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Continuing the little break from Discworld, next up is the Absolute Sandman, volume 3, by Neil Gaiman.

This volume collects the Brief Lives storyline, where Dream and Delirium go looking for their missing brother, and the World’s End story, where several strangers are marooned in a mysterious inn during a reality storm. It also contains some short, one-issue stories, including the story Ramadan where the caliph of Baghdad sells his city, as well as extensive galleries and the full script of Ramadan.

Neither of the two longer storylines are among my favourite Sandman stories. World’s End in particular, I feel is on the weaker side, I don’t care much about the characters involved, or about their stories, which only become interesting when there are fleeting glimpses of the larger mythology of the series. Only towards the very end does something happen which is of interest to me, so it took me quite some time to get through it, I kept taking pauses and reading other things along the way.

Brief Lives on the other hand, is quite good. Though I say it is not among my favourites, this has more to do with so much of Sandman being extremely good than Brief Lives being poor. Possibly, the reason I don’t go nuts for it is that it heavily features Delirium, whom I’ve never quite seen the attraction of. It is an interesting story, not least because it finally introduces us to the missing Endless, and for its connection to the Orpheus myth. And, of course, it contains important set-up for the rest of the series. In general I quite enjoy stories where the mundane is invaded by the fantastic, so I’m not really sure why this one doesn’t sit so well with me.

Ramadan, however, is one of my favourites. It is a beautiful story, written to resemble a tale from One Thousand and One Nights, and though it’s been a while since I last looked in a copy of that, it seems to me a very good emulation of the style.

The writing here is superb, and aside from some of the one-shots in World’s End, so are the characters. The drawings are beautiful throughout, I have no complaints at all on the art. And seeing Death and Dream as children is practically worth the price of admission.

As for the extras, I don’t really have any complaints, but I’m not singing praises either. The many gallery pictures are pretty, but I’m just not the type of person who enjoys looking at that sort of feature for long. The script for Ramadan is interesting in its way, I suppose, but I’m not sure why I would read the story in script form when it’s available in full-fledged comic form just a few pages earlier. I did however enjoy the little documentary pieces on Sandman merchandise, specifically the Little Endless statues.

Ultimately, this has to be seen as part of the longer Sandman story rather than a work in its own right, I think. It doesn’t make sense to recommend the third quarter of a story to people, so I have to recommend Sandman as a whole. And I do. Very strongly. Sandman is a fantastic comic, and you are definitely missing out if you haven’t read it.

And if you have read it, and are wondering whether the over-sized deluxe edition is worth it, I’d have to say yes. Not, perhaps, if you already own the series, but if you’ve been holding off on buying it, this is what you’ve been waiting for. The book itself is beautiful; large, heavy and bound in leather, and looking just as mysterious and inviting as a Sandman book should.

Taking a short break from all the Discworld, the next book I finished reading was How to Make Webcomics, by Brad Guigar, Dave Kellet, Scott Kurtz and Kristofer Straub.

The title of How to Make Webcomics pretty much sums up what the book is about. It is not so much about cartooning per se, it assumes the reader is already familiar with the basics, and focuses on preparing work for digital distribution, and on the business side of webcomics.

Personally, I have no plans or desires for making webcomics, certainly not for commercial gain. I bought this book for the same reason that I listen to the Webcomics Weekly podcast by the same group – the creators are extremely funny people. The book, predictably, is more down-to-business in tone and has fewer of the hilarious tangents they tend to go off on when in verbal discussion, but I still found it entertaining.

Coming to it from that perspective, much of the first half of the book is not really all that interesting, being about drawing and image preparation and such things, but if you are interested in attempting to make a webcomic yourself, I think the information found here would be invaluable help for a beginner. Later chapters, about things such as web design, branding and monetising your work, a are more easily adapted to other endeavours, and so are of more interest to me. There is plenty of good advise crammed into this book, I was actually a bit surprised at how much ground it covered.

