Oh my god. How did this happen?

Matt Fraction has been carefully selecting and arranging Drake-era Doom Patrol panels and uncovering the lessons within. This is really great - thanks Matt!

• Everything I needed to Learn About Comics I Learned from Arnold Drake - Part 1
• Everything I needed to Learn About Comics I Learned from Arnold Drake - Part 2
• Everything I needed to Learn About Comics I Learned from Arnold Drake - Part 3
• Everything I needed to Learn About Comics I Learned from Arnold Drake - Part 4

A conversation that Jess claims she had with me while I was asleep.
Sometime in 2000 or 2001 :

Jess : Who loves you?
sleeping Casey : You guys.
Jess : Who??
Casey : (indignant) You guys!
Jess : You guys? Me and who else?
Casey : (scoffs loudly, as if it's obvious) You and X-Factor!

I recently went through all of my comics and reboxed and sorted them. Well, I sorted *some* of them. That quickly got tiring. Anyway, after picking through all of my old comics and seeing lots of my favorite childhood characters in X-Men 3, I wished that I hadn't foolishly sold off some good books when I was in Junior High. I'm missing lots of great 80's issues Uncanny X-Men, X-Factor and Excalibur. I'm trying to resist the urge to go out and blow a whole bunch of money on back issues when I can pick up the "Essential" trade paperbacks for 11 bucks a pop.

Quick update, sort of related: neat page over at Wikipedia that shows the whole X3 cast with links to articles. I had no idea that the tattooed girl was supposed to be Callisto.

I needed a little cheering up so I bought a copy of James Kochalka's "American Elf". I hope it works.

Before I get into my rant, here are the comics that I am ordering this month. Slim pickins.

That's kind of sad. I'm going to hold off on my order for now in case I find something else to add. It's possible that I'm missing something good from one of the big publishers - I've been kind of ignoring them lately. Also, Local #3 and DMZ #3 should be out but I've already subscribed to both. That reminds me - this blog is good : http://goodcomics.blogspot.com.

I was toying with an idea and I wrote some code that downloads the latest Previews catalog and then tries to find blogs which mention each item code. The results were disappointing. For November, I only found one page which mentions a Previews item with a NOV05 code. Sheesh. I'm not exactly sure what this means. Is it...

1. People aren't using the Previews item numbers when referring to upcoming comics. (eg. SLG, Oni).
2. Google Blogsearch's index not as complete as I thought (I chose Google Blogsearch because it is easy to interface with, fast, and the results are pretty "fresh" when compared to Technorati)
3. or... Creators and publishers just aren't writing about their new releases on blogs. Maybe I should try this on regular Google.

I was also thinking that if you wanted to be able to build such an index, there isn't really a great way to do it. You have to ask people to start using the item number on their sites. Luckily these codes are pretty unique and not really used by other people for other purposes. An alternative way to gather together these sites would be something trackback style where the person talking about the comic inserts some metadata that says "This page or part of page refers to item number X" and then they ping you. The ping part would be necessary because Google only indexes content. (This opens up a whole other discussion - doesn't the vision of the New Web require search engines to do something about metadata?) Should Diamond Previews really have such a central role in this? I'm using their item numbers because most of the comics in the US flow through them. Is there another good way to uniquely identify a comic and tie it to a release date and publisher?

I'm kind of rambling here. My basic point is that 1) It would be good to have some sort of unique identifier for comics that could be tied to data about the creators, publisher, release date and looked up as easily as an ISBN. 2) It would be nice if web content creators had a way to express "this page (or paragraph) refers to about comic [ID # whatever]".

(PS - if you aren't a comic person and you have no idea what "Previews" is, maybe my comic book day post will help)

My pre-orders for September. Brian Wood has been busy, eh?. I'm annoyed with the current state of comic subscribing/pre-ordering but that is a story for another time...

I just started reading Craig Thompson's "Carnet de Voyage". It's a diary and sketchbook that Craig wrote while traveling through Europe and Morocco this eariler this year. I just picked it up at the comic shop today and I'm really enjoying it.

I haven't been over to pick up my comics for a while so there was a sizable stack waiting for me in my cubby. The latest issue of Demo looks like it is going to be good. Demo is my probably favorite comic this year. One night while drunk, I wrote a giddy fanboy email to Becky and Brian - that's how much I like their work. I never sent it. I didn't want to scare them. I also picked up the Transmetropolitan "Tales of Human Waste" paperback because I didn't catch the one-shots that it collects and I am really needing a Spider Jerusalem fix lately. There is a new Batman mini series called "Scratch". I don't normally buy anything that DC puts out (especially Batman) but I really dig Sam Kieth's artwork so I grabbed the first issue.

For most fans, comic book day falls on Wednesday. This is then day when the new releases arrive at shops all around the country. For me, comic book day is usually Saturday or Sunday. Outer Limits (my favorite comic store) is a few towns over and I can't get there during the week. I've got a cubby there and Steve puts aside the books that I want until I show up to collect them. Usually the stores call this kind of thing a "sub" but it isn't really a subscription. It's more like a layaway where you don't put any money down.

Today we passed by Waltham while running errands so I was able to stop by and empty my cubby. Hooray! New comics! It's always exciting to see what is waiting for me in my box. Today I got a bunch of Marvel stuff (X-Men, Wolverine, etc) which wasn't so exciting because I am way behind in my reading of these and I'm not really ready for the new ones yet. Also waiting for me was the latest issue of Demo (awesome!) and Midnight, Mass. Demo is really cool - each issue is a self contained story with a totally different setting and a new group of characters. Midnight, Mass is also one of my current favorites. It's a well done horror series from Vertigo.

Along with the new issues of my favorites, I also get to look forward to picking up the latest copy of Previews. Previews is a 500-600 page newsprint magazine that details all of the new stuff that is coming to shops during the next 1-2 months. I flip through the comic and graphic novel sections and tear out any pages that interest me. This month there are a couple things from Slave Labor press that look really good: Autumn (click on the scan that I included for a bigger copy) and Egg Story. I've got to email Steve and ask him to order these for me and put them in my cubby.

Finally, after I've checked out the Previews and emailed an "order" to my shop, I complete my comic book day ritual by placing all my new books in plastic sleeves and settling down on the couch to read them. sigh. Comic book day is the best :)