No VIGIL this Weekend? Que pinga?!?!?!

Hey Folks,due to a DNS issue ( I have no idea what that is, don't ask) VIGIL will not be seen this weekend (Aug 26th and 27th) as the server will be rebooting and changing and some other stuff, says my publisher, Joey Manley:

"I will be kicking off the DNS changeover on Friday afternoon.

The goal is to get all DNS issues cleared up before Monday morning.

You can essentially expect the site to be down for the weekend. It may
come up earlier than that, but I am telling you now: if your comic is
supposed to update anytime between Friday afternoon and Monday
morning, don't count on the site being available to you or your
readers (it may be, it may not be -- most likely, it will be available
to some, not to all -- that's how DNS works).

When the DNS is cleared up, and my own ISP recognizes the changeover
from one server to another, I will log in via FTP, install the new WCN
engine, and the new Graphic Smash will be born."

So the good news is, a new Graphicsmash.com will be born! What it will do exactly, I have no bloody clue, but it's for the best, I think.

I wil be aiming to replace those pages and have a mega weekend on September 2nd and 3rd and maybe before and after I'll see, but keep watching I will be posting.....

Oh shit, they Killed BEAST!

LOOK AT THAT!
It really doe slook like him dont it? At least the Grant Morrison/New X-men lion head one....
SO waht the fuck is it?
TURNER, Maine  — Residents are wondering if an
animal found dead over the weekend may be the mysterious creature that
has mauled dogs, frightened residents and been the subject of local
legend for half a generation.

That blue fur really knocks me out....

uhm.... who didn't know WIZARD sucked?

This is in response to Tim Leong blog about the latest Wizard. It's actually a video blog, and you know what, a bit spot on. I really don't care for him beating around the bush about it, but the fact that Wizard has sank so low over the years , and is well, defying the laws of physics by sucking and blowing at the same time, it does feel good that somebody "IN" the industry comes out and says it a bit. It' snot too much of a hidden fact by the way, it's saying "N'sync sucks" and waiting for the round of applause but still a good turn in giving them the good ol' archers finger, you know?

Me? Well:
1. WIzard is just catching with all the bullshit the rest of insensitive society is doing in the media, and/or what seemingly passes for media and is shoveled down our throats.

2. It's not like Wizard had far to fall, since it's sucked large donkey genitalia, always.

3. They're not even good at reporting media stories, half the sites out there beat them to the punch anyway.

4. Fucking magazines a catalog really.

5. Comic book fans, in general tend to be fucking tards, so, they spponfeed some raw bacon of idiocy to the people sometimes. If they don't make a ruckus about it, or other thing, why should the rest care?

6. Thanks for saying something. JUSt don't beat around the bush. WIZARD IS HARMING THE COMICS COMMUNITY AND IS AN ARSE OF A MAGAZINE MADE FOR AN ARSE OF A CROWD.

This sort of bugs the hell out of me....

ROCKET PIRATES is a Web comic collection of folks curated under the mindful eye of Warren Ellis, writer and pig-shooter extroardinaire being developed (lobbied) right now. The chance was given by Joey Manley, our Stone guard Warlord over Graphicsmash and Moderntales and such, and could be a real site to see later on, fer sure.

The thing that chaps my balls, is that I can imagine only how many wanton fuckers probabaly went ape shit to have the chance just to have their names next to Mr. Ellis, just so they have some sort of crap bragging rights. People might even develop whatever they got to throw on there and see whats taken jsut for the chance, and it might be crap. I wonder how many of the comics sent now are full of piercings, or split scrotums, just to see how they can kiss up up to Warren's affections.
Shit me.

Now why I say this? I'm not gonna like it crossed my mind too, but hell I owuld be lying to myself if I had anything that would or even had the fucking time to do anything for the site. SO I said fuck it, I'll stay in the audience. I'm just worried at how many haf-assers out there are bringing shit in.

