Sunday Ramble

Woo doggie. I've gotta lotta work to do tonight, and I haven't eaten supper yet. And I'm blogging for no good reason. Groan.

Anyway. If you ain't been there yet, there's three new pages of MONSTER KING up at the main site at www.torcpress.com/monsterking.html. Also, once again, we've got two new books up in the store at www.torcpress.com/store.html. We've got the first print collection of Monster King, as well as Issue 11 of "The Hot Fudge Sundae Adventure Club". HFSAC 11's really good and the last part of a three issue story arc. You should pick up a copy. Why not? (A snarky person would respond to this with: "Because you suck." But we're not in the mood for snarky today, are we?)

Anyway, bought a crap ton of comics. Let's ramble, shall we?

"Hellboy: The Sleeping and the Dead" 2 of 2-- The conclusion of Hellboy's rumble with some cagey British Vampires. Nice art, Quite different from other Hellboy books.

"Witchfinder: Lost and Gone Forever" 1 of 5-- Sir Edward Grey, the Witchfinder, ends up in the Old West for some reason. Cool. Also, Buffalo/Werewolf thingie.

"Atomic Robo" Volume 5 #2 of 5-- Decided to try this one out because I've heard a fair amount of hype about it. It's not bad, and I can see why people dig it, but I don't think it's really my cup o' tea. A little too slow for my taste, and the art isn't my thing. I dig the setting, though, and the characters were all pretty neat.

iZombie #10-- Just when I start to loose interest in this series, a good issue comes along to keep me rolling. There's some cool stuff here, including possession, more interesting stuff with the Frankenstein chick, the one eyed dude gets into trouble, and we get a neat little revelation. Nice.

BPRD: Hell on Earth-Gods #2 of 3-- Man, the title of this series is ridiculous. Anyway, This Issue is Pretty Awesome. It's got little to do with the central cast or the central plot. Instead we get a lengthy (if somewhat mad) dissertation on the ancient civilization of Hyperborea. Very cool.

Bulletproof Coffin #5-6-- Yeah, this series was all sorts of awesome. The ending is a little bit of a bummer, but even then it comes around to something kinda upbeat. Kinda. Still, I really enjoyed this one. It's helped to reaffirm my love of comics.

"Orc Stain" vol 1-- Wow. Picked this one up, sight unseen, thanks to some hype (kinda on a hype run, lately). Wow. This is. Wow. Bold, crazy, wild, eye strainingly detailed artwork. A lush, detailed, exotic, strange, exciting world that gets more interesting with every passing page. Some interesting characters and a solid story. There's definitely some Paul Pope influence floating around in the art style, but it's still solidly its own thing. One word of warning though, Orc Penises are an integral part of everything in this world. So, there's that. Still, damn fine.

"Powr Mastrs" vol 1-- Another try out. As good as "Orc Stain"? Well, no. Still. There's an undeniable attraction to this thing. It's so dreamy and odd, but there's a logic to it (More about dream logic later). The art is...I'm just gonna say it. The art is crap (hey, I know it's bogus for me to say that, but c'mon, this guy actually got published and lotsa people are hyping his book, so he's got plenty of validation). Still, if you can get past the art, the sheer...strangeness of it all is quite compelling. Not sure if I'll pick up the other volumes or not. Gotta admit, I'm quite intrigued. Oh, there's also a graphic sex scene between a woman and a giant jellyfish. So there's that.

"Weathercraft"-- I've missed Jim Woodring so much. So much. There's so much time between Jim Woodring projects that you can sometimes forget Mr. Woodring and his brilliant, phenomenal work. Foolishness. Weathercraft is the Definition of a Must Have. Seriously. If you've never picked up anything by Jim Woodring, this is a great place to start. Like all of Woodring's "Frank" stories, this one is a strange, pantomime, dream-like, phantasmogoria of wonderment that exemplifies everything that is good and proper about comics storytelling. This particular volume follows around the unfortunate character of Manhog as he stumbles about, gets hurt A LOT, and even manages to achieve a brief enlightenment, all while exploring the malleable borders of Woodring's bizarre dreamworld. Oh, and Frank's got a bigger part than I expected. Again. Absolute MUST HAVE. While we're on the subject, get the "Big Book of Frank" while you're at it.

"Love and Rockets: New Stories" #3-- Speaking of must-haves. It's funny. If you know anything about comics, you know the Hernandez Bros are the cream of the crop. And, yet, they always seem to linger in this odd sort of obscurity. Anyway, new issue of L&R: NS is out, and it's genius of course. We get one of the most brilliant, touching, and utterly devastating Maggie stories to date (and I usually don't dig Jamie's work as much as most people do). There's another trippy "Movie" by Gilbert (I am loving these strange ass movies he's been creating. Love em.), coupled with a new story about Killer that links not only into the movie, but a whole mess of previous stuff. Again, and I can never stress this enough: MUST HAVE.

Production Updates: Gonna try to send HFSAC 12 to the Printers sometime within the next couple of weeks. Working on Issue 2 of Mystery Book. Working on a new video for the Dr. Orphyus Project. I've got enough MONSTER KING to get me through till Mid-April, which is nice. I'm tired tonight. Still, wanna see if I can get some more done tonight. Right.