Ken Lowery and I are doing a neat little thing with Planet of the Capes. I sent him the book proposal and outline I did for Brandon when we were first discussing the project, and Ken saw an opportunity to provide a behind-the-scenes look at the genesis of the work. I have to say I'm a little apprehensive about his promise to work over my brain, but I think I can take him. Hit the link for Part One, where we talk about the characters. Tune in tomorrow for a look at the first act.

One of the neatest things about Planet is how many people have seemed to have responded to its compressed storytelling as a response to the decompressed storytelling that's in vogue now. I particularly appreciated the comic book bigshot who likened it to the first fifty issues of Stan and Jack's Fantastic Four. One assumes he meant in terms of one-thrown-pie-after-another and not pop-culture-shaking-significance, but I'll take what I can get.

I was particularly charmed by Mark Hale's survey of the Planet characters from their inception in pre-WWII A T Comics through the pop-art silliness of the 60s, the relevancy of the 70s, the decoder rings, the Broadway plays, and even the reference to a picture of me as a boy proudly holding my copy of Junior Grand #145. I gotta say, couching a review in that much inventiveness sure is a flattering thing for Brandon and me. Thanks very much, Mark!

The Twenty-Two Comics Blogs I Check Every Day:

Comics Weblog Update, Graeme McMillan, Sean T. Collins, Laura Gjovaag, John Jakala, David Jones, Bill Sherman, Jim Henley, Tim O'Neil, Marc Singer, Mike Sterling, Steven Wintle, Kevin Melrose, Rick Geerling, Shane Bailey, Ken Lowery, Jeff Chatlos, Dave Fiore, Variety, Fabio and Gabriel, Dorian Wright, Neil Alien

Who else good am I missing?

Say what you want about comics review sites, but ol' Marc Mason at the Comics Waiting Room has no trouble callin' like he sees 'em. This may be one of my favorite summations of Planet of the Capes so far: "Planet of the Capes is a graphic novel about the comics industry’s reliance on superheroes, the destructive power of that reliance, and why that reliance makes us all assholes." Brilliant!

Augie De Blieck, Jr. takes an in-depth look Planet of the Capes in today's Pipeline. Some of the great pull-quotes you'll no doubt be seeing on future editions of the book include: "It's funny, but once you've seen through it all or read the cheat sheet on it, the dialogue goes from being slightly hokey comic book dialogue to sledgehammer-in-its-subtlety comics industry commentary." and "Planet of the Capes is a challenging book. It's like nothing else the publisher has ever sent to store shelves. Heck, it even has a color sequence in the middle of it. But if you stick with it and pick up on the hints Young lays out, it's a satisfying read with a devilish smile behind it." Go read the rest of it, to see words like "surreal" and "smart" and "narcissist."

Pop Culture Gadabout Bill Sherman takes a swing at the Capes, too, and remains guardedly optimistic. This one was great: "What Young has done, in effect, is create a book that's a cautionary to all us fannish comic geeks attempting to foist Really Good Superhero Comics on non-fans. For readers unfamiliar with the particular company universes that feature each character, I suspect that many of our prized graphic novels read a lot like Capes: as a succession of random events acted out by cardboard figures whose motivations are at best opaque, at worst non-existent. Yet to superhero junkies with a sense of history, the characters in Capes also follow the general path of the genre itself. From simple crimefighting stories to tales of alienated monsters to space opera to demi-realism (where the physics-straining rules of earlier comics no longer consistently hold; where a dam that's held together by superhand one time can no longer keep from crumbling apart) to the rise of psychotic quasi-heroes, Capes charts the devolution of Mainstream Comic Book Hotness – and does so with a knowing wink to the cued-in reader."

Johnny Bacardi, man amongst men, even links over to Bill and reassesses his original take on the book due to Bill's review. It's like an ABC Afterschool Special, here, on the Internet today.

Kevin Melrose serves up an interview with Mimi and me, concentrating mostly on the success of Demo but touching on a few piquant points of publishing. Just after the end of the interview, there's a reminder to enter that cool cross-blog Demo contest, wherein you can win all sorts of cool swag from us and from Digital Webbing Presents, merely by writing up what sort of superpower you'd like to have. Me, I wouldn't want any "power" myself, but I sure wouldn't mind a time machine.

After a pretty busy weekend, in which we finished up True Story Swear to God: 100 Stories, Hench, and did the final polish on the Ursula translation, drove up to Sea Ranch for a night and back to the city for Mother's Day brunch after which we finished the AiT/Planet Lar Q104 accounting, I had a little time to surf around and see what I'd missed. Laura Gjovaag has a nice review of Johnny Dynamite, John Jakala gives a little report on the continuing Entertainment Weekly coverage of comics (where Hench is mentioned), and Johnny Bacardi mourns the non-appearance of the latest Scurvy Dogs in his local shop. Now, assuming the rote spiel about pre-ordering is a given, my next suggestion to Mr. Bacardi would be to move a little closer to civilization.

And this non-AiT/Planet Lar observation: if Boston Rob (absent the whole engagement thing) had just said at tribal council: "You know, I played the best I could, and I'm up here in the Final Two. First place gets the cool million, and second place $500,000, which ain't too shabby by anyone's definition. Just give the mil to Amber," that would have been win-win. Maybe he gets the million, maybe he doesn't, but if he does, he's got a million, and if he doesn't, and Amber blows him off in a few years, every other girl in America thinks of you as the guy who, given the chance, gives his girlfriend a million dollars.