Maybe if I had a smaller camera I’d take more pictures…

…and we all had our eyes closed, except for the thumb.

One of my favorite things about Comic Con is finding the up-and-comers of sequential art. I probably never would have discovered Bone, Small Favors and Finder if I hadn’t come across them at Con.

Here are my discoveries for this year, in no particular order:

Max Hamm Fairy Tale Detective, classic fairy tales with a noir spin. Max (who might be one of the three pigs) has been hired to recover Little Bo Peep’s herd in The Big Sheep. “In a burg called Storybookland. A magical place where dreams come true, wishes are fulfilled and everybody lives happily ever after. Or so they want ya to think.” The binding resembles a children’s book (inside the cover is a bookplate with “This Book Belongs to” and an empty space for your name)
By Frank Cammuso

Daisy Kutter : The Last Train a sci-fi/western about a woman gunslinger who can’t quite get the hang of retirement. A very well drawn black and white book. Only the first issue but it’s off to a great start.
By Kazu Kibuishi at Viper Comics

theater of the meek I don’t think I’ve ever read a comic with so many little tug-at-the-heart-strings moments. This one issue has eight stories each one to sixteen pages long. Unfortunately, the creators site (Ice World Press) is down right now which will make keeping tabs on this talented girl more difficult.
By Robyn Chapman
Avalible here

video plays with the connection between religion and media. What if Jesus came back as a sight gag from Late Night? If he puts as much work into the comic as he did on his website he should have no problems hitting the deadlines.
By Stephen R. Buell

Styx Taxi, A Little Twilight Music three stories by two writers who I livejournal-know via , and . The premise; ghostly cab drivers in New York City pick up the dead and drive them to the afterlife allowing one stop of their choice to let them say goodbye. It makes you think about the lives of the anonymous people around you.
By Steven Goldman, Dan Goldman, Elizabeth Genco, Leland Purvis and Rami Efal from FWD Books

Take-Out I picked up the first in this series of mini-comics. It’s a few cute little slice-of-life comic strips which might be autobiographical.
By Raina Telgemeier

TEEN BOAT! “The ANGST of being a teen- the THRILL of being a boat!” I can’t add anything to that. An odd and well produced mini.
By John Green and Dave Roman, Available at Realmsend.com

A Naturalist’s Guide to Art School I fell in love with a girl named Spike. Unfortuneatly, she lives in Chicago and she’s married. But, I’m willing to move and “eliminate” her husband. We will be together someday.
In the meantime I’ll be following her webcomics Lucus + Odessa and Sparkneedle.
The Naturalist’s Guide is a very funny look at eight art student archetypes and what they do when they’re not not hitting deadlines.
By Spike who is part of the girlamatic syndicate.

Horus even if I didn’t like everything Egypt I would like this book. It’s a story about living Egypt which we don’t get to see very often. The artist has one of the most expressive cartooning styles that I’ve ever seen and I had to buy all three issues right there.
By Johane Matte at Ruff Toon [link is for future reference]

This was a list of nine little comics that should get more attention.

Emphasis on the spent. I dropped over $700 in four days. That’s not accounting for the $150 I spent on printing up ashcans of AIEC and lost wages from missing two days of work.

But I have no regrets. I now possess the complete runs of Preacher, The Invisibles, The Sandman, Finder and Akira as well as a dozen or so other trade paperbacks that I need-wanted.

I got copies of AIEC in the hands of some of my favorite comic-book people; Collen Coover, Laurenn McCubbin, Richard Moore, Carla Speed McNeil and others. I still have about twenty copies, if anyone wants one let me know.

Saw a sneek preview of Harold & Kumar go to White Castle which was a better than average stoner comedy.

I also met a lot of like-minded comic-book aspirants. More on them next post.

---

In other news, most of tonemilazzo.com is back up. I still need to reprogram the 100 Word Story database in mysql and the Gallery is gone for now (not enough space), but everything else is there.

I’ll tell you what happened next, I reached into the jaws of defeat and kicked defeat’s ass!
Using freeunixhost and an old back up from November of last year I now have a website again. It’s a stub, but it’ll do for now.

So who else want’s a piece of me? Huh?

On the first night of Con I was only in the dealers room for two hours and I spent ~$260 which amounts to twenty nine trade paperbacks (all half off). Wednesday night’s all right for buying, Wednesday night’s all right, all right, all right.

After forty minutes I was finally at the head of the line to pick up my Professional Pass and I thought to myself, “Man, when I’m a big name comic book writer I bet I won’t have to wait on line for a pass anymore. I bet Mark Waid get his pass delivered to him on a velvet pillow in his hotel room.”

Then I turned around to look at the line behind me and I saw Mark Waid, twenty spots behind me.

Provided nothing else goes wrong, I’ll be picking up the AIEC ashcan tomorrow morning at Kinko’s.

We took out a classified add on Digital Webbing to find an inker for AI&EC. And we found a guy, Ian, who lives in the UK who’s pretty good, and most importantly, fast.

I still get the occasional responce to this add, including one from Brazil that had this example of his work attached;



There’s not a lot that shocks or offends me, but I do think it’s wrong to send images of bestial rape to strangers.

…whatever that is,”

Since it looks like Robert at Comickaze isn’t going to get around to printing up copies of Prom Night any time soon, so I might as well tell everyone that I posted the pages in the gallery. Yes I lettered it. Yes my handwriting sucks.

Last night, at Lestat’s, I saw a kid in a black trench coat with a t-shirt that read, “Ain’t nothin’ but a Goth thang”.
I don’t usually wish suffering on anyone, but I hope the other goths laughed at him till he cried and wrote a poem or something.

Good news! I have met the San Diego Comic Con’s low standards for a Professional pass. This means that I save $60 and I get a special pass that will make networking with the real professionals easier.

Charlie is almost done with the pencils on Anatomically Incorrect & Ethically Challenged and we found an inker in the UK. We shouldn’t have a problem getting an ashcan ready in time for Con.

Help Frog out with her teaching budget
Ignore her plee for personal gifts and “keep your body to yourself”.

Charlie lent me eight tapes of Escaflowne. I can’t tell if I’m warming up to it, or if I’m just getting used to it, but the show is full of anime cliches.

1. Teenage protagonists (especially schoolgirls)
2. Impossible hairstyles
3. Cheezy themesong about highschool “love”
4. Lack of internal logic
5. A cat girl
6. Love at first sight
• which facilitates another cliche: Love triangles, squares, pentagons and other n sided love polyhedrons where n is an integer approaching infinity
7. Unnecessary, unlikely technology, like giant robots

But since one of the stories that I’m working on for the RISING STARS OF MANGA contest is a parody it’s all fuel for the fire.

…is how to pass the buck.

And I think the Hindu god of machines is a really cool idea.