Each chapter is written by one of the four authors, but the other three will occasionally chime in with words of support or dissenting views via speech bubbles. This is my favourite aspect of the book, it is where it gets the most interesting, and most funny, as the authors debate, argue and joke about the topics at hand. In addition, regardless of chapter author, they have all written smaller sidebars on topics related to the chapter topics, which are scattered throughout the book. These are often quite interesting and funny as well, I particularly enjoyed Straub’s four points on embedding sound in websites.

I also quite enjoyed the “hot seat” feature, in which each of the authors present a couple of their strips for critique by the others. It is interesting to see professionals talk about things like these.

Speaking of strips, the book is littered with them. Series by all four authors are present, usually strips which relate in some way to the subject being discussed. As mentioned, these are extremely funny people, who all make very funny strips, and there are plenty of them in each chapter.

If you are interested in making webcomics, this book is probably a godsend. If you’re like me, without any ambitions of cartooning whatsoever, you will probably still find it an entertaining read.

This digital Elfquest thing has got me pondering reading order (I suspect my imminent exams also have something to do with my dwelling on these thoughts; the alternative is just to horrible to contemplate!), what is the best way to read through the entire story?

Elfquest has been published in several different series, some of them running concurrently, telling simultaneous stories, but with crossovers, which makes it hard to put one ahead of the other. There is also no guarantee that any given issue does not take place before the previous one, with the series like Hidden Years and the other flashbacks. And when they switched to anthology-publishing, I get the impression that chronology varied even more, though I haven’t read these myself yet, so I’m not sure (and this makes planning a reading order even harder, of course.)

How, then, to read it in an order which minimizes spoilers for future issues, but retains a certain chronology? I’ve pondered, studied timelines and mapped it out, and put together this list. Since I don’t know exactly the contents of all the series (and boy, is there a balancing act to reading time lines and avoiding spoilers as best you can!) so it might not be quite right, which is why I’m putting it up here to hopefully get comments from people more knowledgeable than I.

The first three series are easy enough, they’re a story alone, and only after these did the publications split into concurrent runs, so the list begins:

• All of the original Elfquest.
• All of Siege at Blue Mountain.
• All of Kings of the Broken Wheel.

After this is where it gets tricky. Here’s what I have so far:

• Hidden Years #1-3.
• New Blood #11 and #12.
• Hidden Years #8, then #5-7, #9 and #4.
• All of Kahvi.
• Hidden Years #9.5-22
• New Blood #14-35.
• All of Shards.
• Hidden Years #23-29.
• All of Blood of Ten Chiefs.
• All of Two-Spear.

Two-Spear in particular, I am unsure of, it is possible it should come before Kahvi, in which case Blood of Ten Chiefs should probably follow it as well, to maintain the thematic link. If that is the case, both of them should go before Hidden Years entirely, along with the Wolfrider!-stories.

Which brings me to the next segment, where it really gets messy, since we’re now in the anthology years.

• The Wolfrider!-stories found in Volume 2 #19, #21, #23, #25, #27, #29, #31 and #33.
• The Dreamtime-stories found in Volume 2 #4-7, #9-13, #15, #16 and #18.
• The Wild Hunt-stories found in Metamorphosis* and in Volume 2 #1-7, #10-12, #14, #15, #18, #20-30, #32 and #33.
• The Fire-Eye-stories found in Metamorphosis and in Volume 2 #1-7, #9-14, #16, #17 an #19-22.
• The Wavedancers issue, as well as the Wavedancers-stories found in Metamorphosis and in Volume 2 #1, #2, #5, #21, #23, #24, #27, #28, #30 and #31.
• The Rogue’s Curse stories found in Metamorphosis and in Volume 2 #1, #3, #8-10, #12, #13, #15-17, #20, #22, #24-26 and #28-30.
• All of The Rebels.
• All of Jink.
• The FutureQuest-stories found in Metamorphosis and in Volume 2 #10, #11, #13-15, #17, #19, #20 and #22.