Warren will probabaly smell the shit from a mile  away and all will be good but then they'll be the line of arses complaining that warren didin't pick them and some boo hoo fucks.

That when I'll slap them with my cock.

Seeing an Artist Habitat can go a long way...

ARTISTS, ILLUSTRATORS,
  DESIGNERS & CREATIVE
  FOLK SHARE THE STUFF
  ON THEIR DESKS...
I dig these little entries about people's art spaces and what they got going in them; it really shows the process by which people work and get things done....these sort of things and sketchbooks really intrigue me to no end. I always like to see how other artist work and go about their business.

Sometimes I learn something about myself, other times I leanr something about my own process, maybe jsut a bit, and not something as big as right and worng, but just process, you know, A,B, C or C, B, A? You know?
Now a whole Blog of this? Sheez I'm going to be all over it.

Maybe I'll submit?

Go on Sweet Prince!

Top Shelf Says Goodbye to Chunky Rice
from The Comics Journal #270
Posted July 29th, 2005
Top Shelf Publisher Chris Staros confirmed to the Journal that Craig Thompson will be taking his breakthrough graphic novel Goodbye Chunky Rice to Pantheon. Thompson had previously confirmed to the Journal that his next work would done for Pantheon, but the fate of his Top Shelf backlist, including the popular, award-winning Blankets and Carnet de Voyage, remained in question. Staros said Blankets and Carnet de Voyage are still under contract to Top Shelf, and he is still negotiating with Thompson in hope of renewing the contracts. Staros who said he had invested a great deal in helping Thompson develop his work and career, is finding it hard not to take the defection personally.

Let him be. He's showing that the creator that are out there can go and do the next thing. You'll always be seen as the dude who found him.... right?

Teenage Boys and Teenage Girls

Dirk Deppey has a great editorial in the new Comics Journal, which you can also read online, called "She's Got Her Own Thing Now." The issue, and the article, are about shoujo manga, Japanese graphic novels for for teenage girls:

Speaking for myself, the straw that broke the camel's back fell during this year's Emerald City Con in Seattle. I'd stepped out to smoke a cigarette and was watching the passersby. I noticed a family leaving the convention -- a Mom, a Dad, and a little girl no older than eight years of age. The girl was decked out in a beautiful, elaborate kimono and clearly distressed by what she'd just encountered. "But they didn't hardly have any manga at all!" she said as they walked away.

When I was done with my cigarette, I went back inside and relayed this story to an acquaintance prominent in the art-comics publishing scene. "I hate to say it, but good," was his reply. Indeed, I told the story several more times that day, to both indy-comics and superhero-comics professionals, and the reaction was more or less the same each time. A young reader disappointed by the selection offered to her? Good. The future of comics walks out the door, unable to find what she wants? Good. I left the convention early, lost in a foul mood. I swear: I love the comics art form with a passion, but my utter contempt for the American comics industry grows like a cancer with each passing day.

Every July or August I get to really thinking about comics and graphic novels, creatively and professionally; I also get to thinking about manga. How manga reaches a much broader audience, both in Japan and the US, then American comics do, and about how Japanese storytelling hits certain beats that aren't as embedded in my brain as Western storytelling moments are. Going to see Howl's Moving Castle made me think of this--even though it's based on a Western novel, it's adapted and directing by a Japanese filmmaker, and I just didn't know where the story was going or how it would unfold at times. It still has that classic three-act structure, sure, but that's just the bare-bones of it. The muscle and flesh built on top of the skeleton does things that surprise me in ways Western stories and movies usually don't, even the unconventional ones.

But whenever I get that itch to explore manga, I go to the local bookshop or comic store and stand before the racks and racks of manga--the local borders has about four times as many manga titles as American super-hero books--and I just get lost. There's so much, and I don't know the nuances of it all. I can flip open a super-hero title and get the gist of it, recognize the artist or the kind of story being told, know the era the comic is from and probably the company that put it out. I know genres, sub-genres and tendencies of the artists and writers involved, and I know whether or not I want to keep reading. But with manga, I just don't know what's what--I'm not educated in it, I don't recognize the patterns that are surely there to see, I don't know what to start with, what to move on to, where to go. So I tend to skink away, promise to come back a little later, and then never do.

