One day, all the work I've been doing will add up to a little green book, and hopefully the grand total of all the hours of enjoyment people get out of the book will add up to more than all the hours of toil I've spent creating it.

This will probably be my last post for a while, because I have some traveling lined up. (I mean, theoretically I'm still on hiatus, but...)

The weather here has been really lousy, and we can't wait to go someplace else. I hope to see some of you in New York this weekend, and I also hope to both eat and shop until I drop.

There is now a line of "Mr. Men" t-shirts and merchandise. Has anyone seen these? Like, at the mall? I bought a "Mr. Noisy" shirt. It actually has a Mr. Men tag and everything, they're a branded set, it's not a cheap knockoff, so that's nice. It's weird to have my childhood co-opted by someone other than me, but at least it's a cute shirt.

Here's an ad for the new book.

I bought the movie THREE KINGS on DVD at Staples (?) for $9 the other day. I hadn't seen it since maybe '99/2000. It is like a thousand times more disturbing now. It's very good. I love David O Russell and hope he makes another one soon. I HEART HUCKABEES was one of my top 5 of '04.

Yesterday I pre-ordered the PLANET EARTH DVD set on Amazon.ca. Have you guys seen this show? It's so mind-blowing. It's this BBC nature series shot in a super-gorgeous arty way. It's playing on the CBC right now, and I guess on Discovery (in the USA) soon; it wrapped up on the BBC in late 2006. The DVD comes out April 24 and Hope and I can't wait to watch the whole thing in one go.

--

While I was in the shower I was idly thinking about how comics are about the same age as like, rock n' roll, but there's probably 1 notable comics work for every thousand notable works of pop music in the past fifty years. There's a breadth issue. I was thinking about it because I was thinking about comics criticism and how underdeveloped it is, but I guess it's not really the critics' fault. There's just not much to work from. You can compare a new Graphic Novel to like a dozen previous works in your head, seven of which came out in the past five years, you know?

I'm sad about comics. Not really.

--

So I was thinking I would ask: who is going to this North York Public Library thing next week? The me thing? If you're going, what would you like me to talk about or show you? Even if you're not going, what in general do you think a speaking engagement like this should involve? I'm a little bit unprepared and I'm not totally sure how to do a "comics reading", which I think people are expecting. But I'd like to try. So, suggestions plz.

Apparently the Oni Press Wikipedia article has been flagged because it is suggested that Oni Press is not a "notable" company, and should be deleted. As everyone knows, there are plenty of Wikipedia articles about ridiculous crap, and I think a 10-year-old comics publisher with a good stable of creators and a solid library of works qualifies for an article.

SO: if you are a Wikipedia person, or a writer in general, and you know a little about Oni Press (or know how to Google the information), could you please go in there and rewrite the stupid article and cite sources and all that stuff? I would work on it, but I don't have the time (and I have a conflict of interest, sort of?).

Other news: I'm playing songs at Gus' Pub tonight. My guitar (which is really Hope's guitar, handed down from Hope's mom) is really old and the wood is splitting and it's a little buzzy. I could probably patch it up with like, duct tape, but that would probably wreck the finish. I need to take it in and get it looked at. We did that once in Chicago a few years ago, but it needs some more loving care, obviously. Anyway, clearly I can't do that until after the show, so hopefully someone will have a guitar for me to borrow, or maybe I'll just be ... reeeeally careful?

P.S. I got a few reference photos of Sneaky Dee's (see my previous entry), but if you were planning to go take pictures, I'm sure a few more wouldn't hurt. Like for example I can't remember what the floor looks like.

Hey, for some reason I have nothing much to talk about on here, and absolutely nothing to show.

I'm theoretically buckling down to do lots of work on the book this month and until it's done. Drawing is pretty hard. It's very rewarding when it stops being horrible, but I've been really busy for the past month somehow and every time I go back to the drawing board it's horrible again. I'll get over it soon! Maybe tomorrow!

P.S. the book won't be done anytime soon. Don't take this to mean anything. I'm really still getting started on the artwork due to miscellaneous setbacks. James hopes we can put it out for San Diego and I would sort of prefer August so we have time to get out review copies, etc.

I did an interview with Suicide Girls the other day, so hopefully that will go up soon. It was pretty good.

I got a watch.

I saw "Children of Men" and it was the best movie I've seen in ages.

We are really addicted to the Camera Obscura album, Let's Get Out Of This Country, which I sadly didn't discover until after I compiled my stupid "favourite of 2006" list. Their song "Lloyd, I'm ready to be heartbroken" would probably have been on my top-5 list (bumping Peter Bjorn & John, I think).

