Buys
I got my load of 3$ books from Top Shelf (what a great sale!) and have already gone through most of them (see below). These include a bunch of Kochalka books - Super F*ckers #2-4, Mermaid, Monica's Story (written by Jon Lewis), Conversation #2 (with Jeffrey brown, which was much better than the previous effort), and Sunburn (which I now realize was included in The Cute Manifesto, but it reads a little different when it stands alone so I'm not bothered) - and a few "gambles" -Van Helsing's Night Off and Lone Racer by Nicolas Maher, and Mosquito by Dan James.
Less interesting is that my slave drive starting failing last week and before I lost too much data (all my WhoCCG-related stuff was on there), I got me a new one. 200G instead of 8G (to supplement my basic 40G) is something of an upgrade...
"Accomplishments"
With my new data storage unit in play, I could get back to crafting some cards for my Unauthorized Doctor Who CCG this week, just a handful, really, but The Invasion is a long story to strip. I made good use of the new animated elements, however.
Those who figured out I took the term Bench-Thumping straight from the Time Lord RPG know me well.
Warcrap News: Well, Lyndawithay, my little Dranai schoolgirl, went up from level 39 to 41 this week, and that means LEVEL 40 ATTAINED! Which also means my little Lynda got herself a mount, and it's an elephant, folks. I promise a post on the subjet later in the week. I was also contracted by my guild to build a little website for them, and I of course threw in my personal comedy style into it.
If you can read French, Les Chevaliers are always open for business.
From Les Chevaliers to the Crusaders, my DCHeroes campaign. We hadn't played in a long while, and the return of Pout to town - if ever briefly - gave us the perfect excuse to do so. First game for the Battling Bowman, who seems to play a lot like a cross between Green Arrow and Ultimate Captain America, and Pout made Plastic Man guest-star to much laughter. Bass keeps playing the Jester as a 90s revamp, which is equally funny. The story was a mix of current DC universe shennanigans (though taking place in 1989 DC), with a Mad Scientist Club working out of Dinosaur Island, and a big finale that featured an army of T.O. Morrow's Tornado robots.
Ahh, the untold psychic damage 50 emo robots crying out as one can have on a superhero team... Is it me, or are the Crusaders playing more and more like the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League?
The Top Shelf stuff is going down very easily. Super F*ckers is a hoot!!! But the real revelation here is Maher's Lone Racer. Wow. I like his Van Helsing book too, but it's really a collection of jokes. Lone Racer is a real "full-length novel" in a style I've never seen before. How this very naive and rushed artwork and these mangled characters manage to ellicit a strong emotional reaction in me is proof enough of its quality. At once funny and sad, here's a panel for your inspection, as the Racer visits his terminally ill wife in the hospital:
That's all she ever talks about too. And for some reason, I really like how characters walk through doors in Maher's world:
Lone Racer is just beautiful and I will now be looking for more of his things, in either French or English, it doesn't matter to me.
Flipped only one DVD (I know, I know, I'm being a bit slow, especially considering it had no special features) and that's Babel. Hadn't seen it before, and I do wish it had some kind of extras because I've got questions on how it was made, and why certain decisions were made. If you haven't seen it, it's worthy of your time. A tragedy from the get-go, you just know its various stories will mostly end in disaster. It's one of those films, like Magnolia or Crash, with interweaving stories. If Magnolia is about regret and Crash about race relations, then Babel is about communication. It's far more subtle than Crash however, and I think a more thought-provoking set of stories. The international cast is excellent, and I found myself drawn into the Moroccan and Japanese stories far more than the Mexican or American ones. Well, I've never been disturbed by subtitles.
Website Finds
Bass has pointed me towards the path of Holy Redemption with In His Likeness, a 3-times-weekly strip with even SIMPLER artwork than what I've been sampling on paper of late. And again, it works, which really bares out what Kochalka's saying in The Cute Manifesto about "craft" being an obstacle to art. Check it out, it's damn funny. And I'm only up to 2004!
