Who Wants to Watch the Watchmen?

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/watchmen/

Early reviews of Watchmen are mixed, to say the least. I've been avoiding paying too close attention because I don't want my palate spoiled, but yet I still feel like I've been battered back and forth between high and low expectations. I've settled now, at the eleventh hour, to a calm expectation and hope. I expect to ignore the soul of the book. I'm not hoping for it to be good. What I hope is that it will do well enough and be intriguing enough to lead a million non-comic book readers into stores to pick up the original.

I'm going to shank Jim Davis

http://www.gocomics.com/lifeaccordingtogarfield

Just when Garfield Minus Garfield (Feb 23 was not about me, Chris!) had me wondering if there really was something to Jim Davis, he has to go and turn crap into schmaltz.

I want to see this fail epically. I want Garfield to be the cited reason for newspapers failing. I want websites to crash because they've linked to Garfield. I want the world to discover Garfield at Large books harbored a dormant flesh-eating bacteria and have the apocalypse squarely sit on Davis's shoulders, so that our huddled, paranoid, Mad Max shanty towns of the year 2013 become known as Davisvilles.

You're destroying the known world, Jim Davis. The robots are coming for you.

Bit of modern comics history

Colleen Doran tells the story of meeting Neil Gaiman back in 1989 and being offered the chance to illustrate Sandman.

Not much to the tale, but it's hard not to coo at their work and I always find it comforting to be reminded that such a staggering work as Sandman was really just built on the backs of casual meetings between peers.

I continue to heart Dinosaur Comics

http://www.qwantz.com/archive/001411.html

DC actually capitalizing on anticipated movie success?!?!

http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2009/02/dcs-after-watchmen-whats-next-promotion/#more-4163

Chris and I have often questioned the editorial decisions going on at DC, even when we've enjoyed their results. However, this one seems like something everyone can appreciate. Counting on Watchmen to bring an influx of comics outsiders in to stores, DC is putting out $1 special editions of other, more literary genre pieces: Swamp Thing #21, Planetary #1, Transmet #1, Preacher #1, and... uh... Identity Crisis #1. Everyone raises their eyebrow at that last one as not quite sitting on par with the others, but DC is welcoming non-readers with very open arms for a change and this is highly commendable.

Thor Conquers All... Dangnabit.

This is going to be hard to resist

http://webcomicsweekend.com/

Lawyers in a Superhero Reality

SuperLawyers #1 - watch more funny videos

The Dollar Auction

Have you ever heard of the dollar auction? It's where I auction off a $20 bill, but the second place bidder also needs to pay their bid, though they get nothing. Apparently, it can result in a bidding war easily reaching hundreds of dollars, as the top two are no longer bidding to gain money, but are locked in and merely trying to lose the least money. It's a fascinating example of the irrational escalation of commitment. Humans, huh?

Anyways, I was at New York Comiccon all day.

Laughing Out Loud Returns

http://www.boasas.com/?c=1068

http://www.applegeeks.com/lite/index.php?aglitecomic=2009-02-04

http://www.wetherobots.com/2009/02/05/a-nice-quiet-dinner-at-home/

http://www.octopuspie.com/2009-02-04/254-going-downtown/ - note the typeface of the last word in the last panel, that is what got me giggling


To restate the point of 'Laughing Out Loud':
I read a lot of webcomics daily, and these are individual strips that made me laugh out loud today as I was reading them. Enjoy.

Lego NY

I open a forward from my parents and see it's "I LEGO N.Y." So I roll my eyes, but click through to be polite. And much to my surprise, it's not something cheesy like the skyline cast in legos, but tiny abstractions of bits of everyday, reduced down to their basic shapes and colors. Nothing profound, but worth spending a minute on.

Two Links for the Evening

Shrodinger is the source of entirely too much humor. Click the link for the alternate endings. I recommend you check out the rest of Steve Wolfhard's lj as well.

And I'm loathe to admit how sexy I think this A Softer World is:

Hourly Comic Day

It had been my intention to post about this before it happened, but alas.

February 1st (as the event would appear to go) sees artist folks keep an hourly comic journal of their activities. The various results can be found here. I've got to admit I found the results from last year a little more interesting on average. The 1st this year, being a Sunday and the day of super bowl, resulted in a lot of people spending the day on their asses, watching television. The results, nonetheless, are entirely worth scouring.