Did you ever wonder how big a Starfury is compared to an X-Wing? Or how the Death Star compares to Earth's Moon? Wonder no longer.

I never did finish my free comic book day post, so now that it's never-get-work-done Saturday again, I'll post some more.

Last week I picked up the first Leave it to Chance collection, Shaman's Rain, from the library (alas, I have to give it back). Now that I've seen a complete story arc, I like this book even more. It still doesn't blow me away, but it's a good story that anyone -- but especially girls who like Nancy Drew -- can enjoy. Okay, there were some irritating grammatical errors (why do mistakes like this seem to be acceptable in comics when they're not in any other print medium?) (except the web, if you can call it a print medium, which it isn't really, but sort of is). Anyway, there was nothing super-spectacular about the book, except that there aren't that many really fun comics that pretty much anyone who picks it up can get something out of. (Speaking of grammar, I'm not sure that last sentence works, but you know what I mean, right?) So, while I probably won't run out to buy this title every month, it's now on my TPB-collections-to-eventually-buy list.

So, now to the rest of the comics I got free:

Free Speeches (Oni Press) Okay, so this isn't actually a comic-book, but it is a comic-book-shaped publication by a comic book publisher. Also, it was published in 1998, so obviously it isn't one of the books that came out specially for free comic book day. Still, I got it free on free comic book day, so I'm gonna babble about it here. A little. What it is is a small collection of speeches by various people regarding comic books and the US First Amendment (being Canadian, I have to stick that "US" in there) and constitutional free speech. This is important stuff. If you ever wondered how or why free speech doesn't always seem to be applied to comics (when it should, of course), then you should read this. Also, the collection includes the Comics Code Authority, and that alone makes it worth reading: "Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolfism are prohibited." Weird stuff.

Christa Shermot's 100% Guaranteed How-to Manual For Getting ANYONE to Read Comic Books!!! (Second 2 Some Studios) I really like this book. It's really addressed to people who don't read comics, presenting arguments about why they should (which mainly run along the lines of pointing out that any genre or type of story found in prose fiction, tv or movies can also be found in comics, and done just as well or better), rather than to people who already read comics, but it was fun anyway. And now I have a document to hand to those annoying people who insist that comics are all superheroes and kiddie stuff. The only real drawback is that there is an awful lot of text, and less-patient readers may well be turned off. But I liked it enough to think seriously about tracking down the actual comic that the characters here appear in: Fade from Blue. And the art's good, too.

Jennifer Daydreamer: Oliver (Top Shelf Productions) This is a book that rather disappointed me. I'd heard lots of good things about Jennifer Daydreamer, and was very happy to see this book on the free comics table at one of the three stores I went to. That I was disappointed doesn't mean the book was bad, just that I thought it would be much better. Each "story" really doesn't hold up on its own, though I suspect they aren't meant to. By the end of the book, the whole sequence of stories have added up to a strange surreal whole that is greater than its parts, but it still wasn't as good as I was expecting. Also, the art was mostly pretty bad. That said, there was definitely something interesting going on, and I think Jennifer Daydreamer's work may prove to be worth having a look at from time to time.

Landis #0 (A-Bomb) I picked this book up because it's fantasy. From reading a lot of fantasy fiction, I know there's an awful lot of crap to wade through in order to find the good stuff, but it's worth the effort. Comics, I figure, are probably about the same. Alas, this isn't "good stuff." To be fair, it's a 0 issue, rather than part of the ongoing series, so it isn't so much a story as a here's-some-background-for-new-readers sort of thing. Even at that, it really doesn't work all that well. The art is quite uneven (and generally not all that good), and the characters really don't catch my interest (partly a fault of this being a non-story issue). Essentially, even with my soft spot for tough women wielding swords, there is nothing about this issue that makes me want to read the title.

And that's enough for now. I have to go cook some food and get back to reading Half Magic.

Free Comic Book Day was two weeks ago, and I'm just getting around to commenting on all the free books I picked up. Shame on me. Actually, it seems much longer than two weeks, especially considering how fast the days have seemed to pass the past few months. Like time lapse video.

