The conclusion to the Australian horror/thriller comic whose first volume I loved. This was OK – heavy on exposition, as horror sometimes is. It makes me wonder if there’s a way to do a good horror story that has less exposition and more atmosphere/scares. Something to try in my own work, I think.
Buy The Dreaming Vol. 3 at Amazon
Book: 47/52
52/52: An ongoing project to read one book a week and document those books with reviews of 52 words each.
Sep 30, 2008 | Categories: 52 Books/52 Weeks | Leave A Comment »
An experimental novel a la House of Leaves, which I loved. This, less so. The experimental stuff seemed unnecessary; the story dragged in places. The bare minimum of text in the last 50 or so pages was a gift – I might not have finished the book otherwise. Just no momentum for it.
Buy The Raw Shark Texts at Amazon
Book: 46/52
52/52: An ongoing project to read one book a week and document those books with reviews of 52 words each.
Sep 28, 2008 | Categories: 52 Books/52 Weeks | Leave A Comment »
Christine lent me this amusing memoir about the life of a marginal professional basketball player (11 teams in 4 years isn’t a successful track record). Though Shirley’s insight into higher-achieving players in fascinating and he’s definitely not your average pro athlete, he’s not quite as beyond them as he seems to think.
Buy Can I Keep My Jersey? at Amazon
Book: 45/52
52/52: An ongoing project to read one book a week and document those books with reviews of 52 words each.
Sep 18, 2008 | Categories: 52 Books/52 Weeks | Leave A Comment »
The third installment of Shanower’s epic graphic novel of the history of the Trojan War. An impressive technical achievement, in that strictly speaking very little happens (a lot of sailing and talking, really), yet it manages to be gripping. His focus on character, nuance, and a gods-free narrative makes a great story.
Buy Age of Bronze Vol. 3 at Amazon
Book: 43/52
52/52: An ongoing project to read one book a week and document those books with reviews of 52 words each.
Sep 14, 2008 | Categories: 52 Books/52 Weeks | Leave A Comment »
A typically beautiful and high-design comic focusing on the life story of one resident of a Chicago apartment building; part of Ware’s Building Stories series. Good stuff, but I wonder: does anyone ever laugh in Chris Ware comics? Writing funny is hard, but these comics, great as they are, can be bummers.
Buy Acme Novelty Library 18 at Amazon
Book: 42/52
52/52: An ongoing project to read one book a week and document those books with reviews of 52 words each.
Sep 12, 2008 | Categories: 52 Books/52 Weeks | Leave A Comment »
The second book-length collection of found notes, letters, journals, and ephemera. The novelty is wearing off a bit, or maybe the finds just aren’t as high quality, since more of them are needed to support the magazine and the books. Still, I was proud to have a find in the first volume.
Buy Found II at Amazon
Book: 41/52
52/52: An ongoing project to read one book a week and document those books with reviews of 52 words each.
Sep 10, 2008 | Categories: 52 Books/52 Weeks | Leave A Comment »
A lot of people don’t think copy editing is that important, or that it’s only important for professional publications. Not surprisingly, as a copy editor, I disagree. For instance, check out this sign at a local tailor’s shop on the way to my gym:
See if you can find all the grammar and spelling errors (there are three, though one’s pretty hard to see in this photo; sorry - took the photo from my car as I waited at a stop light).
Someone must have pointed them out to the shop, because the sign was up one day and down maybe two or three days later. Still, it doesn’t reflect well on the tailor or the sign shop that no one knew enough grammar or spelling to catch these mistakes - they would have taken but a minute to fix.
Sep 08, 2008 | Categories: Business | 1 Comment »
I write a lot of taglines. Many, many more than ever see the light of day, as you might expect. To get to a suite of 3-4 taglines that get presented to a client, I write anywhere from 20-35 taglines. As a result, I spent a decent amount of my time thinking about what makes a good tagline and what doesn’t. So, when I see a really, truly bad tagline, it sticks in my memory.
In the last month or two, I’ve seen a couple really poor ones. Poor because they’re so funny and conjure the wrong association right away. Though I’d share them in case you enjoy them.
A local restaurant - “We advertise in your mouth.”
A plumber - “We do it right in your house.”
Glad I didn’t write either of those!
Sep 06, 2008 | Categories: Business | Leave A Comment »
Remember those submissions I mentioned a little while back? Well, count at least one of them as a success. I’ve sold my first ever comic script (I’ve published a bunch, but no one paid me for them). Sometime in the future (not sure when yet), I’ll have an 8-page story in Boom Studios’ Cthulhu Tales anthology series. Very exciting! More as I know it.
Sep 04, 2008 | Categories: Comics | Leave A Comment »
By Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerra
The final collection of the five-year series about a gender plague that leaves only one man alive on the planet. A great, though slightly hurried, wrap up to a great series, with one of the most effective slow motion (or, for the comics fan, decompressed) scenes I’ve encountered in comics in years.
Buy Y: The Last Man, Vol. 10 at Amazon
Book: 40/52
52/52: An ongoing project to read one book a week and document those books with reviews of 52 words each.
Sep 02, 2008 | Categories: 52 Books/52 Weeks | Leave A Comment »