I'm working on some new songs.

I did some secret illustration work last week for something that will hopefully be seen in the UK. I'll tell you more soon.

I have a Matthew Friedberger song in my head. It's been there for a good chunk of the day. I forget what it's called.

That's all I can think of!!!

I can't get to my server to update my website, just in case anyone was wondering. I was going to say on there something about how the t-shirts are sold out, and how we're going to APE in April (in San Francisco), and I was going to ask if anybody knows a place where I could pay to have good MP3 hosting so I can have my music online without having to rely on the unreliable bit-torrent thing.

Here's a page i scanned out of my sketchbook the other day.


What I'm up to in my spare time...

* playing Final Fantasy XII for PS2

* we're finally watching Arrested Development Season 3 on DVD

* reading The Maltese Falcon, sort of, slowly

* still reading Fabric of the Cosmos, but the entropy chapter kind of blew my mind slightly and I haven't really picked it up in a little while

* a comic, The Mourning Star Vol. 1 by Kaz Strzepek, is totally awesome and you should pick it up if you can find it. It's very small and square and thick. It's kind of a fantasy story in an unusual post-apocalyptic world, like a cross between Akira Toriyama's Sandland and, say, Jeffrey Brown.

* the D&Q release of Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip is very great and a must-buy! Tove Jansson was a brilliant genius and I'm glad D&Q (Tom Devlin specifically, I think) is putting this out there.

* while I'm ranting about brilliant geniuses, I'm still very much fixated on Osamu Tezuka. The latest english release is Ode to Kirihito, which is like 850 pages for 20 dollars or something ($16 at Amazon), with the added value of being completely fucking insane! I'm also slowly working my way through Phoenix, which I love to bits. Even the stupid ones are perfect, in my mind.

heads up:
Hot Fuzz trailers, etc have been posted online!

namedrop:
Edgar Wright emailed me personally to tell me the trailers were online. hoo ha

me:
working on something for a Toronto publication that will hopefully see print next week, if I get it done in time. I put all my Toronto-feelings into the Scott Pilgrim books, so squeezing out even a few extra drops of Toronto Time is pretty difficult for me, it turns out.

next weekend:
I am signing at the Beguiling, to make up for the canceled signing last month. Details forthcoming (like I'm not even sure if it'll be on Friday or Saturday yet, but definitely either Friday 27th or Saturday 28th).

i read:
* DESOLATION JONES v1 - hot stuff. bitter, dark, violent, elegantly restrained, secretly tender series from Warren Ellis. Issue 7 comes out this week!
* KUROSAGI CORPSE DELIVERY SERVICE v1 - excellent "editor's choice" type of manga from Dark Horse, with a design-y cover and a great high concept: a group of seniors at a Buddhist university realize they're unemployable, so they start a business bringing misplaced corpses to justice!
* DENSHA OTOKO v1 (CMX) - there's a competing Densha Otoko manga from Viz, but this is the one I read. nice, sweet, light-hearted nerd-love story with fun art and good energy.
* LESS THAN ZERO by Bret Easton Ellis - no relation to Warren (I think). I've been working my way circuitously through this Ellis's oeuvre. This is his first novel and it is sharp, minimal, jaded, hazy, horrifying, etc. Written in 1985 but it feels like we've come back around to the world feeling the same way again. Change a few cultural references, add cell phones and internet, and it could be now. Next on the list is American Psycho!

i am still reading:
* IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT A TRAVELER by Italo Calvino (fiction, post-moderny)
* FABRIC OF THE COSMOS by Brian Greene (non-fiction, physics stuff)

right now we're watching ENTOURAGE, season 2 on DVD. This show irritates the hell out of me while being entertaining despite itself. It takes place in Male Fantasy World, where all females are either bitches or whores or both, and every shot has like 100 super-hot female extras vying to get their boobs in front of the camera. Also, it is about a guy who might play Aquaman in a fictional Aquaman movie. Entertaining, yes.

My computer broke, so posting will be infrequent for a while, and hopefully digest-style like this.

