We now resume our broadcast day:

Back from NYC and the Entertainment Weekly Must List party. Got some great photos that I'll post up here or at the Larry Young forum over at the Isotope Virtual Lounge tomorrow. Missed Jim Hanley at his Universe, but had a chance to talk to Gahl at Midtown on New Comics Day about their excellent shop. Big thrill to be there the day The Black Diamond came out...

Speaking of TBD, lots of chatter on it last week. Still going through it all (how can being gone a week yield three weeks of catch up?), but here's a few mentions folks have pointed out or I've turned up. No doubt there's more to come:

Sean Maher sure gets what Jon Proctor and I are doing with the book: "The other thing I expect from Young is a little meta-commentary, a little something that rises above the story and speaks directly to the reader. We get that here, too, in an interesting discussion of stories themselves. How many stories are there? I seem to remember, a long time ago, that some jerk told me there were only forty-two stories or something like that, though I never found out what those forty-two were.

"It's a good thing I saved my time, because Young boils it down quite a bit more: there's 'Just trying to get home' and there's 'Stranger comes to town,' and everything else is a variation on the theme.

"See, that was compelling enough, because it got me thinking about a lot of stories and whether they fit into either category, but then Young pulls it down to just one. It's a thoughtful point that left me thinking, but without weighing the story down; no, the point is made while one character is loading a shotgun, and a scant four pages later we're treated to some really excellent explodo."

+++++

Mike Sterling: "That's what I like about some of AiT/Planet Lar's releases...the transparency of the process of creating the books, either as part of the package itself (as in this case, or in Proof of Concept) or as a separate release (Making of Astronauts in Trouble, True Facts).

The rest of The Black Diamond: On Ramp contains a few pages of Smoke and Guns, a tough gal with... well, guns-type comic by Kirsten Baldock and Fabio Moon, as well as Matt Fraction and Steve Sanders' Five Fists of Science with Nikola Tesla. Tesla? I'm sold right there. Altogether, a solid package stuffed with material, and well worth your three bones."

+++++

Brian Cronin and Greg Burgas both think the idea of an elevated highway of the future where lawless apeshit happens is "sketchy" and "dumb," respectively, although both seem to be provisionally on board nonetheless. I merely point out that action-adventure has not only given us Manhattan as a maximum security prison, a map on the back of the Declaration of Independence, a hard-rockin' neurosurgeon, a domed city where life ends at thirty... not to mention a planet where apes evolved from men and all sorts of other astronauts in all kinds of implausible trouble.

That's the business I'm in: I ask you to buy one ticket, and I'll rock your socks off if you get on my bus. If you want boring old plausibility, AiT/Planet Lar books are not for you.

+++++

Dorian Wright gives us the nod for the Black Diamond overship and says about the project: "The story has a good mix of action and Larry's distinctive sense of humor, filtered through his slightly off-kilter world view. It's a very brief tease for the upcoming series, concentrating more on setting the tone, with the details fleshed out with text pieces and the actual story commencing in the forthcoming first issue.

"Jon Proctor has a visually unique and expressive art style that is not going to be to everyone's tastes. It's got a rough-hewn look to it that puts me in mind of wood-cuts and the German Expressionist art style. His colors are very interesting as well. It's a subdued palette that adds to that nearly Expressionist style I mentioned above."