And then finally all the Worldpool “what if?”-stories:

• New Blood #1-10.
• The Worldpool-stories in Volume 2 #2-4, #9-27 and #31.

And that’s the list. If anybody has comments, please share them! Now I need dinner.

^{* I have not been able to determine whether Metamorphosis and Volume 2 #1 is the same thing, or if Metamorphosis was a special. If you know, please tell me!}

I’ve twittered about this, but I feel it’s worth a post of its own as well: Warp Graphics is making the entire run of ElfQuest available for free on the web. As a long-time ElfQuest fan, this is the kind of news that makes me go “squeee!” My collection has significant holes in it, so I’m really looking forward to seing what I’ve missed.

I suppose this is another interesting development in the business of webcomics, what with another established publisher moving its stuff online, interesting to some, anyway. It’s also clearly a marketing strategy to drum up interest for future publications. It’s already working. After reading what is up there now, I ran through my whole collection again over Easter, and today I went out and bought “the Discovery”, so good thinking, Warp, I guess.

Life, lately, has devolved into getting up in the middle of the day, going to work, coming home, and then not moving for several hours until I fall asleep. Writing it out, that seems far from healthy, but I find it satisfies my innate laziness.

Since my last post (in MAY? Good grief! Loki is right to complain!) I don’t feel like I have really done much worth talking about. School’s obviously been out for the summer (and is actually soon to start up again, but let’s gloss over that little tidbit), and I’m back at my parent’s house, not being very useful. Despite swearing that I would never touch a lawn mower again, I am once more mowing graveyards. The equipment and lack of communication with management is just as bad as last year, and just to make it all perfect, I seem to have developed allergies to grass. Definitely not applying for this job next year.

I am also making a bit of money by cleaning the doctor’s and dentist’s offices on weekdays. Basically I have the job of the Janitor from Scrubs. (Well, except for all the fixing and handyman duties, I just clean, so it’s not really like that job at all, but any analogy that compares me with Neil Flynn is worth including.)

I spent a week in Fredrikstad, on the Oase festival, but a writeup of that wouldn’t be very interesting. There are only so many ways to say “sang and prayed a lot” before it gets boring.

I have bought a new computer, one running this fancy-pants Vista stuff. Help Desk speaks truth, and they’ve sucked all the fun out of Solitaire and Minesweeper (I liked them because they were simple, now they’re a chore!), but other than that, all is well. Mainly because it can run URU!

I’ve been aching to play Uru again for some time now, and now I finally can! I never want to leave my room ever again! And yet I keep having to anyway! Curses! Exclamation points!

This is the main reason for my slack updating, to be honest. Uru Live is very definitely pretty much at the top of my list of Most Awesome Games Ever, narrowly beaten by Riven, possibly sharing second place with The Longest Journey. Explanations can’t do it justice, go get one of the free visitor’s accounts and have a look around it for yourself. It helps to have played the rest of the Myst games, but it isn’t necessary. Or even better, get a paid account, so you can actually see the game, not just the visitor approved areas. August is right around the corner, sign up on the first. It’s 99 cents for the first month, so that gives you plenty of time to get hooked decide if you like it or not.

Another thing I’ve been doing a little bit of is reading, so I’ll do a quick little mini-review-list:

Swamp Thing – I bought all the volumes containing Alan Moore’s run (and when he left it ended! LALALALA THERE IS NO MORE AFTER THAT!). This was very good, I can definitely see why it became so popular. I’ve read them twice since buying them, and will probably end up reading them again before going back to school.

Hellblazer – I bought Original Sins and Dangerous Habits, which the lie-list at the store said were the two containing the earliest stories. Wikipedia tells me there are two volumes in between, though, so I guess I know where next month’s comic budget is going. Original Sins was ok, but nothing spectacular, but I really loved Dangerous Habits, which seems to be where the movie pilfered all it’s best bits. I really didn’t need to get hooked on an expense like this now, but I’m much to weak to resist, so I guess I’ll be buying new shelves soon.

