The NZA

Argh, should i move this one to current events & hope for more activism there? I know practically none of ya have heard of this RPG series, but i assure you its great....cmon, signin it takes less than a few minutes, howzabout doin it as a favor...?

Hmm...well, as you mightve seen, Spider-Man (for PlayStation & Dreamcast) was possibly the greatest comic book video game made; the whole thing was great. The sequel, however, was awful, accordin to the reviewers anyway, never got a chance to play it... This, however, is the version from the movie. I know very lil bout it, except im honestly not too hopeful...comic book games have a hard time workin out, add a movie-to-game translation in the mix and, well i hope it pleasently surprises me.

While not a Woo flick, it does have Chow... Anyway, Spiffy tells me its the basis for Tarentino's popular "Resevoir Dogs", which most of us action fans know was a cool flick, so I'm already curious...add this to the fact that im told its one of Fat's finest moments, and I'm extrememly curious. Turns out, Spiffy has the tape & wants to watch it sometime soon, lemme know if anyone else here (local) wants to watch it with us - most likely wont be till after finals anyway.

I sympathize, KOS. When i first came to college, i had a "Mega Memory Card" for PlayStation, by some unkown company or another, with a trustworthy name like "Mad Katz". Thing was 20 cards in one ( ! ) so i shouldve been wary, plus it was used...but it worked fine, so long as you didnt put it in or take it out while the system was on, 'cause for some retarded reason, that was its command to format all the damn cards. Lo and behold, i moved in with Spiffytee ( :wasabi: ), and after thorougly explainin the delicate situation, the card was DOA within less than 2 months time, as were all my save files from such fine RPGs as FF VII, Suikoden, Vandal Hearts, not to mention my astonishing 830 somethin victories with Armor King in Tekken 2.... :dissappointed: Memory loss sucks, and i know firsthand how hard you mustve worked for that Vagrant Story equipment, so im really sorry for yer loss, here's to hopin it turns up somewhere intact. :dcecil:

...and that should bout top off my final philsophy essay, outside of the final exam ones anyway. Been a suprisingly long road, but interestin at least. For all ive read, i wonder how much i really learned..? i recall knowin a whole lot more before this major. ...now i know why Socrates drank the hemlock. :D