I got my load of 3$ books from Top Shelf (what a great sale!) and have already gone through most of them (see below). These include a bunch of Kochalka books - Super F*ckers #2-4, Mermaid, Monica's Story (written by Jon Lewis), Conversation #2 (with Jeffrey brown, which was much better than the previous effort), and Sunburn (which I now realize was included in The Cute Manifesto, but it reads a little different when it stands alone so I'm not bothered) - and a few "gambles" -Van Helsing's Night Off and Lone Racer by Nicolas Maher, and Mosquito by Dan James.Less interesting is that my slave drive starting failing last week and before I lost too much data (all my WhoCCG-related stuff was on there), I got me a new one. 200G instead of 8G (to supplement my basic 40G) is something of an upgrade...
"Accomplishments"
With my new data storage unit in play, I could get back to crafting some cards for my Unauthorized Doctor Who CCG this week, just a handful, really, but The Invasion is a long story to strip. I made good use of the new animated elements, however.
Those who figured out I took the term Bench-Thumping straight from the Time Lord RPG know me well.Warcrap News: Well, Lyndawithay, my little Dranai schoolgirl, went up from level 39 to 41 this week, and that means LEVEL 40 ATTAINED! Which also means my little Lynda got herself a mount, and it's an elephant, folks. I promise a post on the subjet later in the week. I was also contracted by my guild to build a little website for them, and I of course threw in my personal comedy style into it.
If you can read French, Les Chevaliers are always open for business.
From Les Chevaliers to the Crusaders, my DCHeroes campaign. We hadn't played in a long while, and the return of Pout to town - if ever briefly - gave us the perfect excuse to do so. First game for the Battling Bowman, who seems to play a lot like a cross between Green Arrow and Ultimate Captain America, and Pout made Plastic Man guest-star to much laughter. Bass keeps playing the Jester as a 90s revamp, which is equally funny. The story was a mix of current DC universe shennanigans (though taking place in 1989 DC), with a Mad Scientist Club working out of Dinosaur Island, and a big finale that featured an army of T.O. Morrow's Tornado robots.Ahh, the untold psychic damage 50 emo robots crying out as one can have on a superhero team... Is it me, or are the Crusaders playing more and more like the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League?
The Top Shelf stuff is going down very easily. Super F*ckers is a hoot!!! But the real revelation here is Maher's Lone Racer. Wow. I like his Van Helsing book too, but it's really a collection of jokes. Lone Racer is a real "full-length novel" in a style I've never seen before. How this very naive and rushed artwork and these mangled characters manage to ellicit a strong emotional reaction in me is proof enough of its quality. At once funny and sad, here's a panel for your inspection, as the Racer visits his terminally ill wife in the hospital:
That's all she ever talks about too. And for some reason, I really like how characters walk through doors in Maher's world:
Lone Racer is just beautiful and I will now be looking for more of his things, in either French or English, it doesn't matter to me.
Flipped only one DVD (I know, I know, I'm being a bit slow, especially considering it had no special features) and that's Babel. Hadn't seen it before, and I do wish it had some kind of extras because I've got questions on how it was made, and why certain decisions were made. If you haven't seen it, it's worthy of your time. A tragedy from the get-go, you just know its various stories will mostly end in disaster. It's one of those films, like Magnolia or Crash, with interweaving stories. If Magnolia is about regret and Crash about race relations, then Babel is about communication. It's far more subtle than Crash however, and I think a more thought-provoking set of stories. The international cast is excellent, and I found myself drawn into the Moroccan and Japanese stories far more than the Mexican or American ones. Well, I've never been disturbed by subtitles.
Website FindsBass has pointed me towards the path of Holy Redemption with In His Likeness, a 3-times-weekly strip with even SIMPLER artwork than what I've been sampling on paper of late. And again, it works, which really bares out what Kochalka's saying in The Cute Manifesto about "craft" being an obstacle to art. Check it out, it's damn funny. And I'm only up to 2004!
Comments
And pout, I'm sorry to hear the strip fell dead on you. None of my characters were ever inserted out of a need, and most happened fairly organically. The strip has always been about, honestly, giving me a place to riff on pop culture and the world as I view it through the various perspectives. What it's morphed into over time has been completely organic... good or bad. Thanks for trying it though, that means quite a bit.
Anyway, thanks again and feel free to drop me a line to say hello anytime.
James H