Now Boarding

Flight of the Living Dead starts right now

The Best of 2006

My picks for the best stuff of 2006, in response to a poll at ANP:

: 1. Top 5 movies

5. The Departed
4. Borat
3. Pirates of the Caribbean 2
2. A Scanner Darkly
1. Little Miss Sunshine

: 2. 5 worst movies

5. An American Haunting
4. Eight Below
3. The Hills Have Eyes
2. Final Destination 3
1. When a Stranger Calls

: 3. Top 5 TV shows

5. Heroes
4. The Office
3. Battlestar Galactica
2. Lost
1. Dexter

: 4. Top 5 comic books

5. The Walking Dead
4. Wet Moon 2
3. Fables
2. Flight 3
1. Strangers in Paradise

: 5. Top song

"Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley

: 6. Top album

"The Life Pursuit" by Belle & Sebastian

Diary 12-27-06

FoLD pre-reviews

Here's what people are saying about Flight of the Living Dead before it's begun!

"..from what i've seen of the pages every time i enter our studio space, it is fantastic... " - Joe Frontirre, studiomate and Kubert student

"..it looks like such a great idea. Just from the cover design you know just what the book is about. I think you could sell it as a film just based off of the poster for it." - Mark Smith, writer of Amazing Joy Buzzards

Hopefully they don't retract those statements when the comic actually premieres.

Flight of the Living Dead is taking off early

Rather than putting up the first eight pages tomorrow night at midnight, the first FOUR pages will be going up tonight at midnight, and the next four pages will be up tomorrow night. The rest of the year will be going ahead as scheduled, one page per Monday until December 31, 2007. So check back in... about six hours forty-five minutes for the start of Flight of the Living Dead.

James Randi lecture from 2001

New Grind House Trailer

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/grindhouse_hd.html

Go Away Pac-Xon!

I've just realized that while I posted the Pac-Xon game on my blog so that I could play it easily whenever I want (at least until it disappears into the archive and I have to search for it), the theme music plays every time someone goes to this page. So I've changed it to a link. It's worth playing, though, if you haven't. Check it out two posts down from this one.

New Version of the FoLD Cover

Go Pac-Xon Go!

Go Pac-Xon Go!

Twenty-five

That's how many years I've been around now.

Grind House Trailer

I don't know how this movie escaped my radar until now, but I'm very excited about this: Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez are directing two feature-length horror movies that are being shown together (with fake movie trailers in-between) with the title Grind House. Here's the trailer:

http://mftm.blogspot.com/2006/10/
grind-house-2007-scream-awards-trailer.html

Rodriguez's segment will be a zombie story (and we all know how I feel about zombies), and Tarantino's segment features Rose McGowan with a machine gun for a leg.

I feel like this movie was made just for me.

EDIT: Rose McGowan actually appears in both segments, but only with the machine-gun-leg in Rodriguez's story. Which also features TV's Naveen Andrews (Sayid from "Lost"). Whee!

Dexter

"Dexter" is such an amazing show. Well-written, well-acted, interesting plots, twists and turns, tension, and all the stuff that makes great television shows great. Apparently the first season (which is twelve episodes long) is based on the book Darkly Dreaming Dexter, which I bought today from Borders along with the second book in the series (upon which the second season will apparently be based), Dearly Devoted Dexter. From what I understand, the third book in the series, Dexter in the Dark, is coming out this summer. I hope they never stop making them. In the absence of new episodes of "Lost" (at least until February), "Dexter" is my favorite show currently on the air.

And I think this is the first time in my life I've ever bought a mystery novel.

New Jam Strip

New jam strip starring the Joes (Frontirre and O'Brien, respectively), and Kyle Haase.

Flight of the Living Dead Update

Did a new page today. I really love this comic and I'm enjoying the hell out of drawing every page. The main purpose of doing FoLD was, well, mainly to get back into doing webcomics, since it's sort of where I got my start and I enjoy the structure of a serialized story where feedback is instantaneous. But the purpose was also to push myself over the next year into doing some more experimental stuff and figuring out what works about my style and what doesn't work, and getting faster at producing pages on a regular deadline while still trying to maintain a standard of quality.

