Meanwhile...

So, here's what I've been up to elsewhere on the Internet:



I forgot to link to this last week, but I reviewed Richard Sala's Cat Burglar Black for Robot 6. Nice to see that Sala linked to it from his site too.



This week's Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs was about the third and most recent volume of Age of Bronze.

I said a couple of weeks ago in What Are You Reading that I had mixed feelings about starting this book. On the one hand, I couldn't have been more excited about visiting Shanower's ancient Troy again. On the other, I knew that this would catch me up with the collections, giving me an impossibly long wait for the next one. Fortunately, the volume was enthralling enough to keep me from thinking about the lack of any additional Age of Bronze to follow immediately. At least while I was reading it.

Not that it’s without flaws. It feels sacrilegious to say after so thoroughly loving the first two volumes, but there were a couple of times in this one that I had a hard time connecting to what was going on in the story. Not because Shanower couldn’t find the emotional hook – he’s always brilliantly able to do that – but because I had a hard time figuring out the way a particular subplot supported the main story.

The biggest example of this is a long sequence about a king named Philoktetes who’s bitten by a snake during a sacrifice. It happens as the Greeks are camped on the island of Tenedos, their last stop before arriving at Troy. Over the next few days, as the poison begins to spread through the Philoktetes’ body, he’s in such pain that his screams and curses can be heard all over camp. It’s horribly distracting for High King Agamemnon and the rest of the army.

You can read the rest here and marvel at my stupidity in misplacing Odysseus' nationality. Yeesh.



I usually don't hit the window in time to contribute to Tom Spurgeon's weekly Five for Friday post, but I made it last week. The assignment was to Name Five Songs You'd Like to See Turned into Comic Stories and Your Artist of Choice.

Love the illustration (above) that Tom picked to go with my answers:

1. "Take on Me," a-ha -- Tatsuo Yoshida
2. "Voices Carry," 'Til Tuesday -- Colleen Coover
3. "Sixteen Tons," Tennessee Ernie Ford -- Eric Powell
4. "The Wanderer," U2 featuring Johnny Cash -- Darwyn Cooke
5. "One Night in Bangkok," Murray Head -- Mike Mignola