Worlds Within Worlds...

My Day at the Big E

2006-09-23T22:49:00.000-04:00

I'd have to say that one of the best kept secrets of western Massachusetts is The Eastern States Exposition (aka the Big E). It is kind of like a state fair, but involving six states and lots of different activities, making it the biggest in the northeast. It is one of those traditions I've had with my Mom since I was a little kid, but we hadn't been able to visit for a couple of years. And the last couple of times we went, our health wasn't the best. This year the health/money situation was doing well, Friday's weather looked good, and took the day off from work. Was very glad that I did!

It ended up being a great day, seeing many great sights and buying some fun stuff, so here's a quick overview.

Arrived at around 9am. It's nice to get there early since you can check out the vendors before things start to get too busy.

At 11, we watch a performance of the Peking Acrobats on the small stage. I think it was worth the price of admission just for that! There was about ten performers, split between male and female, doing a half-hour show. It was a very solid show with acrobatics, jumping through stacked hoops, balancing, contortion, plate spinning (one of the more extensive examples I've seen), unicycles, juggling, etc. They managed to pull off quite a bit on that little stage.

Went off to the State Houses for lunch. The Avenue of States is pretty unique to the Big E, with a bunch of large buildings (looking almost like old churches or schoolhouses) that act as embassies to six northeast states, with each state actually owning the land for their building. If you're looking for Cod Cakes, maple goodies, apple dumplings, pumpkin ice cream, fried dough, cider, cider donuts, baked potatoes, pancakes, etc these are the places to go to.

There's also lots of interesting stuff to buy from each state. I ended up buying two wooden yo-yos from the Maine house, which work pretty well.

After eating most of previous list, went off exploring more of the fair. Got to see the Budweiser Clydesdale horses up close (both in their cages and in a parade) which are amazing animals. Their shoulder is 6 feet tall, so I couldn't even see over the body, and they weight over 2000 pounds! They are just massive. I couldn't help thinking that Death Dealer would ride one..

One cool experience was seeing a little Circus Museum they have set up, with the focus on a model replica of the Barnum & Bailey Circus. It is truly amazing, with the big tent having 10,000 inch high figures in it, most of them setting on folding chairs that really fold! It also had all the train cars and some buttons to make certain things move. The man that created it was there and so it was amazing to hear about his past experiences in circuses/carnivals and the creation of the miniature circus.

Also flitted around the Better Living Center, getting out with just a plant stacking thing and some Coolattas. Back in the outside booths, I managed to avoid buying any t-shirts, but did grab a new wallet (monogrammed no less!). The weird thing is that about two hours after buying it, the zipper on my old wallet broke! Mom grabbed a hat and a key-chain (it was weird how hard it was to find key-chains).

Around this time, the parade came by, with some local marching bands, cars, Budweiser wagon and Clydesdales (it was funny how there was a cleaning car after any horses), and misc things. Couple of baton twirlers and flaggers mixed in there too.

We next went to Storrowtown Village, which is kind of a mini Sturbridge Village, with people demonstrating old New England life. Who knew that the "Peter picked a pickled pepper" tongue twister was originally used to help teach English? Was also more booths in that area, where I picked up a Harmonica and a Bamboo flute. I'd actually bought a flute from them 10 years ago or so, but I'd never gotten around to using it and it eventually cracked. This time I'm going to make more of an effort to learn it!

While in this area, it happened that Nuttin' But Stringz started to perform. This is a pretty unusual act, involving two brothers who play the violin on top of hip-hop beats (and some rap here and there). The result worked out really well and it was great to see a big audience of people from many ages and backgrounds totally into it. In fact, when they ran a little late and were going to stop a song short, the crowd booed hard enough that they got to do one more song. Ended up buying their single Thunder and getting it signed. It sounds like they have a full album out soon, so that should be cool.

By this time it was around 7pm and we were getting hungry again. We gravitated back to the State Houses and ended up getting some chili dogs and sodas, topped off with a cider donut. Also got to listen a bit to a band in that area. We also happened to see the mini-Mardi Gras parade and get some beads.

We wandered around a bit more and eventually crossed through the midway on our way out, catching a bit of the main stage musical performance as we passed. We were both pretty exhausted at this point so didn't end up doing anything (not sure if I could have convinced Mom go to on the Ferris Wheel anyway, but maybe next time.. heh).

So, we finally got out at about 9:30pm, so 12 and a half hours at the Big E! The weather was great and it seemed like we saw almost everything there was to see without even trying that hard. Bought some fun stuff (but not too much) and ate lots. It's just as well that I didn't bring a camera, since I would have spent way too much time shooting instead of just experiencing it. I feel really lucky to have something like this in the area. I'd say it is definitely work the trek if you're anywhere near this area.

Free Sleater-Kinney concert download

2006-08-07T17:20:00.000-04:00

While I'm bummed to hear that Sleater-Kinney is going on "indefinite hiatus," I was glad to be pointed to NPR : Sleater-Kinney in Concert. Their full concert from August 3rd in Washington is available for streaming or download.

I've listened to half of it so far and it is good stuff. Just keep in mind that it seems like they were still getting warmed up during the first song. One Beat is a song that probably isn't to the taste of many anyway (though I love it), but it seems weak here. After that, things start cooking though.

Sleater-Kinney is one of the bands that started me on the indie music journey. All Hands On The Bad One was being played in a used record shop (Turn It Up! in Northampton) and I loved it. I googled some lyrics I remembered and grabbed a couple of mp3s from their official site. Then when joining eMusic a little while later, they were one of my first downloads.

Speaking of Turn It Up, I grabbed the original Vampire Hunter D movie for $5 at a recent sidewalk sale. I've been meaning to check it out for a while.

(link via CaptWiffle on eMusic's board)

Comic Shop Conversations

2006-07-31T19:13:00.000-04:00

Here's how you know your comic book shop is one of the good ones. When you walk in, you immediately notice two things:

1. The layout has been changed and in good way.

2. The owner and an employee are discussing a political treaty (a treaty pertaining to the actual real world).

Then later on, they talk about ways to further improve the layout of the store by avoiding "traffic jams" and keeping things from "looking cheesy". I mean, they even have some boxes of Jumbo Pockey! I feel pretty lucky to have Modern Myths in this area.

So, what'd I pick up? Monster #3. You must check it out if you haven't already!

How I Lost Weight

2006-07-30T20:46:00.000-04:00

After being heavy for many years, it finally came to a head around the beginning of 2002 for me. I was 220 pounds (I was actually 235 at one point), wearing XXL shirts and enough was enough. Over the course of a year, I managed drop down to 145, a total of 75 pounds lost, coming out to around 6 pounds a month. It was a great experience for me, raising my self-esteem, making clothing easier to find, etc.

Three years later, I've gained about 30 pounds back. While I wouldn't consider 175 all that overweight for me (I'm about 5"9'), some of my shorts are starting to get a bit tight. In revisiting in my head what worked for me before, I thought it'd be nice to write it out in the spirit of life hacking.

Instead of some sort of radical change in behavior (aka Cold Turkey), I eased into some subtle life changes, and that made all the difference. I have to preface this by saying that I never had any actual eating disorders that I know of. Just a relatively sedantary person (I work at a computer and most of my non-work is spent there as well) whose eating wasn't amazingly healthy but not totally horrible either. I was also in my 20s, though that didn't keep my stomach from never totally going away. ;) But hopefully this can be helpful to most people that just need a push in the right direction.

The first thing you have to understand is that food is not the enemy! Food is what gives you life and eating should be an enjoyable part of life. Setting up eating as some sort of battle puts you into bad mindset that I'd think is the sort of thing that leads to eating disorders. If your main idea of food is denial, you're setting yourself up for failure, since humans hate denying themselves things. The trick is to change your habits and expectations so that denying yourself only happens occationally in extreme circumstances.

For me, I think the biggest single thing was learning to eat slower. It may sound silly, but I found it incredibly important. Too many of us get into the habit of eating until we're full instead of eating until we're not hungry anymore. That is a very important distinction and it is easy lose sight of it if you aren't paying attention. Eating too fast makes it worse since there's a lag time for your body to catch up with what you ate.

Try to purposefully slow down. Chew more than you normally would and try to really taste each bit of food. Maybe pause for a minute and then continue eating. As an experiment you can time yourself eating normally, then the next time you have that meal, try to take twice as long to eat the food. When you eat slower and also pay more attention to eating, you'll likely find that the food seems like a bigger meal than it used to be. You may even find yourself enjoying the food more.

Now you can combine the above with smaller portions. Don't suddenly cut your meals in half! If you're eating a grinder, maybe take off a third of it. If you usually have six pieces (like the little sqare pieces) of pizza from the local shop, try having five pieces, maybe use a couple less noodles in your spaghetti. But eat it slower and more carefully so it takes time similar time to eat as it used to. In this way you can slowly work your portion size down, changing what seems "normal" to your mind and body.

Don't be afraid to throw food away! Many have had parents who have told them to finish their plate. That they're lucky they aren't starving children in Africa. This is meant well, but I think it becomes destructive later in life, especially when you're paying for food and don't want to "waste it". But you have re-orient your mind. Eating food when you aren't hungry is even more of a waste! Unless something is artificially depressing your appetite (medicine, depression, etc), eating when you're not hungry is incredibly wasteful. Not only do you not need the food, but it is going to become fat that you'll have to get rid of later.

Consider this: you buy a grinder and eat two thirds of it. You no longer really feel hungry, but you figure you should eat the last third. This is exactly the kind of thing that can build up over time and cause you to gain weight. If you're not hungry, either take the rest home to eat later or just throw it away. If you find yourself consistantly having too much left over and it isn't something you like to warm up later (like a hamburger), that's a clear sign that you're buying too much food! Instead of large, get a medium, or even a small. Many places will try to manipulate you: "It's only 50 cents extra for twice as much food!" But if it's too much food, then not only are you eating too much, you're also paying 50 cents too much.

The only time to go for the big portion is if you're going to have leftovers. In fact, a great benefit to eating smaller portions is saving money. The foot-long grinder you used to wolf down now becomes two meals, a savings of 50%! My Mom and I had both lowered our portion sizes at the same time and when we went out to eat at a restaurant, we found that most of the time we could buy one meal and that was plenty of food for both of us.

You'll probably notice that I haven't even started talking about food choices yet. That is deliberate, because it is what people always focus on, but is only a part of it. When I lost weight, I still ate plenty of pizza (though mostly home-made), spaghetti, and ate out. Never feel like you have to eat only "healthy" food to lose weight. Still, I did try to steer away from the worst case offenders.

I think if you drink a lot of soda, you should probably try to wean yourself off of it. I hate the taste of diet soda, so that wasn't an option for me. Try some juice, iced tea, milk, water. If you can't get off of soda, try to at least to make the portions smaller. But for me, I found that after getting away from soda for a while, it isn't really something I miss that much and I don't drink it that often anymore.

For snacks, I'd try to get away from cookies and go more toward things like pretzels. And if you're a person that tends to snack every night while watching TV, trying to break that cycle can help things. But how? And what about things like when a co-worker brings in left-over cake? There is certainly some sort of denial that has to come in somewhere. For me, instead of focusing on the food, I'd try to think about what I was trying to achieve. Sure eating a piece of cake is fun, but only last a couple of minutes. If you weigh less, you'll likely feel better all the time.

If you can avoid not eating it for the time that it's around, then it'll be gone and you don't have to worry about it anymore. Relating to that, try not to have temptation around you. If there's cake left from a party, bring it into work or give it to someone else (or even throw it away) so that you won't have the temptation constantly there. It takes a whole lot more work to go out and buy something than it is to eat something already in the house. If you can convince yourself not to buy a snack while you're shopping (and try to food shop right after eating a meal if possible, so you're not hungry while buying) then you're a lot less likely to run into problems.

If you can't break the habit of snacking while watching TV, besides trying healthier snacks (stuff like mini-carrots can be fun), there's other techniques. Like don't bring the box into the room with the TV. Instead, put some in a bowl and take it with you. If you have to actually get up to get more food, you're less likely eat mindlessly, and it'll also slow you down. Also, a lot of it is just keeping your hands busy (like how smokers get used to fussing with the cigarettes). If you're just watching random TV to pass time, you could try some other hobby involving your hands. Or you could do word puzzles while watching TV or something.

But don't feel like you can't ever snack or even have something like ice cream or cookies or cake. Just don't do it all the time, try to have smaller portions when you do, and experiment with less fattening versions (frozen yogurt, etc).

Last is exercise. Exercise definitely helps speed things along, or at the very least tip the balance if you're on the edge of losing weight. Obviously, it also helps out your body, giving you more energy and helping you do basic tasks (go up the stairs easier!). When I lost weight, I was pretty conservative on the exercise front. I did start off with a stationary bike, which helped me to kickstart things, though it was hard to keep up with it. Eventually, I found what worked best was taking a walk during my lunch break. This got me out into fresh air and I could also indulge in some photography.

Lately, I have a new exercise friend called Dance Dance Revolution, the dancing video game. I got a cheap pad from Toys R Us, a Playstation to USB converter from online, the free Stepmania software, and songs (through methods I won't get into!), and I was off and running. If you have a playstation or xbox around, it'll be easier just to buy an official game and go from there. The nice thing is that not only are you exercising, but there's variety and a challenge (both mental and physical).

Riding a stationary bike is incredibly boring, but there's always something new to try and learn with a dancing game. You could even get into the social aspect at arcades if you wanted to. Similarly, you could get some inline skates or rollerskates and go to a local rink. Or get dance instruction or even try to skateboard. For me anyway, I get distracted too easily to be able to keep up with normal exercise. If I feel like I'm learning and challenging myself, that makes it much easier for me to stay motivated.

I did keep a daily weight journal (be sure to weight yourself right in the morning after bathroom, since you weigh more later in the day), which helped me keep track of progress. But be carefull! Weight fluctuates due to how much water you're retaining and all kinds of other factors, so look at the general trend of the last weeks instead of freaking out if you go up a pound one day.

Also, if you do a lot of exercise after having done none, you'll get those cool things called muscles, which have weight! If you find your weight not dropping much, but your body thinning out, then you are probably fine. And even just having muscle will burn more fat in and of itself. It may not be a bad idea to measure yourself occationally to keep things in perspective. As in all of the rest, try to take a measured realistic approach to things.

In the last three years, I got kind of complacent and let my portion sizes creep up, snacking too often, stopped walking (though started up the DDR lately). But even that only comes out to gaining less than one pound a month versus the six a month I was losing. I have the confidence that I can adjust things back without too much pain and start losing again, which is a powerful feeling in and of itself!

Virtual Reality and Gaming

2006-07-30T19:40:00.000-04:00

On a recent trip to the library, I'd happened to pick up a book called Synthetic Worlds by Edward Castronova on "the business and culture of online games." I haven't had a chance to read the whole thing yet, but it has a fascinating appendix called A Digression on Virtual Reality.
In that essay, Castronova talks about how he feels most early virtual reality researchers and theorists were on the wrong track. The focus has been generally on achieving a sensory experience as close to reality as possible. Goggles to beam light directly into your eyes, full-body suits to control your virtual self and give feedback to your body. There was a feeling in the 90s that Virtual Reality was around the corner, but it didn't happen. In fact the term even feels a bit antiquated now after the dot com boom.

However, Castronova points out that virtual reality is alive and well in a completely different form, in online gaming worlds. Instead of trying to make a perfect sensory experience like the Holodeck or Dream Park (a great book), gaming pioneers focused on what the users do and how they interact with other people. From text MUDs to Ultima Online to present day games like Everquest, people are immersed by interaction and story, not by photorealism. And this immersion came from people a world away from VR researchers, using regular monitors, keyboards and mice.

Also, even with a perfect sensory immersion, if the subject isn't engaging, your suspension of disbelief probably won't kick in. You might be standing in a perfect virtual room, but still aware of the fact that you're really standing in an offline room wearing a bunch of gear.

When you think about it, this makes perfect sense. You can look at a perfectly rendered painting, but if it doesn't really capture your mind, you're still be aware that you're standing in a gallery looking at a wall. At the same time, a novel you're wrapped up in can take you to a far-off world, making you lose track of the hours. Text on a page is about as unrealistic a display technology as it gets.

There's so much going on nowadays that I'm frankly a bit frightened to go too deeply involved into any of them. I know from playing MUDs years ago how much time can get sucked into massive multiplayer online games. Even from my somewhat distant perch, I can see massive things like Second Life rising up. Even Golf is getting pretty interesting lately.

For me, a lot of my virtual world now, has to do with the yo-yo community. There's a lot of chatting in IRC and IM, reading and posting to message boards, watching and creating videos. But it comes back to real physical skills and real offline people, and one of highlights is going to the local club or a contest somewhere. This sort of virtual experience grounded in reality has actually brought me closer to the world.

Talking to someone in Quatar or the Czech Republic, finding out about the Hyphy movement from across the US, discussing the American version of Shonen Jump with people from Hong Kong, Korea, and Japan (happened at the World Yo-yo Contest last year), having a simple gettogethers and sleep-overs with groups of people of different ages and backgrounds. All that and much more has happened to me because of a hobby and the internet.

I find it interesting that for someone who grew up with BBSs and then the Internet, instead of going off into more and more fantasy, I ended up pulling back a bit and exploring further into the real world instead. Then again, I do think "reality" is subjective and some people are able to delude themselves in much more destructive ways offline than being a hero of an MMORPG.

Day in the life of a Shuttle booster rocket

2006-07-18T09:32:00.000-04:00

If you haven't seen it yet, you must watch this view from the Space Shuttle's booster rocket. I have to say it one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time. You get to see the earth hurtling away, the separation, the rocket spinning around, the parachute descent, and finally the splashdown. It is amazing to see the texture of the ocean slowly become more distinct until you can finally see individual waves.

There's footage from other areas of the Shuttle on NASA's site, including in quicktime if you can't view the streaming windows media.

--Thanks to Bad Astronomy for the head's up.

Also, if you want to try simulating stuff like this (and much more) yourself, I can't recommend Celestia highly enough. Truly one of the top open source programs in my opinion. If you're interested in space, it is a must have. Stellarium is very well done as well.

Mad As Hell 2: Unreality TV and Yo-yos

2006-07-11T13:37:00.000-04:00

So, last time I talked about the movie Network and the frightening prospect that our current state of television seems to be trying its best to live up to that dark comedy. Here's something a bit related to that and a bit related to my yo-yo hobby.

Recently there aired an episode of the show Master of Champions, in which people skilled in various.. umm skills are pitted against each other. Along with semi-celebrity ex-sporting judges and TV voters and all of that. It is pretty badly done all-around IMO and I much prefer what I've seen of America's Got Talent.

Still, this latest episode had a segment with six yo-yo players, split into two teams. If you missed it, you can watch the yo-yo section below:

First, I do have to say that it is nice to have some yo-yoing on television. I'm glad that the opportunity presented itself and I think Doc and Dave and the rest did a great job under the circumstances. Hopefully it gives some people more of a sense of the current tricks and encourages some people to take it up that never thought about it before.