But after reading the TCJ article, I went out and picked up a copy of Shonen Jump, the monthly American version of the popular Japanese weekly magazine that serializes a good 300-pages worth of new manga with each issue. Shonen means to boys what shoujo means to girls--they're comics for teenage boys. Yu-Gi-Oh! is one of the serialized stories in the current American version, for example. But I thought it would be a good place to start--a fat packet of culture for five bucks, right?

And Wizard World Chicago is next weekend, so I'll be headed to the 50% off trade-paperback boxes to grab whatever manga looks interesting--girl stuff, boy stuff, adult stuff, all of it. I'm not sure if that thinking-out-loud warrants its own entry here, except to say if anyone has some manga recommendations leave them here in the comments--I'll be keeping my eyes open.

Another Good Feeling.

Finally put the logo up on top. For now it’ll be on my Flickr account, but son I will move it to my server so as not to run the risk of bandwidth problems. What do you guys think?

A good feeling

I just let a little boy count a Calvin and Hobbes collection as a chapter book for his summer reading list. (He didn't think we would let him.)

Making out with Comics again

Since we're all about sharing the love of comics, I wanted to state a bit of love on Young Avengers:

YOUNG AVENGERS #4 & #5
Written by Allan Heinberg; Art by Jim Cheung, John Dell; Cover by Jim Cheung
MARVEL UNIVERSE | 32 PGS | Color | $2.99
The other listening to the Comic Geek Speak Podcast ( link) I was listening to comics they like of Marvel and heard the Title “Young Avengers” being said. Right there, my mind swirled with this vision of Iron Man, Thor and Captain America with Pacifiers in their mouth, in some horrible Teen Titan rip off attempt to make a cool teen fighting group to appeal to the teens out there in the Teen land of Teen America.
Ugh.
Then in the Podcast, they said it was good. It was a good book. It was? I couldn’t believe it. I thought maybe that the one crap book that’ll make it through the lines of good taste and people will only soon after repent on the alter of Comics for buying this crap. (Like Rob Liefeld fans from the early 90s)
So when I found issue #4 in the bookstore, I raised an eyebrow and took a look; Well that art was good and the bits here and there is spotted seemed great, and Kang looked old school, but now he was menacing and he felt like a villain. I liked it.
So grabbed Issue #4 and #5 and put them on the pile. After digesting all the good books I like and have been waiting for, I got to reading these issues, and you know what? The Comic Geeks (link) were right! This was good! When I started reading about the team and who they were and what there were trying to do, and seeing that it’s a just bunch of Fanboy’s who happen to have Superpowers I really dug them. They were teens too, they really acted like it; now one tried to be the adult here, and they had real worries, like the Appearance of Kang, and his younger self, and their powers and who they were and who lead. Ultimately this showed best when they’re biggest worry was that the Avenger were going to turn them over to the Cops or even worse, their parents! (DUN-DUN-DUN!)
I got this weird happiness form the Young Avengers that seemed familiar, and I pin pointed it now as I was writing this; it reminded me of the early days of the Gen 13 comics back in the 90s. Even though we still had all the idiocy of the prismatic and alternate covers in those days, the comics really stood out in story, the character involved were awesome, at first a bit trite, but sooner or later they were familiar faces to you and you understood their motivations for things, form dialogue to actions. They were fun, young and what’s happening, and when you mix that with superpowers, you gave a damn. Young Avengers delivers on that in this book, but in a less glamorous way but with the same energy it was a great read, and It made me realize that you needs book like these to counter balance at times the hard nosed anti hero plotlines of other books, by being a little bit lighter, human and caring on the developments of the character all the way being a little bit more fun, even in the action. Young Avengers has gone to the top of my list and I hope it can stay like that as long as the stories remain as interesting and ever changing as it has here.


