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Why is water wet?

Why did Judas rat the Romans while Jesus slept?

I hadn’t really thought about the state of manga before this question. I have some quibbles (Kodansha’s digital manga is vapor, I have issues with Yen Press’s approach, Viz Signature needs to be available digitally), and some stuff I love (Vertical Inc in general, a lot of dumb shonen from Viz, and a bunch of Viz Signature books).

I’m too fond of a small slice of the manga pie to really get anything about worrying about the entire pie. Manga for me is like… One Piece, books where people get shot while smoking cigarettes, and the odd series Vertical picks up.

The publishers closing and turning to Kickstarter to get books done is pretty sad, though.

Hmm… I really liked that Ganges I read. That guy can draw his butt off. Asterios Polyp was pretty good. We3 has some of my favorite storytelling in comics.

You know, this isn’t quite what you mean, but I think Vagabond may be my favorite example of doing anything. The art’s great, excellent even, but what really stunned me about that series, more than everything else that stunned me about that series, was that Inoue got a 500-some page fight scene into the series and it doesn’t drag at all. It’s positively absurd—I bought the Vizbig volumes of Vagabond, 3 in 1 jobs, and the fight’s all in one volume. You start off with a fight and then some drama for the first 50-100 pages, and then Musashi walks down off a mountain and into a war and we’re off. The pacing, storytelling, art, all of that worked in concert so that Inoue could pull that off. That’s just crazy to me. I love it.

Sorry I couldn’t answer your question more directly, but I think this still sorta counts. I love Krazy Kat for its inventiveness, and it’s pushing 100 years old. I love Jack Kirby’s ’70s output for that same reason, and I love a lot of modern comics that same way. People keep finding new things to do, and I think that’s what I love, rather than any specific new thing.

Real life or comics?

Real life, no particular order: Muhammad Ali, Richard Pryor, Malcolm X, my mother, and probably the RZA. Honorable mentions: El-P, Tupac Shakur, Marcus Garvey, Curtis Mayfield.

Comics (in order) 1. Spider-Man 2. The Flash (generally Wally West, but I’m open to being convinced for Barry Allen) 3. Static 4. Gambit 5. Variable

If we’re being honest, Gambit varies sometimes, too. There’s a pool of a lot of dudes (Gambit, Black Panther, Hawkeye, certain versions of Wolverine, Tommy Monaghan, and others) who switch in and out of 4 and 5.

If this list was supposed to be for the gender neutral “heroes,” add Elektra into my top 5, bumping Gambit, and add Jubilee, Black Widow, Rocket, and… I’m blanking, maybe Black Cat onto the bench.

Typhoid Mary & Green Goblin (Harry) are my favorite villains, tied for #1. Hypno Hustler is #2.

whoops, forgot my writing heroes, no order again: Kool G Rap, the GZA, Robert Frost, John Keats, and James Ellroy.

I haven’t. I saw the Viral Factor (good) with a friend and then spent the rest of the weekend inside. Tentatively planning to catch it Saturday morning.

I don’t, I’m sorry. I don’t even really have any bloggers who would be good reading. That’s a subject I should probably read about.

I haven’t, actually, which is still a huge surprise to me. Maybe one or two people get mad enough to email me a year, though probably a dozen like to get at me in the comments for whatever post they cruised by.

I’ve got the usual Xbox Live stuff, but never in any real volume. No death threats from comics writing, either, not that I can remember. A couple suicide wishes. I did get a death threat on a video game job (I was whatever you call the dude who runs the blog and interacts with fans) where a guy said he’d knock me out at San Diego Comic-con. He was as full of crap as anybody else wishing death on somebody else via the internet, though.

I actually had to think about this one. I’ve been powering through my backlog, so things are a little fuzzy. I’m reasonably sure that it was volume 9 of Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service. I don’t have anything particularly deep on this one. The stories in this volume were a little too outlandish (in a series where a dude can make dead bodies talk…), but it’s a good read. The artist is Housui Yamazaki, and he has this weirdly clinical approach to nudity that I find interesting. It’s not that it’s not sexualized so much as it’s just barely sexualized and very matter of fact about things, rather than overly titillating. He’s much more exploitative about the gore, though, and the contrast is curious.

I need to write about manga more, actually, it’s been a little while since I dug into something.

Hmm… no order here, but Superfly, The Mack, Drunken Master, Mystery of Chess-Boxing (aka Ghost Face Killer), and… gosh, I dunno. Shogun Assassin is over here on my shelf and I like that one a whole lot, so that’s on the list, too.

Traumatic event works, though maybe early adulthood. I graduated high school and my college plans were immediately derailed to something crappy, so I spent some time depressed and writing my butt off. A friend hooked me up with a games journo gig, I started doing comics blogging, I switched to the production side of the video game industry instead of the journo side, and then started comics journalism, too.

I hate the term “comics journalism,” though. It’s… not, not really. “writer about comics” is clunkier, but truer.

I do, but… man, I hate reading bad comics to even be able to do that. They have it coming, but I don’t have reading them coming. It’s half as fun as writing about comics is otherwise, ‘cause I want nothing to do with the issue when I’m done. A lotta books could use a jab, I’ll admit that for free. I got something coming later this week, though. Somebody said something stupid about piracy and it’s stuck in my craw.

The sci-fi thing is weird. It’s mostly a prose thing, but the bias bleeds into other media, too. I’m open to it (Akira is clearly sci-fi, though it doesn’t feel “sci-fi” to me), but barring a burst of reading in middle school, spaceships and aliens are a harder sell for me. I’m fine with people on planets or whatever, but when people start making up words and languages I just lose interest. Got the same problem with fantasy. Made it through Lord of the Rings right before the first movie came out, and I think that was the last swords and elves fantasy I sought out.

It’s easier in comics than it is in prose, I guess because the artist gives you a skeleton to imagine from. I’m sure if I made a thorough survey of my tastes I’d be as fine with sci-fi as I am anything else, but when I imagine a slate of movies/books I like, I don’t see a lot of sci-fi.

This tumblr ask thing is super awkward, but still interesting. I always avoided doing it because I thought it would be weird. Turns out I was riiiiiiight

Still ongoing! I took a brief break to get back into the swing of comics writing, but later this week I think I’ll have something new. The old stuff is here, though it’s more creative writing than fiction, strictly. Couple of real ones in there.

I’m hoping to do one or two a week, maybe a little more often schedule depending, until I get to a point where I’m as generally happy with them as I am with my comics writing. Posting it in (semi-?)public helps with that, forcing me to do or don’t, so now I just need to get back to committing the time to do it.

I’m the type of dude that sends your baby’s mama out for food.

I haven’t. I loved that song in high school, mostly because I was all about agreeing with that sentiment and setting myself apart from that. Now that I’m grown, I still like it a whole lot, and can and still do sing along with the whole joint, but I disagree with parts of it now. I think he’s pretty much correct when talking about who gave birth to what and who’s iller, but the position of the song, like a white vs black thing, doesn’t work for me any more.

The song still bangs, though, and it’s only now that I’m older that I can appreciate the progression the music takes into punk rock and the seamless switch from punk to rap. I get the song better now, if that makes sense, as a statement, than I did when I believed the statement behind it. I probably actually like it better now that I disagree with a bit of it.

Huh. This question was really good. I hadn’t thought of that song in depth before.