Where does the "unreality" of the title come in then? The answer comes on Doctor Popular's Blog where he discusses what went on behind the scenes and how much the producers of the show decided to mess with things. He also talked about it on the last episode of Yo-yos Coast to Coast, the podcast of which will be up next monday. Dave's also weighed in. What it boils down to is the producers removing any real drama and replacing it with their own.

For the card thrower, he had a bad day, so they edited multiple takes for it to look cleaner. But he got the finale on the first try, so they edited in misses to highten the drama. Aparantly he even cut the lady on the wheel three times (I didn't see that segment so not sure what was left in).

For our yo-yo players, a non-existant rivalry was attempted to be played up. They pressured Doc to have him say he was the best. During the "greet your opponent" section they removed the handshake and inserted footage of them waiting for mics to be put on. Footage of Dave smiling for most of Doc's routine is not used, but some random blank stare is. I mean these people are all good friends with each other. And while the Bazan crew work together, Doc's "team" wasn't even a real time. Just a couple friends who used the College for the Easily Amused mantle to try to get attention toward those clubs (which Doc started but doesn't run anymore).

There was no rehersals during the day of filming. The music wasn't used, making synched routines almost pointless. No blacklight was used for Dave's team as planned. No darkness for the glow stuff in Doc's routine. And Doc actually went first instead of last in the finale challenge!

I don't mind stuff like goofy comments from the judges or commentary like "look at the offstring" when offstring had been cut out. Stuff like that seems like par for the course. But substituting footage to play up conflicts that aren't there and totally editing performances to suit their needs (putting Doc last has a different emotional reaction) is just too much for me to be comfortable with.

And this was a case where the participents were regular people trying their best to be themselves. Can you imagine the "reality" shows that people go on mostly to get as famous as possible? Though I'm not a huge watcher of pro wrestling, at least stuff like that is so over the top that it is easy to take it for what it is. It is the more subtle distortions of reality that you have to be careful of. As always, don't believe what you see on TV!

I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!

2006-07-10T23:35:00.000-04:00

Well, a stop to a library I don't usually get to visit, and out I came with a ton of DVDs and graphics novels. It's a shame that I haven't been blogging, because plenty of stuff has been going on. But if Dirk Deppy can somehow return to blogging, I should be able to post SOMETHING now and then right?

So, my first thing to try out was the movie Network, which I'd been meaning to see for quite some time and am glad that I finally did. Even if you haven't actually seen (or even heard of) the movie, you've probably heard someone quote "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!" before, which comes from a pivotal scene in the movie.

Network is a dark comedy involving a newscaster on an ailing TV netowork, who is fired due to low ratings and subsequently goes crazy. But this craziness ends up being so good for ratings that he is actually kept on and encouraged in his ways. As it continues, things spiral more and more out of control, with trash being put above all else for the sake of ratings.

Lots of good acting, from Peter Finch who plays the insane newscaster who speaks more truth than most. William Holden plays his friend and former news department head, a flawed man who is having a middle-aged crisis, but still very sympathetic. Most interesting perhaps is Faye Dunaway's character, who brainstorms up most of the changes to the network. She is strikingly immoral in a number of ways and is basically the embodyment of what is wrong with TV and society in general, but she has just enough humanity to make the character more tragic than a simple characture.

What is really most frightening is just how much has come to pass since the movie was made in 1976. The nightly news on the major networks may still be relatively sane, but what about shows like Jerry Springer? Also, look at this conversation, a non-serious musing from early in the film:

Max Schumacher: We could make a series of it. "Suicide of the Week." Aw, hell, why limit ourselves? "Execution of the Week."
Howard Beale: "Terrorist of the Week."
Max Schumacher: I love it. Suicides, assassinations, mad bombers, Mafia hitmen, automobile smash-ups: "The Death Hour." A great Sunday night show for the whole family. It'd wipe that fuckin' Disney right off the air.

As a reviewer on IMDB mentioned, this sounds pretty familiar:

A few years back some network put exactly such a show - "Eye Witness Videos" - on the air. On Sunday night. In prime time.

It's always a bad sign when reality starts to conform to the vision of a black comedy from the past. While some parts of it will feel dated (fashion, technology, tv references, etc), I think it is really worth watching this movie. Almost all of us now were raised with "the tube" as a constant presence, and it is good to have something pointing out just how crazy things have become.

What else did I grab from the library? For DVDs, I Heart Huckabees, an Ansel Adams documentary, Pom Poko (one of the few Ghibli films I haven't seen yet), and the first Full Metal Alchemist DVD (have heard good things about this series).

For GNs, I got Swan #2 (I looove this series!), Dramacon #1, Runaways #1, Flight #2, WE3, Dungeon #1, Fray, and The Red Star #1. I've heard good things about all of these, so it should be a great couple of weeks as I burn through this stuff. I'll try to get some little reviews too.

Also, I'll have some more words on the unreality of TV relating to a recent appearance of yo-yos on TV.. It feels good to blog again, even if no one is reading anymore. Maybe this will help sort my thoughts out a bit.. :)

Flock Test

2006-03-02T22:16:00.000-05:00

This is a test of Flock:

We believe that it should be easy for everyone to contribute to and participate on the web. To that end, we've started with integrating tools that make it easier to blog, publish your photos and share and discover things that are interesting to you.

I haven't blogged in ages, eh? Maybe something like Flock would help me out a bit. Basically it is a modification of Firefox, but geared toward having a seamless interface to various web-based services like Del.icio.us, Flickr, and blogging. Instead of just making an extension to Firefox, it is an attempt to have a full package.

It still has a ways to go, but the progress so far is pretty encouraging. For instance, you can drag and image from your hard drive into the image upload bar and hit Upload to get it to flickr. Then go to a website, select some text and send it to the Shelf. Then go to the blog view, create a new entry and drag the image and some shelf items into the blog entry and post it.

It wasn't quite that simple in this case, since the integration with Blogger doesn't seem so good (perhaps there was an API change in blogger recently?) making it so that titles weren't working correctly. It also added paragraph tags which gave way too much spacing (blogger inserts automatically based on carriage returns). But those seem like issues that could be cleared up easily and probably aren't an issue on Wordpress, etc.

The integration with del.ico.us seems decent. Can search by tags (though not multiple partials) in the favorites view. Deleting a bookmark seemed to reset the dates on all the other bookmarks, so I think it must have deleted and re-added them all, which is odd...

It still has a ways to go, but I think it does have a lot of potential. I don't think I'll be using it full-time in the near future, but it reminds me that I should get going with blogging and del.icio.us again. My head's been distracted a bit with yo-yoing and 3d lately. Comics especially have kind of taken a back seat as of late. Guess we'll see what happens from here on...

Black Friday

2005-11-25T05:52:00.000-05:00

Well, I think this requires a post. I am now officially one of those crazy people who wakes up way too early to get a deal on Black Friday.

Been wanting an mp3 player for some time now. I usually listen to music on the computer so haven't totally needed one, but it'd really be helpful for my Mom as well as stuff like exercising. Also would help a lot for practicing yo-yo freestyles. Not to mention letting me veg out with some podcasts or ebooks while lying down, which could be nice too..

iPods are cool, but a bit too pricey for me at the moment. I tend to play specific songs instead of using random, so the iPod Shuffle was out with its lack of screen. I'd also prefer to just be able to drag files around instead of needing a special program to transfer music.

After some searching, decided that the Sandisk Sansa M240 1GB would be one of the decent ones. My current music collection (mostly from eMusic) is a little over 2 gigs at 192VBR MP3, so I think that's a good compromise. Plenty of room for my favorites while rotating out the rest occasionally.

I belatedly saw it on sale for $80 at Best Buy, but all three local stores were sold out. Then, with the help of Blackfridayads.com, saw that Circuit City was having it for $70 (as opposed to $120) if you got there early today. That's nearly half off!

Got up at about 4am and cleaned off the car (white thanksgiving!) and got there a little after 5am. The parking lot was already full and Mom ended up dropping me off (eventually parking at another store nearby) while I dashed in. Luckily they had a bunch of 512KB and 1GB models in stock and four registers open, so that worked out pretty well.

As much as I'd like to play with it, I should probably got back to sleep. Only got about four hours of it so far.. This is definitely a year where people are looking for deals if Circuit City was any judge. Guess we'll see what the news has to say about it tomorrow..

Some hard bookscan numbers...

2005-09-24T20:37:00.000-04:00

So, David Taylor mentioned the Book Standard's Bestseller Awards.

The interesting thing for me isn't so much the category splits (overall, manga, and superhero) but the fact that it gives hard sales numbers. So, over the course of about a year:

Comics & Graphic Novels
In the Shadow of No Towers, Art Spiegelman (49,000)

Comics & Graphic Novels – Manga
.hack//Legend of the Twilight, Vol. 3, Tatsuya Hamazaki (45,000)

Comics & Graphic Novels – Superheroes
Batman: Hush, Vol. 1, Jeph Loeb, Jim Lee, Scott Williams (20,000)

Just to compare a little, I also looked at ICv2's estimation of sales in the DM. Hush seems to have sold around the same amount during that period (around 22k).

In the Shadow of No Towers is pretty dramatically different. It showed up for 2k in the month of its release in the DM and then dropped off of the radar after that. It is similar with .hack, which did 4k when released and disappeared.

Just goes to show how different the markets really are. Also, I've seen comments on forums sometimes asking just how well GNs actually sell in the bookstore market. This gives us at least a bit of an idea.

New global comics+manga anthology coming?

2005-09-15T19:53:00.000-04:00

It seems like all the news is at The Engine lately. This thread has produced some interesting things lately. The first of which is C.B. Cebulski's news of a new comics+manga anthology starting up:

There's currently a new comic/manga anthology in the planning stages actually. Ideally, it will include short stories from Japanese manga-ka, pro and amateur, as well as an international line-up of comic and OEL artists. All non-superhero, of course. The plan is for an English version to come out in America in late spring 06, with a Japanese version to follow soon thereafter. (Yes, a Japanese publisher is already onboard.) Both editions will hopefully include a survey card where readers can write in and rank their favorites. There will also be a website set up with an online summary card, as well as blogs and forums for the creators worldwide.

The working title we're using now is JETLAG, given that creators from around the world will be sending in their work.

We're still wortking out the final kinks and contracts, but several of the Japanese artists are already lined up and excited. I'll have more news on this soon to share here. Thanks for your patience and hopefully future support.

then Heidi asks:

Who's "WE"?

C.B. again:

"WE" at this point are me and the few crazy, more globally-minded creators that cooked up this scheme. It's been an exciting but maddening experience so far, with so may ideas coming out of it that focusing gets difficult at times. We were planning on 128 pages to start as a test, but now I think it's easily going to grow beyond that rather quickly. Oh, and quarterly for now. We'll see...

This sounds like it could be really cool. Anthologies seem notoriously difficult to start up here, but I hope it works out! The aspect of its possible printing in Japan is a different dimension from normal as well.

Cutest... Mouse... Ever..!!!

2005-09-13T22:29:00.000-04:00

It can't be explained in words. Just go look!

Barnes & Noble to stock Scott Pilgrim

2005-09-13T18:24:00.000-04:00

I just happened to notice this from the Engine:

(Just as a side note, Barnes & Noble recently ordered a bunch of SCOTT PILGRIM, both volumes. I don't know if they're going to shelve them with manga or what. They don't have B&N's up here, so I can't check.)

Good news! It'll be interesting to see both how it is stocked and how well it sells. Best of luck to you Bryan!

Manga and the US Industry on the Engine

2005-09-13T10:20:00.000-04:00

I've been reading Ellis's new forum The Engine a bit lately, and the combination of limited membership (basically creators, publishers, etc) and focus on non-superhero topics makes for an interesting perspective. For one thing, a combo of regular indie creators and OEL ones without the friction you might see in other areas.

So, one of the more interesting topics has been started by Dirk on what lessons the US industry might learn from manga. Of course this springboards from his Journal editorial. There was some decent topics brought up as a result of Pat's response in here and here, but so far I'm really liking the Engine's take on things.

Everything from the Japanese industry, cherry picking, emotions, decompression, and Takuhai come up. Besides, any thread that brings up Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou has to have potential, right?

The coming Sgt. Frog figures...

2005-09-08T09:05:00.000-04:00

So, ICv2 mentions that Sgt. Frog Figures are coming. They mention there are different faces and accessories, but you might not realize just how cool these things are.

I happened to read a Millarworld thread which linked to a great gallery of these figures in action. Check out this page. If we seriously get all that, it'll be great! Japan knows how to make good action figures.

Also of interest is these other Sgt. Frog figures (though I doubt we'd get these) and a Yotsuba figure. Yotsuba & mecha = big trouble!

Am I right in thinking we're going to see some frog figures appearing on some comics blogs in the near future?

A taste of the World Yo-yo Contest

2005-09-06T15:50:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned in my post about the new house, I also went down to Orlando, Florida for the World Yo-yo Contest. Lots of people put videos online from the event, notably Boxthor who had freestyles and clip videos up on Bittorrent very quickly.

The latest video, though, is an epic 24min view of Worlds created by Andrew Lin from Singapore. Though he points out that it isn't a documentary, it is still a nice overview of a lot that went down, including such things as the Iron Modding Contest and Wheel of Penalty. Not to mention a feel for some of the crazy characters in the community. ;) Way too much happened to be contained in any one video, but this a good start.

It is a bit over 200megs and is mpeg-1, so just about anyone on broadband should be able to grab and watch it. Just be sure to right-click on the link and do Save As, since it'll probably work better than trying to stream it.

Download from rednuht.org
or
Download from atomictoyguy.com

Sho Murase's ME2

2005-09-06T14:59:00.000-04:00

Well, a couple of days ago, David mentioned Sho's new series, called ME2 coming out from Tokyopop. However, I haven't seen anyone else talk about it yet, or even comment on his entry.

I don't much about the story, but I have to say that the artwork looks like it'll be great. Like some mad combination of Frank Miller and Ai Yazawa. Also interesting is that it looks to be done as vector artwork (that's how it seems anyway), which certainly gives interesting options for resizing and recoloring.

At first, I was worried about if this thing would be difficult to read due to the complexity of the images, but I'm thinking those splash images are probably a bit more extreme while the following looks more reasonable for a standard style (or at least for the supporting characters?):

Anyway, I have to say that the style has got me really excited. I hope that the story can live up to it. I haven't read her both book Sei yet, but I've been curious about that also. Can see some of her other work on her homepage and she also seems to have a blog.

Anyone know if there's been any interviews about the book yet or preview pages? I guess maybe it isn't that far along yet...

Manga and book houses coming to Comic-con

2005-09-06T09:35:00.000-04:00

I couldn't help but be hearted by this ICv2 article:

Several new exhibitors were announced, including manga publishers Tokyopop, Viz, and Del Rey; games powerhouse (Hasbro subsidiary) Wizards of the Coast; book houses Simon & Schuster and Pantheon; and Dreamworks.

Manga and book houses? With all the complaints of Hollywood taking over that con, it is nice to see more companies come in on the comics side of things.

Everything I know.... Is wrong!

2005-09-02T08:09:00.000-04:00

To tell you the truth, I never really checked out the Millworld forum. Between Fanboy Rampage and other sites, I avoided it as a bastion of insular superhero readers. It seems like I wrongly dismissed it, or at least things are changing even there.

It started off innocently enough with a Yotsuba&! thread (and we all know Yotsuba is innocence incarnate!). When I saw a link to that, I was like "Yotsuba and Millerworld?! I have to check this out." I was pleasantly surprised by lots of positivity and more people checking it out as a result of the thread and liking it also (for the most part).

That lead directly to a thread on Scott Pilgrim. From there, I decided to just surf around and bumped into Sharknife. Then there was a long thread on manga and anime and comic shops. Even MBQ makes an appearance.

I never thought I'd say this, but I think I'm going to have to register for Millerworld so I can participate in some thoughtful comics discussions! I better do it quick before the internet breaks in half...

My new home

2005-08-22T19:52:00.000-04:00

Well, I could make all kinds of excuses on why I haven't blogged in so long, but I guess I've just been a bit unfocused lately (it took me a couple of days even to get this entry out!). But as time has gone on, I've built up some things I'd like to talk about. First up, is one of the biggest things to happen in my life. I bought a house! My Mom and I had lived in the same apartment my whole life, so this was a big jump.

The apartment was one floor of a two-family house, and we have a lot of stuff, so the move was pretty crazy. It was especially hard since I was planning on going to the World Yo-yo Contest right before we had to be out of the old house. Thankfully, people from work and a family friend helped out (with manpower and a van), so it was managed after a bazillion trips. I was afraid I was going to be totally dead for the trip, but I somehow recovered just enough.. :)

I have to show off a little bit, so here is some pics of the house. The outside:

The kitchen:

My bedroom (the box spring didn't fit upstairs, but this is working out fine). I'll probably paint over the Disney characters eventually, but I have to say that the glow in the dark stars on the ceiling is fun. I should have gotten those as a kid:

Backyard:

I'm really happy at how it has worked out. Great having our own home finally, is a good house, a pretty good neighborhood, etc. Still have stuff that needs to be unpacked and cleaned up, but we're getting pretty close now.

I also have to give a plug to Freecycle. This is a series of local yahoo mailing lists, where you can offer items you don't want anymore, as well as ask for things. There's a lot of stuff out there where it isn't worth putting it on eBay or even doing a tag sale, but someone out there probably wants. Instead of throwing it away, it makes sense to just give it away.

I do wish that they had a real interface to the system instead of just being mailing lists, but it works pretty well for the most part. Already gotten rid of a sleep machine and some costume jewelry. Aquarium, box spring, and others going soon. It is the kind of thing where kids clothes, boxes, crutches and such are always flying around, but you never know what will turn up. I always like when the internet opens up neat ideas like this.

I've liked Scott Pilgrim for a thousand years!

2005-06-20T16:35:00.000-04:00

Ok, maybe not, but I sure enjoyed the second book: Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. Things really pick up the pace here, with lots of stuff coming together all at once. I should have re-read the first volume before this, because with the previous crew, new characters and occational time jumps, it got a bit confusing at times. Still, I get the feeling it'll flow a lot easier for me the second I go through them, and I WANT to read them again, so that's a good sign. ;)

I'd also like to point out that this volume has a great number of quotable lines in it that had me laughing out load (LOL?). I won't spoil them here, so you must read it for yourself..

I also wanted to point out this great article from a paper in Halifax. It gives a lot of information on the origins of the comic which I was totally ignorant of. It is probably all on Bryan's website somewhere, but I'm lazy. ;) A nice update on the live-action movie as well. [via Christopher, along with a great pic]

Related to the article and my current love-affair with eMusic, I looked around at some of the bands mentioned. Not only is Plumtree on there, but the song Scott Pilgrim is! I just bought it and I'll probably grab a couple of other tracks too, so I can rock out while reading the books. Interestingly enough, the song is just about 3 minutes long, so the perfect length for a yo-yo freestyle.. hmmm...

The (Oh Man!) What To Do from Thrush Hermit is on there too.