What I may pick up this week:
ALL STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN, THE BOY WONDER #1
MANHUNTER #12
GRAVITY #2
NYX #6
PUNISHER #23
DESOLATION JONES #2
GREEN ARROW #52
FRESHMEN #1
ESSENTIAL THOR VOL 1

Currently Reading:
Daredevil Legends
Persopolis
Green Lantern #1 & #2

Of course, not all is good in comics land. Just check out my review of BLOOD OF THE DEMON #5 & #6.
"Gone Gone from the from of Man
Turn into a comic I can not stand!"

Honey, I Love

..I love how, until the other fellas post again and Jent gets his internet back, this is totally my site. Yeah!!

Having total power makes me feel like talking on one of my favorite subjects: library stuff. I'm a librarian in a big city, and the individual at the top of the library system decreed several years back that comics, graphic novels, etc have no business being in libraries, so we were not going to have any. The rule has relaxed a little since it was imposed; the central library has a decent selection of classic and current books, and most of the local libraries have things like Dark Knight and Watchmen. We also have some collections of popular syndicated strips. And oh yes, we have Tintin. But there's no collections of comic books, no manga (very popular with the kids these days), and we represent only a fraction of the many wonderful graphic novels out there.

It's pretty sad. When I was in library school (about a year ago), I needed some young adult books during a visit to the folks and found that the library in my ultra-conservative little hometown has a solid collection of graphic novels. The shitty library at which I did a two-week stint before Jesus himself outstretched His hands and personally delivered me into a good job was pretty great with the sequentials; they had a large selection of graphic novels and collected strips, and also a full rack of plain-old comic books (X-Men, Superman, Bone etc).* So, basically, if we take these two little suburban libraries as a bellwether for what's going on in the whole country, like I'm doing, our big fancy cityfolk library is way behind the times.

It's also pretty hypocritical. If I swivel my head about 40 degrees to the left I will be looking at one of the largest collections of children's picture books in the city. The definitions for sequential art/graphic novels and picture books are scarily similar: stories told in both words and images, where neither words nor images could convey the story alone. It's just that one is intended for kids and the other is not.

So, why is it that sequential art is beneficial for kids and not for adults?

That is a topic for another blog, plus we're closing so I have to go.



*Both of these libraries kept their graphic novels in the young adult sections, even if they weren't necessarily for young adults. The librarian at the shitty place told me the only one she had qualms about giving to teenagers was "Preacher," because it is so violent. I am currently reading "Preacher" and can attest that this is true, although I'm sure it's no worse than a video game.

Of promises made and forgotten

The time has come, it seems, as it does for all blogs, to turn the discussion to heartbreak. Let me take a deep, shuddery breath and continue with Part Three, the concluding chapter in the story of comics and me and how we came to be:

So, by senior year of college, I was the willing love-slave to Strangers in Paradise, and had dabbled in some others like Schizo, Artbabe, Optic Nerve, etc. I was also reading a lot of stuff by Chris Ware because I had a good friend who had lent me his personal folder of clipped-out newspaper strips---Quimby the Mouse, Jimmy Corrigan, Big Tex, and some randoms. This was the year I was in charge of little old art+performance, my school's super-hip arts magazine. I had one issue to plan, design, and produce, and I decided we would jump on the cool train and do a comics issue.

Friends, it was beautiful. 36 pages, full-color cover (colored by ME, and I'd never done it before), glossy paper. Original work by several nationally known artists and a very talented current student. Interviews with fascinating people, including Ivan Brunetti (on whom I still have a wholly unreasonable and heartfelt art-crush). Essays on such topics as being The Girl in the comics store, animated cartoons we had loved, and even a how-to guide. It was.. majestic.

