Cigarettes and Coffee

My geekier hobbies - comics, video games, “speculative fiction” - rarely intersect with my job, but when they do, holy crap. Gaze in adoration at the cover of the October 2008 edition of Racer X Illustrated:

Craig Schulz, son of Peanuts creator Charles Schulz, was nice enough to write a feature for us about the series [...]

My friend (and fellow U-92 alum) Bill Pearis knows as much about music as anyone you or I have ever met. He covers new music and NYC shows on his blog, Sound Bites, and he also writes a column for the hugely popular Brooklyn Vegan, which is both a blog and a person. Bill just [...]

- If the name alone isn’t enough to get you to play Puzzle Farter, we will probably never be friends.

- In my last post, I mentioned Josh Cotter’s amazing Skyscrapers of the Midwest, and I’ve been making notes for a more in-depth post about the book. Instead, I’ll just direct you to Brian Heater’s review [...]

I’m on a magazine deadline this week, but I want to point a couple things out real quick-like. The first is the Boston Globe’s new online photojournalism/photo-essay section, The Big Picture. I’m just blown away by the quality of the photos they’ve posted so far, particularly in “After the Quake,” which looks at the Sichuan [...]

This weekend was the big Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art festival, aka MoCCA, and I started the weekend Friday night at Rocketship:

That’s where Norwegian comics master Jason debuted his new collection, Pocket Full of Rain. A small gallery of original pages was set up at the front of the store, accompanied by a work [...]

- First and most importantly, this weekend is the annual MoCCA Art Festival here in New York. For comics fans who don’t really have an interest in superheroes and the Marvel/DC stuff, MoCCA (the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art) is where it’s at. It’s mostly indie and “literary” stuff, and lots of creators [...]

And it’s just what it sounds like: a day when your local comics retailer will give you free comic books. I’m not familiar with everything on the list, but I can definitely recommend Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman, which will be available at all the participating shops. If that’s not your thing, talk to some people [...]

One of my favorite discoveries at this year’s New York Comic Con was Dan Goodsell’s Mr. Toast, a series of single-panel comics that combine whimsical awesomeness and absolute nonsense in the very best kind of way. Goodsell had a booth on the floor and was signing comics, greeting fans, and - best of all - [...]

It’s New York Comic Con time, and that means there’s lots of geeky fun to be had around the city. Last night, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund hosted a launch party for Jeff Smith’s new series, RASL, which chronicles the adventures of a surly, dimension-hopping art thief. (Smith is probably best known as the creator of the long-running and immensely entertaining all-ages-friendly Bone series.) First clue that you’ve stumbled into a capital-e Event? You have to squeeze past Frank Miller on your way to get another beer.

The party was held at Coolture Spain, a smallish, gallery-ish place on 39th Street. Smith himself was gracious and outgoing, taking time to talk and take pictures with any idiot who asked.

So apparently, manga - serialized Japanese comics - got huge while I wasn’t looking. Those smelly teenaged urchins who make little campsites in the aisle at Barnes & Noble? Next time you trip over one of them, take a moment to examine the surrounding wall of odd-looking paperbacks. There’s a lot there to like there. [...]

Just a quick follow-up to my last post: This morning, news hit that Michael Cera is in final negotiations to play the lead in the film adaptation of Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life, the first book in Bryan Lee O’Malley’s series. I’m not a huge fan of the word nerdgasm, but that’s about as accurately [...]

The Scott Pilgrim series, written and drawn by Bryan Lee O’Malley, isn’t the most philosophical or complex or beautifully drawn comic I’ve read since getting back into these things, but I can’t think of one that I’ve enjoyed more. Four volumes of a planned six have been released so far (they come out roughly once [...]