I don't see any Kupek on there, though. I guess I'll have to make due with downloading it for free. ;) I'd never gotten around to trying any of his music before now, but the ones on purevolume sound good so far. But here's a question. Shouldn't Kupek do a cover of Scott Pilgrim? Maybe it is in one of the torrents, but if it isn't, it should be. Then again, it might be too awesome for the world to handle!

Anyway, I better stop gushing or I'll sound like a Scottaholic. My excuse is that since I'm 26 years old, I'm predisposed to Pilgrim-addition. ;)

What a difference a year makes...

2005-06-06T14:27:00.000-04:00

Yikes, apologies for being MIA once again. Tons of stuff going on in my personal life lately. One I won't mention quite yet, but the other is that we moved buildings at work and I have my own office. :)

Anyway, I was looking at the Beat's BEA entry and that reminded me of back when I was just starting blogging. Deppy was still blogging, and I remember that book expo was a topic at the time. Discussion of the presence of the manga companies, the rising stature of graphic novels to booksellers in general, etc.

Well, it seems like things are still moving in that direction. Viz has a big banner, a large presentation on graphic novels, and more moves by the big publishing companies (Flight moving to Ballantine!!).

At about the same time, I also noticed this TCJ thread on manga. A very positive thread with helpful suggestions. That's not even mentioning the shoujo issue of TCJ coming up next.

The local central library has an ever-growing selection of graphic novels for both kids and adults. I just read the first part of Moore's Swamp Thing, LoEG II, and a bunch of other good stuff from there.

More columns on manga in the major comic news sites (and a lot less heckling and ignorance whenever manga is mentioned on those sites). FCBD didn't fall flat without a movie release to support it. Lots of exciting new talent showcased in anthologies like Flight and RSoM. Web comics still plugging along...

The list goes on. There's been a fair share of bad things too, especially taking into account the Big Two, but overall I think we're in pretty good place compared to this time last year. I don't think that even the boy's club mentality that has caused firestorms will be able to hold on much longer. Between the huge female manga fanbase and the amount of female up-and-coming creators, things are changing. I'm sure that change will continue to be slow in the superhero world, but the larger comics world surrounding it is becoming quite a different thing entirely.

The tough path of comics in Korea

2005-05-05T09:27:00.000-04:00

The Comics Reporter linked to an article on the death of korean creator Go U-yeong. For someone like me who knows a fair amount about comics' history in the US and Japan and next to nothing about Korea's, even this short article was illuminating. It sounds like comics there have followed a similar path to those in the US, being heavily censored and blamed for the country's ills, except for them the censorship was heaviest in the '70s and '80s. I think a lot of us assumed that the history would be similar to Japan, but when I think of what I've learned of Korean cinema lately, the history of their comics fits in with that.

I'm just glad things seem really on the upswing lately in Korea. Great movies like Old Boy, ...ing, A Tale of Two Sisters, and many more and now the infusion of comics like Model and Priest. With all the talk of American and Japanese comics and cinema, please don't forget Korea!

The American Girl covers...

2005-04-29T23:13:00.000-04:00

So, I stumbled on vintage magazine cover art. I need to look through the site some more, but I already found some cool stuff. Check out The American Girl, which was a magazine for Girl Scouts. Some really interesting and stylized covers on there. For fans of books, November 1930 and 1932 are both really cool. March 1935 is actually giving off a manga vibe to me for some reason. Love the archery image in Sep 1936. Just neat stuff...

Primer

2005-04-27T11:17:00.000-04:00

Well, I just had the chance to see the movie Primer, and you should check it out if you can. Aparantly this movie won Sundance and I can see why. A movie that you'll probably need to see more than once to understand (I certainly don't get everything as of yet), but smartly done instead of just confusing. If you think that the premise of time-travel in movies is all worn out, this approaches it in a different way than others I've seen. Good dialogue and filming technique and also manages to do quite a lot on its small ($7000) budget. Saw it with some friends on DVD, so it must be out there. I think I'm going to buy this one I get some more $$$ in.

Diamond takes advantage of CMX's TenTen faux pas

2005-04-26T11:32:00.000-04:00

In a pretty amusing development, Diamond has put a solicitation in their imports section for the original Japanese version of Tenjho Tenge. Apparently at the top in bold letters, it says: "Fully Un-Edited, Un-Cut Japanese Edition". So, it seems like even Diamond itself is aware of the controversy and is trying to spin it to its own advantage at DC's expense!

Also, be sure to check out the latest Flipped column, where David Welsh compares the major manga publishers to personalities in a high school, and shares my frustration at DC's line not living up to its potential.

Del Ray now has a million volumes sold for only six different series. I remember when they first came on the scene, they had a big cardboard stand in Media Play to showcase their books. It even had a tear-off calendar listing upcoming releases. Not to mention a couple of high-profile titles like those from CLAMP. Swan looks to be a title I'd like a lot, but it is old and probably isn't an amazing seller. Gals! has a decent following, but not a blockbuster title. TenTen was the highest profile title, and they managed to mess up the release. Unless they can get a couple more anchor titles in the future to prop up the line, it will be pretty hard for them to distinguish themselves, as David says, the one whose name you have trouble remembering in the yearbook...

The Art of John Higby

2005-04-25T11:41:00.000-04:00

As a fan of both graphic design / comics and yo-yos, I just have to plug John Higby's art site.

Besides being an all-around nice guy, John does street performances with his wife Rebecca and has a thriving art business centered mostly around hand-painted yo-yo related artwork. I really like his style and thought some of you would get a kick out of it. :)

Flipped vs. Unflipped manga

2005-04-21T09:25:00.000-04:00

Things have been a bit hectic lately (hence my lack of posts), but I had to point out Coffee_and_ink's post on flipped vs. unflipped manga.

Like her, I really disagreed with Bill Randal's essay in the Comics Journal. It varies from person to person, but I think the flipping aspect is one of the least to worry about when it comes to translation.

One of the great observations that coffee_and_ink puts forth is due to the balloon structure of most manga, there isn't a lot of horizontal scanning of text. Most text in manga is vertical, so the balloons tend to be that way also, letting only a couple of words per line fit. That means that your eye stays in the same place and peripheral vision takes in the individual words. So actual eye movement will be mostly just down, similar to how it'd be flipped.

Even without that, I don't think it is that big of a deal. Yes english is left to right, but your eye has to travel all the way back over for every line of a novel. In this case on the last line your eye would just go a bit further left to the next panel.

On the shelving of CMX and Marvel Age books

2005-04-15T10:10:00.000-04:00

I found this thread interesting, in that it sounds like a lot of bookstores are shelving CMX and Marvel Age books together by publisher instead of spread throughout the manga section.

Alex Scott proposes:
I've noticed the same problem with the recent line of Marvel Age books they've put out: they'll all be piled together instead of spread out through the manga section, as I'm sure Marvel intended. The books all have identical cover designs, like the CMX books, and have "MARVEL" in big bold letters on the spine.

I suspect their problem is that they both depend on publisher loyalty in the Direct Market. You have Marvel Zombies, and you have people utterly devoted to DC Comics, and that's the way it's been for at least the past 30 years. They might be assuming that the manga audience will approach them the same way, when I just don't see that kind of loyalty toward particular publishers in the manga market (loyalty AGAINST publishers, on the other hand...).

I think that's probably accurate. I haven't had a chance to actually visit the bookstores for a while now (no $$$), but I'm curious to see if it is happening around here. To Marvel and DC: you may want to just let the individual books speak for themselves. As another poster mentions, this just makes it easy to avoid the books if they don't already have a good impression (like how many fans feal about CMX right now).

Funimation plans website for female fandom...

2005-04-12T15:17:00.000-04:00

From Chris's Sakuracon Report:

Lastly, Funimation is also starting up a new website called "Funi Girls" to cater to female anime fans. It's not up yet, but they hope to give girls a place to network with other fans, give help on putting together anime clubs, encourage females to get involved with the industry, and generally promote gender equality in fandom.

Sounds like quite a good idea to me. With that, Shojo Beat, and Tokyopop's After Hours initiative, things are looking up...

2005 is the year of manga edits?

2005-04-04T16:47:00.000-04:00

Well, I've been kind of caught up in other things lately, so I wasn't really able to cover all the other people who commented on the TenTen censorship, but there have been quite a few good articles. And for the record, comments have not yet ceased on AoDVD, up to now the 7th thread. There is also an experimental thread where people can list titles they don't recommend, due to editing.

My my main reason to post is to give some information on the other unfortunate developments lately, including several titles from other companies. A good thread which lists out all the other threads involved is here.

Osaka Edo has started a blog devoted to manga edits (not work safe) and Nick Falzarano has started up a page listing manga with visual edits.

For a quick rundown of the latest edits:

Descendants of Darkness from Viz has one person removed out of a male/male sex scene, inexplicable due to there being more explicit scenes in just the volume before. To me, this is a really bad edit, since it is totally changing the scene. This one really has people nervous, since it was a normal shoujo title, which Viz hadn't been staying away from as far as edits.

I's from Viz has nipples covered up by huge stars. Viz's response which mentions stars in the Japanese volume 3 seems to imply that the author decided to start censoring himself at that point (that was certainly what I read into it, and made me feel like Viz was more justified). But it turns out that that case was as part of a joke, and that all other cases weren't censored. For a title they're rating 16+ and has all kinds of strong fanservice elements, why bother with such innocuous nudity? Why does the Shonen Jump Advanced label even exist if the titles in it all still need to be edited?

ADV has also apparently removed some nipples entirely from By The Sword (Yo-u). To me, this seems like the least objectionable, since the editing is low-key and it doesn't sound like a title where the big draw is fanservice. Still, it seems like something sneaked under the radar, and really it just doesn't seem necessary...

So, at this point a lot of people are getting pretty ticked off. I'm beginning to wonder if one person's theory of a bookstore suddenly mandating changes is true. It certainly seems like a lot of things have come up pretty suddenly. Either that or companies have just decided to go weird in the head. Thus far, there seems to be very little rhyme or reason on what titles are being edited and to what extent. In the case of something like Descendants of Darkness, policies are changing even between books in the same series.

Some fans are getting pretty depressed and are starting to talk about quitting the American manga scene entirely. As an aside, it is weird to see similar comments to those I've seen in the past for American comics.. that of leaving the original fanbase behind for more mainstream exposure.

Shojo Beat just started accepting subscriptions online, but with Viz suddenly starting to edit regular shoujo titles, a lot of people are now taking a wait and see approach. I'll probably still pick it up myself, but I'm certainly not confident that the titles will come through unscathed at this point...

These are bad times if you don't like editing of content. It seems like we've suddenly been set back a decade or so...

Edit: Geeze.. I must have been asleep yesterday. Shoujo Beat.. not Jump.. :)

Welcome to Sin City

2005-04-01T23:07:00.000-05:00

So, I got to see this on opening night, and I have to say it was a pretty interesting movie. I'm pretty amazed that they managed to make this movie and get so much publicity for it. I'm not sure if it'll be able to make it with regular viewers, but I guess it is hard to say. There was only maybe like 30 people in the theater we were at, but I don't know if that is indicative of all places. In the end, I think it'll all come down to how the word of mouth is.

It was visually striking, over the top, misogynistic, and actually very funny in a couple of places. Basically it is what you've heard that it is. The level of brutality in some places was very very high, but the over-the-topness helped to diffused a lot of that. In some ways it was more graphic than something like Kill Bill 1, but I never felt as uncomfortable as I did in some parts of KB1. Sin City exists in a kind of hyper-reality not unlike something like City of Lost Souls by Takeshi Miike, in which everything goes a step further than in reality.

Elija Wood certainly doesn't have to worry about being typecast as a hobbit after this movie..haha (though he also did a great job in Eternal Sunshine). Miho's character was a bit annoying to me as someone into asian culture, but with all the ninja characters back from when the Sin City comic first came out, I can excuse that. The portrayal of women is a bit jarring to my "new fashioned" sensibilities even in the context of retro, but it still works out most of the time. Occationally dialogue seems off, but a stretch of dialogue never lasts too long before something crazy happens anyway.

Mickey Rourke was amazing, as was Bruce Willis. They both just fit the parts sooo well. I felt a bit let down after Rourke's segment ended, since it was just so charismatic and I had a bit of trouble getting into Clive Owen's part. But I think it still came together well at the end. I wasn't sure if the Yellow guy was going to seem stupid from seeing stills of him, but I thought it worked really well in the movie.

In short, very stylish and definitely not for kids, but also doesn't take itself too seriously a lot of the time, which keeps it from getting bogged down. Whenver it starts to go astray, something crazy and/or funny happens to put it back on track.

As a comic fan, I also just couldn't help but love how prominant the source is. It very clearly says it is based on a grpahic novel in the opening titles. In the same sequence, characters are shown with original Millar drawings, etc.

However, I think this is also kind of an uncommercial movie in a lot of ways, and will be pretty shocking to anyone who doesn't know what to expect. There's a real chance it could bomb in the box office, but hopefully it'll manage to do well. In any case, it certainly seeemed like it has helped the re-issues of the graphic novels! 4 of them in the bookscan top 5!

I'm probably going to see it again soon, but with my Mom, who is a big Elija Wood fan. It'll be interesting to see her reaction to this, though she was able to stomach Kill Bill 1 and get into the style of Sky Captain, so hopefully she will like it at least a bit...

Cheers to the creators for managing to make something pretty unique seemingly so close to what the original must be like. I've always liked Millar's artwork though I haven't actually read much of his work. I'll probably have to grab at least the first re-issue to see how the original source is...

Two things you must download!

2005-03-18T13:50:00.000-05:00

After watching some streamed demos lately, I decided to look around online, to see what was out there to run on my machine. For those that don't know, the demoscene involves creating a program which acts like a music video to demonstrate the skills of the programmers and musicians involved. This has a long history stretching back into Amiga days, but hasn't died out...

First is fr-025 (aka The Popular Demo) from the group farb-rausch. It is basically scenes of a living disco-ball type creature who tends to light up what he walks on like Michael Jackson. Good music and spectacular graphics. The readme says you need at least DirectX 9.0a installed, but there's also a lot of options for resolution, windowed or not, anti-aliasing, etc. I have a pretty new graphics card (Radeon 9800Pro) so I could do full quality on 1280x1024, but YMMV. Best of all, it is only 8megs in size. You can get it here

Next up is zoom3 (trance generation) from the Russion group Intercon. What is amazing about this one is that it is only 64k! (there are competitions for the best in a small size). Yet it is almost 10 minutes long with really interesting graphics, music, and even computer-generated speech. It requires a video card with pixel&vertex shaders, so you'll need some sort of GeForce or Radeon card, but it also has settings for resolution and quality. There's no excuse not to get this, even if you're on dialup. :) Thanks to Thomas for pointing this one out to me... incredible programming! Grab it here.

The year the modem was put to rest...

2005-03-12T20:59:00.000-05:00

It is funny how difficult change can be at times. Personally, I'm a fairly nostalgic person and my memory also isn't all that great. The combination makes me tend to be a packrat, fearful that losing an object will lose the memories as well. I think my digital camera will help with that eventually, but today's topic is about something a bit less physical. I'm finally moving away from my old ISP, losing my old e-mail and website in the process. It may not sound like a big deal, but check out how I got to this point:

[Note: I'm using the wonderful Wayback Machine for links that are gone or might be soon.]

Way way back I was part of a local Bulletin Board System called the-SPA! (Springfield Public Access), run by Linda McCarthy and Matthew de Jongh on TBBS. They were always one of the larger systems in the area, I think eventually getting up to a capability of 64 simultaneous users. I'd tried one BBS for like a week before that, but SPA was really where I found my home and got exposed to the concept of "online". This was still before anyone but people at universities or large companies could use the internet, and no one else knew was really even aware of it. Check out this article which looks back on BBSs and fidonet in the area and talks to Matthew about the SPA.

At first I just went in and downloaded some files. I got an image viewer and it was really the first time I experienced photos on my commputer. These days it is hard to imagine the huge shift that represented. I mean why would you have a photo viewer when there was no real way to get photos? No digital cameras, scanners were really expensive and mostly b&w, printers were b&w dot matrix, etc. But now on the BBS there were all these cd-roms of interesting pictures and programs. Back then I was on a 2400 baud modem, so a 640x480 jpeg took something like a half hour to download.

I believe I may have also grabbed a MOD file player and some songs, which was some of the first high-quality music I'd hear on the computer (along with the awesome Tetra Demo that came with my Sound Blaster, which was a tracker, though I didn't know that at the time). See Mindcandy for more on the demoscene.

Eventually I started talking to people in the chatroom. For a shy kid of around 15? or so, it was a pretty liberating experience to talk with local people from all walks of life. We went to a SPA picnic and some parties and people's houses. I got involved in a MUD called Illusions, which was a really cool experience to play online with other people and also roleplay a character. In later years I'd even have my first relationships based off of meetings on that BBS and even know of some people who got married who met on SPA.

SPA always had Fidonet, which I believe was hooked up to Usenet. I never really got involved in that, but later SPA would get e-mail. You could always send messages to other people on the board, but this was something new. About that time, more people were starting to talk about the internet, though most still weren't sure exactly what it was. I actually went to the library and found the book Zen and the Art of the Internet. Not only did it explain things like ftp, gopher, and the www (which was still mostly text-based at that point), but it gave some addresses and also my way into the big time.

That way was ftp by e-mail. You see, some people had created special gateways so that people without ftp could still download files. I'm sure there are still a couple of them out there somewhere actually. Basically you'd send an e-mail with your instructions and it'd spit back the result. So if I e-mailed something like:

ftp ftp.sunet.se
anonymous
shawn.fumo@the-spa.com
dir

It'd then e-mail me back the directory listing. You'd mail back go into one of the directories and list it again. When you finally got to a file you wanted, it'd send back a series of e-mails with the file converted to text. Back then I had an offline reader for the BBS and it let me save e-mails to disc. One of the CD-ROMs on their system also had a program to uudecode back into a file.

Back then I was homeschooling and one of my things was to learn some Pascal. I didn't have a lot of money, so I decided to try to download one online. I ended up finding an ftp site with it and using the mail-to-ftp which sent me back something like 5 e-mails. After saving and decoding, I got a zip file. I downloaded an unzip program off the BBS and it unzipped! It is hard to explain just how amazing it was to go through that convoluted process and have it actually work...

Now, eventually SPA got a shell account which let you use ftp and gopher and lynx. It'd download the file to the BBS, and then I could download it to my computer. That was a big exploration period, and you also started to see things like the Internet Yellow Pages in bookstores so you could find good sites to go to.

Eventually SPA started up a real internet service. I remember going to classes that they held to help educate people about the internet. I actually knew a decent amount by then about the net itself works, but having graphical tools in windows was new. I started off with an early version of Netscape which didn't support background images yet. Lots of gray in those days..heh. Started getting involved in usenet. Eventually I'd put up my own website, complete with rainbow dividers in January of 1996. That version isn't online, but you can look here for October '96 (Wayback doesn't store background images unfortunately).