(To set the scene, let me also tell you that during the 2-week period of heavy production on this issue, in which most nights ended with a 3am ride in the escort car back to my apartment, I was finishing three classes, one of which I had only attended 7 times, studying for finals, writing my honors thesis, of which I deleted half immediately after finishing, working 25 hours a week, and dealing with a recently acquired knitting addiction. Ok, so that was my fault, but I couldn't stop. I was also watching at least three hours of PBS Kids a day and crying a lot.)

And then? It didn't happen. A total motherfucking heartbreak. Our funding fell through at the last minute--because the school funding office forgot to cut a check to the printing company. It was awful... My co-editor and I consoled ourselves with the idea that we'd publish it first thing in the fall. The bitch then spent a glam-o summer in New York City taking all kinds of design classes, got all fancy, and upon returning to campus in the fall (I was graduated and gone), completely scrapped the comics issue and made a whole new one full of flashy pictures. My jaw knocked the phone out of my hand on its way to the floor when she told me. Never printed, none of the material ever used, including the original art!

My heart and soul! Poured out, then blotted up by a funding error and an Illustrator ego. It was a long while before I could read comics again. Too harsh. The disappointment still tears at me on occasion, like, when I think about it.

Oh well.

A year later I took a class on graphic novels and I read some more good stuff. 100 Bullets started my heart on the road to repair. It's just that good.

And for your penance..

I've been saying rosaries all day to punish myself for never picking up Meat Cake. The covers just never looked interesting. Dame Darcy, can you forgive an old fool?

Doin It and Doin It and Doin It Well

My quest for a randomly enjoyed superhero comic has met a successful end!

Well, it begins again anew with every trek to the comics shop, whether it ends in success or failure, but this week, at least, it ended well. I picked up #2 of BATMAN: DARK DETECTIVE by Steve Englehart, Marshall Rogers, and Terry Austin. I picked it up because I liked the cover--because the cover looked like a superhero comic I would have bought 20 years ago, even though I've never been a big Batman fan. It shows a bunch of Batman villains--the Joker, the Penguin, Two-Face, and more--ready for battle. In the foreground, as if we're looking over his shoulder, is the side of Batman's face--he's a little taller than us and we can just barely peek under the nose of his cowl. The title on the cover: "by love . . . BETRAYED!"

Hell, yes!

I didn't kow what his min-series was, but the art looked pretty John Severin-like as I flipped through it. Apparently it's a reunion of heavy hitting 70's bat-team, but it's set in present-day continuity. BUT, even though it's set in the present, I was so-not-lost, even though I haven't been keeping up on all of the latest pre-INFINITE CRISIS hullaballoo.

And!

(. . . this is the best part . . .)

Stuff happens in the book! Stuff happens in the book, and it's fun to read, and it makes sense, and it's self-contained in a way that doesn't leave you confused, yet moves the story ahead, yet makes you want to read the next issue. Will Two-Face kill the Joker if J. doesn't drop out of the governor's race? Will the *other* candidate for governor find out that Batman/Bruce Wayne is rollin' around on the ground with his lady, and Bruce's ex, Silver St. Cloud? What the heck is the Scarecrow up to, dressing as policemen and planting slow-acting gas on Batman's cape?

I mean, egads, folks! Them's is good comics!

My other attempt this week was #4 of Spider-Man/Human Torch, because it seemed to be set in the post-Secret Wars era black costume/Black Cat days. It was, but alas, it didn't live up to those stories I used to enjoy. I'll pass on more issues of Spidey/Torch, but Dark Detective is one I'll be returning to.

Composite Superman!