The Lies of Locke Lamora and Red Seas under Red Skies – Oh man! I bought Lies some time ago, on sale, and it’s just been sitting in my shelf ever since waiting for me to find the time to read it. Luckily for me, that time arrived at the same time as the sequel, so I didn’t have to grind my teeth and wring my hands waiting for more. At least not until I finished Seas. These books were good. These books were very good. Who doesn’t love con men and capers? And pirates? And it’s in a good fantasy setting to boot. Locke Lamora is hereby officially one of my favorite fictional characters.

Renegade’s Magic – the end of Robin Hobb’s Soldier Son trilogy, and what an end! Seriously, the end took be completely by surprise, especially considering her other work. Like all her books, this was a fantastic story, well worth the read.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – I’m not even going to bother. Either you’ve read it, or you intend to read it, or you hate it without having read it, or you just don’t care. I thought it was good, and I’ll leave it at that.

I think that’s it. I make no guarantees for continued activity, not with Uru installed, but I somehow suspect that I’ll be more tempted to blog once school starts again and I have other things to do.

The third issue of Cheshire Crossing is out. Rejoice, rejoice!

This issue isn’t quite as fast-paced and completely bad-ass as the last one, but it is still very, very good. It has some answers to nagging questions, lots and lots of clever references to the source materials, extremely good villains, and plenty of Weir’s fantastic humour. I know I’ll be reading it at least three more times today, and I’ll probably reread the other two issues as well.

Like I did last time, I’ll reread it now, and write down my thoughts as I go along, with little to no structure or planning. This will probably include many spoilers, so make sure you read the issue yourself first.

(more…)

Have you read today’s xkcd? It is made of pure fun.

Happily ignoring the fact that I haven’t written anything for a month, I thought I’d ponder the Web Cartoonist’s Choice Awards a bit.

The nominations for the 2007 WCCA was supposed to start yesterday, but it has apparently been delayed for a week. The plus side of this is that it gives people some time to brush up on the past year to find who they want to nominate.

I’m not allowed to actually nominate anybody, since I’m not involved in the making of a webcomic. Actually, I am involved in the making of what can be called a webcomic, but I doubt it would get me past the WCCA bouncer. It certainly wouldn’t if I was the WCCA bouncer. Anyways, even though I can’t actually nominate anybody, here’s a little list of comics I’d like to see on the ballot this year.

I’ll start with the small print categories, first of all Outstanding Superhero/Action Comic. I can only think of one comic I read that might fit into this category. Fortunately, it’s a very good one that definitely deserves some recognition, namely The Adventures of Dr. McNinja. It isn’t really what I normally think of as a superhero or action comic, that sends my mind more towards Superman and The Phantom. Dr. McNinja is first and foremost hilarious, but a ninja (an especially a McNinja) is just as good as any superhero, and there is most definitely plenty of awesome action.

For Outstanding Science Fiction Comic, Starslip Crisis springs instantly to mind. In the last year, we’ve had fun interludes with the Chronomantic and Vore and Zillion, both of which are obviously building up to something awesome, met the fantastic villain Obdrath von Lucifuge, encountered the crisis, lost Jovia, lost Cirbozoid, and seen a ghost that wasn’t a ghost. It’s been exciting, thrilling, sad and extremely funny. I read a few other sci-fi strips, but this year Starslip has definitely been the best of them.

I think I’ll skip Outstanding Romantic Comic, can’t think of any to nominate for that, and move on to Outstanding Slice-of-Life Comic. Real Life. Easily. Real Life was actually the first webcomic I ever read, and it’s still one of my favorites. It’s changed a lot over the years, but it has always been funny. Without doing any real research, I think it’s actually moved more towards the realistic and autobiographical side, and away from the time machines and parallel universes in later years. There’s still the occasional space station, but that’s the exception rather than the rule, I think. I can think of a few other comics that might be nominated here, but Real Life deserves to beat them all.