I'd also fulfill a bit of a childhood fantasy. Back even before the BBS days, we had a paper catalog where you could send away for software and they'd send you back a floppy disc with it on it. In the catalog was a program that I never did end up getting at the time, but whose description made an impact on me. It was POV-Ray, a program that'd let you make 3d images on your computer, along with a screenshot of I think it was a train. Once I got active on the net, I was able to grab that program and start exploring 3d, which was a great time. Actually, I may have downloaded a version off of the BBS at one point, but my computer was really too slow at the time. Anyway, I'm still proud of the 3d mechanical pencils I created using entirely a text editor.

By and by, the internet would slowly kill off the BBS. First you'd use the e-mail go to the internet for files. Then you might see all the MUDs you could telnet into. I think what really nailed it in the end was ICQ. Once friends that met by chatting on the BBS stopped going to it even for that, there wasn't a whole lot left. Still, I can't help think that something was lost when you stopped having that center of community which was location. Of course that's been starting to come back lately in various ways, but that's another story.

So, since that time I've been plugging along using the internet with my trusty USRobotics 56k modem. I've had the website for almost 10 years now, and the e-mail address for probably close to 12? Despite my e-mail address being flooded with spam (I get lots of e-mails from people I don't know, so I'm scared of filters) and moving a lot of personal correspondance over to gmail. Despite finding other web hosts in various places and leaving the old site as mostly a relic. It is still hard to let go of that after so many years.

A couple of weeks ago, SPA announced that they'd merge with the biggest local ISP: Crocker Communications. The advantage of this would be that I could keep my e-mail and website address. However, calling several times to ask for information got met with tech support which was too busy. The service was also $10 a month more than Verizon for the same features. Plus, as I thought of it, this wouldn't be the same anyway. Matthew and Linda aren't running it. Dan Berger won't be creating cool images of the roman corporate mascot Sparky.

[As an aside, Dan is a great artist and was one of highest scoring MUD players as King Hell. I haven't talked to him in ages, but last I checked he did work for Mirage Studios and produces his own comic book called Gutwallow.
Matthew recently got married, but I do wonder what Linda is up to?]

I've prided myself on keeping this connection to the past, but it is probably just time to move on now. It is too late now to waffle anyway.. the router and modem will arrive on Monday. I'll make sure I have the old site backed up, move all my mailing lists and logins over to gmail. In the practical sense, it'll barely make any impact on my dailing life at all, but in my mind it feels like the end of an era. Hopefully the start of an even better one...

For anyone who has actually read this far, here's a couple more things:

Lastly, let's take at what was on my site: the the latest version [Wayback link]

Check out my bio page. The funny thing about the picture of me is that it was taken when I was 17. Now that I've lost weight and shave, I actually look younger now than I did then! And check out this quote:

I also enjoy looking at other people's artistic work. I've always loved Fantasy/Sci-Fi art, and have a lot of books and cards on the subject. I got into it origionally by interests in Fantasy literature and comic books. Speaking of comics, I used to collect them before they got too expensive, and I enjoy the somewhat related Anime/Manga genre when I can.

Who'd have thought comics and anime/manga would become such a big part of my life again these last couple of years? I also had a brief spell of going nuts downloading a ton of Jpop, hence my name-dropping of Glay, etc. I seem to be getting back into that lately as well.

I was always a person of many hobbies. It is really too bad that particular Rubik's Cube site isn't around anymore. Had cool 3d illustrations. I think I printed it out somewhere though. Aparantly some people are still making KiSS dolls, which is good to see. Hmm.. I never did figure out how to pick locks..

A fun relic was my technology tv guide. Do you remember C/Net Central, Computer Man, Future Watch, New Edge, Next Step, The Site, CNN Computer Connection and the rest of those technology shows that were out during the 90s tech boom? I hear Beyond2000 is still being made, though I don't think we can get it here. That used to be one of my favorite shows...

I'll be very sorry to see my old POV-Ray Utilities List go offline. I based it off of another list that got abandoned. Unfortunately mine would suffer the same fate. A lot of pages still link to it, though, so it'll be a shame to move it. The same goes for my old yo-yo site, where I first took a my message board post about how to loop and put it on my site, eventually becoming something quite larger.

Since we're on a nostalgia kick, I'll end with a couple of old yo-yo posts. My first post back in 1997, hailing my official entry into yo-yos as a more serious hobby. My trip to Nationals in California in 1999. People actually did a fundraiser so I could fly out, which was an amazing experience. Lastly, my trip to Worlds in florida in 2004. It seems my end of blogging never really came to be did it? I think I've found a bit of a balance for it now...

Sorry for such a personal post. I just really wanted to have a record out there for that part of my life and also try to get it all out of my system. Is it weird that most of the important events of my life have been catalogued online? Such is the world we now live in, I guess. :) If you're a kid or just weren't involved in technology during that time, I hope you follow some of the links in this post and this list of tech-related documentaries. It is good to know how we got to this point.

So, moving on...

Reviewing Worst - Vol. 1

2005-03-06T14:33:00.000-05:00

It seems like Digital Manga Publishing has been doing a push to send review copies to bloggers, and I was lucky enough to get the first volumes of Worst and IWGP. Most of the reviews I've read from others liked IWGP best, so I decided to tackle Worst first:

Worst is by Hiroshi Takahashi and revolves around country boy Hana who arrives at a boarding house in the city where he'll stay while going to school. It ends up that his school is one of the worst around, full of toughs who fight it out. Despite being friendly and unassuming, it turns out Hana is a great fighter with plans of his own.

First, let's talk production. I have to say that the quality on DMP's books are very nice. The front cover is pretty striking and the logo seems fine. The DMP bar/logo is also thankfully pretty innocuous. Something to note is that this is slightly larger (8.25"x6") than most of the manga out there these days. This gives it a pretty substantial feel, things aren't lost in the spine, and it opens up well. It'll stick out a bit on a shelf, though. It has a dust cover like most digests do in Japan, with a b&w cover under it. I do wish they would have removed the "over 1 mil sold" balloon from the b&w cover. The back has a flower design instead of the description/price/rating of the dust cover, so why keep the marketing quote on the front?

The paper is good and the printing quality itself is very nice and crisp. There was one panel on page 62 that seems strangely pixilated, but other than that it looks fantastic with no moire patterns in the screentone. I have to admit that at $12.95, I'd be less likely to pick one of these up on a whim, but the price seems justified due to the quality of production.

The translation seems fine for the most part in terms of how it flows. No unnecessary slang, etc. I really like how they handled the sound effects. The sfx are left alone but then a small english subtitle is placed next to it. Replacing sfx entirely is difficult (especially when they are integrated into the art), glossaries are a pain, and I hate when they aren't translated at all, so this seems like a good compromise. They also keep in the occational word like "sempai" with a culture note in the gutter. One thing that is a bit odd is a couple of places where a sfx switches between the meaning and the sound. For instance the first time you see "shiin", it is translated as "silience". The next time they just write out "shiin". That kind of works, but for people less used to Japanese sfx, they might not make the connection that these two instances are the same thing.

For artwork, I have to say that Takahashi is pretty gifted. For those that aren't into the "big eyes" look, here is something for you. In fact most of the characters' eyes are SMALLER normal people's. ;) And while there is still some cartoony moments (especially for Hana), the artwork is generally pretty grounded. Other reviewers have mentioned his skill in differentiating the various characters, and I agree that he's done a good job. Lots of distinctive facial features and clothing keeps you from getting the main characters confused. Here are the char designs of the five guys at the boarding house. But once it gets to the school, I almost feel like I stepped into a shoujo manga when I look at how many shirt patterns this guy comes up with. ;)

I was also impressed by the judicious use of screen tone (after the first couple of chapters). When it is used, it doesn't call attention to itself and a decent number of shirt designs were inked by hand. The backgrounds are surprisingly detailed as well. You get the feeling that in the times when it is left out, it is to emphasise the character, not just the creator being lazy. Also interesting is a technique used during crowd scenes. I've seen other manga and anime to sometimes leave background characters undetailed, but in Worst he will tend to render these people as very detailed except for having totally blank faces. This gets across pretty well that they are just a sea of people that we don't need to focus on.

Now, as for the story, it certainly isn't for everyone, but I found myself warming to it. Our main character (nicknamed Hana, which means flower), is a friendly country guy with a shaved head. He reminds me of adult Goku in DBZ in that he's a genuinely nice (and somewhat innocent) person who can switch into a serious fighting mode. The other characters he encounters at the boarding house range from tough to outsider to fearful. The adult who runs it seems like a yakuza (but might not be), and the cook is his brother, a transvestite.

Speaking of which, I think it is interesting to note that (at least in this first volume) there are no females at all. It might be that girlfriends and such will appear later on, but currently they don't seem to exist in this world. While on first glance that seems like a bad thing, I'm not so sure. So many fighting manga seem to put in females as either token characters or sexual objects. It is refreshing that there is no fanservice to be found in this book.

In fact, for a book about fighting, there's surprisingly little fighting as well. Takahashi seems to take a more abstract approach. While many fighting manga will have entire volumes devoted to a single fight, so far most of the fights have either taken place off-panel or at most a couple of pages. Even the fighting tournament which decides the top dogs of the school is half-over during one chapter (and most of that chapter is devoted to the people on the sidelines talking). With this being a bunch of normal street brawlers, I think he is smart to realize that (like in a horror movie) it is better to let us use our imaginations to fill in the fight. Here is an entire fight in one two-page spread.

My main complaint at this point is just that there are a lot of characters thrown at you at once (especially once they get to the school), as well as a lot of exposition to introdcuce those people and explain the groups and factions. Still, it seems like this is going to be a book focusing less on the fights themselves and more on the characters involved in them and the various politics of alliances and such. I'm very curious to see where it heads. If it can keep up the energy it has and provide some more depth to the characters, it should be a pretty solid fighting soap opera.

As an aside, considering the recent hoopla surrounding TenTen, it is nice to note that DMP gave this a rating of Young Adult (16+), which seems appropriate. While there is some moderate swearing, the violence is actually less graphic than that of Teen-rated series like Naruto, though that could very well change in future volumes. But it also just feels older than the Jump titles do. Still, if CMX wanted a fighting title for teens, this would have been way more appropriate than the graphic fanservice and violence of TenTen. This is a very solid production from DMP that feels pretty transparent. Instead of screaming about "authenticity" like some companies do, in this case the results speak for themselves.

DMP also has the entire first chapter online as a preview, which is always nice (and sure saves me some time in linking to images..heh). Next up will be a review of IWGP.

A look into the studio of Otagaki Yasuo

2005-03-06T14:23:00.000-05:00

The author of the manga Midnight Mile (which I haven't read but seems to have some of the same feels as Planetes) has put up a page detailing the process he and his assistants go through to create it. Pretty neat stuff.

[via T Fraga on the TCJ board]

Tenjho Tenge update and guerilla fighting techniques

2005-03-05T14:35:00.000-05:00

Wow, I'm pleasantly surprised by how much coverage this controversy is gettting. Lots of blogs of course, but now the news sites are starting to take notice. Newsarama has an article up and I'm especially happy to see ICv2 cover the issue. I wish they'd have mentioned that many feel the content isn't appropriate for 13+ even with the edits, but it is still a well-done summary of what is going on.

Striking is that Newarama and ICv2 both got a "no comment" from DC when asked. Seriously, are they not going to say anything at all? ICv2 is a pretty major pop culture site and it doesn't look good for them to keep ignoring the issue.

Fight: DC CMX has updated the list of edits with several more edits that were found and more importantly has created a campaign page. Besides listing mailing and e-mail addresses, there's the great idea of putting some guerilla style fighting to work. You can download a 4x5 pdf which you can print out and stick into copies of the book on shelves in stores to let people know it is edited. Some people have already started to do this, and it is a neat idea of getting the word out to the general public without doing any damage to the books.

Also, someone on the Newsarama thread mentioned that everyone should mention the edits on the online stores that support user reviews. I think that's a great idea, and two sites which allow comments are Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Anyone know of other sites that do this? I just posted a review to B&N which hopefully will show up in a day or two.

CMX's Tenjho Tenge fiasco...

2005-03-04T13:10:00.000-05:00

Geeze, I don't check the boards for a couple of days and everything goes crazy. The long and short of it is that DC has decided to extensively censor the long-awaited fighting manga Tenjho Tenge. All instances of nudity have been removed, through a combination of drawn-on bras and panties, zoomed in panels, and over-large sound effects. It is also rated Teen (13+) and is non-shrinkwrapped.

Not only is editing bad in general (and this is some of the most extensive editing done in quite some time), but even worse is who they are marketing it toward. It is a series for adults (or at least late teens), containing violence, sex, and various instances of rape. People have pointed out that this is the same kind of rating used for Shonen Jump titles like One Piece and TenTen is being put on the endcaps right next to them. I don't think drawing a bra on someone being raped automatically makes it appropriate for a 13-year-old. I've not read much of the series, but I hear it only gets more troublesome as time goes on, with things such as lesbian sex and some disturbing torture scenes.

This is even more stupid, when taking into account the success of titles like Berserk and Battle Royale in the direct market, and the strong sales of Negima everywhere. Negima was originally going to edited, but the decision was reversed after fans got wind of it. This could have been a successful title with the adult market, but instead they'll alienate those people with censorship and market it to an audience for which it still isn't appropriate.

If you'd like to see before and after images, you can visit: FIGHT: DC CMX - The Campaign for Uncensored Tenjho Tenge. I haven't looked at this yet, but I'm guessing it is NOT worksafe. Actually there is a textual list of edits on ListerX.

Personally, I'd urge everyone to boycott this title until CMX gets its act together. It has been suggested that people who bought it unawares to try return it to wherever they bought it. A lot of people are also sending letters to the editor here:

Jake Tarbox-- Editor
CMX Manga
DC Comics / Wildstorm Productions
888 Prospect Ave., Suite 240
La Jolla, CA 92037

Posts are starting to pile into the CMX message board, but no one from DC aparantly ever posts anything on their own borad. Not they've responded to anyone in any capacity that I know of yet.

If you'd like to see the three huuuge thread on AoDVD, you can look here, here, and here.

I really think DC may have set themselves up for a fall here. CMX is just getting started as an imprint and so far hasn't had as much overall success as other newcomers like Del Ray. This is going to cause a huge backlash from fans and also make people extremely suspicious about any new titles they decide to come out with. It certainly hasn't been helped by their total silence on the matter.

It's a shame, since I've heard their other titles have been pretty well done so far. I've been meaning to at least check out Swan myself, but this dampens my enthusiasm toward CMX in general. If they wanted a title for teens, they should have licensed a title that was meant for them instead of trying to shoehorn something else. I myself wasn't going to buy TenTen, but I've really been enjoying Dark Horse's release of Berserk. I can only imagine what might have happened to it if CMX had been the one to release it...

Iron Wok Jan returns...

2005-02-28T14:03:00.000-05:00

Thanks for David for pointing out AoDVD's homepage, which posts Dr. Master's upcoming scedule, including Iron Wok Jan #13 and #14.

I still haven't read the first two volumes that I got from dollarmanga, but judging from everyone else's reactions, I think I'll soon be very glad it is still being published.

Kiki's Live-action Remake and Ghibli TV ads

2005-02-28T11:51:00.000-05:00

Akadot's mailing list happened to throw out
this tidbit. Jeff Stockwell is writing a script for Disney US for a live-action version of Kiki's Delivery service. I'm curious whether this will be based on Miyazaki's movie or the original children's novel by Eiko Kadono.

While we're on topics relating to Ghibli, Nausicaa.net also mentions that TV ads for the new english Beuna Vista DVDs are running on several major networks. They also have a video up of the Nausiaa one. Is anyone else excited that there are TV ads in the US for Ghibli movies?!

Lastly, it sounds like Miyazaki is going to continue directing movies. Countless times in the past he's claimed that he's about to retire, but it seems like he just isn't able to do it. I'm glad to hear that we'll have more movies from him, though I hope he'll physically be able to keep it up.

With the talk of no new blood in this article, I really wish Miyazaki's successor hadn't died. Still, I'm not sure it is as bleak as all that. I've still seen some really interesting anime coming out as of late...

Manga: Sixty Years gets Flipped

2005-02-23T17:45:00.000-05:00

Just wanted to mention David's latest Flipped column which reviews Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics by Paul Gravett. I picked this up a couple of months ago and really enjoyed what I read of it. A nice combination of good historical information with a near coffee-table-book level of great artwork on display.

I love the two Schodt books, but it is great that new updated books on manga are still being written. The industry is just so massive and has such history that I think things like this are really important. Personally, I love pop-culture history in general...

CMX hard to reach?

2005-02-23T17:34:00.000-05:00

While hopping around reading various threads, I stumbled on a comment from Althalus which among other things, mentions DC's lack of a feedback mechanism for CMX:

But I was very much taken aback by DC's practically non-existant customer service. There is no email contact specifically for CMX questions, in fact there's only this ridiculous "ask the editors"-column for any questions. They do have a forum, but in all the time since they opened it, not one single company rep (or even moderator) has graced it with his or her presence.

I wonder, are the expectations different in the manga and us comics communities? I know that I've seen US reps posting on various threads before, but is it as extensive as the anime and manga reps on a place like AoDVD? Is there any general things we can say, or is this all company by company on both sides?

It was too good to last... dollarmanga becomes cubicmall

2005-02-22T11:14:00.000-05:00

Alas, it had to happen eventually.. I'm thankful I finally got around to ordering from Dollarmanga when I did, but I still wish I'd bought more. It has now become CubicMall.com. They say it'll be DrMaster (previously ComicsOne)'s official online site, and it now has more variety to the stock than the other site did.

However the prices are up and the shipping is still outrageous. Some of the titles that used to be $1 are now $2. Others are up to $5. The newest titles are full price. This isn't to say that some of the titles aren't still a good deal, but you're going to have to be a lot more selective and it is even more important to make a large order at a time.

But if you're looking for the newest titles, stay far away, since pretty much anyone else will cheaper when taking the shipping into account.

Nausicaa, Porco Rosso, and Cat Returns DVDs out today!

2005-02-22T10:11:00.000-05:00

I know I've been kind of absent lately. Lots of things swirling around has made it hard to focus enough to blog on any one thing. However, in trying to catch up a little this morning, AoDVD's homepage reminded me of something very imporant. Buena Vista's next batch of Ghibli DVDs are out today!

Though out of the three, I've only seen Nausicaa before, all of these have very good reputations. If you're someone who is mainly in the manga realm, Ghibli is a good place to start when going to check out some anime.

Those that know me, know that Nausicaa is one of my favorite comics of all time, and while the anime is more limited in scope, it is still a great achievement. I also have a particular soft spot for it, in that I had Warriors of the Wind on tape as a child. While this was a very cut up version of the Nausicaa movie, it still made an impact on me as a child, and I'm sure is one of the contributing factors of making me a fan as an adult (along with such things as the Unico movies, Voltron, Robotech, and some of the slightly more adult american animation such as Starchaser: the Legend of Orin). A review of the new Nausicaa DVD can be found here, and seems to be in line with Buena Vista's other Ghibli releases.

Opera Meets Manga

2005-02-02T15:07:00.000-05:00

I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to opera, but this still sounds very cool. Geoduck happened to spot some volumes of Comics The Masterpiece of Opera by Machiko Satonaka at a Kinokuniya shop in Seattle, featuring Madama Butterfly, La Boheme, Die Zauberflote and others. Aparantly each one is themed on a particular creator and features three operas.

