A guy named Guy LeCharles Gonzalez gave me my best belly-laugh of the day so far, with his hilarious "review" of Demo #1-12, which consisted mostly of a screed against "hype" and the film American Beauty. Guy then lapsed into a diatribe about how Demo, in the end, didn't live up to his expectations for it. For a dude who bemoaned his inablity to escape the buzz on the book, ol' Guy seems to have missed the marketing tagline that was everywhere the first six or eight months: "I'm not who you want me to be." And, honestly, it's a little hard to take a guy seriously who writes things like "The final issue, 'Mon Dernier Jour Avec Toi' is a terribly boring romantic aside, four pages stretched to twenty, that reads like something a starry-eyed high schooler wrote to their first love" and yet has this:
and someone must tell their stories
and someone must raise their voices
to the tops of their lungs
until poetry is seen in grade school
in college
at home
at work
in bathroom stalls
on bodega walls
in black & white
in technicolor
in stereo
in person
and everywhere it's seen everywhere that it is seen it needs to be heard LOUD AND CLEAR!
as a "manifesto" on his website LoudPoet.com. Mister Kettle? A Mister Pot called. Something about you being black, sir. No, no other message.
Ed Cunard applies a little thought-sweat to Making Comics Better and summarizes my position as "action should trump talking about action." Although I'm personally glad he didn't add to his "Idea Store" Breakfast Club II: Twenty Years Later about the kids going back to a reunion and getting snowed in at the airport, stuck together in the same room again, belly-aching about their now-adult concerns. I'm not sure we need that idea out in the world.
Ooops.
Scurvy Dogs makes Chris Brown's Weekly Top Ten.
Reading the Isotope Communique is definitely on the daily list of things-to-do. Hit that link to see the original Isotope Mini Comic Award-winning 1000 Steps to World Domination reviewed in Polish. Anyone who's ever told a Polish joke needs to apologize right now, because even comics reviewers in Poland get our difficult company name correct in the body of the review.
"So, a couple of days ago I finished the graphic novel for Scurvy Dogs... The only comic book to boldly pronounce that 'pirates are the new mokeys.' OMG, is it funny. I must say, my co-workers have wonderful taste in comic books. I love the idea of modern day pirates... Especially done so comically. I mean, nothing beats a pirate vs. monkey fight."
Let's give a great big sigh of relief for my pal Battle-Damage Colin Chan. Colin is my NyQuil Brother, and brunt/source of many intoxicated shenanigans Late Night at the Isotope. The poor bastard had his bike stolen, so I sold him mine about a year ago. Yesterday, I get this in the ol' inbox:
Believe it or not, he's FINE. "The poor bike got run over twice, once when the car was going forward, the second time to scrape it off the bottom of the car, which is probably why it looks in much worse shape than I do. Lucky for me, rather than get caught under the car, I somehow landed on the hood, rolled up the windshield, and then rolled back down and flew off the car when the driver apparently noticed I was there and hit the brakes. Still not a fun ride, but two days later, and I barely have a scratch. The police officer on the scene practically laughed at the road rash I got."