Christ, i hope even a few of you make it this far, as this here piece is the single, most concise evaluation on what needs to be done, somewhat reiterating previous rants, tyin up others...this will be the only one not paraphrased, so be prepared. The discussion truly begins here, if there is to be one. If not, that's alright, I'll just keep talkin to myself....gotta get someone's attention eventually, or at least help formulate my own ideas from this. Here we go: -------------------------------------------------------- The Old Bastard's Manifesto Best before 01/01/01 Management not responsible for incorrect expiry dates Management not responsible for your anger, your embarrassment, or your insufficient intelligence Management not interested in your response Work prone to spontaneous mutation Ideological freeware: distribute at will ITEM ONE This is the time. The Western comics industry is scattered, unfocussed, badly confused. Such periods are optimum for violent revolution. The Old Bastard says sharpen your axes, make your peace and pack your Rohypnol; we're going on a road trip to reclaim the comics industry and remake it in another image. Specifically, mine. ITEM TWO Pop culture is darkening again. Accept it and stop whining, or stay at home and continue to attempt to convince your aged mother that you're really not sitting in your stained, crunchy bed fantasising about Betty and Veronica. People who refuse to see what time it is are surplus to requirements. Stop whining about what we're telling you long enough to listen to what we're telling you. Be an adult. ITEM THREE The graphic novel or album (or other more suitable nomenclature yet to be coined) is the optimised form of "comics." The intermediate form is the serialisation towards collection, what used to be termed the "miniseries". DC Comics did not become the No 1 publisher in sales terms because of all its ongoing titles. It became No 1 because of the massive and growing revenues generated by its graphic novels and albums. Comics are not "habitual entertainment" that need to remain static and require broadcasting regularly until death us do part. That's the comic strip, and even those are sometimes allowed dignified endings. Comics, like their related media of novels and cinema, must be allowed to tell complete stories. If you can't handle that, then you really need to be in another business. Those who support us will be rewarded by increased sales and given the gift of the Future. The people who attempt to stop us will be stamped on. ITEM FOUR Once, the characters were the most important part of a book to its audience. Then, the publisher's brand became paramount. Later, a schism emerged, where for every person who aligned themselves with a publisher, another aligned themselves with a particular family of books from a publisher. All these identification systems have pretty much gone the way of the dodo with the new century. But a new alignment is emerging. More and more stores are racking their books not by publisher, nor alphabetically by title, but by creator. Which makes sense. Do you go into a record store and look for the new long-player recording by your favourite popular beat combo by record company? Go looking for the Eels single in the Dreamworks section of Tower Records? 'Course you bloody don't. No-one wants the creators to appear bigger than the characters. The publishers hate the notion that Grant Morrison could have been a more important thing to ACTION COMICS than the presence of Superman - that maybe the characters don't sell themselves and that the creators might have something to do with it. People do respond to reviews and mainstream media features and fond memories by entering stores in search of the new Neil Gaiman, or the new Alan Moore, or the new Frank Miller. So rack them accordingly. Let people have a Neil Gaiman section in stores, or Alex Ross, or Will Eisner, or Grant Morrison. We might not be a grown-up medium yet, but if we dress like it, we might just bring it on. ITEM FIVE Fuck superheroes, frankly. The notion that these things dominate an entire genre is absurd. It's like every bookstore in the planet having ninety percent of its shelves filled by nurse novels. Imagine that. You want a new novel, but you have to wade through three hundred new books about romances in the wards before you can get at any other genre. A medium where the relationship of fiction about nurses outweighs mainstream literary fiction by a ratio of one hundred to one. Superhero comics are like bloody creeping fungus, and they smother everything else. It's been the hip and trendy thing to do, recently, to say that superheroes are, you know, all right. And, if they're well done, I agree with you. There's room for any kind of good work, no matter what genre it's in. But that doesn't excuse you from going out and burning out all the bad work at the fucking root with torches. It doesn't excuse all the nameless toss that DC and Marvel and Image and all the others slop out every month. If you want to read three hundred superhero comics a month then you are sick and you need medical help. Rip from their steaming corpses the things that led superhero comics to dominate the medium - the mad energy, the astonishing visuals, the fetishism, whatever - and apply them to the telling of other stories in other genres. That's all THE MATRIX did, after all. ITEM SIX What you say on the net doesn't matter. What you used to say in letters pages doesn't matter. No-one's listening to you. Because whenever anyone asks you what you think, you ask them to bring the fucking Micronauts back. The coin of your uninformed opinion is unutterably debased. Come back when you have something worth saying. ITEM SEVEN Too much of the industry's energy is focussed on creating comics for children that children either won't read or won't find. The comics retail culture is almost exclusively an environment for adolescent males of all ages. Trina Robbins is fanatically devoted to producing comics for girls, which is great. We need more genuine fanatics. But Trina Robbins producing comics for girls that are then exclusively sold through the direct sales network for comics specialty stores is nothing short of retarded. Because girls won't know it's there. Mark Waid was frequently heard to complain that, in IMPULSE, he was writing a children's comics series that was only being read by forty-year-old men. Because here's the news; kids don't go into comics stores any more. Even the nerdy kids go down to the Virgin Megastore to rent some Playstation games, if they're not at home downloading some porn. "The kids" couldn't give a rat's arse about your shit. If kids get comics, then they buy, or get bought, comics off the newsstand. And comics publishers gave up on the newsstand a long, long time ago. hell, they gave up on kid's comics a long time ago. I mean, do you see a dedicated campaign to tell parents that there's a POWERPUFF GIRLS comic available in specialty comics stores? One of the perks of my job is that I get complementary copies of all DC books. My four-year-old daughter practically tears my arm off to get at the new POWERPUFF GIRLS comic. If anyone cared enough, mobs could be gathering at comics stores tomorrow in search of this work. But they don't. Evidently the POKEMON comics were shifting something like a million units a month at one point. Did you see those readers at your local comics store? Did you see those books listed on the Top 200? No. So give up. Quit it. Work on making comics stores places that adults will go into. Adults are good. Many of them have jobs, and therefore have money to spend. Give them adult works to buy, the equivalent of novels and cinema. Understand that when you write CAPE GIRL or ZAP BOY, you are not writing for your fondly imagined child audience. It doesn't exist. You are writing for a forty-five-year-old unmarried man living in a one-room apartment who listens to Madonna and is probably masturbating over your work. I want you to hold that image in your head the next time you sit down to create one of these works. Your worst convention-nightmare fan, glopping away as he peers through thick glasses at your drawing of Zoom Woman. Then go and do something better with your time. Because I'm telling you now, I'm out of patience, and if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. And who knows? In a few years, when we've reached the point where the majority of work in a comics store is suitable for readers over 10, then perhaps we might move to set up children's sections, as seen in bookstores the world over. Makes sense. Children's material is one of the most lucrative sectors in publishing. Once you've created a space that non-hobbyist adults are happy to enter, maybe they'll bring their kids in one day. And then we can begin again. ITEM EIGHT I am part of the problem. Fuck you. ITEM NINE This is the perfect opportunity to begin building an adult medium. The industry is in flux, the direct market is in trouble. We seize on times of change and bend things to our mighty will. Make the change. ITEM TEN It begins. --------------------------------------------------------- 'Nuff said. My ideas/variations forthcoming, here's to hopin some of you have comments/questions/complaints/input.