But, anyway. I convinced my sister (who reads comics every now and then), my nephew (who is into gaming and miniatures, but not comics so much) and my niece (who doens't read comics at all, but likes anime) to come along. My niece also brought her friend. So there we were, two just-over-thirty women, a thirteen-almost-fourteen-year-old boy, and two seven-almost-eight-year-old girls in the wilds of comic book land. Of course I wanted them to come so they could become junkies like me, but I had an ulterior motive -- if they didn't choose their quota, I could make them pick up free stuff for me.

Three comic stores in the same block (two right next door to each other) and three free books a person. Nine books, right? Due to my clever planning, I came home with thirteen. There were still a few more I would happily have taken. But I was happy. Thirteen free books, and I managed to only spend $20 on non-free stuff. A very good day.

So here are my thoughts on the books I got. Keep in mind that these are quick judgements, based on a single reading of a single issue or excerpt in an anthology. So. I probably won't get through them all today, so I'll start with my favourites. Or, rather, I'll leave my least favourites till last (meaning these aren't in strict most-to-least fave order).

Skinwalker #1 of 4 (Oni Press) I'm kind of a Tony Hillerman mystery junkie, so a comic about a Navaho polic officer and an FBI agent investigating murders sounded pretty appealing. I was a bit worried that it would be a Hillerman rip-off, though. Anyway, I liked this one enough that I'll be looking for the collected TPB. It was similar to Hillerman's books to the extent that a detective story in Navaho country with a Navaho police officer as one of the main characters and a plot involving skinwalking is bound to be. Phew. That was quite a sentence. The art's pretty good, though it's all in shades of grey, and often quite dark, which gives it a bit of a . . . I can't think of a suitable adjective, but it is very, very grey. The Navaho characters look Navaho, though, which is a big plus. Good stuff.

Way of the Rat #1 (Crossgen) I think I've said elsewhere that I've pretty much been avoiding Crossgen's books because they look at first glance like Image clones with their bright computer colouring and all. As often happens when I make some sweeping, opinionated statement like that, I have to admit I was at least partly wrong. Somewhere in a previous post I mentioned Brath, and how it was actually pretty good. Well, Way of the Rat is, too. It's kind of like a Chinese action movie in comic form, which is actually pretty cool. The art is a bit uneven, but mostly good, and the characters look Chinese. And the women are actually wearing clothes! The story is fun, too, though it's hard to say how well it succeeds from only one issue. I suspect I may pick this up now and then, or maybe wait for a TPB. I mean, it's got a talking monkey.

Whether I will have to continue to revise my opinion of Crossgen books remains to be seen, but I'll certainly be more open-minded from now on. Maybe I'll go check out the free comics on their website.

Also, I didn't mean to imply that all Image books are bad, just that I'm not the least bit interested in most of them. I do read some of the creator-owned titles they publish (yay, A Distant Soil) and I like Aria (I'm a sucker for fairies), but most of the titles make me want to move to the other side of the store rather than pick them up and read them. (There's another sweeping, opinionated statement waiting to be revised -- somebody feel free to prove me wrong) (I know, send me lots of free Image comics to read and maybe I'll change my mind).

Leave It To Chance (Image) What was that I was saying about being proved wrong? Well, this book doesn't, quite, but I did enjoy it. I think it's from last year, and I have no idea what issue # it is -- somewhere in the middle, I'm guessing. This book didn't really blow me away or anything, but it's nice to see an all-ages title that has a fun fantasy story and a tough girl main character (that is, a girl who is wearing normal clothes and doesn't have her boobs popping out). I suggested my niece pick this one up, but I don't know if she's read it yet, so I can't tell you what she thought. The story is almost self-contained, so it was a good choice for a free issue. I probably won't rush out and buy it, but I did request one of the TPBs through the public library so I can form a better judgement.

Anyway, this is becoming a very long post, so I'll leave it at that for now. More later.

I finally got a dog. He sooo soft! Now I not only have the softest, fuzziest cat in the world (Bast, otherwise known as Queen of the Universe) (serves me right for naming her after a goddess), I also have the softest dog in the world (he's like black velvet). He's name is Darwin, which kind of fits my recent tendencies toward atheism. I got him through the Northwest Canadian Greyhound League, and he's a very sweet-tempered, gentle ex-racing dog. See ever-so-cute pictures of him here.