What this means is that sometimes I try stuff in FoLD that I wouldn't do normally, just to try it. There will sometimes be stuff that will look out of place or awkward, because I'm trying it out for the first time. I might decide to do a page in a stark, black-and-white Frank Miller style or incorporate photos or try other things that I might normally shy away from. I might even do a page or two in color. The first eight pages are all being done in inkwash, which is something I've tried before but have never really embraced fully. These pages look good, though, and I'm liking the way the gray tones complement my line work. It's giving my stuff a Ross Campbell feel that I really enjoy.

The comic starts three weeks from tomorrow, and continues every week for the next year. I cannot tell you how excited, but also scared, I am about this. I fully intend to meet every deadline and make sure each page goes up when it's supposed to. For someone like me, who is used to missing deadlines and shirking responsibility, that's terrifying.

And if this goes well, I've recently come up with a name for the sequel, which (like Flight of the Living Dead) is another zombie title I can't believe hasn't been used already.

ComicSpace

MySpace for comic creators, I guess. Here's me: www.comicspace.com/scottewen.

Bookworm Adventures

Found this game through Penny Arcade, the writer of which describes it as a "Scrabble RPG." You create words from tiled letters, and the better your word, the more damage it does to your opponent. Insanely addictive. Here's my top ten word list:

Both "Lex" and "Scott" are me; Lex is the default name and I just played through the demo twice. Even though "nuisances" is worth more points, I cannot tell you how happy I was to pull out "juxtapose." I don't know what a "vocabular" is. I was trying for "vocabulary" and didn't have a Y, but the game took it anyway. I suppose it's someone who vocabulates.

The Lost A-Team

I like this comic strip

Found a link to this over at the Intelligent Brian board. It's one of the strangest comics I've ever read, and it's hilarious.
Ged by Kyle Baddeley

New Sketch!

In the sketches section, there's a drawing of Kat Cooper, main character of FLIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, as a zombie. Done for my buddy Dave.

Kyle at desk

Pennies abound.

Read the first seven pages of THE SUNDAYS #1

Right now! More soon.

Comic Book Recommendation of the Week

Acme Novelty Library #17
By Chris Ware

This is my first experience with Chris Ware's narrative work, having been impressed with his art after seeing it last week at the New York Jewish Museum. His art is very simplistic and clean, and he writes the kind of comic stories I love to read, the "slice-of-life" type stuff seen in Daniel Clowes and Guy Delisle's work.

Also read this week:

The Punisher vol. 6: Barracuda - Possibly my favorite of the Punisher MAX stories so far.
The Punisher X-Mas - One of the first non-Ennis written Punisher stories I've liked. Definitely better than last year's Christmas special.
Supermarket - I liked this story a lot until the ending, which seemed rushed. The artwork is very good, though.
The Walking Dead #32 - Really good. I'm glad the story's starting to pick up again after a few issues of not much happening.
Batman/The Spirit - I loved Darwyn Cooke's artwork, but Jeph Loeb's story just seemed cheesy and unnecessary. It seems this book was made for no reason other than to team up Batman and The Spirit, not because there was a good idea for a story. I'm looking forward to Darwyn Cooke's ongoing Spirit comic, though, since he's writing it himself.
Criminal #2 - Tops even the first issue. This is a really great series. I'm going to have to go back and pick up Sleeper now.
Gorillaz: The Rise of the Ogre - Being a huge fan of both the Gorillaz' music and Jamie Hewlett's artwork, this was a no-brainer. Haven't read it all yet, but it's definitely a funny and beautiful book.
David Boring - The second act of this three-act book by Daniel Clowes seemed a little out-of-place, but overall it was very enjoyable and beautifully drawn.

Audiobooks are fun

Oftentimes while at my desk working, I like to listen to podcasts such as The Ricky Gervais Show, Penn Radio, or Party Truck USA. I just discovered audible.com, which lets you download audiobooks for much less than they are in the store (usually less than $20).