There is an ebay auction for some Scott Pilgrim Vol 3 artwork that I want to keep you aware of. It ends tomorrow sometime. I think it should go higher because I would like to make more money on it. There better be some furious last-minute action on it.

recent obsessions:

the cover of this book


the Japanese logo for UNICO (the baby unicorn)


this image

uhhh... yeah... my desktop... for no reason... i was just happy with it.

the windows theme is called "aesthetic groove 1". it's last year's style, but i still like it. i'm running the stupid dock thing with the stupid ugly icons. i can never figure out how to install new icons on my desktop or anything.

sorry for showing my own website and everything. :(

today we cleaned this house and hope also saw at least two unknown kitties out in the yard. we live in a mysterious kingdom of animals. i want to listen to these mitch hedberg CDs really bad so i might bring them to the main studio so we can listen and draw or something.

i also have this:

I was sick most of last week, so I didn't get a lot done. I finally sent out the (probably) 2nd-last batch of Scott Pilgrim orders. I am very close to done. I'm on something like #92, minus two people who got bumped back for dumb labeling reasons and stuff (my fault). I'll try to finish up on Monday.

OK, dreamtime. Feel free to skip this paragraph because it'll be stupid. Last night, I had a dream that I was watching the band Final Fantasy and was kind of in awe of the guy's crazy looping or whatever (this is because Chris used to rave about him; I'm really not even a fan) and then I had to go up and play a song after him for some reason, but I wasn't ready, etc, generic dream. All of my friends were there (on stage), etc. I told them we were going to play "you practically rock" and we played it but everything was bad and I kept switching instruments in the middle of the song, etc. OK, that's enough dreamtime.

While sick I actually found a copy of Shadow Hearts: Covenant (the PS2 game I have been fruitlessly, half-assedly searching for). The MicroPlay in Sackville is shutting down, and they're selling all their rentals. We just happened to drop by there one day (it's right beside a grocery store that we rarely go to) and I asked if they had it, and they did, and I just had to search through their random, disorganized mess of games to find it. It was only 20 bucks! The case is kind of messed up (stickers, etc) but the game is really clean, not scratchy or anything, and so far it's kind of fun. It's got so much retarded anime bullshit in it, and it's a really obvious Final Fantasy clone, but it's still fun. It's just like playing an alternate universe Final Fantasy game or something. With more cheesy anime garbage characterization. I seriously don't think any Japanese person who's ever worked on a videogame has ever even MET a woman in real life.

that A-storm is hitting us now. A big branch fell off one of our trees while we weren't watching. the cats want to go out and play, but they're not allowed. good thing we got the lawn mowed yesterday!


(not this lawn)

I just noticed that last month (which was Asian Heritage month), Diamond Comics Distributors highlighted me, along with probably every other semi-Asian human being they could think of in their catalogue.

I don't have anything good to say right now. I'm sick of the internet, comics, etc. We bought a new laser printer though and it is awesome. It's like the ultimate thing I never knew I wanted. It functions right off a network cable through our router, which is so futuristic. I am in love. We're also going to buy a large-format scanner next week and that will make life so shiny and new.

I'm playing a bit of Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, which is getting more entertaining as it goes. I kind of like it because it makes me nostalgic for AD&D games that never went so smoothly. You can fight bad guys through a door, in awkward hallways, etc. It's interesting. Isn't there already a new BOF game out too? Whatever. I only buy games that are under $25. I still want someone to send (or buy) me a copy of Shadow Hearts: Covenant, sort of. I don't want to order it from the internet and pay shipping out the ass, you guys, I live in CANADA. Canada is so shitty about that stuff. Did you know it's costing me like $11 to send the same package within Canada that costs $5 to send to the USA?

Speaking of which, I'm doing the shipping, I shipped a few books out the other day, and I'll finish the others early this week. Those damned buttons will be the death of me. There's an I Wish Kim Pine Was My Girlfriend button, and a Scott 1-UP button, and the raccoon button. I'll bring the leftovers to MoCCA, which is next week. While there I hope to eat some good food, get a new t-shirt from rich, and enjoy myself somewhat.

This is a new lamp I got. My art table is now in our big studio which we finally finished fixing up, and tomorrow we will make chairs. This room is now the little studio. My computer will be in here for now, and my music stuff, and this chair and the stereo and the lamp, and I will do backwards dances. I should paint the floor in zigzags.

Scott Pilgrim Vol 3 is printed, and a copy is fedexing its way to me for tomorrow morning. I am somewhat nervous. I finally get to read it! And see if anything is fucked up! Anyway, I think this keeps us on track for a May 24 release (25 in the UK).

I have been buying cheap PS2 games since I finished Vol 3. I got Viewtiful Joe for $12.99, then Sonic Mega Collection Plus for $24.99, then today I got Prince of Persia: Sands of Time for $14.99. I played it for an hour or so, then I was painting the trim in the studio, and I had the song "If I Could Turn Back Time" by Cher in my head the entire time. ( I go on and on )

Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness: I started putting the notes and outline together May 19, 2005. Drew the first interior pages starting July 19, 2005. A few hiatuses in there, the big ones being September (long driving trip to the southern U.S., including SPX) and November (we moved to the country and painted and fixed up a lot of stuff, so I hardly touched the book until December).