And now, an innovative approach on how to save comics. I swear, I'm goin somewhere with this: those special few that're still with me here, god bless ya. One more massive post followin this one, then I'll try to incorporate more ideas of my own, should I have the time to refine them whilst procrastinating finals. -------------------------------------------------------- "Comics don't need saving. Now, Grant Morrison [writer of New X-Men, JLA and Invisibles, the book that, for all intents and purposes, became "The Matrix", so he's good] claims that a new boom is coming back. With his astrological charts, reports on sunspot activity, entrails of roadkill and a bloody Etch-A-Sketch, he can prove that a cycle of industry wealth and success exists, and that we're currently moving along the upswing of the curve towards a brand new peak, a little optimum. In just a few years, everyone will be all over us again, people will back truckloads of money up to our doors, we'll shift more units of THE LONELY DEATH OF GOT NO LEGS BOY in one week than Shania bloody Twain shifts CDs in a year, and we'll all live like kings. But, to be blunt, Grant is on drugs. No boom coming, folks. A boom, at this stage, would require access to a larger audience. And the only audience we have, the only audience we currently have the apparatus to reach, is those people prepared to walk through the door of a direct market comics store. And there aren't nearly as many direct market comics stores as there were during the boom. We have something like half the retail visibility of that we had back then. Okay. I know what comes next. You've read my ranting elsewhere over the last few years, and you quote it back to me. We need to be reaching out to a new audience via new distribution channels. Newsstands, book stores, record stores. (I note that Tower is taking a new initiative with graphic novels.) Yes, we do. But the simple truth is that this is not going to happen any time soon. Marvel and DC simply are not interested in fully opening up these distribution channels. They have too much invested in the survival of the direct market. They have had myriad chances to reopen newsstand dealings, and don't take them properly. hell, DC actively forced sales away from the newsstand into the direct market. Marvel killed my SATANA so that their entire line was considered wholly safe for sale in K-Mart and other family mass outlets. I've not been in an American K-Mart recently, but I have had royalty statements for the piece of all-ages work I've done for them since, and I've been following the company's general disposition. And this doesn't seem to have done them a whole hell of a lot of good, does it? I believe the Archie books are still peddling their dismal, retarded unreality in supermarkets and the like, but those people are the Enemy, to be vilified, hunted down and fucked to death. ...So it behooves us to bolster the failing direct market system if we want to continue selling comics in the current paradigm. And I'd like to, because I'd like to continue paying for my house and stuff. And that means changing the comics store culture. That means getting rid of the talking Jar Jar Binks stand-up in the doorway. It means racking the T&A stuff somewhere else. It means focussing more on graphic novels than back-issue bins. It means displaying your comics in the window, not the bloody toys, and making your standalone floor displays out of comics and graphic novels, not those stupid pewter figures for pretending to be sodding elves in role-paying games with. It means talking to customers, not just standing idly by or peering over your till with an air of false superiority. It means talking to the people who work in and run the shop, telling them what you think works, telling them what you want to read. It means call-out sections where you rack by creator, and all the comics shops I know of that have tried it have discovered that it works very well indeed. Because people who don't come from the comics-store culture will walk into stores and look, not for a title, but the new Neil Gaiman, or the new Alan Moore, or the new Frank Miller. Basically, if we're going to attempt to drive new potential readers into comics store, we don't want them retching from man-stench and cheap porno-manga the minute they get into the store. We need to provide a mature environment in line with bookstores and record stores. A sense of relaxed professionalism. An environment that's proud to sell its wares, as opposed to covering them up with miles of Magic boxes or brazenly (or sloppily) leaving the ugly and ephemeral mainstream stuff in front and hiding the good stuff in the back. Newsflash; if someone newly interested in comics enters a comics store for the first time, odds are good that they're not going to want this month's AMAZING FROTTAGE-MAN. ...This is the problem that needs solving. For every [legitmate comic book store], there are ten Scrotal Sac Comics that are really only interested in selling Spider-Man to the same forty people while paying the rent with this year's Pokemon. The number of stores that are unafraid to sell comics and make their packet by drawing new, non-comics-culture people into the store to show them the good stuff are outnumbered." --------------------------------------------------------- Here, he's really onto somethin. New fans aren't to be found because they cant be fuckin reached. Comics arent on newstands anymore these days, and comic shops, while often few & far between, are many times hard to find, and in the cases of local shops like Alternate Dimension, they have but a few boxes of actual comic books, but an entire store filled with merchandise. If comic stores must be stereotyped as dirty, smelly, taboo, etc (which they fuckin well shouldnt be), part of me wishes theyd be in the same vein as the sex shops in coconut grove & the beach, where at least random people will pass & take a look, if even to giggle or buy gag gifts...its a start. We cant do shit if we can't get em in the door.