So far, I've listened to about half of Eragon, which is shit. And I've just downloaded David Sedaris's Me Talk Pretty One Day. I'll let you know how it is.

Photos from Studio Like

Reference for THE SUNDAYS:




A few weeks ago, we started leaving pennies anonymously on Kyle's desk because he got annoyed when he found them there. A few days ago we started taping them to the underside of his desk. He has yet to find them:

Scientology: TR Demo

Underwater Volcanic Eruption

Click to make big.

When the National Science Foundation's Ridge 2000 program was launched in the late 1990s to study active undersea volcanic activities, researchers chose several areas of interest. One of those is located about 400 miles west of Mexico along a massive volcanic mountain range called the East Pacific Rise. When the U.S. researchers returned to check their seismometers in April 2006, they discovered that several of them were lost, buried under new lava from an underwater eruption. And when they used a deep-diving camera system to see what's had happened, they saw that almost ocean bottom life had disappeared. As says one of the scientists, this was like seeing the 'death and birth of a mid-ocean ridge from all perspectives — geological, biological, geophysical.' But read more…

The Sundays #1 page 7

And now it is inked.

New Sundays page

The Sundays #1, page seven has been penciled.

Venom

Courtesy of Rev. Danny.

My T-Shirt Came

Mr Gruff, the atheist goat who loves coffee instead of god.

New Sundays page in the Inks section

Page six is inked now. Check it out here. You can also see the line art for the Flight of the Living Dead poster in there.

Sigma Airlines.com Officially Launches

Check out the official page for FLIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD at www.sigmaairlines.com. This is where you'll be going every Monday for the next twelve months to get your zombie fix.

Flight of the Living Dead

This is the new webcomic I've been working on for the past few weeks.



Flight of the Living Dead was created as a 60-page graphic novel, which is being serialized from January 1, 2007 to December 31, 2007. The story takes place over seven hours, with each hour comprising eight pages (the final hour is 12 pages). One new page will go up every Monday in 2007, with the first eight pages all going up on January 1. Hence the schedule will be:

* Hour One: pages 1-8, January 1
* Hour Two: pages 9-16, January 8 - February 26
* Hour Three: pages 17-24, March 5 - April 23
* Hour Four: pages 25-32, April 30 - June 18
* Hour Five: pages 33-40, June 25 - August 13
* Hour Six: pages 41-48, August 20 - October 8
* Hour Seven: pages 49-60, October 15 - December 31

Comic Book Recommendation of the Week

SHENZHEN: A TRAVELOGUE FROM CHINA
by Guy Delisle


I was a big fan of Guy Delisle's previous book, PYONGYANG: A JOURNEY IN NORTH KOREA, and I was delighted to see this new one at Borders today.

PYONGYANG was an autobiographical comic about Delisle's stay in North Korea while working as the director of a Korean animation studio. Delisle, who is French-Canadian, writes the book in a diary-like way, going over his daily life while working in a country that intentionally isolates itself from the rest of the world. Delisle stays in a hotel with so few guests that they all stay on one or two floors, and those are the only ones with the electricity turned on. He orders french toast in the hotel restaurant and gets soggy bread warmed in the microwave. Radios are illegal and he can't even take a walk without having a Korean "guide" come with him. Everyone in Korea must wear a pin with a picture of Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung, and their portraits must be hung in every room in every building in the country. Even the bathrooms. He brings a copy of Orwell's 1984 with to read and can't help but notice the similarities.

The new book, SHENZHEN, takes place in a less totalitarian country and Delisle seems to enjoy his stay in China a little bit more than he did North Korea. The differences between Western and Eastern cultures are still there, though, and he is staying in a city with very few non-Chinese people and almost no one that speaks English.

Both books are really great for anyone who likes diary-style comics like AMERICAN SPLENDOR or BLANKETS. I've read PYONGYANG three times now and I cannot recommend it enough.