I doubt we'll see any of these translated to english any time soon, but I'm glad to know that they're out there!

Five Manga: AoDVD vs. Blogosphere

2005-01-29T21:02:00.000-05:00

Johanna has just tallied up everyone's votes for their five favorite manga currently still being released.

This encouraged me to stop being lazy and revisit the original thread. Following Johanna's lead, I decided to list all the manga that least two people voted for (since these are top five lists, the majority of these should be of good quality anyway). Here it is:

(15 votes)
Fruits Basket

(13 votes)
Berserk
Rurouni Kenshin

(10 votes)
Kare Kano

(8 votes)
Basara

(7 votes)
Please Save My Earth

(6 votes)
Bleach
Tokyo Babylon
Vagabond

(4 votes)
Chrono Crusade
Oh My Goddess
One Piece
Planetes

(3 votes)
Banana Fish
GTO
Hikaru no Go
Hot Gimmick
Kindaichi Case Files
Prince of Tennis
Red River
Tsubasa
XXXHolic

(2 votes)
ARIA
Blade of the Immortal
Boys over Flowers
Buddha
Card Captor Sakura - 2nd Edition
Flame of Recca
Iron Wok Jan
Maison Ikkoku
Phoenix
Saikano
Saiyuki
Tramps Like Us
Tuxedo Gin

It is interesting to note how little overlap there is with the blog lists until we a bit further down the list. Planetes (1st place in the blogs) and Oh My Goddess (6th place) both make it into 7th place in the AoDVD thread.

We need a digital Previews...

2005-01-27T23:46:00.000-05:00

I was just reading Steven Bates' latest "I I Think I Can Manage" column. He talks about some of his issues with Previews in terms of retailer information: too many big flashy ads that cause more confusion than help, copy text that is more hype than informational, and different formatting among the different major publishers. He mentions a system he had come up with called T.A.P.S., which is a simple listing of Title (including volume/issue #), Author, Price, and Story.

That is all good stuff and sensible but then this quote jumped out at me:

What's the answer? I'm not sure. I don't expect Diamond to publish two separate catalogs, one for retailers and another for consumers. It'd be nice ... but I don't think it's financially feasible.

Why would that jump out? Well, it got me to thinking about WHY it wouldn't be feasible. The main problem is that Previews is this big hulking paper publication. That makes sense along with all of the flash and wizard-lite elements because of the number of normal readers that use it as an ordering guide. But in the same way that the requirements are different for retailers, it seems to me like the medium very well could be (and should be) different as well.

After all, what is TAPS but the definition of database? And Diamond must have all of this data in some sort of database to begin with, so transforming it into some form where page layout isn't a big concern should be relatively easy. Also, isn't the price and ads in Previews mostly to offset the cost of the printing itself? That they make their actual money from distributing?

So my question is why isn't there some sort of digital catalog? This could be a website or even a cd-rom (the former better because of no shipping issues and up-to-the-minute changes, the latter nice because you have all the data without having to wait for things to load). Even a simple website could be TAPS-ish like some of the entries that are already on Diamond's site. Look at this listing for OJO for instance. That is a pretty clear layout right there. I mean they have a text order form on the site which already includes a title and price, which has to be generated in some way.

But even that is thinking too small. Why should this be some static list that retailers have to pore over? The real advantage of technology in terms of databases is how easy it is to manipulate them. It'd be trivial to let you sort or search by any attribute. Why can't you do something as simple as search for the author of CLAMP and come up with all of their titles, regardless of which company is publishing them? Why can't you list all the marvel titles that go for $2.99?

Even that doesn't seem like it is enough. Diamond wants people to order stuff, so they should make things as easy as possible. Why do people have to put codes into a form? When you join up with Diamond, you could get an account. You log into that and have a shopping cart type system. If you see something interesting while you're browsing, just add it to the cart and keep going. You could see your total and tweak it until the ordering deadline. They may not want to get too far into inventory management (since I'd guess most retailers already have their own system), but it probably wouldn't hurt to have something in place to make it easier to re-order new issues of ongoing series, be alerted when a delayed title you wanted is coming out, etc.

If they had some sort of external API for retreiving catalogue information and sending orders to their account, it could even be integrated into existing inventory management systems. Imagine browsing the titles in your system that you've ordered and then be able to immediately pull up what new issues are coming out along with their description and image, then decide how many copies they want and it'd send it to diamond as well as put it into their own system to compare with the actual shipment that arrives.

To me, that seems WAY more effecient than waiting for this big magazine to get shipped to you, wade through ads and different layouts, copy down the codes, fill out an order form, and then mail it out.

Obviously my wishlist gets more ambitious near the end (though even the API isn't so bad, really.. all kinds of companies have web services these days), but the first step of just putting all the info online in a non-searchable/sortable format is about as trivial as it gets. Even if they didn't want any automation with their own database, they should be able to export some comma-separated file and run it through a script to make it html and upload it once a month. They have to be doing something already to make those order forms. Someone has rocks in their heads if those files are being made by hand each time...

The only reason I can think of for this sort of thing not already being done is either laziness, fear of the unknown, or that they really are making big profits on selling Previews and don't want to detract from that. It certainly isn't from any useability concerns. I really hope that I'm wrong and there is SOME sort of electronic version of the Diamond's information, or at the least some way to do orders without printing out and mailing a form, but I have a sinking feeling...

Wrong About Japan the wrong approach?

2005-01-26T11:22:00.000-05:00

I have to say that after reading this this review for the book Wrong About Japan: A Father's Journey With His Son, I was pretty interested in picking it up to take a look at. I like the concept of a father trying to get at the root of his son's hobby and finding preconceived notions challenged.

Unfortunately, I fear this may not be the book to do it. I just finished reading some reviews on Amazon, and it sounds like this is a pretty sparse book that doesn't go much further than the surface, that the interviews aren't that well done, etc. It also appears that at least part of it (a character called Takashi) is fictionalized, so that makes me wary as well.

I myself would really like to get to Japan at some point. I know that I myself have a lot of preconceived notions that are probably wrong, but I'd also like to think that by looking around in a lot of places and being open-minded that I'm not as off as I used to be.

For instance, most anime/manga fans usually have the opinion at first that Japan is a panacea where everyone reads manga, it is an artform that everyone respects, etc. The truth sounds closer to TV shows in the US. A lot of people watch them, but a lot of people also consider them disposable low-denominator entertainment. And while most adults are going to watch a Ghibli movie that comes out, there is still the notion overall that anime is for kids. Not to say that there is no respect at all (it has certainly permeated the country to a high degree), but expecting to get into big anime/manga discussions with people off the street sounds like it isn't so likely...

From reading/watching the mediums (including live-aciton movies and novels), you can certainly get disavowed of the thoughts that Japan is all temples and kabuki pretty quick. You can see the emphasis on schooling everywhere, the disconnect from nature in everything from Lain to Spirited Away, and how Nea_7 shows an old world that is quickly fading away.

It sounds like one of the quickest ways to get disavowed of romantic notions is to actually work in Japan, either as an English teacher or something else, where racism can frequently rear its ugly head and you're in contact constantly with various people.

But obviously there is still a lot to like about Japan, and it is important to remember it is full of regular people just like here. For all the strangeness that might be in Japan, the US has all kinds of craziness going on all the time. We're just more or less used to it from living here already. There are various blogs out there with people living in Japan that can give some realistic anectdotes. If you want to take some time to learn Esperanto, you can find families to stay with for free during a vacation. If you're a yo-yo player, you get exposed to people from Japan quite often, either online or at international competitions.

Anyway, I have no idea where I was going with all of this. I guess I just want to reiterate the need to be seriously open-minded when looking at another culture and willing to change what you think you know at the drop of a hat. I certainly know better than to totally trust my own "facts" at this point. :)

[via Heidi]

"Top 5 manga series currently being released" Thread

2005-01-25T14:08:00.000-05:00

For those that are on the lookout for new manga titles to pick up, you may want to check out this thread. Texhnolyze asks everyone to post their top five series that are currently being released (aka there must be some volumes not out yet). You see some of the names coming up again and again like Basara, Berserk, and Please Save My Earth. A couple of the people also list favorite finished and upcoming series.

As for me, my awareness of what is currently out and the number of those that I'm reading is kind of limited at the moment, so I'll let the thread speak for itself. I'll be having an infusion of manga reading soon, though, since my dollarmanga.com order just came in. :)

Movie involving manga fandom released in Japan...

2005-01-24T14:41:00.000-05:00

Midnight Eye has a review up for Koi No Mon: Otakus in Love, which uses different approaches to manga fandom as the main plot point between two people in a romantic drama. It even has settings such as manga bars, anime karaoke, and Comiket (the largest comic convention in the world), and the story is itself based on a manga.

This sounds pretty promising, so I hope this gets brought over to the US some day...

[via Chris Beveridge)

Verizon blocks European e-mail messages...

2005-01-20T11:44:00.000-05:00

Man, I can't believe the sheer gall to do something like this. Aparantly due to spam concerns, Verizon has decided to block e-mails coming from europe. They say they will white-list things after complaints, but I really don't think that is acceptable.

This came to my attention after a post on a yo-yo board I read, which makes sense considering how spread out the community is over the world. I can only imagine the headaches this has caused for various people. I was planning on getting Verizon soon, but if I do, I think I'll stick with GMail for now instead of using their pop account if they are going to pull stuff like this.

Such a big part of the internet is about connecting with the world, to suddenly lock off half the rest of the world without warning seems almost inconceivable. This isn't some tiny ISP, but one of the largest DSL providers around. The rep from Verizon that says "If it's really important you might want to make a phone call" doesn't exactly change my mind in thinking they are out of touch.

It makes me feel sad that we're so American-centric at times in this country that a company feels like they can get away with something like this. Can you imagine the uproar we'd have on all the news stations if say a huge ISP in Britain said "we're not taking e-mails from the US anymore due to spam concerns"?

The difficulties of market testing

2005-01-18T23:32:00.000-05:00

Here is something that I stumbled on and have been trying to pass on to other people:
IT Conversations: Malcolm Gladwell - Human Nature

This is a half-hour recording of a presentation he gave involving the relationship between human nature and market testing, availible for either streaming or mp3 download. He brings up three big problems relating to asking people their opinions: preference isn't fixed but can be very changable based on the context, that people tend to make up stories when they don't really know what they're feeling, and that the very act of asking someone's opinion tends to move it toward a more conservative answer.

Lots of examples are brought up from the Aeron chair, to New Coke, to world-class tennis players, to All In the Family. I think this sort of thing is really important to keep in mind, especially these days when market testing is given so much weight. Something as simple as the fact that in taking only a sip of soda versus an entire can, people almost always choose the sweeter one, cost Coke a fortune. And every day movies and tv shows are dumbed down due in part to the fact that people who don't have the language to describe their feelings on something new and unusual will tend to describe it in a negative way. Not to mention that fact that you really shouldn't roll your roll your wrist for a top-spin in tennis.

This last point I can attest to with my experiences with yo-yoing. It ended up that I had a talent for teaching people tricks with writing online. Was it because I was the greatest player around? Nope.. it was because I could usually figure out exactly what it was that I was doing to make something work or fail. It seems like I was lucky since a lot of people tend to have trouble with describing what it is that they're doing, even if they are very skilled at it... In a lot of things, communication is key...

Not dead yet...

2005-01-15T01:40:00.000-05:00

Yes, I know.. I went missing yet again. But the good news is that I read an incredible amount of graphic novels over the Christmas break and during January so far. I think I've read about 30 in that time, including some big ones like Bone: 1Vol Edition and From Hell, which is probably as many as in all of the rest of 2004!

I plan to get a bit caught up over the weekend, starting with some thoughts on the aggregated Diamond numbers for 2004...

Animerica Extra cancelled, but new shoujo anthology may take its place

2004-12-21T14:48:00.000-05:00

So, word is out that the long-running manga anthology Animerica Extra has been cancelled. While I never subscribed to it myself, this offshoot of Animerica magazine has been going for quite a few years and recently re-made itself to be an all-shoujo anthology.

At first glance, its cancellation would seem like very bad news, but it seems like there is a lot of signs pointing in the direction of Viz having some sort of new shoujo anthology in the works. Personally, I thought keeping the thing called Animerica Extra wasn't a good idea when it switched to all-shoujo. I mean it had a reputation, but not necessarily for shoujo and frankly anyone seeing it for the first time on a shelf wasn't going to think shoujo or even manga from the name. Plus, it was also a bit on the thin side, especially compared to Shonen Jump. I'm not sure if they could pull off a shoujo anthology at the same size as Shonen, but something inbetween the two I think would have good possibilities.

But between a recent Viz poll on having a new shoujo anthology, "this isn't really the end, keep your eyes open" on the farewell page of Extra, and a radio snipped that said "Shonen Jump is Stage One.", I'd say things are looking pretty promising for the future. I'd certainly consider subscribing to a shoujo anthology that was more like Shounen Jump (minus the editing controversies of late).

Tokyopop's unethical handling of American creators?

2004-12-18T16:14:00.000-05:00

I thought I should liberate these comments from a post on the Beat.

From stacy:

Tokyopop's unethical way of handling new creators will be big news in 2005 too if they don't change their policies. They force noobs to sign a schedule before they sign a contract, then try to stick them with a contract with a $50,000 payment cap if their story ever becomes a movie. The contract gives them no say in development deals. Tokyopop pays the lowest advance ($15,000) with an unachievable $2,000 incentive to finish faster than humanly possible (typically 4 months for a 176 page book). That advance is per book, not per creator. Your contract typically states that you will be making a "150 page book plus extras" and those extras that you make for free are usually the rest of the entire 176 page book. The royalty is 10 to 15 % net with ambiguous wording over whether or not advertising cost will count against the royalty, and they divide up the payment of the advance over $1,000 mile-stones that each take over a month to get paid on. There's your news story. Tokyopop is just mining cheap labor for made-for-TV movies and cheap cartoons. And that's the creator-owned stuff. Their work-for-hire contracts make political prisoners giggle.

Then Manga Widow:

Insert applause. :)

Only thing I'd add is that they actually try to wrestle that "generous" advance as low as $10,000, and/or try to set royalty percentages sometimes even lower than that 10-15% you mentioned. :/

Not to mention that those paychecks, delayed by a month, are not paid monthly...in some cases the pay period itself is significantly longer than a month.

I've been glad to see Tokyopop giving opportunities to upcoming creators, but if they're using their position to take advantage, that curbs my enthusiasm quite a bit. Anyone else have any experiences they might want to share, additional comments, or any other discussions that might be going on in other locations online?

Babylon 5 movie might be recast?

2004-12-18T15:24:00.000-05:00

Hmm.. bad news here. No concrete information as of yet, but it sounds like WB doesn't want to distribute a movie unless it has "big-name" actors. Geeze, all these actors were great and had all that time during the series to work with each other become a cohesive team. It isn't like B5 ran 15 years ago and they can't get the same actors. I mean what if when they made the Star Trek motion pictures, they decided that Shatner, Nimoy and everyone else weren't big enough actors and recast them all? That would make about as much sense as this does. Let's hope it somehow doesn't come to pass...

Wearable robots and Roujin Z

2004-12-16T09:08:00.000-05:00

When I saw this article on wearable robots and exoskelatons in Japan, I couldn't help but think of the anime Roujin Z.

Something they talk about in the article is that these devices would primarily be used by the elderly and that those people would be the most resistant to the new technology. In Roujin Z, a elderly man is used as a guinea pig for a new technology-laden bed. I really enjoyed the movie when I saw it on Sci-Fi Channel ages ago. As this review says, it is a nice mix of social commentary and quirky humor. Something to check out if you're looking for anime a bit off the beaten path.

[Via Shane]

Japanese parents worried over sexy shoujo...

2004-12-15T09:53:00.000-05:00

While one always has to look at WaiWai with a critical eye (this section of the Mainichi newspaper is like a mini-tabloid that always plays up any puriel angle it can find), this article is pretty interesting.

Obviously manga for women can have all kinds of content in it, yaoi or otherwise. And shonen titles will be forever trying to push the envelope on what level of fanservice they can fit in (and seemingly have been slapped down a bit before in the past). However, according to this article, raunchy content is also on the rise in magazines for girls. It is pretty interesting looking at this and comparing it to our own industry:

From a Mom:

"I started shaking in terror from the moment I turned the page. I never dreamed my daughter was reading such a shocking manga," the 40-year-old mom tells
...
"They're selling in ordinary bookstores and my daughter buys them with her pocket money," Yoshimi says. "I liked manga, too, when I was a kid and I wasn't worried at all when my daughter first started reading them."

From a "manga expert":

"You've got to think that theses comics are being read by girls who perhaps a year earlier hadn't even begun budding breasts and they're now reading stuff like, in one manga for instance, finding a young boy to 'train' and turn into a sex toy. It even made me feel sick."

Of course kids aren't worried:

"Of course I'm interested in sexy stuff and it's a bit exciting to read it," a sixth grader from Tokyo tells Sunday Mainichi. "But I know there's a difference between manga and reality and I don't pay much attention to what I read."

Besides mentions of sex-laden spam and other live-action stuff on the internet being worse, a student also has this to say:

"Cool girls are already out with their boyfriends having sex and couldn't give a damn about manga," a third-year junior high schoolgirl from Kanagawa Prefecture says. "Just sitting there reading a manga is proof that the girl is not cool, which naturally means she hasn't got a boyfriend and isn't having sex. Rather than being worried (by shojo manga), parents should feel at ease."

You didn't think stereotypes like this only happened in the US did you? I recommend checking the whole article out...

[Via AoDVD]

Dr. Slump manga coming!

2004-12-15T08:24:00.000-05:00

Megan from AoDVD mentions this Time article which lists five titles coming in 2005 from the major comic publishers. For Viza lot of people are most likely looking forward to Full Metal Alchemist or Hunter X Hunter, but for me it is definitely Dr. Slump. What a lot of people don't realize is that Dragon Ball wasn't Akira Toriyama's first hit. Before DB was Dr. Slump, about the misadventures of a girl robot. I haven't had a chance to read this yet myself, but I hear it is akin to something like Crayon Shinchan, with a young protagonist who is always getting into trouble. Should be fun... :)

Also interesting in this particular article is that all of Tokyopop's titles have english names listed. It seems like they are really wanting to push their american-made releases lately...

Evangelion Box Set for $40?!!

2004-12-14T13:28:00.000-05:00

Wow! I just noticed on AoDVD's shop page that Rightstuf is having some special deals up until Christmas. One deal revealed per day, but the coupon working on any of them until the 24th (Code: 12days). The first one revealed was the Evangelion Set for just $40!

There are remastered Evangelion discs coming out right now, so they probably want to get rid of old stock, but this set's retail price was $170. I'd gotten a big deal on it when I bought it, for something like $80. Eight discs at $40 just $5 a disc....

So, if you've been curious what the hype is about, this is certainly the time to give it a shot. Even if you hate it, you could probably make it back on Ebay even with the new releases coming out.. Man, this is quite the time to be into anime...

