Congrats to ADDTF for one solid year of reading comics naked.

Also, welcome back ADD and In Sequence.

Did I miss anyone?

 
Nik Nak



I don't know if it's possible for someone with my complete lack of good taste to have a guilty pleasure. Owning Ambush Bug's every appearance might be close. Here's one for my fellow nerds, from the Obscure DC Guide.

From the Amazing Heroes Preview Special 1986:
"How to succeed in business without really trying: early in his new mini-series, the Bug establishes his first big time secret headquarters - a restaurant. 'He does everything he can to make his new headquarters a secret,' says Robert Loren Fleming, 'and the fact that it's a restaurant is only a cover to throw off villains. It's out on the docks, in a real seedy area of the harbor where there are muggers and cutthroats and killers everywhere, because he does not want it to go. He even names it 'Hamster Haven', and that's all he serves -hamsters on a stick, hamster au gratin, bacon cheesehamster, hamsters flambee, and so on - all purposely so there will be no clientele, because he wants a secret headquarters. So naturally, the hamsters catch on as the biggest craze since sushi, and people are lined up around the block. They're being mugged and murdered, they don't care - they're still coming. Of course, this is going to cause all kinds of problems for him, because he has to decide whether to franchise or not. Corporations are trying to buy him out. He even has to start hiring help, though Cheeks will be taking the phone reservations.'"
Later in the article, Bob goes on to tell us that "there's always the upcoming battle with Banal, who is what Fleming describes as a 'triviakiller. He talks. A lot. About nothing. He's so boring that, depending on what subject he picks, he can put you to sleep, knock you down, kill you, whatever - mostly people throw money and jewels at him just to get rid of him.' 'We also have the Legion of Substitute Heroes now.' says Fleming. 'Paul Levitz said essentially "take em and go away from me." What we've got in mind right now is for a bunch of them to take on the Uh-Oh Squad. We want to do one of those old JLA-JSA type covers showing the Uh-Oh Squad and the Legion running full-tilt at one another, with Ambush Bug in the middle with maybe a whistle.'"

Special Announcement

Beginning tomorrow and running for most of the month, Flat Earth will be welcoming a rotating panel of guest writers in a supplemental bonus to our regular blogging. Enjoy!

posted by Steven at 8:50 PM

 
Blue Friday

"I think I might like Blue Monday more than Archie."
-J's shocking confession to me, made a few months ago.

Supersized has the first part of a three part interview with Blue Monday and Scooter Girl creator Chynna Clugston-Major.

Unfortunately, most interviews and websites devoted to Clugston-Major on the internet have long since bitten the dust or are no longer updated. Even the official site doesn't seem to be working, which is a real shame. I like Blue Monday alot. But don't take just my word for it. Comics Worth Reading has a review of the entire series. You can still browse a nice little Scooter Girl site and there are a few interviews available. Clugston-Major also seems to get alot of press in print, two examples of which you can view as scans from Bust and Animerica, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Be warned, the file size may be quite large for the scans.

If you aren't familiar with Blue Monday, Oni's Sunday Comics will help remedy that. The second and third are the cutest.
posted by Steven at 12:14 AM

 
Free Comic Thursday - Gasoline Alley

For your enjoyment, a 141-strip continuity from Frank King's Gasoline Alley.

ADD (Happy belated birthday!) gave the rundown on Drawn and Quarterly for 2004 from their newsletter awhile ago. I haven't had the chance to express my excitement for the upcoming Gasoline Alley reprint series. I have the Drawn and Quarterly anthology with the collection of Gasoline Alley Sunday pages, and though I adore them, I've always been more interested in the down-to-earth dailies. This project has been bumped back so many times that most people thought it was never going to happen. I remember hearing that it was supposed to be released at least a year ago, and a tentative date was set for Fall of last year. Not that I'm complaining. I'm sure it will be worth the wait.