Yellow Submarine

My new favorite website

I'm pretty sure this is a joke, but this site is worth a lot of laughs even if it isn't.

http://objectiveministries.org/kidz

I bought this t-shirt.

My webcomic is online

Comic Genesis, who have agreed to host my new webcomic debuted January 1, have put up the first page two months early. And I cannot yet log in to delete it. If you know how to work Google, well... chances are good you can find out a week early what the comic is about and see the first page.

Update: I figured out how to log in and take it down. They sure do make it difficult. Once you have your page set up on ComicGenesis, before you can edit it you then need to register for a username on the forum, then attach your account to your username. Why it's set up this way I have no idea, but no longer is the comic online.

Couldn't have said it any better myself

Comic Book Recommendation of the Week

THE GOD DELUSION
By Richard Dawkins

"If atheism had a pope, it would be Richard Dawkins." - Penn Jillette

Richard Dawkins is an English biologist who has written several books on science and evolution. I've only previously read his book The Blind Watchmaker, which describes and explains natural selection in a way that a layperson can fully understand. His new book, The God Delusion, is sort of a follow-up and expansion of his BBC documentary on religion entitled The Root of All Evil?*. Keep in mind I can only comment on the first quarter of the book, having read that much so far.

The book goes into the common arguments for belief in god that tend to pop up from theists, and he shoots them down one by one. Points such as "something so complex as life on Earth must have had a designer," "everything can't have started from nothing, so god must have started it," even the transparent Pascal's Wager ("If you believe in god and are right, you go to Heaven. But if you're wrong you lose nothing") are shown to be completely empty arguments. He then shows the arguments for why there almost certainly is no god, and talks about the harm that religion does to the world, and why it's ridiculous that religion should be treated with a kind of respect and honor that makes it taboo to disagree with.

This book was not really meant for me, as an atheist, since its main goal is to show believers why the only really sane choice is nonbelief. But it is fascinating and I would recommend it to everyone, believer or nonbeliever. I started this review with a Penn Jillette quote (who interviewed Dawkins on his radio show recently, which is how I found out about the book), and I'll end it with one from the back cover:

"The God Delusion is smart, compassionate, and true like ice, like fire. If this book doesn't change the world, we're all screwed."

* The Root of All Evil? has not been shown on American television, and probably won't be anytime soon. A DVD release is apparently forthcoming, but if you'd like to watch it now, you can download part one here and part two here.

---

On a completely unrelated note, make sure not to install iTunes 7.0.1. I had heard from friends that iTunes 7 has been known to delete mp3s from users' computers. Last night my housemate Kyle told me the new version, 7.0.1, had fixed the glitch. I installed it and the first thing it did was to delete every single mp3 from my hard drive and iPod.

An image from my new webcomic

Inking the first page right now. Here's the first time we see the main character, Kat. I don't want to show any more of the panel because it'll give away some of the story, but you can see the style I'll be working in for this one. A little bit messier than usual, but I'm getting it done faster. I'm also experimenting with stuff I normally would shy away from, like scraping a razor across black ink, black and white ink splatter, and drybrush (which you can see in Kat's shirt and hair).

[EDIT] P.S. I've decided on a day when I'm going to announce the title and full details of the comic: November 13.

Picard's Theme Song

Character Design

A sketch of the main character from my new webcomic. Visually she is based on an ex-girlfriend of mine.



You can also see it in the "sketches" section.

Pumpkinball

Frat House Pumpkin Carvings

Coolest Photo Ever

Shamelessly stolen from Warren Ellis's blog, a shot of a space shuttle launch as seen from the International Space Station.

Click to enlarge, or go to WarrenEllis.com to see more.

Comic Book Recommendation of the Week

FABLES: 1001 NIGHTS OF SNOWFALL
By Bill Willingham, et al.

Fables is, without a doubt, the best Vertigo series going on right now. The new graphic novel is a collection of short stories told by Snow White over the course of 1,001 nights that give something of a backstory to the Fables universe. We don't get all 1,001 stories, but the few that we get are terrific, and beautifully illustrated (except for Mark Wheatley, who apparently drew his story entirely in Sharpie). This also contains the first sequential art by James Jean that I've ever seen, and it's just as gorgeous as his covers.

