I don't know what I like best about this picture: the excellent Adam Hughes art, the fact that Supergirl is showing it to bidders, or that Dr. Doom is nearby raving about the whole thing. The neatest thing is that the piece went for over $4000 smackers! I didn't get to go to one of my favorite shows ever this year, but thanks to pal Patrick Sun, I was able to enjoy it vicariously through his photo gallery. And now you can too! Great pictures, Pat. If you were at the show and have a memory to spare, get all up in my comments, please. Congratulations Shelton Drum!

It looks like the Word Balloon show has decided to make the interviews free for a while, so follow this LINK and listen to a few. But mainly mine. John Siuntres does a terrific job with keeping the thing in a cohesive narrative, you'd think we planned where the discussion was going to go. That's the hallmark of an interviewer who's done his homework, and it was a pleasure to be on the show. In it we talk mainly about Interman, but also spend a good chunk of time on my upcoming Marvel work. I don't sound as radio-comfortable as someone who's other college major was Communications should sound, but I don't think sounding very slick is necessarily a good thing either. Spread the word on this, I think with proper support Word Balloon will be an excellent mouthpiece for the comics field. In spite of me.

John Siuntres of Sporting News Radio has created a new comics show called Word Balloon, and he recently interviewed me. I just babble on and on, but you might want to listen to the Brian Azzarello or Marc Andreyko interviews. I don't know much about Bitpasses and such, but it costs money. You can hear a tiny snippet of my Nesmithy voice whining about dull comics here.Though the soundbyte is a superhero reference, most of our interview is actually about The Interman. Thanks John!

Hey, there's another good review of Marvel Adventures Spider-Man #4 that's up. I was afraid no one would pay attention to the Adventures books, assuming they're the "baby books", but it seems word is getting out and we're getting noticed. Sean McKeever will take it from there ably on Spider-Man, and I'll be Puppet-Mastering the Fantastic Four. Thanks for the kind words!

SPURGEON: Is the fact that men like Marsh were larger than life figures and semi-bullshitters a part of that decision? Does the fact that much of the literature of the time was fanciful play a part?


OTTAVIANI: Oh sure. I wouldn't say bullshitters, though: Cope and Marsh were the real thing and true experts in their field. So I'd pick a different word. Bullies? Blowhards? Still and all, roght, and I worked extra hard in this book to give many of the characters their own voice/mode of speech. Red Cloud, P.T. Barnum, and Marsh were particularly important to me along those lines. Barnum was fun, though Jeff Parker of Interman fame, when going over the script, caught a place where I missed an obvious and perfect line for Barnum. It's in there now...thanks Jeff!


Oops, I somehow made it all about me again. The whole interview with Jim is over at The Comics Reporter, and features more images from Bonesharps. Yes, sorry I abbreviate the title, Jim. We've got Jim in Portland this week, by the way.

Some are with Tom Spurgeon.

So it's the personal memories that dominate when I think of working at the Journal. Hanging out on the back porch smoking and complaining about our low pay. The poker games at the moldy house in Ballard. Eric Reynolds and I posing as comic shop employees to sneak into a Marvel retailer presentation. Gary placing Conrad Groth astride a garbage can so he could finish an argument on CompuServe. Stopping work early to browbeat the interns about their taste in comics. Everyone should work at a place like Fantagraphics at least once in their lives, although no one can afford to twice.

When I was farting around in college running a weekly newspaper comics page, same-aged Tom Spurgeon was at The Comics Journal being a big part of that magazine's Golden Era. CJ was a profound influence on the way I thought about comics critically, and Tom the most interesting critic. Go read this in-depth interview by Ed Cunard over at the newly resurrected Comic Book Galaxy.

I need to thank young Ethan Robinson for waiting half a school year to get his Flat Stanley pictures from me. After I lost Stanley several times, his dad found an uncolored FS image online, and the kid stayed up past his bedtime to color it again so it could be sent to me. Me and Stanley did a little tour of Portland, and my karma now remains intact. Too bad I couldn't have done it this week, the Navy is in town. Not any cool ships like Destroyers or anything, just a bunch of (yawn) Frigates. And the other day I saw we've suddenly got Guardian Angels. Discussing that led to several of us at Mercury having the name "Lisa Sliwa" stuck in our heads (ex-wife of Curtis Sliwa, the original Angel, duh). And we're all still settling into some decorum to observe in trading DJ duties with the Airtunes. It quickly became obvious that taking turns after a song apiece interrupted work too much, so now we do "blocks" and sometimes themes to those blocks which have to be guessed. Maybe I should post studio notes on the Mercury Blog. F that, there's like a zillion other members who could be posting there and I've got this one to feed. You'd think a group blog would practically write itself, but taint so. Just like on the Huffington Blog, where the first week it looked like we'd be getting some occasional thoughts from John Cusak and David Mamet, and they haven't been back since. Sorry this is a bunch of disconnected thoughts like a Penny Cartoon from the old PeeWee's Playhouse show. Maybe I'll tie it all back up and use "Sliwa" for an exit line.

Sliwa.

Very happy today, there's a review to kill for over at Silver Bullet Comics for Marvel Adventures Spider-Man #4. I'm glad people are enjoying that issue, it was equally a blast to write. And a lot of hard work on Patrick Scherberger's aching hand.

Mercury Studio just got 63% more dopetastic yesterday. Last week, Matthew Clark and I got sick of our D-Link router failing repeatedly, so we went to the Mac store and bought a Airport Express and a Netgear Switch so that the warm waves of the internet would once again broadcast through our room. A day later we moved the stereo receiver to the center of the room, where the ethernet cable could get in STRIKING DISTANCE of the wifi. Then today, Lieber realized PHASE 3 of the Great Plan, and hooked up the audio cable from wifi to stereo. Now he, David, Terri and I can DJ from the iTunes on our Mac laptops. YES! No more being at the mercy of Ron Randall's disc changer which plays Richard Thompson whether the cd is in there or not! With this move, Mercury Studio has now surpassed all other working comics studios in the industry. Oh, your workplace has a 50 cd changer set on random? Well that's precious. WE HAVE OVER 60 COMBINED GIGABYTES OF MP3'S (and books on tape) FROM WHICH TO CHOOSE! PLAYED FROM THE COMFORT OF WHEREEVER IN THE ROOM WE HAPPEN TO BE! VIVA MERCURY!

Oh, and poo on you I-T guys who devote whole servers to the music you steal. You don't count.

Like my other bloggaz, I threw up a link to Zombie Eat Brains. Entertaining. Will it have the tenacity of Hulk's Blog That Is On The Internet? We'll see.

And as geeky as it is, I'll weigh in on this. THANAGAR. The hell is Rann going to do, beg Adam Strange to fight all the Hawkmen for them? Jump back on that Catherine Zeta-Beam.

Thanks to Matthew Clark, I finally saw the nice mention for my story in Four Letter Worlds. Cool.

While at your local comics shop today, do me a solid and pick up MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN #4 please. Story by me, super-fly art by Patrick Scherberger. Oh, I know you think it's going to be for wittle bitty kids, but you would be wrong. It's for you: at least stand there and read the first three pages in the store. Featuring the return of a classic Kirby monster: GOOM!