Now, for some perspective - let's look at how comics fair overseas & see if theyre onto somethin. --------------------------------------------------------- "There aren't enough comics. Now you're all looking at me like I've gone mad. No, seriously. I was reading the excellent recent book on Japanese pop culture, JAPAN EDGE (Cadence Books, 1999) when this occurred to me. It was a point being made about the relationship between anime, Japanese animation, and manga, Japanese comics, and the disparity between their material. anime tends to focus on a couple of genres. There are around fifty anime tv shows, about fifteen original anime videos released every month, two or three anime films a year. manga cover pretty much any genre you'd care to name, and a few they invented, plus serious literary mainstream work. There are something over 200 manga magazines released in Japan every month. That is a vast amount of pages. Some of those manga anthology magazines are hundreds of pages long, with very little advertising space given up. anime production is fairly minimal, and takes place over a much longer time period per piece, in comparison to manga. manga has the space to consider the whole of fiction. anime tends to concentrate on what will work for the audience they know they have. I've found plenty of manga to enjoy. I've found the majority of anime I've viewed to be mindless bollocks. Is this just my strange and cranky tastes? Is it down to the fact that manga ranges across the genres and concerns I'm interested in and anime doesn't? A little from column A and a little from column B, I suspect. And also a little of the supposed universal law that's only ever quoted by people who read too much sf in their youth: Sturgeon's Law. You may well be familiar with it. Sf writer Theodore Sturgeon is considered to be the first to have boiled it down to a physical law, though I've heard the actual percentage vary in various quotations. But this is the gist of it: 90% of everything is crap. Everything. Complete and utter pants, as the young people in Olde England say these days. Only ten per cent good stuff anywhere. Which means that I find more manga to enjoy because ten per cent of the medium of manga weighs a hell of a lot more than 10 per cent of all available anime output. We're talking at best, fifty TV shows a year as opposed to hundreds of serialised manga instalments a month. Commercial Anglophone comics are working against a massive drag factor in terms of breadth and purity of vision and other yardsticks of quality or cultural importance. A vast amount of the artform's energies are turned towards keeping the hundred or so company-owned continuing superhero comics alive. It's that appalling Simpsons side of the business, the dirty secret: it's the mass of people required to perform awful procedures on Mister Burns so that he can cheat death for another week. It's the hypnotic lie that has otherwise intelligent and talented people providing life support for old ideas, not for short periods to establish themselves in a harsh marketplace, but for years on end. I mean, I'm sure Peter David has a fine old time on SUPERGIRL, but I have to be honest; watching him piss away his gift for dialogue and the inventiveness I've seen from him in person on thin little books that will never be seen again past the week of their release is a bloody waste. ....Which means we need more comics." ---------------------------------------------------------- Was just havin this discussion the other night with artisticcartoon: Sony allows anyone & their mother to develop games for the PlayStation, and what happens? Sure, a lot of unknown (and well-known) crap, but there's some fine diamonds to be found in the rough. Increase the quantity, encourage diversity - even mediocre diverse books stand the chance of inspiring better work. The industry - and largely, the remaining fan base - are deathly afraid of change...but more on that later. Let's continue.

"And you don't experience them in the context of a cultural mainstream, either. When you pick up a novel, you know that many other people are doing it too, or have done. You've seen the reviews in the newspapers and other culture magazines. You're experiencing it in the context of a culture simultaneously experiencing it and conjuring general conversation about it. Of course, you also have the option of ignoring that conversation and entering the work "cleanly." But, hell, that's one more option than you get with comics. There is not the public exchange of thoughts and commentary that we find with art -- or, at least, that we find with art in Britain. As I understand it, the American exchange of thoughts about art begins and ends with lawsuits, these days. I can't pick up a newspaper and read about a new graphic novel or serial release. This pisses me off. I can't get anything on TV about them either. ... I create for you a world that you enter into as a solitary reader of a form cut off from the cultural conversation. You come in alone. Okay, yes, here in Britain the Guardian newspaper usually covers the new PREACHER collection and the latest Gaiman, but that is, by and large, the sum total of it. Which is wrong. If I have to be subjected to reviews of poetry books with lower print runs than, God, I don't know, the semi-autobiographical THE LONELY DEATH OF GOT NO LEGS BOY by Speech Impediment And Skin Aberration Press out of Dogshit, Nebraska... then, hell, why not devote some space to an artform that, in cold commercial terms, puts more bums on seats? ....Which is why we're in the ridiculous position of people saying "I don't like comics", which is the same as saying you don't like music, or you don't like cinema, or books. When people do step inside here, we too often have nothing worth showing them. We come in alone because, by and large, no-one else gives a toss." ---------------------------------------------------------- Some great points here: comics are, by nature somewhat and largely by marketing, an isolated area of culture. I couldn't agree more with the "I don't like comics" quote: while the superhero genre sill dominates the medium, there's just so much out there, and even more that can be done... Ellis expands on this point later, mentionin that the evolution of comic reading has closely mirrored cinema: gone are the days of "I only read Marvel/DC/etc", as that shit's the same as sayin "I only listen to Interscope records" or "I only watch movies by New Line Cinema" - its fucking retarded, you watch/listen to things according to their creators, not the goddamn label. Point being: More and more, comic readers are finding their favorite creative team of artist and or writer, and simply searchin the store for their particluar works, wherever they may be...this should be encouraged, and I think sections by creative team would be a great fuckin idea.