Anyway, I got done on April 4th, 2006. If anyone has time to kill and wants to figure out how many days that was or whatever, I'd be interested to know.

For what it's worth, I desperately wanted to push the release date back last August, but James didn't let me. He is now very sorry. :(

I'm working towards an outline for Vol 4 now, and doing some promo art. And I have a few outstanding pieces that I owe people which I'm going to try to do ASAP. I might redesign my website, too.

wednesday 5 april: flew to london, landed at gatwick. had weird pressure brain bubble on landing and felt really bad for a while. recovered with tea on the gatwick express, goggled at the weird houses and stuff (on the return trip this morning they'd stopped seeming weird). struggled to stay awake all day. went on three walking trips from the hotel. ate unappetizing-yet-huge portions of pad thai. saw some of hyde park, the royal albert hall, the victoria & something museum of decorative art, more stuff, hard to remember, finally mercifully fell asleep.

( much, much more )

i'm back on the internet~

i'm planning to get an LCD monitor next week. any tips? My eye is on the Dell UltraSharp 1905FP. i want to go up to the 19 inches because it would be nice, and easier on the eyes, i think? that one seems to be the best reviewed, and ... that's really one of my only reasons for wanting it. and locke has two Dell LCDs and said they were good. but those are better reasons for buying something than "because i drew it for a magazine", which I was going to do -- this ViewSonic thingy that I actually drew for a magazine recently. But I read some more reviews of it today, and it doesn't seem that great.

the only problem with Dell is that the only place to get it seems to be dell.ca, and they seem a trifle overpriced. plus their shipping is like "1-2 weeks" so... what? lame.

anyway, any tips? yeah... whatever.

my studio is super yellow. orange-juice-orange. school bus yellow. tangerine! sorta. i'll take some more pictures eventually. it's been pretty slow getting stuff in order and there's a lot more to be done.

i can't even comprehend the amounts of money that we've spent in the past week. it's only been a WEEK!

today we did something pretty funny, which was pay off our credit cards. mine had like $5000 on it, so I guess I feel better about myself? it was largely incurred during the days of long distance relationships. lots of flights, train rides, bus rides, rental cars, gifts, fancy meals, amazon orders and stuff.

then (ironically, i guess) we went SHOPPING! I had a wad of cash from selling that Ramona drawing to Chris McLaren. I bought a new track jacket at the Sears outlet (blue/orange/white and says "27," which I like, even though I'm still 26). Hope got some Value Village stuff, including a cool typewriter for $8.

Fast food in Halifax is going downhill... Subway discontinued their stamps promotion, then they discontinued their seafood sub (my favourite!) and their service is just getting amazingly shitty and the quality of their food is like... ew?? SUB PAR? i love subway! This one time in late August, they only had the cheese bread, and they refused to bake any other bread because they said it was too hot. Understandable, but WHAT? And don't even get me started on the new Taco Bell that opened -- I am going to do a scathing exposé-comic on that subject this weekend, I swear to god. i swear to god.

can i get some opinions on the Colbert Report? we've been torrenting it (it doesn't play on our 3 TV channels, strangely?), and we like it, but dude, it is Intense shit. Eh? Isn't it? That first episode was like 80 punches in the face. and obviously he seems a little nervous, especially during the interviews. I hope he finds his footing and the show settles into its niche. It's just so different from Jon Stewart. Jon is so chilled-out most of the time, and so natural... Colbert is such a character... it's hard to say how it'll pan out.

yesterday we played softball.

today i am an old, old man.

We spent $89 at the groceries today. It's a new record. I think our previous all-time high was like $60-something. NOW WE HAVE SO MUCH FOOD! WE CAN TRULY LIVE!

Steve & Sabina are in town and we went for a bbq at her grandma's house. Good lord, they live on the arm of the bay (this is water talk) and it's gorgeous. I got a little seasick standing on the pier. I have become some kind of total pussy when it comes to, um, the ground under my feet moving. Maybe I have some kind of inner ear problem? Anyway, I ate fake meat products on buns, then fireworks happened, then we talked about comics and stuff and shat the shit.

I am suddenly filled with the desire to read this Chandler novel I bought at the Beguiling like 6 months ago and put on the "to do" pile, so I might do that for a bit.