Also contributing are Charles Vess, Michael Kaluda, John Bolton, Mark Buckingham (painted, even!), Derek Kirk Kim (this guy's great. If you haven't seen his stuff, Google him. It's worth it), Tara McPherson (never heard of her before, but I'm going to search for her stuff now. She was my favorite artist in the book), and Jill Thompson, who is great as always.

Also picked up Desolation Jones (nice to have the book back, and this issue's very good. There's even a Philip K. Dick reference!), Other Side #1 (which I also recommend wholeheartedly. If you like the first hour of "Full Metal Jacket," you'll like this one), and the 50c preview of The Absolute Sandman. It's got the whole first issue of Sandman, recolored with modern Photoshop magic. It looks great, although I can't see myself dropping a hundred bucks for the full book, since I already have all these stories.

New Intelligent Brian strips by me

There are two new Intelligent Brian strips, drawn by me, at www.intelligentbrian.com. Click on "New Strips."

What 'X-Men 3' Should Have Been Like...

Here's an older strip by Studio-Like, done over summer 2006. Click to enlarge.

Pumpkin Coffee

A new "add-a-panel" strip created by the members of Studio-Like, and starring me. Click to enlarge:

Comic Strip Jam panel 2

By Killer Rian Miller:

I'm Fresh and Full of Life

New Comic Strip Jam

Since it's been roughly seven centuries since I posted the panel for Steve McBride to add onto with nothing to speak of, I'm starting a new strip. This one's going to Kryin' K. Rian Miller.

Comic Book Recommendation of the Week

IN THE STUDIO: VISITS WITH CONTEMPORARY CARTOONISTS
By Todd Hignite

This is not really a comic book at all, but it is comic-related. It's a 300-page book of interviews with Ivan Brunetti, Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes, Robert Crumb, Jaime Hernandez, Gary Panter, Seth, Art Spiegelman, and Chris Ware. I'm not familiar with all of the artists in here, but the ones I am familiar with are amazing. There are also tons of sketches and illustrations from the artists, and art that inspired them or that they find interesting. I haven't read all of it yet, but it's worth the cover price ($30) just for the artwork in it.

Runner-up: Sloth by Gilbert Hernandez. Beautifully illustrated, even if it does get really weird about halfway through. Fans of David Lynch movies might enjoy this one.

Comic Announcement

I'm starting a new webcomic, the first installment of which will be released on January 1, 2007. Every Monday I'm putting up a new black-and-white, Manga-sized page here on the site. It's not going to look as slick and clean as my Sundays pages, it's probably going to be quite sketchy and quickly-done. This is a finite series, I've got an ending in mind and it'll probably take me about a year to get there. In fact the entire story takes place over seven continuous hours, so it'll be a fairly short run when I'm totally done with it. Title of the story is forthcoming, it's the sort of title that tells you exactly what the comic is about, so I want to keep it secret until closer to the launch of the webcomic.

Why am I doing this when I've got The Sundays to work on and two part-time jobs? Partly because I like the story and want to tell it, and I'll be working in a genre that I love and have never done before. But mostly because I want to give myself a small project that I can do in my off-time as sort of a way to loosen up and keep my artistic muscles flexed.

Over the next few weeks I'm going to start putting up sketches and character designs.

Look Around You

Now With Sketches

Sketches page is now up, and there's a new sketch I did for fellow Kubert grad Ron Harrison.

New Artwork

There's a hilarious webcomic called Intelligent Brian done over at, appropriately enough, intelligentbrian.com. It's written by Kevin L. Sheath (who is writing the comic book I'm working on, The Sundays), and Jimi Odell (who wrote a comic called The Bar I'll be tackling after The Sundays). It's usually drawn by Kevin, but every now and again he gets his friends to do some guest strips. This is actually how I met them both, as I was a fan of the webcomic and volunteered to do some guest artwork back in 2002. From there led to more guest strips and eventually to The Sundays. This week, hopefully, two new strips of mine will be going up (the first new strips from me since 2002, I think), and I've got the inks for the first one. No color or dialogue balloons yet, you'll have to wait until Wednesday to see that. There's a chance I won't be able to finish it on time, in which case my strips will get pushed back to next week.