Graphic novel reviews... The Library's Big Score

2004-12-06T01:14:00.000-05:00

So, while I was in the library today, I decided to check out the graphic novel selection, something I hadn't done in a while. At the time, I'd read most of what I wanted to read, but they've gotten quite a lot of new stuff in lately. Just going through the teen section, there was plenty of stuff that looked interesting. Everything from various Catwoman novels and Moore's Supreme to Bone. Then I looked at the adult section and boy did that nearly give me a heart attack. When you go to a shelf and see Blankets, From Hell, and the Palomar hardcover staring at you, that's enough GN to hold anyone over for a good while! Not to mention The Metamorphosis, Quimby the Mouse, In the Shadow of No Towers, Persepolis, Luis Riel, etc. I opted for From Hell for now, since I enjoyed the movie...

Anyway, out of the 10+ GNs I ended up borrowing, I actually read three of them tonight. First up was The Complete Geisha. I have to say that this was a really enjoyable book. Something about androids lend themselves to daily life stories, I guess the possibilities normalcy with just enough of a twist. Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (Yokohama Shopping Trip Log or Quiet Country Cafe) is one of my my favorite comics of all time, involving Alpha who runs a small cafe in the countryside. Geisha is like the urban version of this concept, with Jomi just wanting to paint for a living, but having to deal with the prejudices of being an android. She's a character who is hard not to like, with some definite spunk when necessary. I also can't help having flashbacks to Edna from the Incredibles when her freind Boychick appears. :)

Watson's style on this is great as well. Great flowing lines and design sense that all works very well in black and white. The small bits of Japanese culture are fun as well, done in (mostly) subtle ways like a cat named Neko. The art reflects some manga invluence as well, but the style is just as much old style western comic (Jack Hamm) and western animation as anything from the east. Stuff like this is what makes me know that fears of generic manga style overtaking everything are unfounded. We have way too much culture mishmash for anthing to stay one way for long.

Anyway, cheers to Watson for doing a great job on this, and I certainly wouldn't mind more short stories involving Jomi or other unrelated stories from the same world...

Next up was Bone I: Out from Boneville. I wanted to take a look at this before I plunked down for the giant single-volume bone book. After reading the first one, I think I'm definitely a go for getting it. Great artwork and the storyline and characters are a lot of fun so far. The Bones have a feel of something like the Ducks (Donald, Scrooge, etc), with a bit of an edge (though I'd guess some of the Duck comics have an edge to them at times themselves). The character designs themselves are great, with a quality similar to that in the original Grinch cartoon, with the heavy lids and mischevous grins. It seems like the setup for a normal fantasy quest type of thing, but it has enough imagination in it that who knows what exactly will happen next...

Lastly was one of the Catwoman GNs: Selina's Big Score. I have to say that this was a really enjoyable tale, and for someone like me who has very little real in-depth knowledge of superhero universes, this worked well since it was very self-contained. In fact, it was so self-contained and worked so well that way, that I couldn't help but actually be put off by the super-hero elements in it. It wasn't as jarring as it was in something like Books of Magic (Batman and Catwoman have no actual powers after all, so it fit with the down to earth tone), but it also seemed entirely unnecessary for anything but sales figures. I mean all the characters specific to this book were quickly realized without relying on any kind of continuity, and Selena's past and in fact all connections to the DC universe could probably be modified to be self-contained with something like 10 panels and a couple of paragraphs changing.

In any case, the art and writing were very good, and fit the tone of the story. This is just a good straight-forward noir heist tale, and is recommended to fans of the same. While I personally found the occational batman/catwoman more distracting than clever (in this case, I'd rather imagine Selena's full backstory and future myself, rather than the baggage of the DC universe), but it is really very much in the background, so don't let that put you off from giving it a try.

Local Cinema: Evil Dead II and Carol's Journey...

2004-12-05T23:13:00.000-05:00

One nice thing about the area has been a seeming upsurge in local movie showings of late, or at least me being aware that they exist. :) As always, many thanks to Marty for getting me the info.

First up was seeing Evil Dead II for the second time. I'd first seen it a good while back, after having first seen Evil Dead. While I'm sure that I mostly enjoyed it, I was also confused during a large part of the beginning. I hadn't realized about this being more of a remake than a sequel, so there was a lot of "Why doesn't he know about the book?!" at first. Things went a lot more smoothly this time, and I could just concentrate on the ensuing comedy and mayhem. If you've never seen any of these movies, the first one is mostly a normal budget horror movie. Scares, some titilation, etc. Of course made a name for itself for being over the top (the infamous hentai-ish evil tree), but still played it relatively straight.

Evil Dead II, however, throws this out the window. There's still a lot of gore, but titilation is thrown out in favor of humor. Also, the gore is now just so over the top and unrealistic that it is intensionally laughable most of the time. Even the more uptight people in the audience who would never have been caught dead renting something like this on their own were laughing in spite of themselves a lot of the time. Not only the humor is great, but the real sense of energy. There's no way you can mistake this for some stodgy Hollywood by-the-numbers picture.

And something Marty mentioned during the showing was that while Bruce Campbell's acting is obviously totally over the top, that there is sincerity to it. This is something I have to agree with. It is hard to explain, but is almost like the "iconic" concept that Scott McCloud talks about for comics, that of a simplified design getting to the heart of something. Bruce's performance in the movie is not subtle by any stretch, but it also manages to rise above simple bad acting. He just puts so much into the role that it makes you get into the performance as well. There's also great physical performance by him, and some interesting set design (the bridge!) and overall comedic timing. In some ways, this is almost like an old silent movie taken into modern times. This may be something to check out, even if you're not usually into horror or cult classic film. Did I mention that Ash is pretty much a superhero by the end of the movie? Of course that gets continued in Army of Darkness...

One last note, with all the talk of decompression in comics, this movie is actually compressed, like the original spider-man issue. What happens in less than five minutes in this movie would take something like a half hour or maybe even half the runtime in another movie. You certainly won't have a chance to get bored..heh

Now, that happened in the back of a Goodwill shop near my house in Springfield, run by the people attempted to rennovate an old theater on my street (the Bing). At that showing would be a member of the Central Library, who it would turn out is also showing movies lately. Aparantly a company called Film Movement is releasing DVDs of award-winning indie and foreign films, as well as getting them into libraries.

So, today's showing was of a DVD containing a movie from Spain called Carol's Journey, as well as a short film (each of their DVDs contains a short). I'm sorry to say that the short was pretty disappointing, a semi-animated talk about a girl who waits at the window of a tower each day for a by-plane pilot to fly by. It was 3D with live-action actors. I'm sure the creator was wanting the 3d to seem stylistic, but it came off more as out-dated instead. That with the very simplistic plot and shiny people made it come off more like something from the 80s. The general effect on the audience was more laughable than heartwarming...

Luckily, the main feature was much better. Carol's Journey involves a 12-year-old Spanish-American girl from New York, who moves to her Mother's village in Spain during Spain's Civil War. This is a relatively standard tale of growing up, first love, etc, but it is well done, especially the child actors. Carol is innocent, but also a pretty tough tomboy and the boy Tomiche she meets has a vunerability to expressions. I have to say that it had a lot of the same feel as the Ghibli movies to me, like Whispers of the Heart or Laputa. The strong child characters who mix innocence and enthusiasm with a strone sense of personal morality and strength, with the real world trying to drag them down. It was a nice way to spend two hours...

Crazy internet speeds in Japan...

2004-11-29T18:13:00.000-05:00

Wow, this is amazing. Aparantly 100mbit internet connections on fibre are availible in some parts of Japan, with that speed for upload as well! 100mbit/8bit=12.5megabytes a second, or a full CD-ROM in about a minute or so. And that's for somewhere around $50-60US a month, not much more than cable here. And even for their cheaper DSL, it is around 12mbit download and 1mbit upload. For DSL through Verizon in this area (at $30 a month!), it is just 1.5mbit download and 380kbit upload.

Not only that, according to this, people in Japan will start getting 1gbit access in some areas, with 10gbit to follow by 2010. Most ethernet cards are only 1gbit and hard drive writing even slower than that. You could split the connection between two computers and still write to your drive as fast as physically possible...

This is really crazy territory. If you think stuff like movie piracy is prevalant now, wait until everyone can get full quality video at faster than real-time. It is already happening in Japan... Of course, there are big ramifications in the legal realm as well. That would finally open the door for streaming movie rentals to be practical over the internet (I've heard it is already popular in places like Korea). Having a fast upload connection also makes hosting your own website a reality, even for relatively high-bandwith sites. It really just changes everything...

Oh well, I'll be happy when I finally get DSL at home, which should hopefully be in a month or two at the most. That'll make a lot of things much easier to deal with. :)

Comic Book Encyclopedia...

2004-11-29T15:08:00.000-05:00

Well, at first this sounded pretty promising, but then one of the posters links to this entry on Neil Gaiman's blog and it sounds like the book is a bit disappointing. That it has a lot of typos and factual errors, along with too much focus on golden age characters. I might still flip through this at some point, since my knowledge of a lot of the industry is pretth sketchy at best, but I share Neil's disappointment that there isn't something out there that is totally reliable and what you think of when you think "encyclopedia".

Speaking of which, I wish the Anime Encyclopedia would get updated. I have some issues with basic features of the book (lots of opinionated reviews, which tend toward bashing newer series, and a lot of series ending spoilers that aren't marked in any particular way), but I think I could deal with that if the factual information got updated and corrected. There was a thread back when it first came out, with a pretty long list of corrections needed, though obviously it is hard to get everything right in something that big. I think a second edition that fixed all of that and updated with titles up to 2004 would go a long way toward making it a more solid reference work.

B&N comic shop rumor...

2004-11-26T09:53:00.000-05:00

I probably shouldn't post this, since who knows where the rumor originates or how reliable it is, but I have to say that the concept in and of itself is certainly interesting... from a new post by travis on this old thread:

see, i heard a rumor that barnes and noble was planning on opening a chain of comic shops. bad news for local shops except that the b&n stores wouldn't stock back issues. also, they'd have everything that diamond puts out, which is pretty cool, but they would end up returning unsold books over time with the covers ripped off like they do for books. that would be bad news for small-time self-publishers might have to return money. eeeewwww. hrm. corporate america smells like pee. anyway, just something i heard. sshhh!!!

What do you think it'd mean if something like that ever came about? Personally, I have my doubts they'd try it or manage to be successful if they did. It seems like things are going so well with graphic novels, would they really want to try to fuss with the monthlies, even if returnable? One of the reasons for newstands not wanting to carry comics is the dollars per square foot isn't so great with monthlies versus $8 glossy magazines or regular books. I'd think it'd be more likely for them to try small GN-only stores if anything, but I'd still wonder about how good that'd be. I mean many B&N shops are large enough that they can stock a pretty large selection of GNs. And someone shopping for those may see another kind of book they'd like to buy and vice versa. I'm not sure how much they would gain from making a specialty store versus having a large selection all in one place...

Glad I don't have cable anymore (G4TechTV troubles)

2004-11-24T17:23:00.000-05:00

A while back we decided to drop cable, mostly for financial reasons. One of the things I hated getting rid of was TechTV, since I watched The Screen Savers on most days. Screen Saves was pretty fun, a live tech show that was a bit rough around the edges. I know some people scoffed at it, but they had some decent news and features and encouraged a lot of people to get into technology a bit more actively.

I got rid of cable right before the the merger of TechTV and G4. Now, I also did like watching G4. I wasn't so much into their original programming since it felt pretty flat to me (like Pulse), but they ran a lot of shows made by others. For instance I seem to be one of the few people who likes Judgement Day and Filter was a pretty fun way to spend some time. Nerd Nation had a couple of good shows (I especially liked the original one), though it was kind of annoying that they tried to shoe-horn disparate canadian standalone specials into one show. I can't remember if Icons was original or not, but I'm a sucker for pop culture history, so that was great as well.

But G4 also had quite a lot of dead space. Tons of re-runs and stuff like Cinematech. TechTV also had its share of padding, though not nearly as bad as G4. I was hoping that the merger would let both of them get rid of the fluff and make a more solid content-rich network, but it certainly doesn't sound like it panned out that way.

First they lost both Leo and Patrick as the hosts of Screen Savers, both of which was a great loss. Leo had a tendancy to go a bit weird and say innapropriate things at times, but he had some good knowledge and enough clout to get some good guests on the show. Patrick I think had become a real heart to the show, with solid knowledge and very strong views against things like the DMCA. Kevin and Sarah both seem like good people, but I don't think would really have the clout/authority the same way as the others. Like I couldn't see Kevin getting away with some of Patrick's strongly stated opinions...

I never had the chance to see Alex, who would become the new co-host with Kevin. It seems like that doesn't matter now, because neither are hosts anymore! I mean geeze guys, talk about a lack of stability. I can understand Kevin wanting to get back to doing more content development, but why get rid of Alex not long after hiring him and having him move to the area? Why shake up things for an audience already unsettled by the merge and host changes? And Periera might be fine as the new host, but since he already does hosting on other G4 shows, that takes away from some of the individuality of the screen savers. There's also the fact that he's known more for game expertise, which fits in with the seeming elimination of most tech stuff for gaming. I'd heard from a friend that SS already wasn't as tech-centered as it used to be, having more fluff spots and less important guests. I can't say this additional shake-up is boosting my confidence..

The second big thing of late is that Unscrewed is now gone. I never actually had a chance to watch the show, but lots of people unhappy.

It just seems like there is barely anything of TechTV left in the line-up. IMO, it was pretty silly to just buy up another station and then use barely any of the content. Maybe they wanted to remove the competition, but it seems like TechTV was really filling a niche. If they just destroy what there was, I'm guessing someone else will just start up a new technology channel to compete. It is only a matter of time really....

Oh well, TechTV was nice while it lasted. Here's hoping either G4 gets its act together or new competition isn't too ong in coming...

Incredibles was incredible!

2004-11-21T17:00:00.000-05:00

So, my Mom and I have had a pair of free tickets for a while now, and kept forgetting to use them on anything. I'd been hearing good buzz on the Incredibles for a while now, not just online but from coworkers and others. As an interesting added bonus: the lack of cable has meant that I've barely watched any TV for some time now. Why is that important? Because I saw the trailer for the movie on Quicktime's site once and that was it! No scenes drilled into my head a million times.. just a rememberance that I liked what I saw in the trailer and not much more.

Today was pretty dreary out, so the perfect day to stay in. At first we thought we wouldn't make it there in time, but got there at 1:15 exactly and so the trailers were still going on by the time we got in there. Got a pretty good seat, and also got to miss out on the commercials.

The Pixar short before the movie was a bit on the heavyhanded side maybe, but still fun and great anaimation as always (and great sense of motion)... Now it was time for the movie, and it was one of those rare great movie-watching experiences. Sound wasn't so loud that your ears were ringing after, the kids in audience were pretty well-behaved, and everyone (including us) were just into it all. Seriously, this is up there with some of my favorite movies, and I feel like it captures a sense of wonder that you don't often see these days (like the old Indiana Jones and Star Wars movies with a little Bond thrown and a strong family core). It tackles some serious issues without getting bogged down, has nostalgia while still being contemporary, it has great characters, and very good comic timing.

In short, you should really go see it if you haven't yet. I don't want to overhype it and give impossible expectations, but all I can say is that it was a really well done and enjoyable movie. And while this wasn't like the first showing of a LotR movie in terms of audience participation, it certainly didn't feel like a movie that's been out for a while now. It was the kind of thing where everyone felt like clapping at the end (though only a couple actually did) and there was a couple of throngs of people talking about it afterward... cool stuff. :)

If you've already seen it... see below for a bit more thoughts with spoilers:

---------------------- spoilers -----------------------
One of the comments that a co-worker made to me was that it was a movie that manages to appeal to kids and adults without having to do the tact of pop culture references and double entendres. However, having said that, it still isn't afraid of having stuff in there that younger kids won't understand or care about. It is just that it is done more like how things are in real life. Stuff like Elastigirl being worried he's cheating on her, or being unhappy with herself in the mirror, or the exact nature of what's going on in the insurance firm, or what the designer character is spoofing, but that isn't necessary to enjoy the movie. They'll certainly understand that Incredible's boss is a jerk, etc. This is the way a real family movie is made. Not by dumbing everything down to the lowest common denominator, but telling a good story and having enough cool stuff going on that there's no worry of boredom..

BTW, was anyone else surprised at a couple of things they got away with? I'm thinking especially the scene where Dash is asleep on Violet and kind of holding her and then wakes up and jumps off disgusted? It is kind of open to interpretation on if he was thinking of his Mom or something else, but it feels like a real moment.. something that could easily happen between kids in real life.

Also, one of the moments where the movie really impressed me was when the missles are coming at the ship and Elastigirl is yelling for Violet to put up her force field and in the end Violet just can't do it. Between her frailer personality and being told for so long not to use her powers, it is all way too much for her to handle. Again, that felt like a real moment, and I really expected that the movie was going to take the easy way out...

I loved the way the powers were used in this movie. The stuff at home was well thought-out and the fights were pretty creative at times (obviously just about any possible use of these powers has already happened in comics before, but that doesn't mean a movie couldn't botch things up). You really got the sense that the characters grew up with these powers (though of course somewhat surpressed in the case of the kids). Actually, I was impressed by those scenes with both the kids and parents where it becomes obvious just why the parents have the reputations they do. The kids themselves are amazed by just how skillful their parents really are. It is interesting in that while (as an adult) you identify with them in their normal lives, you're also seeing them as their kids have only know them. It is only later on when you really glimpse their past lives, and are now in the same position as the children of seeing it happen.

The characters are just really good in this movie. Violet has that shyness and almost a goth feeling at first, Dash manages not to be annoying, and the parents pretty well-rounded. And you really feel the vunerability of both Elastigirl and Mr. Incredible (his admission at the end), while also seeing their overall strength of character. And while Violet perhaps seemingly changes the most at the end of the movie, it also feels pretty natural. You can see from her interactions with her brother that she has a personality just screaming to get out...

As for the side characters, that boss is the slimeball you love to hate. Cheers to Wallace for still getting work. That designer lady (Edna) was amazing! Just such a funny and cool character. You can't help but love her. Is IMDB correct that that is actually the director doing her voice??? Frozone is neat character and despite not getting too too much screen time, those scenes really benefit from him. His lines in the burning building and then the cup of water were classic. It is also amusing that you never actually see his wife, only hear her voice...

I also liked that the henchmen get fleshed out ever-so-slightly. It would have been easy just to stick a mask on them, have them never talk, etc.. Everything from the guy throwing sand into the water, to them celebrating their aparant victory in the van were nice touches. Obviously Buddy is an interesting character, a pretty twisted guy. For Mirage, certainly in the Bond vein of exotic dangerous lady that falls for the hero. If anything bothers me in the movie, it is that her change of heart seems a bit quick and major. I suppose one might argue she got attracted to Buddy's power and got wrapped up in his plans without really thinking of the consequences.. I still would have liked to see a bit more deveopment for her, but the movie was already two hours long, and I'm glad they gave the time to the main family that they did. Also, those two scenes where Incredible nearly kills her were pretty bold....

