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With this New York Times piece, I veer between drawing realistic eyes and little dot eyeballs, and it holds this strong unconscious meaning in the story. Or maybe not. Maybe nobody cares.

Huh. That’s interesting. I hadn’t noticed that.

Also, since most Comics Comics readers live under rocks, you may not know that the irreplaceable and much-missed Comics Reporter is back up and running. Now you do.

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From Tom Spurgeon:

“I’m happy to report there’s nothing weird about the site going down, and I’m flattered anyone would notice. It just went down about 10 AM on Sunday and the server people (after an hour on the phone) say it will take them a few days to fix it. It’s the kind of nothing-you-can-do-about-it meltdown that I guess happens every now and then. I will say it was a bit more tolerable when this happened when we were renting space from that guy in Malibu who hosted sites on equipment his garage than it is now, when we’re paying YAHOO money to do this.

“This really screws up the momentum of the holiday interview series, for which I apologize. Frank’s interview was posted on Sunday but was only up for two hours or so, Chris Pitzer was suhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifpposed to go out Monday, I was going to give away 50 boxes of comics on Christmas, and Francoise Mouly is supposed to be up today. Not to mention the seven already completed pieces that no one can access right now, or the 11 interviews yet to come that I’m unable to finish work on, a few of which may now be crowded out.

“My impulse is to re-run the interviews at the top of blog, and there’s really no other day to run a comics giveaway that targets the more devoted readers, so that’s probably out. When the site goes live again, a bunch of half-finished work will go up for a couple of minutes or hours that I will fix the second I can get to it. I hope you’ll afford me a few minutes to clean things up.

“I’m really, really sorry about this. I know from the e-mails that I receive that a few people were appreciative of new content during the holiday slowdown. I’m really uncomfortable talking about the writing on comics I do or am going to do or how hard or how easy it is as opposed to just shutting up and doing the writing, so hopefully CR goes up soon and we can get back to seven days a week content and I don’t ever have to talk about this stuff again.

“PS — I’d still love to hear from anyone who has a birthdate they’d like me to recognize on the site: tomATcomicsreporterDOTcom.”

UPDATE: Tom explains the situation as of January 2 here.

UPDATE II: The site’s back up! Go, read.

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The mighty Tom Spurgeon interviewed me for Comics Reporter. It’s a pretty awesome interview and covers ground not discussed in the equally awesome Inkstuds radio interview I did recently. Please check it out here.

To the right is an old Sirk zine of mine from ’93.

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See if you can catch the several (not-important-at-all-oh-no) mistakes I’ve cleverly hidden in my replies to Tom Spurgeon’s interview questions over at the Comics Reporter. If you can find all five (or are there more?), I will reward you with a look of embarrassed panic.

[UPDATE: To paraphrase General Petraeus, the Spurge is working — and the mistake I allude to in the headline of this post has now been fixed. No more freebies in this contest.)

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As most of you know, this is the week Comics Comics 3 is supposed to be shipping to finer comic stores, and early reviews are in!

Tom “The Comics Reporter” Spurgeon calls it “lovely-looking … full of engaging essays where writers stake out a unique aesthetic position and then defend it. A lot of comics coverage leaves off that first part. The third and best issue.”

Joe “Jog” McCulloch (who, as a contributor to the issue, is perhaps not completely trustworthy) calls it a “fine newspaper of comics information and festivity”, and further claims, “It’s a scientifically proven fact that a copy of Comics Comics can heal a multitude of diseases if pressed against the offending portion of the body, though it’s gotta be a sick body part, not just offending.”

Last but not least (well, technically, I guess it is least), Newsarama’s Chris Mautner ranks the issue as “pretty good”. But he also says there are “lots of crack reviews”, which sounds very good to me.

Next post: less hype, more blog.

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Today Tom Spurgeon offers an excellent explanation of the appeal of Wally Wood. I remain fascinated by the late work of Wood. His and Ogden Whitney’s work have occupied my brain for the better part of a year now. Both create such odd, tactile visual spaces and both, in some ways, are under-appreciated. The recent biography of Wood, Wally’s World, by Steve Starger and J. David Spurlock does little to remedy that. It’s a slapdash affair that at times borders on incoherence. There’s a great book to be written on Wood–it just doesn’t exist yet. In the meantime, check out Tom’s succinct take on a unique artist.

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First, yes, another review of Comics Comics (the magazine) is in, this time from the redoubtable Tom Spurgeon at the Comics Reporter. (Is that the right way to use “redoubtable”?) Read it here:

“The hilarious thing is that this works.”

Second, it has come to my attention that many (two) of our readers have been asking whether or not our magazine’s content might be made available here on our site. It pleases me to announce that a crack team is currently working on the related technological problems, and some time in the near future you’ll be able to read the amazing Comics Comics features and stories you’ve only heard about right here online.

Third, (and here you readers are privy to confidential business discussions) Dan, I think you’re worried too much about whether or not the comics we talk about here are “mainstream” or not. I don’t know whether that term even means anything any more, for one thing. Also, as you say, great “underground” comics don’t come out every day, and we don’t want to cannibalize pieces that potentially might work better in our magazine. In my opinion, we should just write about anything comics-related that we think is interesting, and forget about everything else. As I’m sure you’d agree, we just don’t want to become a typical comics blog, reviewing all of the week’s releases. Other sites already do that, and probably make a better job of it than we would, anyway. This blog is intended only to fool readers into thinking that the magazine might be worth picking up, or more importantly, considering it as a venue for advertising. (NB: we have very reasonable rates.)

Fourth, for those of you wondering about our publication schedule here, Dan and I both hope to contribute two or so posts each week. Right now, other PictureBox publication demands mean that Dan probably will not be posting quite that often, at least until things die down. In any case, at least three out of five weekdays should feature new content.

Filler ends here.

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Sorry we missed a day blogging. I ate too many burgers this weekend, and kind of needed a break. (Green-chile cheeseburgers are amazing things, but should be eaten in moderation.

Anyway, I still haven’t come up with the energy for a really well-considered post, so here are a few random things I thought worth noting.

1. The week before last in the New York Times, John Hodgman wrote a really nice review of recent comics, including MOME, Ganges, et cetera. (Most of you probably saw it.) I don’t agree with everything he has to say, but it’s thoughtful, informed, and it isn’t patronizing. This isn’t the first smart comics review Hodgman’s written in the Times, and with any luck, it won’t be the last. Maybe other writers for big-time newspapers and magazines will even follow his example.

2. Last week, on his invaluable Comics Reporter blog, Tom Spurgeon advanced an argument about superhero comics addressing hot-button political issues that happens to more or less, kinda-sorta parallel one of my own recent posts, albeit in a much more focused and coherent manner. Marvel Comics’ own Aubrey Sitterson wrote in to disagree, mostly using straw-man tactics.

I was going to write more about all of this, but ultimately decided against it, as I don’t want to bore readers by talking about superheroes too much. But suffice it to say that Sitterson is only able to think of one modern superhero comic that actually supports his argument, and it’s Watchmen. As usual.

I forgot to mention it earlier, but maybe the fact that none of the characters in that book are used to sell Pez dispensers has something to do with Watchmen‘s artistic success.

3. Many of you may already be aware of Big Fun magazine, but if you’re not, and you’re a fan of classic adventure strips, I highly recommend that you seek it out. The included strips are fairly hard-to-find elsewhere, and they’ve been extremely well-reproduced. Leslie Turner’s Captain Easy, Noel Sickles‘ Scorchy Smith, and Warren Tufts’ Lance are all currently being serialized, and the artwork is simply fantastic.

More, and better, entries later in the week.