Speaking of action figures . . . I went to the comic shop today. I've been out of the loop I guess, because I was 100% surprised to find a Composite Superman figure on the shelf. One of the very first comics I owned was an issue of DC's WHO'S WHO series that was simply an encyclopedic list of the heroes and villains of the DCU. I left that thing in tatters, man--eventually I picked up a replacement copy just for nostalgia's sake. The appeal of that comic was that I didn't read any DC books, but here was a whole list of new heroes and villains to pit against Spider-Man and the Avengers in the comics I was making up myself. And the one that really blew my mind was this guy:



Composite Superman! He's got green skin and he has a costume that's a split-down-the-middle amalgamation of Superman and Batman. And if that wasn't weird enough, according to the back of the box, he has all of the powers of the Legion of Super-Heroes.

It's just weird, man. I'm not even sure it makes sense. He was a villain, according to my copy of WHO'S WHO, but in my six year old brain, green skin + Superman + Batman = Ultimate Superhero.

I wish the figure wasn't twenty bucks, though. I don't buy action figures these days, but I would totally set that one up on my desk. It's everything I dig about superhero comics these days.

Subway Pirates!

I haven't been to the comic shop in ages.

I might make it tomorrow.

In the meantime, the new Entertainment Weekly lists "5 Reasons We Love SEVEN SOLDIERS," and at least one of them got me thinking:

"5: Morrison stuffs each issue--each page--with myriad wild ideas, a long-evolving style he calls 'compression.' It reaches maturity in SOLDIERS. 'Most comics spread a story too thin,' says Morrison. 'I'm throwing down the gauntlet. I'm saying 'Pick up your game.'"

I've only seen one issue of GUARDIAN so far, one of Morrison's SEVEN SOLDIERS titles, but in the first few pages we're introduced to this idea of subway pirates--they hijack subwar cars and run them on forgotten tracks in the underground rail system of New York City. They're tattooed and pierced and scary, looking like a good pirate should, and I can't help but think that in the hands of other writers, the idea of subway pirates would have been drawn out for six issues--first, the mystery of disappearing cars, by issue two Our Hero finds an outdated map showing unused lines, and maybe by issue 3 or 4 we get our first sight of the pirates. But with Morrison, and with GUARDIAN, we get right to the action. There's no slow reveal of what we already know is going to happen from reading PREVIEWS two months ago--subway pirates, page two, and on page three, more adventure!

I know I've gone on about ALL-STAR SUPERMAN already, but from what I hear the destruction of Krypton happens in the first quarter of the first page, and the rest of the issue is sci-fi superheroics. From time to time I think I might want to pick up a random issue of a superhero comic, just for the pure, four-color enjoyment of it; and in my heart of hearts, I'll always be a Marvel kid. I really like Spider-Man, for example, but I know if I pick up an issue of ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN I'm as likely to get a four page spread of security guards talking about Spider-Man as I am 30 pages of a fight scene that still isn't resolved by the end of the issue. That's "writing for the trade," I guess, or what the kids these days are calling "decompression," but it's just bad storytelling, to me. It's what makes the new STAR WARS pictures seem so thin. Also in a recent issue of ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY (you see where I get all of my media news, huh?) George Lucas said that 60% of the backstory he had for the prequels is in EPISODE III, while the other 40% was spread between the other movies. That's awful! That's the worst thing I've ever HEARD from the mouth of George Lucas, including the dialogue he's written!

I'm talking about comics, man! Serialized comics, work that comes with an almost 70-year tradition of solid adventure stories, a slice of culture as Mr. Alan Moore likes to call them. I want subway pirates in the first three pages, not at the end of issue four!

By way of introduction, Part Two

So when DID I first start reading comics, they're all asking..

So here's the thing: I read slow. I've always been a little self conscious about it, being you know, really into books and shit. I also had a hard time getting through books for school in the time we were given. High school, sophomore year: I'm at Barnes and Noble with my dad, on one of our late-night trips. The only things my dad and I have ever really been able to talk about are books and politics, and since at this point I was still interested in being pals with him, every time he asked me if I wanted to go to Barnes and Noble at 9pm I'd say "yes." One night I was looking through copies of Othello because I had to read it for school, and I found the graphic novel version by Oscar Zarate. I figured my teacher wouldn't mind, since it said it was unabridged. I was already translating my world history notes into cartoons in the margins, so I guess I knew that interpreting words and pictures together was easier for me than words alone. Anyway, I kept that comic book Othello around for years and re-read it many times..

