DJ lil' e has posted for download a bunch of mashups that she put together for her recent gig. And it wouldn't be a lil' e set without some Dead or Alive.

Been mucking about with Flickr, and our photos from the SDCC are now posted. There are a lot of photos are folks in costume, but that's mostly because it's easier than trying to take pictures that capture the size of the Con.

In San Diego last week, we spent some time with Chris, a friend from art school. He's doing some pretty amazing photography these days with Holgas and various sorts of homemande pinhole cameras (including the SPAMera). Yesterday, he posted a a photo from our day out.

Heh. I was having a discussion at work about CP+B's excellent work for Mini Cooper (and how Cooper's kind of co-opted the "designer cool" that the Beetle had when it relaunched), and then ran across their work for VW at Adrants. It's funny, but it's like they're just revisiting the past victory of the (admittedly, pretty terrific) Unauthorized Owner's Manual.

Monica ran across this article at Comic Foundry, where the chief editor for magazines at the NYT explains the reasoning behind the new "front" section with its serialized comic and fiction.

(Further down the page, the Comic Foundry notes the problems of the ill-conceived superhero from the Magazine Publishers of America, which I also just read about at Adland while catching up on my adblogs. It's not always appropriate create a superhero icon for any marketing project, people.)

Evan has one of the Mac mods that he and his friend John did featured in an article at MacWorld. More detailed photos and other projects at their site.

OK, had to see Ultraviolet to believe it. We were entertained. But then, we were sleep deprived, sunburnt, and coming off a couple of geekiest days we ever had. Most interesting — and incongruous — were the opening credits, done by the The Interman himself, Jeff Parker, featuring a montage of imaginary comic book covers of Ultraviolet through the years. Some of the story behind that is at his blog, along with links to other covers in the comments section.

Andy points out the new DC Comics stamps at the Con. Yeah, the USPS was there, but the line was full of people mailing stuff home.

The Con is really, really big.* It's overload. And though comics are maybe not always the focus, it makes for a dazzling mix. And a sobering reality check, that though comics and video games and movies are marketed alongside each other, comics are competing against other media as much (if not more) than other comics.

* Exhibit floor alone is 525,701 square feet (a football field is 57,600 square feet). More than last year's 104,000 attendees were expected (the city of Santa Fe has around 62,000 people, 140,000 in the "greater metropolitan" area).

Back.

The Comics Reporter (who I was lucky enough to meet at the Con) points us to this review of Masters of American Comics in Milwaukee. M. caught more of the panel on the exhibit than I did, but unfortunately, their exhibition catalog lost in the Eisner Awards.

More later.

Results of the annual "It was a dark and stormy night" contest. Via free wireless in the hotel lobby and MB at reference.

Off tomorrow, on a week-long vacation to southern California, where we'll be visiting friends and going to the Con.

Updates when we return and recover. In the meantime, Matt's drawing monsters and Lucas has moved to Syria.

Anybody tape The Amazing Screw-on Head?

The latest Squirrel Tales — featuring Rose — is now posted. Check out Dale's other work at the 7000 BC store.

Off to 7000 BC meeting. Starting off at the Seth Fisher retrospective and I'm going to try and see the new show at Feral Gallery on my way out.

I'll be in NYC on a bidnez trip for the first half of the week. New Squirrel Tales posted when I return.

The Sci Fi Channel will be showing the pilot of Mike Mignola's The Amazing Screw-on Head, and then allowing viewers to vote if the series should continue. As much as I wanted the comic to go on and on, it's pretty much perfect just as it is — a little, self-contained story. We'll see what everyone else thinks.

Via the Newsarama Blog. They also provide this link to some of the stills.

SPACE Finds Part 6: Jumbo Jape

Sean Bieri stopped by the 7000 BC table to trade for some books by Jeff Benham; we weren't really doing trades (especially on others' behalf), but he was enthusiastic, with great-looking work that we wanted to read. Yeah, don't tell Jeff. But once I saw what he was getting, I had to order my own. Read the rest »

Jumbo Jape is a collection of assorted minicomics. Running the gamut from skewed observations, to inspired mashups of classic cartoon strips and classic stories, to a wonderful, hard-boiled piece that I immediately related to as the reason I don't visit the dentist more than once every presidential administration, this book is holds a chuckle and/or a surprise on every page.

It's tough to review as a whole, because the book is a series of unconnected little set pieces. But the writing jumps from satire to parody to bad puns to slice of life. The tone changes page to page, but always with a sense of humor. The parodies are dead-on, the observations on our contemporary society are painfully true, the gags are sometimes groan-out-loud funny.

The art is fluid, switching from homage to stylized to cartoon, but with an impeccable sense of composition and mastery of line weight. There's a real understanding of the power of gesture and caricature, and it's all in the service of making the funny.

Jumbo Jape is a couple years old, and represents a decade of work. Luckily, we scored a couple issues of a more recent work, Business Chimp, a series of one-page observations of, well, Business Chimp. Anybody who works in (or even has heard of working in) an office will find it easy to relate to and laugh at, though not without a bit of sadness. Sean has also done a bunch of Gocco prints that really showcase his ability to capture a single moment with active linework.

Jumbo Jape
Black and white with color cover, 60 pages
$3.00
zoomcat@comcast.net

Moon Trees. Learned about 'em on the drive home from StarDate.

Toward the beginning of District B13 the other night, I was thinking, "this is just a bunch of action scenes strung together." But when they got into things like, plot, character development, I starting wishing for more jumping through and around buildings.

In honor of a Fourth of July tradition here in Santa Fe, two of the finest pages you'll ever read about pancakes. There you go.

So, what have we been up to?

• The next installment of Squirrel Tales will be posted mid-July; after Dale did this pinup, I had no choice but to have him do Rose's story.
  
• The penultimate Los Alamos story will be posted in August. We've got the conclusion to that, and two more Squirrel Tales (with art by Pete and Jeff), and then we're putting it all into a trade paperback. In the meantime, volume 1 is at the printer for a second run.
  
• The 32-page first issue of New West is well underway, hoping to see the light of day by fall. And Dale and I are plotting out a Native American horror comic based on some of the drawings in his Dale Deforest Pinup Gallery.
  
• We (along with some of the 7000 BC folks) will be selling work at Bubonicon, August 18-20, and at the Phoenix Cactus Comiccon, September 23-24.

Richard Thompson's comic is now available online!