Hey, im workin on somethin really cool over in comic forum, "Come in Alone - Justifyin comics as an art form", go check it out people. :D

A while back, writer extraoridnaire Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan, Authority, Hellblazer, etc) did a column for Comic Book Resources, called Come In Alone. His rantings went on in that online column for over a year, and after their completion, the best of them were put into a trade, and to date, it's one of the best books I've read on how revolutionize the comic industry, and perhaps even save it. Ive decided some of this material needs to be posted here, along with whatever I can contribute, to help justify comics as a legitimate art form & hopefully spread the word a bit, the guy's got some great ideas; im gonna try to apply them here. It should be noted, I'm gonna try to take this post somewhat seriously, so trolling will be censored. Here goes. -------------------------------------------------------- "This is a book about comic books. There we go. Lost half of you. Gets worse. This is a huge collection of a series of columns about the world of comic books written for a website. ...And there goes the rest. So, it's just you and me. No, don't run away. I have whisky. Comics are a small medium, these days. Fifty-odd years ago, a comic book could sell 5 million without trying. As I write today, it's taken all the marketing resources of one of the two major American publishers to get their top books to sell just under a hundred and fifty thousand copies. I mean, its not quite the poetry market, but it's getting there. These are sad numbers for what are a cheaply produced, relatively uncorrupted visual narrative medium. There's a reason why this stuff used to sell 5 million a pop, same reason why the film industry now draws from the medium's creative drive, same reason the Pulitzer recognizes comics, same reason comic artists and writers are constantly hired into other media, same reason why your'e still here. ...I hate the fact that comics are treated as this bastard little medium that should hide in the dark in the corner, and I equally hate the fact that too many comic readers would rather hide in the dark in the corner than go out and join the general cultural conversation. Comics are the mass medium we go into on our own. We don't experience it in company, the way we do film, TV, or often music. You don't gather twelve of your friends around a comic, nor does your family huddle around it together in the evenings. And you normally can't dance to one, nor can you attempt to have sex in the toilets next door to one. Well, actually, that's not true. But you see my point. Comics aren't a group experience. We all enter comics on our own. Moving into the fictional world of a graphic novel is not a group pursuit. It is the act of one reader, with one copy of one comic. We all come in alone." --------------------------------------------------------- That should set things up...much, much more to come, again, on how to legitimize comics, how to actually get new readers involved for once, things that keep them stagnant, and more whisky.

"4th quarter....To be announced....(we dont fuckin know)" ..dammit, when is Xenosaga comin out!?

Well I, for one say bravo, its about goddamn time. Why, just the other day, i was watchin the live action versions of "Fist of the North Star" & "Dragon Ball", and after beatin off to the live action "La Blue Girl" a few times, i couldnt stop askin m'self: why arent there more of these things out there? I mean, really! Why not Macross, Ghost in the Shell? hell, let's make sitcoms outta Ranma, Fushigi Yugi, Kenshin, Sailor Moon, etc! Christ, Junker, maybe if you werent so damn narrow minded, youd appreciate this ever-growing genre for what it truly is: .... ...the genre that makes me believe that even tho i'd be a talentless hack, yes, even I could direct a movie. :arrow:

PS my votes, forthcoming. :link:

2002 Eisner Award Nominees Best Short Story "The Adventures of Hergé," by Boquet, Fromental, and Stanislas, in Drawn & Quarterly, vol. 4 (Drawn & Quarterly) "The Eltingville Club in 'The Intervention,'" by Evan Dorkin, in Dork #9 (Slave Labor) "His Story," by Dave McKean, in Bento #1 and Pictures That [Tick] (Hourglass/Allen Spiegel Fine Arts) "Me and Edith Head," by Sara Ryan and Steve Lieber, in Cicada, vol. 4 no. 1 (Carus Publishing) "Oh, To Celebrate," by Miriam Katin in Drawn & Quarterly, vol. 4 (Drawn & Quarterly) "The Willful Death of a Stereotype," by Chris Staros and Bo Hampton, in Expo 2001 (The EXPO) Best Single Issue Eightball #22, by Dan Clowes (Fantagraphics) The Fall, by Ed Brubaker and Jason Lutes (Drawn & Quarterly) Finder #22: "Fight Scene," by Carla Speed McNeil (Lightspeed) 100 Bullets #27: "Idol Chatter," by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso (Vertigo/DC) Optic Nerve #8: Bomb Scare," by Adrian Tomine (Drawn & Quarterly) Best Serialized Story Amazing Spider-Man #30-35: "Coming Home," by J. Michael Straczynski, John Romita Jr., and Scott Hanna (Marvel) Hellblazer #164-167: "Highwater," by Brian Azzarello and Marcelo Frusin (Vertigo/DC) Finder #18-22: "Talisman," by Carla Speed McNeil (Lightspeed) New X-Men #114-117: "E Is for Extinction," by Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely, Ethan Van Sciver, and Tim Townsend (Marvel) Queen and Country #1-4: "Operation: Broken Ground," by Greg Rucka and Steve Rolston (Oni) Best Continuing Series Finder. by Carla Speed McNeil (Lightspeed) 100 Bullets, by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso (Vertigo/DC) Planetary, by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday (Wildstorm/DC) Queen & Country, by Greg Rucka and Steve Rolston (Oni) Ruse, by Mark Waid, Butch Guice, and Michael Perkins (CrossGen) Best Limited Series Enemy Ace: War in Heaven, by Garth Ennis, Chris Weston, Christian Alamy, and Russ Heath (DC) Hellboy: Conqueror Worm, by Mike Mignola (Dark Horse Maverick) Hopeless Savages, by Jen Van Meter, Christine Norrie, and Chynna Clugston-Major (Oni) Rose, by Jeff Smith and Charles Vess (Cartoon Books) Scary Godmother: Ghouls Out for Summer, by Jill Thompson (Sirius) Best New Series Private Beach, by David Hahn (Slave Labor) Queen & Country, by Greg Rucka and Steve Rolston (Oni) Ruse by Mark Waid, Butch Guice, and Michael Perkins (CrossGen) The Sandwalk Adventures, by Jay Hosler (Active Synapse) True Story, Swear to God, by Tom Beland (Clib's Boy Comics) Best Title for a Younger Audience Courageous Princess: The Quest for Home, by Rod Espinosa (Antarctic) Herobear and the Kid, by Mike Kunkel (Astonish) Little Lit: Strange Stories for Strange Kids, edited by Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly (HarperCollins) Patty Cake & Friends, by Scott Roberts (Amaze Ink/Slave Labor) The Return of Alison Dare, Little Miss Adventures, by J. Torres and J. Bone (Oni) Best Humor Publication The Adventures of Barry Ween, Boy Genius: Monkey Tales, by Judd Winick (Oni) Bizarro Comics, edited by Joey Cavalieri (DC) Dork #9, by Evan Dorkin (Slave Labor) Hey, Mister: Dial "M" for Mister, by Pete Sickman-Garner (Top Shelf) Jingle Belle: The Mighty Elves. by Paul Dini and J. Bone (Oni) Radioactive Man, by Batton Lash, Abel Laxamana, Dan De Carlo, Mike DeCarlo, and Bob Smith (Bongo) Best Anthology Bizarro Comics, edited by Joey Cavalieri (DC) Comics Journal Winter Special 2002, edited by Gary Groth and Anne Elizabeth Moore (Fantagraphics) Drawn & Quarterly, vol. 4, edited by Chris Oliveros (Drawn & Quarterly) Little Lit: Strange Stories for Strange Kids, edited by Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly (HarperCollins) Oni Press Summer Color Special 2001, edited by Jamie Rich (Oni) Best Graphic Album-New The Book of Leviathan, by Peter Blegvad (Overlook Press) Fallout, by Jim Ottaviani, Janine Johnston, Steve Lieber, Vince Locke, Bernie Mireault, and Jeff Parker (GT Labs) The Golem's Mighty Swing, by James Sturm (Drawn & Quarterly) Hey, Wait . . . by Jason (Fantagraphics) Mail Order Bride, by Mark Kalesniko (Fantagraphics) The Name of the Game, by Will Eisner (DC) Pictures That [Tick] by Dave McKean (Hourglass/Allen Spiegel Fine Arts) Best Graphic Album-Reprint Batman: Dark Victory, by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale (DC) Berlin: City of Stones, by Jason Lutes (Drawn & Quarterly) Box Office Poison, by Alex Robinson (Top Shelf) Scatterbrain, edited by Phil Amara and Scott Allie (Dark Horse Maverick) Stray Bullets: Other People, by David Lapham (El Capitan) Best Archival Collection/Project Akira, by Katsuhiro Otomo (Dark Horse) Plastic Man Archives, vol. 3, by Jack Cole (DC) Spy vs. Spy: The Complete Casebook, by