Not A Wedding Announcement

I promised myself not to write about current relationships until there was some sort of wedding announcement. Don't hold your breath, blue people were never a turn on for me (unless you count Brainy Smurf, but I don't).

I'm also taking a break from writing bitter love poems, political rants, and anything involving words.

Which is why I've been spending so much time trying to reconnect with my visual artist friends. Really, ever since Celeste moved to LA, my life has been sorely lacking in the hypnotic eyefucking of inanimate objects (unless you count the catotonic guy at The Cantab Semifinals, but I don't). Sora's photography makes me eyesmile, but I am admittedly biased, and have a thing for his most frequent model. But what else to fill the void? Stalk Randy Milholland? No, thanks. Accidentally buy thousands of dollars worth of graphic novels by buying one every time you go to the comic book store, and going to the comic book store several times a week? Uhhhh, yea, that seemed like a good idea at the time. Not so much, anymore, though.

I've been going to WANE. A Boston meetup for comic artists and writers. The first few times I went were the kind of special that drools a lot. Each time, there was this big guy, obsessed with Erik Larsen, who he once was elbowed by at a comic con, making them friends forever. He always talks about these fancomics he's working on, and mentioning that the website he plans to post them on gets 600,000 hits, and the other website he plans on posting them on gets 400,000 hits, so he has a million readers. I have thus far managed to stifle the urge to remind him that since he hasn't actually written his comic yet, he technically doesn't have any readers. This is how I plan on getting into Heaven.

At the meetup in February, Big Guy mentioned the Chimpeach sticker in the comic book store window, and began ranting "You need to take that out. That sort of thing is devisive. And comic books should be about bringing people together, not driving them apart. If my grandmother was to walk by this store, she'd see that sticker, and walk right by, without stopping in."

"Uh," I said, losing my place in the Heaven line, "Does your grandmother ever go into comic book stores?"

"No, but she might some day. And, anyway, comics ahould be about nice things, and harmony. Not something that's going to make people angry. It's about escapism."

"Sooooo...Art Speigelman's Maus shouldn't exist, then? I mean, theoretically, it might offend Nazis." And, I know, everyone always pull the Nazi card when they're talking about free expression, but what else was I going to say, "Sooooo...the X-Men shouldn't exist because it might offend mutants with magnetic powers who like to wear purple helmets?" And, even then, what made Magneto evil? Being tortured by Nazis. Every argument I had was going to devolve into Nazis anyway, why not cut to the chase?

He then babbled about peace, harmony, and masturbating to the Snorks. Actually, he may not have mentioned the Snork thing, I ended up deciding to tune him out.

At any rate, I skipped March's meeting, and was not overly optimistic about April's. So I brought Zuzu along, figuring, if nothing else, her interaction with Big Guy would be hilarious.

Well, fuck you pessimism, April's meetup was great. Another comic group showed up, and, combined, we had enough people to populate a Marvel Superhero team, and The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Big Guy didn't get a lot of babble time. And I got to schmooze with the cool woman who puts out the Malarkey anthology that Celeste is in, AND paulmay, whose covers for The Weekly Dig are all kinds of awesome. His portfolio also turned my tongue all fanboy, and I now have some new webcomic sites to explore. Anyhow, if your looking for a bunch of cool, frequently updated comics, you should check out act_i_vate, which features an array of web-comix. You should also check out paulmay's website, Delicious Brains Dot Com.

Time for me to get back to work on that Torpor Heights comic I wanted to do with Celeste.