For information on the history of Gasoline Alley, check out this guest-edition of The Answer Man, or the page over at Toonopedia. For information on creator Frank King, Lambiek has a short biography, King himself provides an autobiography, and the city of Tomah has a tribute to its favourite son. This Amazon entry gives a little info on the series, as does an old, old post (scroll down) from Egon which transcribes a snippet from an interview with Drawn and Quarterly publisher Chris Oliveros.

"It's going to be a series of about fifteen volumes, starting in 1921, going up to the early '50s... and there'll be two years of the dailies collected per volume." Each book will feature design work by Chris Ware and an introduction by Jeet Heer."

Gasoline Alley's early years always seemed to have generated enough interest to keep collectors paying high prices for newspaper clippings, but not enough to merit a reprint collection. Thank you, D + Q. 2004 looks to be the year of the classic comic reprints.

posted by Steven at 12:07 AM

 
Peer Pressure

My fellow comic blogonauts are a great bunch of kids. A gang of them wrote me over the weekend, passing along numerous scoops for me to give to you.

Flat Earth's first Comic Blogosphere Hunk-Of-The-Month, Bill "I'd rather be Punk-Of-The-Month" Kartalopoulos is moonlighting from his regular gig at Egon for the newly-revamped Indy Magazine. Now you're spoiled for choice in content from one of comics' great advocates.

Dirk Deppey of Journalista has had to scale back his regular in-depth comic blogging due to scheduling difficulties. His first Mini-Journalista of the week was comprised of only 32 separate entries with 43 links in total. Hope to see you back at full strength sometime soon, Dirk.

Progressive Ruin's Mike Sterling has an uncanny ability to post completely random tidbits of information I've been saving for a rainy day mere hours before I finally get to them. He dropped me a line to relate his own stories of people copying his posts and links without credit. He later issued an open letter to the Livejournal user responsible.

Neilalien has no use for this link to The New Universe of Canadian Comics but was kind enough to send it my way. Neilalien knows me too well. The link he originally sent me was of this mighty character, which says it all, really. Thanks Neilalien, this Doctor Strange puffy sticker is for you.



David Fiore over at Motime gave me the lowdown on where he gets his cheap comics in Montreal, and promises to share this information in an upcoming post. I can't wait for my next trip to La Belle Province.

Since we're on a Canadian streak, Salgood Sam of Sequential welcomed me back to the comic blogosphere a few days ago. Not that you'd notice considering the massive amount of posts he's been making lately. Sequential is, so far as I know, the only region-specific comic blog running, and a damn comprehensive one at that. If you want to know anything about the Canadian comic scene, look no further.

Ever notice how a higher percentage then normal of comic blogs are run by Canadians? We also purchase the largest amount of Archie comics per capita then any other nation in the world.

And I'm finally able to respond to Sean Collins' response to my response to his initial posts concerning the current state of comic interviews. I'd say my post was rambling and brainless rather then thorough and thoughtful, but I appreciate the sentiment. I'd also like to add something that I couldn't find room to fit in initially, which is that even though I disagree with the majority of what Collins put across, I was glad he brought the issue to the table to begin with.

The one point I'd like to clarify is that I did not, at any time, believe that Collins felt the Journal was biased. At one point I said, "While I understand that Collins' wasn't necessarily saying that he himself felt this way towards the Journal..." One of my biggest faults in writing is in not making myself clear. Apologies to Mr. Collins for the misunderstanding. So far as agreeing to disagree with me on that one point, well, you and the rest of the world.

Thanks again to all the bloggers mentioned above, as well as all those who weren't, for making each and every breakfast a thrilling one.


posted by Steven at 11:47 PM

 
My Four-Colour Prison

I leave for awhile and all sorts of stuff pops up. I received the most email I've ever had from the blog, despite leaving it in the capable robot hands of the Flat Earth Auto-Pilot Blogomatic for four days. It's like I never left.

It's incredibly cold up here and in Montreal, so J. and I didn't do as much quarter bin diving as usual, but we did manage on scoring the first copy of Deathrace 2020 and an issue of Measles.