I just saw some quotes from the director Brad Bird and one thing he mentioned is that while he's a fan of comics, he isn't a big trivia buff, and that he feels like some people are too busy trying to throw out references. I think that was one of the things I got from this movie was a real love of super-heroes without getting bogged down in continuity and nods. It essentially just takes the various archetypes and treats them as straight characters. I think it would have been diminished as a movie if they'd felt the need to throw in more direct references to their inspirations instead of concentrating on what actually makes superheroes so interesting in their basic sense. Despite the serious elements that balance things out, I think someone would be hard pressed not to dream of being able to stretch, run fast, etc. after seeing this movie. :) As I said to start with, I think it captures a real sense of wonder and excitement...

Lastly, it is nice to have a movie where all the humor seems to work, and does it without being really annoying or too wink-wink. The running gags with the kid on the tricycle and the trouble with capes were classic, and the gags at the expense of the heroes' old age weren't over-done, something which could have easily turned them into caricatures..
-------------------------------------------------------

In short... I like this movie.. :)

Disney's galling hyperbole....

2004-11-16T21:58:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Kevin for pointing me on the right track to Tom Spurgeon's entry. Among other things, it links to the official press release and a newswire article.

So, does Disney's original claim to 50% of worldwide comics publishing stand up? Not by a long shot.. What makes me mad is that even with this additional information, no single source is providing the whole picture and frankly who knows what else they are leaving out of the equation.

Let's start with with the official press release:

Disney represents approximately 50 percent of all children’s comic magazines sold around the world, reaching readers of all ages with 220 million comics each year.

OK, the actual number of comics is a good statistic to have. This gives us something a bit more solid to work with. The other aspect is two narrowing words "children's" and "magazines". From that we can gather they don't mean graphic novels and they don't mean comics for adults. Of course "children" is pretty broad in itself. Do they mean just little kids, or are they including teens?

This is all well and good, but it can't possibly be the whole story. Why? The big M: manga. Looking at Dreamland Japan, the stats for manga magazines in 1995 is a staggering 1.6 billion copies. Taking just Shonen and Shoujo, that is still 800 million. Now, that was nine years ago, but it is my understanding that overall manga is still doing pretty well in Japan, and certainly hasn't lost anywhere near a fourth of their sales.

Looking at the other article gives us some answers:

Disney owns about half of the nonmanga comic book business worldwide, though Dugan said that the vast majority of sales are outside the United States.

So, this time they specifially say manga isn't involved, but now they just refer to comics in general, not saying anything about comics for children or the magazine format.

The only thing that seems half-way plausible to me is that they have 50% of the market of comic magazines that are aimed at children and are not manga.

But even that doesn't really tell us enough. OK, so manga is out, but what about Korea's rising comic industry? What about Hong Kong? Also, what about manga sold in other countries? Are the various manga magazines like Shonen Jump USA and those in countries like Germany being counted or not?

I probably shouldn't be dwelling on this so much, but it really is annoying to me that they'd try to get away with such a huge misrepresentation. Yes it is nice that Disney sells a lot of comics throughout the world. If they'd merely said they do 220 million issues a year, I would have been pleasantly surprised and congratulated them. It is a shame that they feel like that isn't enough and that they have to be vague in general and specifically ignore the biggest comic industry in the world just to try to make some point. I don't know what the actual breakdown of automobile manufacturers is, but imagine the uproar if Honda did a marketing campaign where they said something like "We have 50% of the world automobile market..." and in fine print said "not counting US companies". It is laughable just trying to imagine the idea...

As an aside, I think it is pretty sad that everyone (including the comic news sites) seems to know so little about the world comic market that something like this can go relatively unchallenged. I mean I'm just a random reader and red flags went up for me right away. I knew they couldn't possible have 50% of all comics in the world period, though I was having a little self-doubt in that I found it hard to believe they'd be THAT grossly misleading and that people would just parrot them if it wasn't at least partially true. I also figured maybe they just meant thin monthlies and not thicker magazine anthologies, since it'd be galling for them to just not count manga. In any case, it shouldn't be bloggers that are the ones trying to figure this stuff out..

I hope some people are feeling a bit embarassed at this point and telling certain Disney reps to be a bit more clear on their statements in the future...

Disney publishes 50% of comics in the world??

2004-11-15T13:28:00.000-05:00

So, I was reading this article on the aquisition of CrossGen's assets by Disney, which seems like it could work out well. However, I was pretty surprised by this:

“Disney, worldwide, accounts for 50% of all comics published, which is an enormous number, but our presence in the US isn’t as visible, mostly because our comic books go through other distributors,” Brenda Bowen, VP and Editor in Chief of Hyperion Books for Children told Newsarama. We’ve been starting to think that since we’re the biggest comic book company in the world, maybe we should be looking at more domestic comics, and see what we can get from them, and see how we can use them in our different formats here.”

Does anyone have any more information on this statement? I'm sure that Disney's comics do really well in many countries, especially in europe, but it still seems to me like there must be some sort of unspoken qualifier to it. I just find it hard to believe that with manga's reach in its own country and internationally that it is taking up less than the comics world in relation to Disney's comics. Are they maybe just counting what we consider "comic books" (i.e. the thin monthlies) and not the thicker magazine anthology format that most manga uses? Then again, I thought a lot of Disney's big sellers in europe were anthology magazines?

Maybe they really are just that big, but color me pretty skeptical at this point...

When you thought they'd never be licensed... (Jo Jo manga and Slam Dunk anime)

2004-11-14T16:09:00.000-05:00

Two interesting licenses as of late (well, there's been a bunch, but these two I'm most familiar with). ListerX has word that Viz has licensed Jo Jo's Bizarre Adventure, which is backed up by this Amazon page.

Jo Jo is one of the longer manga series around, split into various sub-series, all by the same author. It starts off in victorian times, and goes all the way up to the 21st century, following various members of a family. As far as I know, this is generally a fighting show, with many characters having "stands" which are like invisible entities with special powers. Various contemporary series like Shaman King were obviously strongly influenced by Jo Jo. It would seem that the big draws are his art style, which is unlike most manga (though it has some feelings of Berserk, Fist of the North Star, Burne Hogarth, and some of the over-the-top fashion of something like Aeon Flux). Take a look at some of his artwork.

Another draw would be the inventiveness of the powers of various characters. I've seen mention that many manga creators when running out of ideas of super-powers for their characters will just go to Jo Jo for inspiration. One person described the battles as more of a "rock, paper, scissors" situation where someone has specific powers that are very strong, but weak in other areas, much like american superheros. Someone else has called this a "glam version of Fist of the North Star".

Combining all of that with the various time periods, lots of settings in various places in europe like Italy, and at least 75 volumes of GNs makes for quite the series. Here is a FAQ, though beware of spoilers. I those images linked above from this Italian site. Here's an american site with plot overviews, gallery of the cover art, etc....

----

Geneon has also announced a partnership with Toei Animation, which includes the Slam Dunk anime. Remember when sports titles were untouchable as far as licenses went? I've read a bit of the Slam Dunk manga, and it is a lot of fun. This is definitely one of the names that always comes up when one talks of sports anime/manga, and a pretty long series.

Are you a female in your 20s or 30s who's into manga?

2004-11-14T14:35:00.000-05:00

It looks like Tokyopop is going to embark on a PR push for some of their "chick-lit" titles and wants to hear from you:

Hi,
It's Julie from TOKYOPOP.
We are doing a big PR push for our "chick-lit" manga (Erica Sakurazawa, Happy Mania, Tramps Like Us) and are looking for e-mails from female fans in their 20s and 30s (or 40s!) who love manga. If you're into any of the three books I've mentioned, we'd love to hear that too.
Please post here or send me an e-mail at juliet@tokyopop.com telling me WHY you love manga so much, what you love about it, and why manga isn't just for teenagers anymore!!
Thanks a million,
Julie

This could be very cool folks... I can't wait to see what TP have up their sleeves as far as a PR campain goes...

[via AoDVD]

ComicsOne rumors and super-cheap manga...

2004-11-14T14:15:00.000-05:00

I need to add my voice to those that'll be really sad if the rumors of ComicsOne dying come to pass. I really want to read Iron Wok Jan, and they have some other interesting titles as well.

Something that isn't exactly encouraging is this site, which is selling ComicsOne manga at insane discounts. The site itself has been around for quite a while, but it used to focus mostly on discounts for ComicsOne's oldest and less popular titles like Wounded Man and Weed. But now, just about everything in their lineup is affected.

I mean look at it.. you can get all 7 volumes of Iron Wok Jan that have been released thus far for a total of $21! The first 5 volumes of Crayon Shinchan for $5 total and volumes 6-8 at 50% off cover. Joan is supposed to be a great series and is just 3 volumes long, for a total of $3... Shipping seems to be (for Ground), $5 an order and $1 for each item. Not the cheapest ever, but the discounts on the titles more than make up for it.

It doesn't actually say anywhere on the site who is in charge, but ComicsOne is prominently mentioned on the home page, and there is no manga from any other companies on it. You'd think it must be connected to them in some way...

As they say, get it while it lasts... Most of them seem to have complete series, but the first Bride of Deimos is missing for instance...

Creative Commons gets Wired...

2004-11-14T13:55:00.000-05:00

It is always nice when things like Creative Commons get more exposure. It seems that the latest issue of Wired includes a CD of 16 songs that people can feel free to sample. Three of those can only be used in noncommercial efforts, but the rest you can use even for commercial purposes. Pretty cool stuff...

I recently used one of a song from Brad Sucks (via Magnatune in a yo-yo video I made and it is a nice feeling when you can do something that is 100% legit...

Doggy Poo

2004-11-14T01:03:00.000-05:00

Well, it has finally happened.. I have seen Doggy Poo. As crazy as it might sound to someone who hasn't seen the movie, this is a touching children's movie that is literally about the life of some doggy poo. This korean claymation film was based off of a popular children's novel, with the moral that everyone has a place in the world. The poo itself is just adorable and sooo sad a lot of the time, just like a kid. The design and voice of course help with that...

This actually reminds me of a cartoon I saw as a kid, which involved a Christmas ornament. It has the same sort of theme of a young inanimate that discovers the ways of the world through various other characters that advise it or cause trouble (in the Christmas cartoon, the ornament's main mentor would be the Christmas tree).

Fun stuff... :)

Updated blogroll...

2004-11-13T17:29:00.000-05:00

Well, I finally got around to updating the links in my sidebar a bit. It still needs work and I'm sure I left out some people, but it is a start at least. To show you just how out of date it was, Franklin wasn't even on it and I've been reading his blog for ages. Of course none of the "newer" ones like Johanna's were on there... I have to say it was a little depressing that my top three links had to be removed since they don't exist anymore. :(

Anyway, they aren't really in much of an order at the moment, so don't feel bad if you're at the bottom. I'll probably do alphabetical at some point. I may also switch it so that they're sorted with topic as the main category instead of blog versus forum.

Cheers... and thanks to everyone that hasn't given up blogging as of yet. You're all an inspiration for me to try to keep this thing going and a great source of news for someone that doesn't have time to be on all the forums and news sites anymore. :)

Disney back on for Miyazaki movies.. with a change..

2004-11-13T15:19:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm really glad to see that Disney is back on for releasing three Miyazaki movies on February 22nd. However, I really wish they'd just stop second-guessing themselves with the constant delays and undelays and everything. I having to be in the "I'll believe it when I see it" mode of thinking..

Anyway, the interesting change is that The Cat Returns has been swapped in for Totoro. Perhaps their reasoning was that since Fox released a bare-bones version of Totoro a while back, they'd make more money with a different title. I'd really been hoping to finally see Totoro, though, and I also question the choice. Cat Returns is a sequel to another movie (one of my favorite anime movies.. Whisper of the Heart), and while I doubt it depends all that much on having seen the first movie, you'd think they'd just release Whisper first... Oh well, hopefully they'll get their act together and get all the Ghibli movies out eventually...

On voting methods...

2004-11-12T13:29:00.000-05:00

I don't like getting too too much into politics on the blog as I'm not really an adversarial sort most of the time, and lots of other people do it better anyway, but here's a couple of things...

Did Bush win legitimately? Hard to say... I think he probably would have won no matter what, but some of the issues raised make me nervous for whatever person would have won. I especially just don't like how the electronic systems have no paper trail. I work with computers all the time and I see how often they mess up. While surfing around, I came onto a post about the voting in Venezuela, and that seems a lot more like what we should be striving for. Obviously it doesn't all apply since people in the US aren't required to have IDs, but we seriously need open source voting machines and the multiple paper results tallied by two different sets of people would be very nice as well.

I think we're too obsessed with getting results as fast as possible, when a slower method that makes us all feel more secure in the end would be a lot better...

As an aside, I don't really agree with everything in this other post, but it does bring up some interesting thoughts. What would it be like if we only had write-in instead of multiple choice? Actually, the idea I like most is the one that the last response had, which was a option for "none of the above" for all offices. I'm not sure that'd actually be a positive thing overall, but it'd be pretty interesting to see a real guage of no-confidence instead of the varied nonsense write-ins that usually happen.

Lastly (and more practically), Johnny mentions the concept of Instant Runoff Voting, which aparantly is already used in some countries like Australia. In this method, people can rate several candidates if they want, and if a single candidate doesn't get 50% of the vote, the one with the lowest vote gets removes and the second place entry for each of those voters gets put into the pool, until someone finally gets over 50% of the votes.

I think one of the biggest poxed on our system right now is the feeling that you can't vote for who you really want to, for fear of taking away votes from the "lesser of two evils". This method would let people vote for whoever they wanted to in clean concious. It is beneficial to smaller parties since people will actually vote for them and beneficial to larger parties since their votes won't be split unless one of the third parties gets strong enough to actuall get a 50% vote. It'd also be a powerful gauge for "no-confidence" in and of itself, since you'd be able to see that before the runoffs happened, how split the voters were. Lastly, if done state by state, it wouldn't need the constitutional ammendment that getting rid of the electoral college would need..

I think IRV is something I really feel like I can support. Many thanks to Johnny for bringing it up!

Hashcash versus spam...

2004-11-11T17:52:00.000-05:00

I'm always interested in things like security, cryptography and spam, so this method of deturring spam was pretty interesting to see.

This is one of the classes of solutions that tries to use cost as a deterrent to spam. In most of the past proposals from various sounces, cost is in terms of money, with some sort of micropayment scheme. That has a ton of problems. A lot of people wouldn't want to pay even fractions of a cent, what about people with no credit card, who organizes everything, is there taxation, what about other countries, etc. I think anything like that is doomed to failure...

The hashcash method takes a different direction, where the cost is computer power. The idea is to make the sender incur some processing power to sent a valid e-mail. The seconds it'd take would be negligible for a normal user, but less practical for a spammer (they might still be able to send tens of thousands of messages a day, but they'd probably usually send millions an hour..).

It works by using an algorythym that takes a semi-random string (like the e-mail being sent to, the time of day, and some random numbers) and gives a specific result. They key being that it is slow to generate that result, but quick for someone on the other end to plug in the values and see that it is correct.

The recepient sets a certain strength and if they get an e-mail who has a header proving they did the work to that strength, it doesn't get filtered as heavy (or perhaps even whitelisted) by whatever anti-spam measures are in place.

This is a pretty cool idea, but still see some issues. Some are fairly easy to results, but others less so. For friends and for mailing lists you actually want to get, it is easy enough to white list those, so that only strangers need to do the extra work.. My main concerns would be that it seems like some spammers make quite a lot of money, so specialized hardware solutions may not be out of the question for them. Does anyone know what typical margins are like? Could they afford special farms or chips to help the calculations?

Another concern is less powerful machines. People with old computers are used to suffering a bit.. what about people who use bluetooth or whatever to send e-mails through their pda? My other concern is how does one get the word out on what strength someone needs to be able to get through to someone? Could put it on a website and tagline and such, but it seems like there'd still be a lot of issues.

They seem to be going about it in a more lucid way than many others (i.e. they are trying to slowly blend it into other solutions instead of needing a mass acceptence to be successful), but I still have my doubts on if it'll get anywhere. Still, I like it a lot more than those challenge/response things that won't work if two people have them at once, or the efforts to try to remove a lot of the anonymity inherant in the internet...

Firefox 1.0

2004-11-10T14:45:00.000-05:00

So, I'd been waiting to update most of my machines until the official 1.0 release. I had 0.7 on my machine at work and 0.8 at home. Yesterday morning I happened to browse to Mozillazine and wondering why it was so slow, I soon saw that 1.0 was out! This was fairly early in the morning and soon everything just halted as things got slashdotted (I'm sure Mozilla.org itself was long since down). In order to get the release, I ended up using the google cache of the mirrors page to find an ftp which had the release and torrents. I decided to go with torrents to help save someone's server and that worked great. It seemed like I wasn't doing any uploading, though, so I looked with TorrentSpy and saw 900 seenders and 50 downloaders. Talk about a nice ratio. :)

Anyway, I have to say I'm liking 1.0 a lot. It seems more stable and a bit more responsive than some of the previous versions and I'm ok with the default theme though gray is a bit blah... One nice thing is that secure page actually really stand out, with both the gold locks and gold url bar. I was pleasantly surprised by the new "search on this page" type bar which appears right above the status bar and scrolls down the to first instance as you type. You can even have it highlight all instances on the page at once.

Relating to blogging, it has a feature where most pages with RSS automatically show an icon in the corner letting you easily bookmark the feed. Then when you look in the bookmarks, it shows up as a folder with entry titles as items inside it. I think that's a bit too much on the basic side for me, but still pretty cool for those that want to get their feet wet with feeds.

I have to say that a definite lowlight to me is the fact that it still has no icon under windows in terms of the upperleft corner of the window and when minimized to the taskbar. Not a huge deal in terms of functionality, but it is one of the few things left that makes it seem a bit unprofessional. Why whould an app this big be showing a generic windows icon instead of its own logo? The other obvious lowlight is a lot of the extensions not working with the new version yet.

But overall I have to say that I'm really happy with it. It is such a world away from those early Mozilla versions ages ago and even the earlier incarnations of Firefox itself. Good going guys... it is looking pretty solid.

Edit: Aparantly the icon thing was just a Win98 issue. Thanks everyone who helped clear this up.. :)

Blogs with your newsreader?

2004-11-10T13:55:00.000-05:00

Hey now, nntp//rss is a pretty cool idea. It sets is an RSS reader that sets up a usenet type server on your machine, with each feed as a group and posts like news posts. That lets you use any of the newsreader software out there to check up on news or blogs. I haven't tried it as of yet, but I may give it a shot, since some of the newsreader software out there is pretty advanced..

Manga superhero comes out on top?

2004-10-29T20:25:00.000-04:00

Started writing this a couple of days ago and then got busy again. Anyway:

I'm running a couple of days behind, but big thanks to Kevin for posting the list. I'm usually pretty depressed when I look at the top 100 list of monthly comic releases and less so at the graphic novels, since they seem more balanced. But looking at this tally of the year from various outlets, I can't help but feel a bit sorry for the shared universe superheros for once. 1602 in 25th place comes the closest since it has Marvel characters, but even that is an elseworlds.

