Hello and good Monday. I checked the stats and found that the top three countries viewing the comic are the USA, Canada, and a surprise with Germany passing up the UK now. Hi, Germany! Glad to have you!

Let’s see, first I’d like to apologize for the delay of comic today - I’m still getting used to all of the functions of comic press, and as Anne mentioned in the last, there are plenty of buttons you can touch that will break things. But it’s all arights now, and the next month’s comics are all all uploaded and ready, along with the vote incentives, so we’ll cross our fingers and hope that works. On to better business.

Upon seeing the first 10 pages I realized, with some dismay, how painfully slow the story moves. They’re all important pages, as you will see later, but I think it took me seeing them in order to figure out how to make things move at their proper pacing. So I went and revised the script from page 10 on and it is a lot tighter now, but that still leaves us wading through the swamp for now. Anne and I have discussed eventually going back and redoing some of those pages, and perhaps we will. But for now, we will go ever forwards, safe in the knowledge that both the writing and the architectural perspective get better from here.

On a non-comic related note, I went to see Neil Gaiman’s Coraline last Friday and it was, in summary, wonderfully creepy. First, as far as the animation and the cinematography is concerned, the choice to go with stop motion was perfectly apropos for the story, as it gave a very doll-like quality to the characters. Things weren’t as oozy as they generally are in Gaiman stories, but it still made the movie as far as ambiance went.

As far as the story itself, though there were some things changed from the book, overall I thought they did a good job, and I understand why some things were added or altered. I’m a little surprised that Gaiman himself did not do the treatment and the screenplay, as he already proved his chops with Stardust and Beowulf, but Selick did a good job. Nothing can quite compare to the prickling sensation one gets on the back of the neck when reading Gaiman’s narratives, but I found myself jumping out of my seat plenty of times nevertheless.

So if you’re looking for something to do this weekend, Coraline. I recommend it.

See you next week,

Jen

Good morning!

A few things for your Monday: one, is a ‘new’ comic suggestion for a comic that has been running for a few years now called The Adventures of Popsicleman. Without giving away any spoilers, it is a black and white weekly comic… about a popsicle that fights crime, and it is also packed full of completely non-sequitor, g-rated, outlandish and sometimes downright ridiculous geek humor. If you are a geek, and you want to see a guy who is a frozen snack treat put villains behind bars, well, you’re a very specific person, and you’re also in luck.

Second is perhaps the coolest thing google search has yielded me in a long time, and that is lunch bag art. This guy is a graphic artist who decorates his kids’s lunch bags during his break at work every day, and he’s got some phenomenal skills.

^ From the movie Labyrinth, which I found terrifying, mostly because I find David Bowie terrifying. Note the giant spike mullet and contact juggling ball. Still, despite the creepiness, this was one of my favorites.

^ How could I resist loving this one? A very stylized Morpheus and Matthew from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series.

So, go check him out, there’s a goldmine of sci-fi/fantasy art floating around over there.

See you next week.

- Jen

It’s been a while, but we’re still here.

Good morning, fellows. Especially those from Russia and the Balkans, which we seem to become very popular with this month. Privyet, good to see you.

There are a few news bits today, first of which is that you should all check out our links tab: we have a few new friends over there, a few really kickin’ comics! Give them a skim, if you have time.

Also, two of my personal favorites have status changes - Dovecote Crest has finished its first story arc and it is simply too adorable. If you haven’t read it, now is a good time as they are on guest art hiatus. Second is that Lovecraft is Missing is coming back from it’s hiatus on May 27th, be there, or be an equilateral rectangle.

The next piece of news, following my penchant for geek culture movie reviews,  is that I went and saw the Wolverine movie (I have yet to see Star Trek, that is next, don’t worry).

What can I say about this movie? It was… pretty gosh darn terrible. It had halfway done cinematography, no story continuity with the comic, too many random cameos that did not make any sense, and a script so bad I could have knocked a can of alphabet soup off the table and had a better finished draft written on my floor. But you know what? It was definitely watchable. One does not approach this type of thing with high expectations: I went to see Hugh Jackmanangst about his past and blow up half the Canadian landscape, and that is what I got. So if you’re into that kind of thing, go to see it. Just don’t get angry over what they did to Deadpool.

Alright onto happier topics: What ho! Did Neil Gaiman and Craig Russell make a graphic novel out of Coraline? Why yes, they did. How fantastic! Let’s all go see what that’s about.

Oh, and the last bit, check out the credits on this week’s page - two of our designers made cameos, and they will pop up again. See if you can find them a couple of pages from now.

That’s all, see you next week.

- Jen