I've been meaning to babble about the comics I picked up at free comic book day, but I haven't quite got to it yet. Maybe I will later this evening, or maybe on Saturday when I never manage to get any real work done no matter how good my intentions.

Looks like my story wasn't accepted for the SPX 2003 anthology. Oh well, at least I got a piece of finished work out of it. And congrats to all those whose work did get in.

Finally, someone who likes Tank Girl (the movie) as much as I do: "Comic Mayhem" by Andrew Burden.

It's all there. Faerie or Bust. Of course, I have approximately no bandwidth, so good luck trying to see the whole thing in one go. Oh well, time to upgrade I guess.

Hey! I finally got some of my 24-hour comic posted. Only the cover and page 1, but it's better than nothing at all . . .

What? There's a world outside comics? Of course there is; now go explore it, then come back and make a comic about it.

So back on March 17 (if my archives weren't screwy, I'd use the permalink, but, alas . . .) I tried to explain my thoughts on nature and magic and atheism. I didn't do a very good job. What I meant to say was something like this:

A man truly awake does not need religion. He doesn’t need gods. He doesn’t need miracles. He doesn’t need holy lands here below or celestial heavens up above. For him, life in this universe is itself holy, as is every patch of ground and every path he walks. Life itself is enough of a miracle. To believe in a god who made this life is to believe in a miracle even greater than this miracle. Who needs more than one unfathomable miracle? Existence is a fluke, a freak, a wonder, a dream, a bizarre uncanny thing. Our own consciousness of this existence is so incredible a phenomenon that I don’t understand why anyone feels the need to believe in anything else more 'spiritual.' It’s all spiritual. It’s all true magic. Why add imagined magic to explain the magic that is right before us?

You have to ignore the old-fashioned "he" standing in for both sexes (grrr). That's a quote from a very good (and at times very frightening) article by Ed Weathers. Makes you think. (And I stole the link from Pen-Elayne on the Web.)

Woo hoo! Free comic book day is coming up soon. I've got three stores in the same downtown block to visit, plus a fourth not too far away if I don't get enough free stuff there.

And I actually went comic shopping recently. I forgot my list though, and I couldn't remember which recent back issues I'd bought of some titles, so I decided to just buy a few new things instead. Of course, they are new to me, but since I'm hopelessly behind, they're not really new to anyone else.

I picked up the first tpb of Phil and Kaja Foglio's very funny Girl Genius. It's called Agatha Heterodyne and the Beetleburg Clank. It was really the . . . catchphrase? . . . I'm not sure what to call it. Anyway, the words "A Gaslamp Fantasy with Adventure, Romance & Mad Science" were the reason I picked it up for a closer look. Then I brought it home, and oh what fun it is! I liked it, in other words.

Then I got Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things by Ted Naifeh. Also very fun. And creepy, and cool, and a little silly in some places. Very much worth the money. More than worth it. (No, I'm not being very articulate today.)

I also grabbed the Prologue issue of CrossGen's Brath becuase I'm a sucker for pseudo-Celtic stuff. I've generally avoided CrossGen's books because I'm really not a fan of computer colouring. Some of it is very good, but a lot is just garish. Anyway, Brath isn't too bad. An interesting character, plot not too horrible. Not a glowing review, I know, but it's good enough I'll try a few more issues at least -- to see how it progresses.

Now I'll shut up about comics and go do something productive. (No, I haven't got "Faerie or Bust" online yet.)

Oh yeah, another thing I learned while doing a 24-hour comic: if there is a blob of wet ink anywhere on the page, I'll stick my hand in it.

Did I say "where does the time go" in my last post? And here it is more than a week later . . .

Oh well. I finished the comic short to submit to the SPX 2003 anthology. It's called "Fey: Fleeing Arcadia" (the "Fey" part is from my eventually-ongoing-series Fey, though this piece is from way, way, waaay in the past). I was originally going to call it "Leaving Arcadia," and now I kind of wish I hadn't changed it. Oh well. It's done, it's submitted, and now I wait with my fingers crossed.

