***
The Movie Meme Contest is going to end this weekend, on Sunday. Take another whack at it if you like. I'll reveal the answers on Monday. There can be more than one winner...
***Why isn't waiting for the trade more popular? Creators like Warren Ellis, Matt Fraction, Antony Johnston and Jason Aaron are doing excellent books on a monthly schedule (well, Ellis' FELL and DESOLATION JONES have been irregularly monthly) and writing for the ultimate collections of those monthlies to great effect. I know that Ellis, Fraction and Johnston all do 'extra' material in the monthlies that aren't included in the trades, but I don't know about Aaron's SCALPED, as I don't even look at it as a monthly book. Since it's from Vertigo I suspect it's not got any extras, but then there aren't any extras in either of the trades, either. I hope that we can see a trend of smaller, more fully-realized books like FELL or CASANOVA that have a reasonable price tag ($1.99 in both cases) but have enough content that it feels like a 22 page 'regular' book. Then the trade has some even more interesting extras. That's the DVD-style treatment, I guess, that wins the day for me. If you only buy one version, you get something extra, but if you buy both, you get everything and that's a win-win situation for me. I'd buy ten or twelve books a month at a buck ninety-nine if they were quality enough, and then the trades if there was even more.
***Extras are something nice, but I still miss letters pages in monthly comics. Once upon a time one could go to the news stand or the mailbox (does anyone still SUBSCRIBE to comics?) and if you'd written a thoughtful letter of comment, there was a chance you could see your name and hometown printed in a Marvel or DC comic. Letters pages were awesome when they were edited properly, but were lost in cost cutbacks in the 90s. Too bad.
***All the static of this political season is just that. When are we going to see one of the three candidates actually take the leadership role? I've come 'round to the Obama camp thanks to Travis' support of him, and I hope he gets the opportunity to be the leader that I think he can be. The United States desperately needs someone to show us the way that's been lost in the last eight years. We must become ONE country, not seven.
***Warren Ellis used to espouse an idea that comics could be approached the same way as pop music singles, and that comics could be composed in a 'rhythmic' way, like a song. Old Time Radio (OTR) shows were thirty minutes long and the equivalent of modern 22 page comics. The technology to create podcasts has simplified and become ubiquitous. Microfictions and short stories are appealing to the shorter attention spans of the internet denizens. All this is rolling around in my mind as I think about what to do with what little talents I have, and then Phil Hester tells me about
Quiet, Please and hooks me with a comparison to it of the Twilight Zone. (If you're a fan of OTR at all, you have got to listen to "The Thing on the Fourble Board".) Which came twenty years LATER. Now I've got IDEAS...
***Which is why I was considering changing gears to work on The Sky Inside Me. Last night was a good night for looking at how to do that, and Thursday will be a test run to see if I can make it work the way I want it to.
More to come, but probably not today.