Because of the temperature, we decided to indulge ourselves and pick up a Russ Meyer film, specifically Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. The film ends with Z-Man and friends becoming fetishist superheroes, including Superwoman, Jungle Boy and Boy Wonder. I spent the next few hours quoting Z-Man, saying "This is my happening and it freaks me out!" It was nearly the next Take The Dare or Boobronica.

The next day, I had to be completely silent for a half-hour stretch of time (don't ask) and decided to reread Ghost World, which I had brought over for J. to enjoy.



Finally, when I'm in the mood for some light reading, I usually turn to some form of manly genre fiction. Robert E. Howard's Conan series, Cornell Woolrich's exercises in noir, and Richard Stark's parker novels, among others. I finished my most recent Parker novel, Comeback, on the bus. Here's an excerpt.

"Ralph Quindero was about what Dwayne had expected: Beetle Bailey without the comedy, a sad sack who would always be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just smart enough to get into trouble."

Beetle Bailey? Comedic? One of the goals of good genre entertainment is in attaining suspension of disbelief. Shame that Stark blew it.

Comics. Once they get ahold of you, they'll never let you go.
posted by Steven at 12:35 AM

 
Don't Forget Your Roots!


posted by Steven at 7:38 PM

 
Cutting out the middle man
Originally posted on Termite Terrace and reposted here considering recent events.

Just how far back do you have to go to credit a source?

A few weeks ago I posted a small, temporary link in the sidebar to a new story by Derek Kirk Kim, now gone. At that time (and to this day, come to think of it) I only had one or two irregular visitors to the site, one of which is John Jakala of Grotesque Anatomy, who no doubt got here through my referral to his site. John posted the link to his blog, along with credit to mine for the discovery. Since then, numerous blogs both in and out of the "comics blogosphere" (hehe) have also linked to Derek Kirk Kim's story, usually crediting Grotesque Anatomy, or in some cases, crediting someone who credited Grotesque Anatomy. Mr. Jakala has been so kind as to try and redirect credit back to this blog, not only on his own site, but also on others.

(Side note : Johnny Bacardi has also laid claim to the Kim link, though it is for promoting Kim's site in general, not the story specifically. John and Johnny have since agreed to split the cookie.)

All this commotion over credit has prompted me to think about the rules of etiquette in blogging, and on the internet in general, I guess. About a year ago I took hours out to research a particular piece of news, only to discover a day later that an even more prominent blog (now defunct) took all these links and posted them without credit. The more respected blog won out, and the "scoop" was credited to that blog instead. At the time, I was incredibly angry at such a transgression. Of all the reasons I started blogging, one that I had never consciously considered was in gaining a measure of popularity. After all, if I really wanted a huge amount of hits, would I start a blog about comics? But within the then-smallish community of comic blogs, it did increasingly matter to me that I keep up with the Joneses.

This happened at least a few more times that I know of, but after that initial occurance, I realized that in the end I was just a middleman. Did I create the news that was spreading around? Didn't others know about it before I presented it to a group that until then hadn't? And shouldn't I be happy that having those links lifted, credit or not, allowed that story to reach an even larger number of people then I had originally intended? That last one was what did it for me. I had forgotten that my reason for starting the blog in the first place was to spread the word, not take credit for being the messenger. Another consideration was that, looking back on it, I have probably inadvertently commited the same offense at one time or another.

I don't believe everyone who starts a blog will have to deal with this, but I somehow doubt jealousy and spite will be entirely absent either. As the "comics blogosphere" continues to grow, questions of credit will no doubt become more prominent. I'd really be interested to know how different bloggers go about crediting their sources. For example, someone with a larger stake in creating a name or brand for themselves may feel differently then I do. In a way I can understand, and I would love to hear their point of view.

P.S. Thanks Mr. Jakala for giving it a try. I think your (mistaken?) retitling of this blog as "Terrible Termite" is apt, and it's terrible nature may be a reason that no one really cares to acknowledge it. I promise to make it a place worth visiting in the months to come.

posted by Steven at 12:24 PM