Pot Luck Post
MOCCA

MOCCA is this weekend. I've started packing up stock for the table, and  we will be bringing some odds and ends due to the fact that we're cleaning up the basement and trying to hone down our overstock/file copies. To that end we're bringing a few DH Book Of anthologies (Dead, Witchcraft, Monsters) which contain the stories I've done with Jill Thompson, a few copies of I Love You Beth Cooper (gave the rest to family, then ran out of family), a few copies of the Simpson's WInter Wingding and Bart Simpson's Comics, and whatever else we can dig up. I plan to bring a few of the Bowen M&C fridge magnets and several DHC M&C lunchboxes. If I dig up any zippos, or flat magnets from Graphitti, or card sets, I'll be bringing them as we attempt to lighten the load here at the HOF.

We will also have some free comics to give away, as long as supplies last.  Feel free to stop by and pick up a comic book while supplies last. We don't have a ton, stuff that got dinged up in shipping, or items we just have too many comps of for our own good. Bring your youngster around as we may have some recent copies of Nickelodeon magazine for them. As usual, quick sketches are free, just bring something for me to doodle on. I'll have pages for sale, roughs and sketches, some additions to the HOF art list if all goes well, and the M&C vinyl prototypes on display.

Anyway, there's our MOCCA plans. FYI, Sarah will most likely not be at the show on Sunday, so keep that in mind if you wished to stop by and say to her. We're playing it by ear, in regards as to how much MOCCA the baby can handle.

CAPTAIN AMERICA  RED, WHITE AND BLUE TPB

Marvel Comics is soliciting a Captain America: Red, White and Blue trade paperback for this September. I guess they're putting out whatever Cap stuff they can while some people give a crap about him being dead or whatever the hell's going on,  because this is a book they practically pretended didn't exist when it came out in hardcover. Anyway, the two-page Milk and Cheese-style Red Skull and Baron Zemo strip I did is in this book, along with work by Bruce Timm, Mark Waid, Paul Dini, Paul Pope, Peter Kuper,  and others. It also reprints Kirby, Frank Miller and Steranko stories. $20, iirc. Your call, Marvel doesn't pay royalties on this sort of stuff from what I understand, so no skin off my grape either way.

ME READ COMICS

Caught up with Cromartie High School over the past week or so, volumes 7-10. Enjoyed most of it, but volume 10 is the first honest to god flat-out stinker of the run so far. It consists mostly of an extended storyline about one of the students falling down a manhole and dealing with a Planet of the Apes-like simian society, as well as a cliched prophecy/evil enemy situation. It isn't really upended or exuberant enough to be anything more than a slightly off-kilter adventure manga, at times you forget it's supposed to be a comedy manga. The plot and execution don't lampoon the SF/fantasy genre cliches so much as slightly nick them across the chin with a knuckle -- actual jokes are few and far between and mostly fall flat, and Nonaka's art isn't up to what these strips need in terms of flourishes and settings. It's actually pretty awful stuff, made even more surprising by how good the strip generally is, and how much material Nonaka can usually wring out of aimless, Shaggy Dog plots and illogical situations. This just drags and drags, and you get the feeling he was bored with the usual material in Cromartie, tried something else, got bored with that, but was stuck with finishing up the strip. Do not, I repeat, do not ever start reading this series with volume 10. Even if you're on a deserted island. Let it lay.  It will sour you.

Of course, this is probably the most beloved storyline of the series for all I know.

LATELY MY EARS HAVE LISTENED

Songs I have heard and enjoyed (I do not guarantee I have band names or song titles absolutely correct, and I will not google to find out my possible mistakes):

Witch - Seer
The Cardigans - I Need Some Fine Wine, and You, You Need to be Nicer
Soviet Valves - Sight that Harms, Gaze that Harms
Electrelane -To the East
Palomar - Beats Beat Nothing
J. Retard - Blood Vision/I Know a Place
Some stuff by Ladytron I don't know the names of

There's a new Art Brut CD out, and I like everything I've heard by The Long Blondes.

And that clears up several post-it notes. Good day.