Junior Mad Scientist - Lab Notes

San Diego Comic-Con 2007: A Report (sort of)

August 2nd, 2007 by bweber

The original title of this post was, “Where In The World Is Fosdick Bruingate?”

Immediately following his heralded (though somewhat stilted) debut on this site, Mr. Bruingate vanished. He became suddenly unreachable. No response from his cellphone, pager or email; every message eft on his phone and at his hotel went ignored until the boxes were full.

After reading about the unprovoked attacks on convention attendees by crazed hoodlums, I feared Foz might be languishing in some SoCal ICU, mis-identified as JOHN DOE #107.

I started calling area police departments and hospitals. Once I got them to understand that, yes, Fosdick Bruingate is a real person, they told me, no, they had nobody in their custody or care with that name or physical description.

He was supposed to be back in the office on Tuesday morning. By five o’clock that afternoon, I was convinced he was dead.

Yesterday, I come back from lunch to find his notebook lying on my desk: warped and stiff and stained with something that I hope is (please, God, let it be) tequila. A pair of scissors stabbed through the front cover held down a seven-page note recounting a hitchhike down the Tijuana Libre, a no-name town with the world’s best enchiladas, an infected tattoo, and something about girl named, “Esperanza”.

I don’t know what, if any of it, is true. Honestly, I don’t care. The note is an astounding piece of writing. It’s pure genius, a joy to read, and totally unprintable on this blog. The same can be said for the entirety of his Comic Con entries.

Oh, there’s a place for this stuff, just not on the JMS site, not right now. I’ve got to work out how to get it to the public. It’s too good to just let sit. And I’ll get Foz back on the beat as soon as possible.

And his trip to Comic-Con was not a total loss, as far as this blog is concerned. Today, I received a box of books with a San Diego postmark. Foz collected some great stuff for me to review, including:

The Beast Of Chicago: The Murderous Career Of H. H. Holmes
by Rick Geary

Wire Mothers: Harry Harlow and the Science of Love
by Jim Ottaviani and Dylan Meconis

Lucha Noir: The Complete Rafael Navarro in From Parts Unknown
by Rafael Navarro

as well as a DVD movie by director Ted Smith, a cool CD by Hans Karl, and several advance reader’s copies of promising books due out later this year.

So watch the site for reviews of those.

And thanks for staying tuned.

Posted in General, Comics | No Comments »

Finally! A reason to buy Marvel Comics

July 6th, 2007 by bweber

One hundred twenty-two days ago, I stopped buying comics.

The thing to understand is I’m a comics reader, not a collector. I’m in it for the stories. And the stories from The Big Two have long been turning from stale to moldy.

I’d grown tired of the melba toast melodrama cranked out by DC and Marvel. I was evermore pissed-off about blowing three bucks on a “book” that took me less than ten minutes to read and was nearly half ads. And the stories? Jesus, the stories. Every comic read like a rejected “Days Of Our Lives” script; the annual continuity shattering/re-ordering “event” never failed to end in another Civil Crisis of Infinite Boredom.

Multiply by six books a week. That’s about a thousand dollars a year. For what?

It was time to yank that spandex-clad monkey off my back.

I called my comic shop guy on a Tuesday and told him to cancel my pull list — a decision beautifully validated the following morning by the “shocking” death of Captain America .

Yaaaaawn.

And except for taking my daughter to Free Comic Book Day, I haven’t been in a shop since.

My four-color ennui vanished last week when I read that my close personal friend, Rich Koslowski, will be writing for the upcoming revamp of MARVEL COMICS ANTHOLOGY.

A Marvel comic from the genius who brought us The King, The Three Geeks saga (soon to be an indy motion picture), and the Ignatz Award Winning Three Fingers.

The book doesn’t hit stands until September but, much to my surprise, I’m already in line.

Get all the details from Rich right here.

YOU GO NOW!

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My Dead Grandmother Keeps Getting Mail

May 31st, 2007 by bweber

My Dead Grandmother Keeps Getting Mail
(click above to open the PDF) (1.5M)

(Best viewed at 85% zoom or higher. Scroll slowly when reading.)

Here it is! The long-awaited, much-touted mystery comic. It took nine months to do, but the finished story came out much better than expected thanks to two key people:

The wife, who aided with various visual elements and let me tie up her iMac for a whole day.

My wonderful and tolerant mother, who provided old snapshots and acted as a photo reference without asking too many questions. (And to think she was worried I was going to do something weird with those pictures.)

This comic is dedicated with a great deal of love to the memory of my grandmother — who really did die 14 years ago and whose mail still gets delivered to my house.

I miss you, Charlie. Now more than ever.




Posted in Comics | 2 Comments »