Antonio Prohias (Watson Guptill) Wendell All Together, by Howard Cruse (Olmstead Press) The Complete Classic Adventures of Zorro, by Alex Toth (Image) Best U.S. Edition of Foreign Material Akira, by Katsuhiro Otomo (Dark Horse) Eagle, by Kaiji Kawaguchi (Viz) Hey, Wait . . . by Jason (Fantagraphics) Nogegon, by Luc and Francois Schuiten (Humanoids) Uzumaki, byJunji Ito (Viz) Best Writer Brian Azzarello, 100 Bullets, Hellblazer (Vertigo/DC) Brian Michael Bendis, Powers (Image); Alias, Daredevil, Ultimate Spider-Man (Marvel) Grant Morrison, FF 1234, New X-Men (Marvel) Greg Rucka, Queen & Country (Oni); Detective Comics (DC) Mark Waid, Ruse (CrossGen) Best Writer/Artist Jessica Abel, La Perdida (Fantagraphics) Dan Clowes, Eightball (Fantagraphics) Carla Speed McNeil, Finder (Lightspeed) James Sturm, The Golem's Mighty Swing (Drawn & Quarterly) Adrian Tomine, Optic Nerve (Drawn & Quarterly) Best Writer/Artist-Humor Tom Beland, True Story, Swear to God (Clib's Boy Comics) Chynna Clugston-Major, Blue Monday: Absolute Beginners (Oni) Evan Dorkin, Dork (Slave Labor) Makoto Kobayashi, "What's Michael?" in Super Manga Blast (Dark Horse) Chris Ware, Acme Novelty Library (Fantagraphics) Judd Winick, The Adventures of Barry Ween, Boy Genius (Oni) Best Penciller/Inker or Penciller/Inker Team John Cassaday, Planetary (Wildstorm/DC) Butch Guice, Ruse (CrossGen) Gene Ha, Top 10 (ABC) Humberto Ramos/Sandra Hope, Out There (Wildstorm/DC) Eduardo Risso, 100 Bullets (Vertigo/DC) Francois Schuitten, Brusel (NBM); Nogegon (Humanoids) Best Painter/Multimedia Artist (interior art) Allen Coulter and Snakebite, The Red Star (Image) Dave McKean, Pictures That [Tick] (Hourglass/Allen Spiegel Fine Arts) David Mack, Daredevil #16-19 (Marvel) John Van Fleet, Batman: The Ankh (DC) Charles Vess, Rose (Cartoon Books) Best Coloring Edgar Delgado/Studio F, Out There (Wildstorm/DC) Laura DePuy, Ruse (CrossGen); Ministry of Space (Image) Patricia Mulvihill, Wonder Woman (DC), 100 Bullets (Vertigo/DC) Jose Villarrubia, Fantastic Four 1234 (Marvel) Chris Ware, Acme Novelty Library #15 (Fantagraphics) Best Lettering Dan Clowes, Eightball #22 (Fantagraphics) Todd Klein, Promethea, Tom Strong's Terrific Tales, Tomorrow Stories, Top 10, Greyshirt (ABC); The Sandman Presents: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Dreams But Were Afraid to Ask (Vertigo/DC); Detective Comics, The Dark Knight Strikes Again (DC); Castle Waiting (Olio); Universe X (Marvel) Stan Sakai, Usagi Yojimbo, Groo: Death & Taxes (Dark Horse Maverick) Dave Sim, Cerebus (Aardvark-Vanaheim) Chris Ware, Acme Novelty Library #15 (Fantagraphics) Best Cover Artist Tim Bradstreet, Hellblazer (DC) Dave Johnson, Detective Comics (DC), 100 Bullets (Vertigo/DC) J. G. Jones, Codename: Knockout, Transmetropolitan (Vertigo/DC) Jae Lee, "Our Worlds at War" specials (DC); Fantastic Four 1234 (Marvel) Mike Mignola, Hellboy: Conqueror Worm (Dark Horse Maverick) Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition Jen Benka and Kris Dresen (Manya) Nick Bertozzi (The Masochists) Arthur Dela Cruz (Kissing Chaos) Dean Haspiel (Opposable Thumbs) Dylan Horrocks (Hicksville, Atlas) Best Comics-Related Periodical Alter Ego, edited by Roy Thomas (TwoMorrows) Comic Book Artist, edited by Jon Cooke (TwoMorrows) The Comics Journal, edited by Gary Groth and Anne Elizabeth Moore (Fantagraphics) Best Comics-Related Book Hal Foster: Prince of Illustrators, Father of the Adventure Strip, by Brian M. Kane (Vanguard) Jack Cole and Plastic Man, by Art Spiegelman (Chronicle Books) Kimota! The Miracleman Companion, by George Khoury (TwoMorrows) OPUS, vol. 2, by Barry Windsor-Smith (Fantagraphics) Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz, edited by Chip Kidd (Pantheon) Best Comics-Related Item Dark Horse classic comic characters statuettes, sculpted by Yoe Studio (Dark Horse) Hellboy PVC set (Dark Horse) Little Enid Doll (Press-Pop Gallery) R. Crumb Catholic Schoolgirl statue, sculpted by Ken Melton (Bowen designs) Roman Dirge's Lenore lunchbox (Slave Labor) Best Publication Design Acme Novelty Library #15, designed by Chris Ware (Fantagraphics) Drawn & Quarterly, vol. 4, designed by Chris Oliveros (Drawn & Quarterly) Non #5, designed by Jordan Crane (Red Ink) OPUS, vol. 2, designed by Barry Windsor-Smith (Fantagraphics) Red Star vol. 1: The Battle of Kar Dathra's Gate, designed by Team Red Star (Image) Scatterbrain, designed by Cary Grazzini and Craig Thompson (Dark Horse Maverick) Hall of Fame Judges' Choices: Charles Biro, Osamu Tezuka Nominees (4 will be chosen): Sergio Aragones Vaughn Bode John Buscema Al Capp Nick Cardy Gene Colan Dan De Carlo Will Elder Lou Fine Herge Bernie Krigstein Joe Orlando John Romita John Severin John Stanley

