Book hunt

It took me a month or two, but I finally finished The Education of a Comics Artist, an extensive collection of essays and interviews about the comics medium.

Despite being a real word-brick with very few pictures for being a book about a visual medium, it had some very interesting and enlightening ideas.

My personal favorite essay was by Craig Yoe. He talked rather tongue in cheek-ly about being a voracious accumulator cartoons and comic art to the point of saturation. That point where A&E or Oprah might document your extensive hoarding and give you an intervention.

Some artists he mentioned, like Heinrich Kley, only have so much available. Just the same two books that've been around for the last 50 years.

Even a prolific artist like Walt Kelly is hard to find books published in the last 20-30 years. Fantagraphics was supposed to start releasing books of Pogo strips like they have with Dick Tracy, Terry & the Pirates and the like, but nothing has ever come of the book since I preordered it on Amazon two and a half years ago. Yet every year instead of canceling it Amazon pushing it back and keeping my feeble hopes up.

Sorry, maybe next year

Despite all this I've been cramming my Amazon wishlists (yes, plural) full of cheap, used books on comics, cartoons and illustrations that'll take me years to buy off.

I'm not sure what happens after that. I think you just soak up comics awesomeness through you pores or something. Maybe I need to reread the essay.

Would you trust someone who smiles like this?

I'm still not sure about Planet 51, which comes out this next Friday. I like the concept of a role reversal of the standard alien invasion and all, but I don't know if it'll actually be any good.

I haven't even seen all that much promotion for it. That is until today I was at the store when I saw this face glaring at me from the freezer section:

Is this part of the dreaded `Tude that John K always warns about? Not really, but it is the stock "squash one side of the face and stretch the other" expression that doesn't really mean anything. And in this case, his eyes are crossed just enough to make him look like an imbecile.

I can't get too hyped about a movie when the press shots of the main character make him look like a moron.