I'm pretty pleased with a lot of the art in it, but the story seems a little thin. I think my 24-hour comic (soon to be online) had a more substantial story, and it was a peculiar ramble about hitch-hiking, pants and boinking.

Well, here it is Saturday already. Where does the time go? (Lately I've been feeling like I'm stuck in the middle of a time-lapse movie, as the weeks go by at impossible speeds.)

The 24-hour comic is done. Woo hoo! Twenty-three hours and nineteen minutes and I could barely move my arm by the end. Sleep and tylenol cured all, though, and my wrist is hardly stiff at all now. It was a strange experience. I learned many things, such as:

• loose inks over tight pencils look much better than any sort of inks over loose pencils (with my meagre drawing skill, anyway)
  
• no matter how well you think you know a character, they can still surprise you
  
• it is possible to draw for nearly 24 hours straight, even when you can't feel your fingers
  
• satyrs don't wear pants (except occasionally as a joke)
  
• faeries are obsessed with "boinking" (their word, not mine)
  
• I really need to take some more life drawing classes
  
• even really awful drawings can convey a surprising amount of emotion and character
  
• it's really difficult to draw facial expressions on a character who looks like a rabbit
  
• satyrs are fun to draw
  
• satyr horns are fun to draw (though they go wonky sometimes)
  
• if you hitchhike by the side of a major highway, carrying a sign that says "Faerie or bust," you just might get a ride from an elf on horseback
  

I'm sure there's more, but those are the things-learned that come to mind right now. I'm going to try to get the thing scanned this weekend (or maybe early next week) so you can see for your ownself.

So my archives between March 9 and March 31 are missing. Hmmm. Probably has something to do with me switching from weekly to monthly archiving (why I chose weekly in the first place, I don't know. Perhaps I thought I had a lot to say . . .).

Disappearing archives aside, I am now preparing to write a 24-hour comic, beginning as soon as I have coffee tomorrow (after first waking up, of course). (Actually that will be later today, as it is after 1 in the morning, but I think of it as tomorrow because I haven't gone to bed yet.) Twenty-four pages plus a cover in twenty-four consecutive hours. That's the aim, anyway. We'll see how I actually do. This evening I made a couple of signs to go on my doors for before and after working on the thing. It made a good warm-up exercise.

And, speaking of comics, Girlmatic is now up and running with all sorts of cool stuff. So go subscribe (which is an entirely hypocritical thing to say, as I haven't subscribed yet. But I will, and before the end of the month so I can get the cheap rate. Because I am cheap. Or just poor).

Here's a cool thing: Amber Benson (who played Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer) has written an animated show. It's called Ghosts of Albion and you can watch it online. It's creepy and has magic and London and were-beasts. Much fun.

From the part of my brain that ponders irrelevant things: Why does Harry Potter have glasses, anyway? I don't mean why did he have them in the first place, but why does he still have them? I mean, if wizards can come up with "Skele-grow" to re-grow the bones in Harry's arm, why can't they come up with a spell or potion to fix his eyesight? Then again, whenever he loses his glasses, he doesn't seem to miss them much. Maybe they're just for show.

I'm thinking this may be a good example of why one should always put limits on magic in fiction. Harry Potter magic doesn't seem limited, really, except for having to learn spells before casting them.

White Foxes, Full Moon has now reached 44, 730 words! Woo hoo! (only about a bazillion more to go . . . )

I had to share this one. Put down any drinks or food and swallow before you read this. (Stole the link from Will Shetterly's blog, by the way.)

I've spent I don't know how long today, in little bits and bites between doing other things, trying to find something I saw somewhere on the web yesterday. It was, I think, somebody recalling talking to Alberto Manguel, and Jorge Luis Borges was mentioned. Of course, I can't remember where I read it or even exactly what it said, which makes it much more difficult to find. The only reason I wanted to find it was because I reading a book of essays by Manguel, Into the Looking-Glass Wood, which I am enjoying immensely, and I wanted to share. Alas . . . But lost web pages aside, the book is fantastic. It's essays, but has the sort of unnamable magic that is rarely found even in fiction.