Flash forward to freshman year of college, when I saw Chasing Amy and was like "(double take) ...people write comics about love and stuff?!" After watching it several times, I decided to write my own comic. It was loosely based on my angsty teenage adventures at home and school. I came up with a bunch of characters but I only ever wrote two pages. I drew it freehand with a pen and a tube of white-out. I think a lot of it was about my parents.

Sophomore year, when I left school and lived at home for a while and worked at Borders, a really cool-looking girl (rare in my hometown) once asked me if we sold Strangers in Paradise. So the name was familiar to me when my Summer of '00 roommate suggested I read them. I did, and I got so involved in the story that the Emma/plane crash issues gave me stomachaches. I LOVED it. A funny, realistic love-and-friendship story with great characters and a generous dose of violence. It's still the only comic I buy every time it comes out. SIP, I am your bitch.

But SIP did also turn me on to the general world of comics, graphic novels, etc. I started going to Quimby's and CC, and read some things like Eightball, which I didn't like, and My Monkey's Name is Jennifer, which I adored. I also started reading old issues of Artbabe, and a friend had gotten me into the Chris Ware comics in the Reader.

That's totally long enough for one blog.
Coming up next: The Comics Issue That Wasn't!!

Damn you Jent!

Well thanks to Mathew and his bloody riting, I uped and slummed myself into the local comic shop (one I didin't like too much) and bought Issue 3-6 of "Identity Crisis"
Damn you Jent, now I'm hooked, and looking for issues 1 & 2
Damn you and your infectious love of comics!

On a side note, VIGIL is back 100%

Juan Navarro returns to VIGIL, with a second “season” in the works and
short pieces in between, restarting May 8th, 2005. He kicks off the series with his
short “CAPES,” where reality shows meet supercrime.

After "CAPES," VIGIL will run the short “Pizza Run" and then lead into “Jackie and the Beanstalk,” plus
pin ups by Jon Morris, Jason Martin, Ramon Sierra, Serge' and Tim Kelly. And then, the second season,
as the team heads toward an inevitable showdown with their one-time mightiest member...

Get ready for more great stories of life, death and invulnerability. Stories of powers on the mean, sweaty streets. Stories of the endless VIGIL.

This can also be found on my Blog

Game Logic

Hey Juan, do you think we could get Warren Ellis to start posting here? I don't always like his work these days, or even his Bad Signal emails, but from time to time he says something in them that leads me here to write something instead of just finishing my Red Bull and getting on the train, like I should be doing.

Today he sent one out about "Game Logic." The idea is simple--when something happens because it happens, it's game logic. It can be a jokey moment or a cute moment, but it's something that's not real-world-safe. A good example he gave was from a comic I'm not familiar with, where the hero raises his fist to the audience and exclaims, "Dude!" while his sidekick is shown with a thought balloon, exclaiming to herself, "Dude!"

Warren says, and I'm not going to go into a quoting spree here, but Warren says, "There's no self-consciousness, no irony, no distancing." What happens, happens--and you either buy in, or you don't.

To me, it's a sense of play. It's comics that are FUN and exciting, both to the people making them and to the folks reading them. It's comics where coincidences happen because it serves the story, because it IS a story, and it knows it, and the author knows it, and we know it, too.

I don't like the term Game Logic, but I like the idea behind it. Warren says two good examples of it are SHARKNIFE and SCOTT PILGRIM, so if those titles are as new to you as they are to me, go to the comic shop this week and take a chance on them. And go to Warren's site and sign up for Bad Signal, if you don't mind the occasional email about how he's cranky and tired. It's worth it when one like this comes through.