Cigarettes and Coffee

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. [...]

I was always a little nerdy. As a kid, I competed in the Robot Olympics (I was part of a three-man team, programming ‘bots to perform tasks of increasing difficulty), attended a summertime “nerd camp” on the campus of Edinboro University, and spent vast sums of time planted in front of my Commodore 64. (I [...]