You can see the new strip in the inks section.

The Funniest Photo You Will Ever See

Comic Book Recommendation of the Week

THE VAULT OF MICHAEL ALLRED #1 of 4
By Michael Allred

Not that much came out this week really. All three issues I bought were new series or, in the case of my recommendation this week, a magazine-like collection of artwork, interviews, commentaries, and photos of one of my favorite comic book creators, Mike Allred. Allred is one of the biggest influences in my own comic book work, so it's amazing to be able to sit down and trace his evolution as an artist from his earliest work in the eighties to the point he's at now.

The other two things I picked up were Brian K. Vaughan's Dr. Strange: The Omen #1 and Criminal #1 by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. I haven't read either one yet.

I just got back into town after four days in New York City. Saw a show at the Laugh Factory, featuring Judah Friedlander and three other guys I'd never heard of, but all were good. I also watched a taping of The Late Show with David Letterman, which had the hilarious Amy Sedaris, and as the musical guest there was Trey Anastasio, who I understand used to host a fishing show or something.

I picked up the third season DVD of Penn & Teller's Bullshit!, which is a wonderful show, and was surprised to see a new Beck CD at the store. The Beck CD, which has been called "The Information," has a four-page booklet of white grid paper. There is no text or pictures, but there is a sheet of stickers, which you can use to create your own cover art, booklet, and back cover for the CD. Later I may post a picture of mine.

No Comic Book Recommendation This Week

Unfortunately, not that much came out this week at Funny Steve's Comic Book Emporium. I got the new Invincible, the new Ultimates and Jack of Fables and American Virgin. They were all really good comics, but you already know that. You've probably read them all too. I even searched Steve's 70% Off "The Shit No One Will Buy" Shelf, but couldn't find anything good to recommend here. Except Strangers in Paradise Pocket Book 2, which surprises me because it's such an excellent book. If anything he should be charging more for it. I already have it though. If you don't, well, then I recommend you buy that, I guess. But get book one first. Otherwise it won't make any sense.

Extras this week was good, though not as good as the David Bowie episode. The Office was excellent, as always. Lost starts back up next Wednesday. I'm going to be very happy for the next six weeks.

New Artwork To Behold

I haven't had a working scanner for a while so I've been kind of sitting on these pages, not being able to put them up on the website. Tonight I drove to Kinko's and, for the hefty cost of thirty damn dollars, scanned in three pages of pencils and two pages of inks. Good thing the scan quality is so poor on these pages that they are unusable for print. The inked pages look okay on the website, but they scanned it in in color rather than in bitmap mode. So you can see the brushstrokes on the solid black areas, which is not good. And of course, you can see how horrible the pencil scans came in.

Anyway, they're in the pencils and inks galleries. Please don't let their bad scan quality taint your enjoyment of them. I really do like the way they came out. Now I'm working on finishing the pencils for page 7, starting the inks for page 6, and doing layouts for the big page 8-9 double-page spread.

Friday Night Drinking

I just bought a six-pack of the new Smirnov Ice flavor, "Artic Berry." I want to know what kind of berries grow in the arctic.

Comic Book Recommendation of the Week

NEXTWAVE: AGENTS OF H.A.T.E. #8
by Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen

"I am Rorkannu, Master of the Dim Dimensions... and you cannot beat me up!"

I'd like to start doing these CBRotW's as more of a "the comic you're probably not reading" type of thing, because honestly, you can find recommendations for NextWave on every remotely comic-friendly website out there. But it was the most entertaining thing I read this week, and anyone who isn't reading it monthly is missing out. So this is the one time I'll recommend NextWave. And Warren Ellis along with it, because he writes some good stuff. If you're not reading Fell or Desolation Jones, now's the time to hop on those books, since they're both fairly early in their runs. Both are great, great comics. Also terrific this week were The Walking Dead and Strangers in Paradise.

