Here's a great bit of flattery from Joe Casey on the Man of Action blog:

"Larry Young taught us all how to do San Diego right. AiT/Planet Lar is pretty much the king of the indy publishing section of the Con. Here he is pimping a little book called CODEFLESH."

They don't give a damn about any trumpet-playing band/It ain't what they call rock-and-roll.

Ain't It Cool News reviews Continuity: "Focusing on a young girl who believes that when she dreams, those dreams become reality when she wakes up, makes the reader feel the anxiety and torment this power has on the main character. What starts out as a school-girl fantasy of a beautiful night with the school stud she's crushing on, ends up a whacked out nightmare involving homeless revolutionaries fighting a government police force that enforce a society that has become reliant on pills to stay awake, beautiful, and powerful. This story really does hit you on many levels. It holds a warped but not too distorted mirror to today's society and hot topics like the homeless, the pharmaceutical industry, law enforcement, teen pregnancy, and the steady decline of social interactions in the world. It's Orwellian in scope, but the fact that the main character is a drugged up and possibly delusional pregnant teen grounds this tragedy with an all too recognizable anchor."

+++++

Dorian Wright looks at the retro-future of Shatter: "Originally published by First, Shatter was part of the previous 'great indie scene' in comics, and its themes and preoccupations are borne out of the political and cultural climate. It envisions a future that now seems strangely retro and anachronistic. Viewed strictly as a crime caper with sci-fi overtones, the story has an appeal and a manic pace that serves it well. I can't unreservedly recommend it, because the book as a whole is very much a product of the time, but for those interested in what independent comics looked like during their Reagan-era hey day, this is a good example of a technically experimental work that reflects the mood and themes of the time."

+++++

SFist's Matty Matt, however, does recommend it unreservedly: "This re-release of the original (Shatter) is a pixely masterpiece, that's fer damn sure. Nowadays it's hard to find a book that wasn't made with a computer's help, but these guys invented it, with gusto. Some of those panels are of a quality that pixel artists today would be congratulated for creating -- they don't just look good, they've got an amazing sense of drama and film-noir style. It's really amazing that this was the first out of the gate, and not something created after years of refining a craft."

+++++

...and Johnny B waxes nostalgic: "And you know what? While the art is still mighty sterile, it improves a bit in black and white and is, when examined through my ever-fuzzier eyesight and theoretically more mature and adult perspective, is actually quite good- almost always solid anatomically as well as from a storytelling viewpoint too. And the mind boggles when one takes into consideration that this was done on a prehistoric Apple computer - the amount of time spent alone gives me pause. I remember the first Mac I ever used, back in 1985 (permit me to digress a bit)- it was an Macintosh Classic, used as a Crosfield scanner interface, and I used to enjoy messing around with the desktop, rearranging the pixels to make weird shapes and so on. And that was about the limit that it could do, since it possessed a whopping 134KB of RAM! I can't imagine doing a sustained quantity of work on something even as "advanced" as a IIci, for example. So that's a hell of an accomplishment, in my book. Heck, I can't even do four pages the old-fashioned way! Anyway, with the benefit of 20 plus years of hindsight, this stacks up as a pretty darn good, even somewhat prescient, Philip K. Dick/William Gibson-esque thriller- rarely predictable, not as dated as you'd think, and the good stretches make up for the occasional slow ones- always a hazard when publishing as an ongoing monthly (or was it bi-monthly? I forget). I can't say if I would have liked it as much at age 24, even if I had decided to buy it on a regular basis, but I'm happy to have the opportunity to reevaluate it now. B+"

Back in the back/Of a Cadillac/Number One with a bullet, I'm a power pack

Got a quick little recap of San Diego from our point of view up at Newsarama today, on top of the news that we're Best Local Publishing House in the San Francisco Bay Guardian's Best of the Bay issue: "Do the names Astronauts in Trouble, Giant Robot Warriors, Electric Girl, or Switchblade Honey ring a bell? They should. These are just some of the original, intelligent graphic novels our readers' favorite publishing company, AiT/Planet Lar, is behind."


Our pals at the Isotope got their fourth-year-in-a-row nod for Best Comic Store:

"If you were a comic book store, wouldn't you want to be a comic book store with class and heart? A comic book store that revels in a love for all things Fantagraphic and buffed-out mainstream mutants in PVC dreamwear? Of course you would, and that's why our readers have chosen Isotope Comics as their favorite."

I was going to work at home today in my comfy pants and go through all the pitches we got in San Diego, but it looks like I'm going in to the Operations office and do some scanning of the Guardian pages to put up online...

If everyone could give me a week or so to go through all the submissions I got at San Diego, that'd be great.

Mimi and I appreciate all the help we got from Kickstart (watch The Amazing Screw-On Head this Thursday); and Ken (of course); all of our hard-working creators; and we thank all the folks who pitched us and the thousands of folks who came by to buy our books and thank us for being so awesome. Brought a manly tear to my eye, it did.

Special after-show shout-outs to the Couchflap; The Rocky Horror Picture Show... and Buffet; everyone who costumed up; Heather, for giving my hard-working roadies that care package to ease 'em on their way home; Charlie Adlard and Rich Starkings, who, in addition to being top blokes, share my love for the work of Mike Trim and gave me some fun everybody's-a-fanboy-for-something moments) and, of course, to Josh ("I feel good, and I'm not scared at all. I just feel kind of... kind of invincible... is it getting hot in here, or is it just me?") Richardson and Ian ("The burrito is a tasty and economical meal... I'm just sayin'.") Yarborough.

"It's not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required." --Sir Winston Churchill. Nice job, men.