However, taking a somewhat broader view, it is interesting to see that Kenshin seems to be the clear winner, with 5 volumes in the top 25, including 2nd and 3rd place. Why interesting? Because it is one of the most "superhero-ish" titles on the list. A character with seemingly superhuman skill who fights superpowerful villains while vowing never to kill again. Lots of battles, dark pasts, etc. The author is even a fan of Spider-man and the X-men, with some characters in the story modelled loosely on those.

IMO, it is less the superhero concept itself (in the broad sense) that many people take issue with, but a lot of the other aspects like spandex and shared worlds. Marvel and DC certainly have rich pasts and interesting concepts, but it seems like there is also a place outside of that for superpowered characters who fight evil...

Akihito Yoshitomi's Ray...

2004-10-26T11:39:00.000-04:00

Out of these november manga reviews one of the ones that sounds the most interesting to me is Ray.

The premise of a world where some people are raised as organ doners and a woman who uses x-ray visian for medical purposes sounds really interesting. Also, this was done by the same creator as Eat-Man, and I had enjoyed the Eat-Man '98 series with it's episodic stories and quirky hero.

Also, I'm really liking the style of the artwork on the covers at least. You can see all 4 of french covers here.

One more thing to buy, eh?

Armored Trooper Votoms figure on ICv2

2004-10-26T08:06:00.000-04:00

Hah, I really didn't expect to see this on ICv2 today. I actually have the whole Votoms original series on DVD, and while I haven't had a chance to watch the whole thing, what I have seen has been a really cool oldschool series that a lot of people aren't familiar with.

Basically the tale of a good soldier who is betrayed and framed and seeks revenge, in a sci-fi setting. There is four main arcs, each taking place on a different planet.

This is a series I usually wouldn't have gotten due to the length of it (16 dvds), but these were an older release with subtitles burned into the video and so were on an amazing clearance at the time. If you happen to find any retailers that still have some of these in stock and at a good price, give it a shot. Just because something doesn't have the newest flashiest animation doesn't mean it isn't a good series. :)

Junko Mizuno's Halloween greetings...

2004-10-25T22:18:00.000-04:00

I know this is a bit early, but I'm sure I'll forget otherwise. Mizuno gets into the Hallooween spirit (as if she needed any help..heh).

Diamond's slow shipping on books...

2004-10-25T17:54:00.000-04:00

Geeze, previews reviews this week was a bit of an eye-opener. I'd heard before about comics retailers getting things like manga a lot later than bookstores. A lot of people (myself included) assumed that it was companies like Tokypop giving preference to the marketplaces where they make the most money.

But it seems like in almost all cases, companies ship to Diamond at the same time as bookstore distributers, with as much as a 15 day difference in some cases!

With the recent exclusive contracts by companies like Tokyopop for Diamond in comic shops, I really hope Diamond get their acts together. You'd think Diamond would be one of the companies most devoted to helping comic shops out compared to bookstores, but it sure doesn't seem that way...

Once in a Blue Moon

2004-10-21T09:35:00.000-04:00

I have to say this series is looking pretty promising. I forgot all about it after the long delay, but the artwork looks pretty nice and I've always the enjoyed of idea of magic in the world, etc.. Obviously the concept of being transported into another land is nothing new (and the aknowledge liking Inuyasha in the interview), but it seems like they have a good handle on their particular storyline.

Muse's Time of the Month...

2004-10-20T17:28:00.000-04:00

I have to say that Ed's latest column (the first of them that I've read) was really nice to see. Advertising is always tricky, and the ad that Muse put together is great in so many ways.

Many of the aspects seem kind of self-evident when it is pointed out, but are easy to not think of. That Moore illustration and the store's logo and everything just seem a world away from what you might expect (a big swinging spidey.. etc). The only part that seems slightly icky (or at least not fitting wth the rest) is the font used for the "free" stuff, but it sounds like the owner didn't like it either and stayed because of time constraints.

Obviously not everyone can have the same results (getting a bunch of people who haven't read comics before and end up bying things), but this certainly seems a better attempt than many I've seen myself. I think the big lesson to take away is that you don't have to do a huge campaign. The big thing is to know what audience you are targetting. They went for a student crowd and were really careful to do something that looked interesting and wouldn't alienate either guys or gals. If your selection is trying to cater to people other than the usual suspects, the advertising really has to reflect that difference...

Nice going Muse... :)

On the Star Trek manga...

2004-10-18T23:11:00.000-04:00

So, we have more info. on the Star Trek manga, along with a couple of sketches. My thoughts echo some of the posters there as well as here. Basically I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm kind of so-so on the particular sketchs shown, but those Return of the Jedi panels that Horomoto drew are pretty nice. I'll have to think of picking up those Star Trek adaptations at some point. I remember flipping through them like a year ago and being impressed.

As for the creators, it does seem a bit odd like some pointed out that they'd go so far as having various Japanese artists, but have everything scripted by American authors. It isn't like they don't know Star Trek in Japan, and even Animatrix did a split approach. And I haven't read any of the novels, but everyone seems to agree that Peter David is one of the few good authors. Where is he in here? At least Jake Forbes of Sgt. Frog poetry fame is in there. Too bad his idea for a romantic comedy story got shot down by Universal..heh

I'm curious about the other artists that'll come on board. Someone mentioned they'd like to see Amato. I just crack up at the thought of that. Amato doing Star Trek would be crazy! :) Has he done any Star Wars work? That guy has a pretty amazing style (I love those Vampire Hunter D paintings and his Sandman stuff).

In closing, I can't help but poke a little fun at one of the RotJ pages. Especially that lower-left panel:

"Vador, I challenge you to a game... a Shadow Game!" :)

Tokyo Tribes gets an Extreme Makeover (in more ways one)

2004-10-18T22:38:00.000-04:00

I thought it was pretty interesting that Santa Inoue, creator of the Tokyo Tribes manga was going to be on Extreme Makeover. I read from somewhere that the kid was really into manga, and that's why they picked him to redo the kid's room. Unfortunately, according to FigNewton, the manga aspect was totally glossed over, just saying his name and that he was from Tokyo.

I can see them being worried about the content of his manga being associated with the show, but geeze you'd think if they had a celebrity guest they could at least allude to his occupation. It isn't like most people would know his comic was out in the US anyway.

Of course the Tokyo Tribes release has had its share of controversy in the manga community due to big black bars added over nudity. Personally, I'm not as much up in arms as a lot of other people are. It seems like Santa was ok with getting the age rating down slightly for better distribution and gave specific instructions on how to have things covered up.

My main reason for not being too perturbed is that while imagery of what is going on is being blocked out, you aren't being misled. In the Initial D editing, the company was trying to cover up a pretty important aspect of a character's story. Even in cases where a swimsuit is drawn over someone, that can change the dynamic of what's going on.

In this case the black bars almost seem like a subversive form of self-censorship, since everyone still knows exactly what is going on, but have to imagine part of it and (just as in many good horror movies) the imagination may make up something more graphic than was there to begin with.

It actually seems like an extesion of thinking from what has gone on in Japan for many years, where the most messed up stuff is possible to be made as long as certain things were mosaiced out. And as much as we might think of that sometimes as an oddity in Japan, the US is certianly no exception. For instance bleeping out swears on TV when it is totally obvious what is actually being said. Or stuff that happens on COPS or Howard Stern or whatever.

People might accuse Santa of caving in to pressure, but in a way this almost seems like beating the system. Instead of misleading readers into thinking the manga isn't so graphic, those aspects have actually been emphasized even more, without actually changing the story itself.... Hmmm...

500 Amazing Spidey comics for $50?

2004-10-18T21:59:00.000-04:00

Wow, even I am tempted by
this 11-cd cet. As with the other posters, I'm worried about what format the images will be in, as well as the default image viewer.

As far as quality goes, math may give us an idea: Say they are 700 meg cds. 700 x 11 = 7700 megs. Divide that by 500 and you get a bit over 15 megs per comic. You divide that by 32 pages and you get an average of 500k per page.

Of course there could be other content that whittles that down, but it still sounds like it could be good quality as long as it has decent compression.

I had got a Spirit cd-rom some years ago and was pretty disappointed overall, but this sounds like a pretty serious attempt. It also fits in better with the recent move by more and more people away from pure collectability and into just wanting to read a story. All that old content combined with the ads and letter pages makes it even more interesting for someone like me who is into pop-culture history.

If it is successful, let's hope they try it with some other series...

Anime in the theaters...

2004-10-18T20:49:00.000-04:00

Jen on the SeqTart board pointed out
this chart of current/lifetime information on various anime movies in the theaters. Sad to see Millennium Actress so far down, especially with reputations of Perfect Blue and Tokyo Godfathers. But nice to see the Ghibli stuff up there and GitS2 seemingly on the rise. I'm surprised the Bebop movie got up so high, though I really like the movie so it is great to see. I suppose the TV exposure helped. Pokemon seems pretty unbeatable at this point, though...

Jesus vs. Lucifer! Who rocks harder?

2004-10-18T20:29:00.000-04:00

Man, is this solicit for volume 4 of Sensual Phrase a bit out there or is it me? heh:

SENSUAL PHRASE, Volume 4 · MSRP: $9.95 · Available OCTOBER 12, 2004
Up until recently, Lucifer has been the hottest band on the radio. The combination of Sakuya’s good looks and Aine’s sexy lyrics has shot them straight to the top of the hit parade. But that’s all about to change. A new group by the name of Jesus is creeping up the charts. They’ve got the tunes and the sex appeal to rival even Lucifer’s scorching popularity. It’s the ultimate battle of the bands – Jesus vs. Lucifer! Who rocks harder?

I always find it amusing when a place like Japan takes something like Christian surface aspects to add some exotic flavor to a title. The West so often injects some random greek or egyptian or asian themes into something to make it more interesting, it is interesting to have the shoe on the other foot...

Worlds Finest Trailer

2004-10-18T17:14:00.000-04:00

Things on the family front seem to be working out now (and better than hoped), so here is something completely different...

Suzanne Lanoue posted a link to the SFTV mailing list mentioning a new fan-made trailer for a fictional World's Finest movie. I haven't had a chance to watch too many fan-videos since Troopers days, so this was cool to see. I have to say that it is really really well done.

Just from a standpoint of a trailer, it is paced well and shows a lot of teases without feeling like it gives away everything . The actors seem good, especially the guy playing Clarke, who really seems to pull off Superman. The special effects look good and there are some big sets with lots of people. It really looks like there could be a full movie that scenes are being taken from. I'm not up on DC lore or the World's Finest storyline, so I dunno who the kryoptite-chested baddie is, but looks sufficiantly evil..heh

Seriously, a studio should hire Sandy Collora to make a superhero movie. It seems like he'd certainly do a better job than most of people out there.

P.S. Sandy also made a short film called Batman: Dead End, which I haven't had a chance to watch yet, but is supposed to be really good.

Sometimes life just sucks...

2004-10-18T01:38:00.000-04:00

Man.. what a bad day today. I think I'm just fried... With my grandfather in the hospital for a week or so, we tried to take care of my grandmother, but because of the troubles with her mind and body, it just wasn't possible. My aunt's mother (and her mother) were able to take care of her last night, but they couldn't manage another night either, and everyone else was too far away to get here in time. So we scrambled around and now she's being watched over in the ER tonight, with finding a (hopefully temp) nursing home for her tomorrow.

Just been such a rollercoaster. After the experience of the first two nights, I think Mom was literally in shock yesterday. Thank goodness we didn't have to do last night or who knows what would have happened. So today was waiting at the hospitol for like three hours (lots of emergancies and obviously those have to go first) under false pretenses. Then the revealing of what was really going on and her actually being very lucid and saying it was ok. We were just so worried that she wouldn't know what was going on or be totally angry and betrayed. In some ways it almost felt worse that she was doing so well in that you start to have self-doubt. If only she was like that all the time, we would be able to manage...

In the end we were there almost 6 hours... I hope it can all work out in the end, but it is just hard to see someone you care about like that, and even more so for Mom since she's her mother. But it has to be worst of all for my grandmother. She has trouble talking most of the time (finding the words to express herself), can't really read anymore, etc. So even when she is lucid, there isn't much she can actually do, and she knows enough to know that there are other times when she isn't well. What kind of existance is that to be stuck in?

Oh well, I guess some things in life are just pretty messed up at times. I should try to get to sleep I guess.. I need to try to get to work tomorrow. I just feel pretty numb right now...

I feel a wave of amateur hentai coming...

2004-10-15T08:25:00.000-04:00

Having trouble getting that scene in your adult fanfiction comic just right? It sounds like you might need this DVD. ;)

Gilles Chaillet's map of Rome...

2004-10-14T21:14:00.000-04:00

I believe Kevin first linked to an article on Chaillet's amazing achievement of a 11x6.5 foot detailed drawn map of Rome from 314AD, but I wanted to see what this thing looked like. Here is another article with a picture of part of it. I love detailed stuff like this. A year or so ago I got an amazing fanmade poster with hundreds of anime characters on it. You can spend hours trying to name all the characters on it. Cool stuff!

Netscape's Anniversary...

2004-10-14T21:01:00.000-04:00

Well, it looks like it has been 10 years since the first public beta of Netscape Navigator. My web browsing started with an early version Netscape, though I'm not sure quite which one. I had done internet stuff before that on the BBS I went to (e-mail, ftp by e-mail, then ftp and a bit of lynx), but by the time I got general net access, Mosiac was already on its way out. I remember upgrading to a newer version to get stuff like background images and a save dialog box.

Courtesy of that thread, here is the original press release (check out the feature list!), screenshots of an early beta (0.93), a copy of the original website (but set your default background to gray for full effect), downloads from 0.4 to 4.07.

It seems appropriate, since Firefox is nearly at 1.0 now. When one of my bosses at work installs Firefox and says it is "faster than IE" boy does that seem a long ways away from the old Mozilla builds I used just for the sake of being part of something exciting, but were barely usable!

Happy anniversary to the dinosaur that helped out the web. :)

Bone in Color...

2004-10-13T13:11:00.000-04:00

So, I've finally seen the samples of Bone in color. I was skeptical of it being colorized, but I have to say that it looks pretty nice. I'll reserve final judgement until I actually see it in print, but it probably also helps that not having read Bone, I don't have so much attachement to the b&w version as of yet...

Still, all of Bone for $27 and free shipping? I may just save up and try to grab that before the stores run out of copies.. I probably should have asked for that on my birthday, though I did enjoy the two I got (Go: More Than A Game and Manga: 60 Years of Japanese Culture).

One day I'll finally read this series!

On previews review...

2004-10-13T09:49:00.000-04:00

Ok, so I know I haven't updated for a looong time now, and I'm sure no one is still actively reading, but maybe someone's still subscribed via RSS? In any case, here goes...

Chris has the new Previews Review up for October, and so much looks interesting. Money for me is super-tight right now so I probably won't actually be buying any of this for a while, but I have to agree with Chris when he said it looks like a good month. Here's some meta-commentary.. :)

Blue Spring

I have to say that I'm very interested in Blue Spring from Yaiyo Matsumoto. I haven't read any of his other works as of yet, but I saw the movie based on Blue Spring and was very impressed with it. The combination of great soundtrack, visuals, and Ryuhei Matsuda in the lead (also did a great job in Taboo, along with good supporting characters and an interesting story worked out well. I actually shouldn't focus too much on Ryuhei's character of Kujo since things really revolve around him and his best friend Aoki. Reminded me of the anime FLCL (Fooly Cooly) in terms of oozing with style and the relationship to music, but Blue Spring is much more of a straight-forward story (FLCL is too, but doesn't seem that way at first).

One thing I gleamed from a post in IMDB is that the kanji characters for youth/adolescence (seishun) mean "blue" and "spring". The title of this manga/movie however is literally Blue Spring (aoi haru), so kind of a play on words. But the story is certainly about adolescence, being a look at the life of various students in a school where there isn't a lot of hope to go around. I'm really curious to see if the manga goes into more depth on the individual stories that make up the movie. I enjoyed the Battle Royale movie, but ultimately found the original novel to be a much more engrossing and coherant experience, with a lot more time to dwell on the individual characters.

As If!

Wow, I never heard of As If before, but this looks really good. A strip about daily life at school that doesn't take itself too seriously but isn't just parody either? I'm in for that... and the artwork?

Something I've been saying for a while now is not to be too worried about manga influence. The US has enough inherant diversity in it (due to cultures mashed together and sheer size) that nothing too monolithic for too long. I think one of the greater influences I see happening is less about slavish manga copying and more about a general move toward more "iconic" storytelling (in McCloud's sense of things being stylized). That not everything has to be about realism and if your story isn't totally serious, it isn't a sin for someone's eyes to bug out or an anvil fall on their head from time to time. :) And not to pin too much on manga, comic strips in general have always tended toward iconic, and online strips seem to be really gaining footholds in popularity.

In any case, take a look at the art style of As If, especially comparing the first couple of strips with the latest couple. Eyes shrink, screentone becomes washes. The whole thing looks a lot less generic, and more personal. Congrats to Amy for some real progression as an artist through the life of the strip. Now I just need to sit down and read the thing. :)

Vanyda (The Building Opposite)

I hadn't heard of Vanyda, since I'm still a newbie when it comes to French BD. That cover image for The Building Opposite looked nice from a distance, but I wanted to see more. I found this page for L'annee du Dragon, which looks like a pretty interesting urban tale with an (imaginary perhaps?) dragon in it. Click on Gallery for a pop-up window full of a ton of full finished pages, character designs, and other stuff. I have to say that this guy is a great artist. Occationally, there is something that seems "manga-ish", but I probably wouldn't even be thinking in that direction if not for Chris's mention of Nouvelle Manga in relation to it. Very nice stuff...

The rest...

Wet Moon sounds interesting. I was tempted to go to an art school at some point... perhaps an interesting contrast to Paradise Kiss?

My Mom did some temp work at some point, so Temporary seems like an interesting concept. When I saw the page with preview art, I was a bit wary looking at the thumbnails, since I'm not usually into cramped styles as much. But as soon as I clicked around to get full-size images, I could see that it worked really well for this story and wasn't actually as cramped as I'd thought at first glance.

Of course I have to mention Walking Man. This looks like something I'll really enjoy. A lot of times I really love slide-of-life stories, especially those dealing with nature and going back to a slower pace of life. I love Yokohama Shopping Trip Log for just that reason (which better come out some day guys!), and I'm thinking this will work with me for exactly the same reasons. During the holiday, I took a couple of hours to go to a local park and walk around, snap pictures, and just generall relax and contemplate life. Comics, movies, animation or whatever that can capture that same sort of feeling without being boring are a rare gift I think.

Lastly, I've loved Sam Kieth's style for a really long time now. Some day I'll pick up the Maxx GNs to complement my back issues... I picked up Zero Girl a year or so ago and while the story isn't the most amazing thing ever, his style shows through as always and makes it worthwhile. Ojo sounds like something I'd really enjoy, especially with the word that his writing lives up to the visual aspects...

Anyway, cheers to everyone in the comics blogosphere. Don't count me totally out of the game yet. :)