And a brand new episode of Extras tonight. This may be the best one yet. Stephen Merchant and Barry off EastEnders are a comedic duo to rival the best. And David Bowie is a fucking genius.

Strip Jam 9/21

When I was in the Kubert School, my class used to do these strips: eight panels on an 11 x 17 page, where each participant would add a panel and continue the story of the previous panels. Sometimes we had funky rules, like you could only see the previous panel, or you added dialogue to the previous panel and left your own dialogue balloons blank. Now that we're out of school, we've just started our first online strip. I did the first panel. I'll post the rest as they become available.

Not Safe For Work

C'mon! C'mon, Toshi!

A Small Redesign

Still working out the kinks on this site. Links page is new, sketches page is coming soon, new artwork from The Sundays is coming soon. This blog should be easier to read now, hopefully.

A Pirate's Life

Just found an eight-page short story that I did for Mike Kraiger's writing class at the Kubert School. It's a little corny, but I love it so much. It's a musical starring pirates, and it makes me laugh, so I'm thinking I want to use it for something. Maybe do it up for an anthology or something. Here's the first page:


Page One

1. A seventeenth-century sailing ship on the open ocean, seen through a telescope (circular panel).

2. A pirate's face, as he lowers the telescope and squints at the ship on the horizon. He is on a pirate ship, and he is CAPTAIN BLACKMOUSTACHE. He has a black moustache.

• BLACKMOUSTACHE: Yar.

3. BLACKMOUSTACHE turns to face his crew of fearsome pirates.

• BLACKMOUSTACHE: Ahoy! Thar be booty afoot!

4. A couple of pirates glance down at their feet.

5. BLACKMOUSTACHE points out to sea.

• BLACKMOUSTACHE: Nar! Look ye fools! A ship!

Fairly soon after this the pirates break out in song.

Holy Shit!

From the list of machines that visit my website the most frequently:



I think I've found my new target demographic.

Why I Hate Microsoft, pt. I

This is the first in what I can only imagine will be a long, long line of bile-filled diatribes against the constant, malicious pebble in my damn shoe that is Microsoft. The most recent blog update on this site, concerning a comic book I enjoyed and wished to share with you, my friends, took about three minutes to type into my computer. It took about two minutes to find the picture of the cover on DC Comics' website and save it to my desktop for use in the blog. It would take me appoximately five minutes, using a relatively decent webediting program, such as Dreamweaver, to put the update together and upload it to my site. But, since I don't have Dreamweaver and decided to do all my updates in Microsoft Word, thus allowing the bother of writing the HTML code for each of these things to be taken out of my hands and placed upon Microsoft's hairy, pimply shoulder, it took an hour.

An hour! For that little review of PRIDE OF BAGHDAD. Because every time I tried placing the image on the page, it created a new version of the picture, scaled up 125% and saved to a seperate folder. I opened the HTML file in Notepad and proceeded to fix the mistakes, but opening the document in Word again meant the program deleted the picture outright from my page.

What this would have meant is that from now on, every time I wanted to update this blog and have any picture on this page remain the size and filename that I originally gave it, I would have to do all the code myself in Notepad. Which is still a goddamn Microsoft product! The irony!

So now I'm using Blogger. Which means you can post comments and talk smack about me if you want. Please feel free.

And join me tomorrow for part II of Why I Hate Microsoft, when I go after Internet Explorer, Xbox, and Minesweeper.

Comic Book Recommendation of the Week

PRIDE OF BAGHDAD
by Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon.

Anyone who enjoys emotional, character-driven stories (even if they aren’t human characters) paired with amazing art should read this one. I enjoyed it thoroughly. Runner-up: THE ESCAPISTS #1, which didn’t come out this week, but I had never heard of it before yesterday. Hopefully the next two issues are just as good.