ramps added around the edges, with another "level" of park added. This additional level is Escher-like.

I'm trying to puzzle out how to navigate this when The Joker runs past, gassing people in the park. Batman then comes running, and kicks the shit out of him in front of me. Blood and teeth everywhere. I then see Dave Sim (circa 1989), Jeff Smith (current), and Rob Liefeld (!!) (circa Gap Commercial) and ask them if this is a promotion for the film, and Dave tells me, kind of archly, that no, Batman is real and has been running around New York for weeks, where have I been?

"Well, I'm trying to get to Connecticut," I say. Oh, that's where we're going, the three of them say in chorus, in the same voice, and then Tzipora walks in the door of the room where I'm sleeping and I wake up and there's no more.

At least my throat has stopped hurting.

I'm now going to go back to sleep, because my NYCC sounds more fun than the real one!

-B

Oh wow: Douglas is looking forward to April now.

Not what I would've expected Dave Sim's new comic to be. Or, as one of the promo posters puts it:

But it also makes sense--all the photorealist stuff in Latter Days, and the stuff he's been writing recently about his fascination with Alex Raymond, Stan Drake, et al., suggests that this is exactly the kind of comic he's going to enjoy drawing. (Why he uses "photorealism" instead of "photorealist" as an adjective I have no idea, but I'm sure he's thought it out. Actually, of all the potential Dave Sim manifestos I could read, Why Photorealism Is The Best Kind of Cartooning is easily #1.) And those pages behind him in the author-promo photos look fantastic. I'm totally there.

Sorry for delay

Sunday and Monday I had a store project I needed to finish and forgot about until zero hour. All done, though. I just got back from the store (doing THIS week's books), so let's wrap LAST week by talking about all of the BOOKS you should go and pick up and your local funnybook emporium when you stroll in tomorrow.

In friendly alphabetical order (Or, at least, Alpha by Diamond listings):

B KRIGSTEIN COMICS HC: Yes it is pricey, but damnation, it's worth every penny. Krigstein was a genius, and even the slightest story in this big-ass volume is pure gold. My one quibble: despite it being in the first, biographical volume, I think they missed a big boat by not putting "The Master Race" in this edition.

BONE ONE VOLUME EDITION: Well, you probably can't buy it anyway. We got allocated at just over 1/3 of our order (*sigh*) and all of the rack copies sold out in like 10 minutes. Expect a much much longer thought on this in about a week in Tilting at Windmills over on Newsarama.... Either way, this is top notch comics by a top notch cartoonist, and some version of Bone should be in your collection. I can't wait until Ben is old enough for me to read this to him... (though, actually, it'll be the HC I'll be ordering once it is solicited. I left the SC at the store since we got allocated)

CEREBUS V 16: THE LAST DAY: End of an era, and this volume is worth it for the essay in the back, alone. Honestly, I think it explains a bit more than I had previously understood about the last few years. (Lester, read it before I come in on Friday -- should give us at least 30 minutes of conversation...) One of these days, if I ever find time, I'll write an essay about Cerebus as a complete work, but if you can find a better all-around cartoonist than Dave Sim, I'd like to meet him. The timing, the draftsmanship, the craft and care -- I don't really care if the whole thing ends on the biggest reductio ad absurdum ever, I don't really care if you don't care for his politics or his thinking (fuck, if George Bush could draw like this, I'd buy his comics too!), comics will be a poorer place for not having Dave Sim around, month-in, month-out showing us how to do it. Seriously, read Cerebus, you'll be better for it.

CRISIS ON MULTIPLE EARTHS V3 TP: Well, you know, I've always been a sucker for the JLA/JSA crossover, but, man, are these stinky-ass stories. ("TEPPY STRIKES BACK!") On the other hand, these stories suck so much they're actually great. C'mon, dude, THE HUMAN BOMB! Rocks out, with it's cock out!

FINDER V 6 MYSTERY DATE: Carla Speed McNeil is an amazing cartoonist -- kinetic yet compressed, mystical yet focused on human emotions. Why she isn't a millionaire is a mystery to me.

JIM WOODRING PUPSHAW & PUPSHAW: At $17 for what's effectively 16 panels (well, it is a Japanese import), you have to be a big Woodring fan to appreciate this. Thankfully I am. Plus I only have to pay cost, seeing how I own the store and all. But damn, if he can't draw and tell a reasonably compelling tale in those 16 panels....

KYLE BAKER, CARTOONIST V 2: An excellent companion to volume 1, though it feels a smidge light for the price point of $14.95. It's the week of excellent cartoonists, as you can see (it wasn't the comics what killed me, it was the books), and Baker is up there high in the firmament.

P. CRAIG RUSSELL'S LIBRARY OF THE OPERA V 3 HC: Yah, OK you could wait for the 6 weeks or whatever it will take for the SC to come out, I suppose, but I prefer to have a binding that will hold up for repeated rereadings. Loverly loverly stuff, and he makes the source material palatable to those of us who hate opera as it's own art form.

PAUL AUSTERS CITY OF GLASS: Finally this exquisite book of David Mazzuchelli's adapatation of the Auster story is back in print, and let me hear a fuckin' hallelujah! Despite the (very!) stiff competetition this week, this is the A #1 must have, bug-your-LCS-to-stock-it item of the week. Seriously.

POWERS V 6 THE SELL OUTS: The perhaps-ironically named first post-image volume. While it's begining to flag a bit at this point of the narrative, this is still sharper than 80% of the super-hero work on the market.

SAMURAI EXECUTIONER V1 : If you liked DH's presentation of Lone Wolf & Cub, you're also going to dig this story Koike & Kojima did before. I'm only about 10% into it, but it's reading just as well, to me.

OK, that's what I took home on the book side, at least.

See you.... tomorrow with the first part of this week's books!

(God, tomorrow already? Does this ever end?)

-B