Check it out... Jazz/big band fan mix of Super Mario 2 song

^, ^, down, down, , , B,A, START. Most people think you need to press SELECT, but ya dont. PS. North, west, south, west to the corner of the woods. :link:

I second chief's motion for the Allman Brothers, great band. Shame i keep associatin "Jessica" with a damn Publix commerical tho.

Its worth mentioning that much of this week has been so @#$%in hot, i know how this guy felt. Cant believe im leavin here for Texas, the only spot hotter'n here at times. ??? "Fuck you and your extreme heat, you lizard fuck!" - Bill Hicks

Bascially, you can have up to 100kb or around 100 messages accordin to how im readin the setup, whichever comes first...like i said, just be sure to delete old ones & empty your sent messages as well (i try to make sure to uncheck the "copy to sent messages" box when writing a private message). Again, We'd really like to give more room on 'em, but with all the text & images, Yahven tells me were kinda over the web space limit as it is, so its not a good idea right now. Thanks again everybody, hope it aint too much trouble.

You got a PSG-1? You can use that against Sniper Wolf. Hurry up and save Meryl! ... Honestly though, you have played the game for a long time.

Fak! Must go fix...thanks Benny.

OK, this one never came back up, but havin recently re-watched X-Men, i wanna know everyone's problem with Sir Ian Mckellan's portrayl as Magneto. First off, he's a sheakspearan actor, and Magneto used to always quote that stuff. Artistic felt he was too old/frail but i think that's irrelevant; physical power is a joke to him. The only reason he's got a sixpack in the comics is 'cause after Jim Lee, everyone had a sixpack; i think Aunt May did for a while. Regardless, while he perhaps couldve seemed more familar with Xavier, i thought he played the philisophical point (that of Maclolm X vs Rev Martin Luther King Jr) rather well, especially in the final chess battle, which bacchus observed that he even works the board lke Magneto would. Again, i admit the opening Aushwitz scene was promising, and the whole "lets turn Kelly into a mutant" thing was weak, but that wasnt Mckellen's fault. He wasnt a dead-on like Patrick Stewart or Hugh Jackman, but ive yet to really here why he was so "lousy" or who'dve done it better (and if bacchus is readin this, dont just throw out Connery 'cause ya like him). Lemme know what ya think, people.

Verily, this soul was do dark, one could see mine shadow upon the sun. Mother, should I trust the government?

Went to lunch with Junker today, he was tellin me the tutorial mode is massive, and that any & all combos can be countered/avoided, which is the depth of the gameplay i think he was referrin to...havent actually played the game as of yet, so i cant really say either way, but artistic - did you sit through the tutorial? I hear it was long as hell. PS