In Outstanding Gaming Comic, The Order of the Stick is the only choice for me. It is one of the funniest comics I know of, and it also has a fantastic story, with excellent RPG jokes sprinkled on top.

With Outstanding Fantasy Comic, we reach the first category where I’m torn. People can nominate up to three comics for each category, but obviously only one of them can win, and I’m not sure which of my two candidates deserve that more. The first is The Gods of Arr-Kelaan which has had a good year, especially since the new Consequences story started. The other is The Knights of Dor, one of my favorite fantasy stories in general, not just in comics.

For Outstanding Anthropomorphic Comic, I’ll say Kevin and Kell, as it is the only one I can think of where the fact that the characters are animals serves a purpose.

Moving on to the writing awards, for Outstanding Dramatic Comic I’m not sure who I’d nominate. Starslip Crisis has certainly had some great dramatic moments with the death of Jovia, the unveiling of the crisis and the war with Katarakis, so I think I’ll go with that.

For Outstanding Comedic Comic, Get Medieval. Get Medieval is one of the most consistently funny strips I know, with great gags, funny stories and humorous characters. This year it has had such high points as siege by bees, Georges le Gai, the tournament and of course the pilgrimage.

I don’t think I read any single panel comic regularly, so I’ll skip that, and go to Outstanding Short Form Comic. I’d nominate Count Your Sheep, which come to think of it has very little story or continuity between individuals strips. That amazing mix of sad, cute and funny definitely deserves an award of some sort, and seeing as how it does all this in self-contained strips, this would be a good one.

For Outstanding Long Form Comic, I have a problem. Starslip Crisis, The Gods of Arr-Kelaan, Get Medieval, The Order of the Stick, Narbonic and Cheshire Crossing are all comics I feel have had awesome stories this year, and I have no idea how to choose between them. If it comes to it, I guess Starslip, The Order of the Stick and Narbonic would be my three nominees.

Moving on, Outstanding Character Writing. I have no idea. What comes to mind is Vanderbeam revealing new sides of himself at the death of Jovia. And the promotion of Cutter. And the war over Cirbozoid. Not to mention Cutter’s growth in the promotion to captain. And the recent fiasco at command school. Yeah, you know what, Starslip Crisis. Also coming to mind is Narbonic, with Dave’s dismissal and descent into madness, and the effect of this on all the characters, so two nominees here.

Then for the main writing award, Outstanding Writer. I’d nominate Kristofer Straub (of Starslip Crisis), Irony Chan (of Get Medieval) and Shaenon Garrity (of Narbonic). All three write fantastic comics, that are funny and have exiting stories. Actually, I think I’ll reread them all after I finish this.

Now, for the art awards… I’m going to skip these. They deal with areas I don’t feel very confident commenting on. In general, the writing is much more crucial to whether or not I’ll like a comic than the art.

Come to think of it, though, Starslip Crisis should be nominated for Outstanding Website Design, for the very handy save place function and the extremely nifty Exhibition Mode.

Skipping the art, and saving the best for last, we come to Outstanding Newcomer. Here, I’d nominate Cheshire Crossing, which is Awesome with capital A, and Home on the Strange, which is good geeky fun. In the end Cheshire would probably get the vote from me if they both ended on the ballot, but Home on the Strange should be there as well.

Then the grand finale, Outstanding Comic. I’m really glad I can’t vote, as there is no way I can decide which of these has been the greatest this year. Narbonic and Get Medieval. I cannot set one over the other. They both ruled supremely in my reading list this year, with Starslip Crisis a close second.

And that’s it. If I were giving awards, those listed here would be the ones getting them.

Well, my reading list sure filled up. See you in another month.