If you're in the Northwest and not spending the weekend chained to an old growth tree to stop the lumberjacks, you gotta make it out to the Stumptown Comics Fest being held at Portland State University this Saturday. The guest list is too long for me to go into, just click that banner. Dedicated to focusing on the artists and their craft, this show has already quadrupled in size from the first one last year. Come out so you can say "I used to go to Stumptown when it was cool, before it became this week-long sellout circus," and come by the table. Also, I'll probably be in the Ezra Claytan Daniels Comic Art Battle again, so come be a ringer and applaud for me. See you there...

Here's my pushings for the day. First: you may find yourself in a comics store. Look around and see if any Mark Schultz cover art pops out at you, like say, on the all new BONE SHARPS, COWBOYS & THUNDER LIZARDS gn from GT-Labs. See it? Okay, buy that. Good.

Now. The supertalented Sandy Jarrell has a preview of his latest project up at WhamComics.com that I think will intrigue many of you. So go get in on some of that action.

There's also a cracking small-batch comic by Chris Gumpritch and Dennis Culver up online now called Round 4 that begs a gander too. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Finally I'd like to congratulate all the IGNATZ winners from the Small Press Expo, and all the excellent candidates in the webcomic category. The winner was the wet-your-pants-funny Perry Bible Fellowship, which really never disappoints. I'd like to also remind you to bookmark two of the other candidates, Dicebox by Jenn Manley Lee, and Superslackers by Steven Manale, two quality features that I hope have a higher profile now.

There, that's enough links that you should have your afternoon taken care of now. See you tomorrow.

Here's a preview from that aforementioned Fantastic Four issue, that I just found out about. For all I know, they do this every month, but how cool.

"Within a rollicking issue of Marvel Adventures Fantastic Four, you can find a sweetness and poignancy that most comic books eschew for big, empty crossovers... Jeff Parker nails the personalities of all the characters through humorous dialogue, friendly interaction and potentially deadly situations that they confront like professionals."

We got another great review from Silver Bullet! If you're in the comics shop, pick up "His Latest Flame," won'tcha? And yes, it does use the title of an Elvis song, observant one.

Well it looks like that's it for Mike Hoffman and his blog. Apparently he's done like others who want no more of Society, and gone to Australia. Or somewhere. Shoot, that blog was one of my favorite places to stop by. I'll leave the link up (EgoNayFacto) anyway, because it still has some rants that have to be read to be believed. Until the site fades away into whereever dead websites go.

Oh. My. God. My man Pat Sun has really outdone himself this time, pushing his camera to its limits in documenting that Fantasy/Fetish Opus that is the Atlanta Dragoncon. Here, have but a mere taste.

DC RULZ!



No, wait, MARVEL RULZ!!!



Laura Gjovaag, this one's for you.




And there's so much more. Superman with Clint Eastwood. ElastiGirl and Edna Mode. Dumb and Dumber. Terence and Phillip. The Mostly Naked Witchgirl. Some Goldsuited Anorexic. StormTroopettes. A giant 20-sided Die. MangaHo after Mango Ho. Levar Burton and Marina Sirtis emceeing it all. Zombies.

While you're abusing his bandwidth, don't forget to drop him a line regarding all the hard work. And don't use any of the pictures without Pat and Brian Bailie's permission. Now go kill a good hour or more at The Patcave.

By the way, the winners of the Escapist page auction were Roc and Laurie Blumenthal, who wisely chose to donate their winning bid to Habitat for Humanity, a group who will no doubt have a prominent role in helping get Lousianians back into homes. Thanks Roc and Laurie!

I'd hoped to get the Spider-Man piece I drew for the DVD of movie 2 into the Inkwell auction, but I stored it somewhere so safe I can't find it. When I do contribute to other auctions I'll point you that way. Now I'm off to develop organizational skills so I can hold onto original art somehow.

While making breakfast this morning I thought, "you're right, Haloscan Commenters, Beverage Week can't end with just four postings and on such a down note." So how could I not make a tribute to the coffee I'm enjoying right now? There it is, Stumptown Coffee beans ground, french-pressed, and served in my Periodic Table of the Elements mug with sugar and half-and-half. And boy,is it good. Sometimes my little girl Allie helps with the process, using her button-pushing abilities to help grind the beans. Mmm, that smooth, rich flavor.

Beverage Week salutes STUMPTOWN COFFEE!

Sorry to end Beverage Week on a down note, but it's important to point out drink trends that suck as well, like these verdammt "energy" drinks. The biggest offender to me is ROCKSTAR, mainly because when I'm on the freeway I have to see this cheesy bimbo poster with a girl who looks like a novelty blow-up doll. It's a pretty common practice to try to suggest a viewer think of another word when looking at your ad, and there's no missing that they want you to hear the name as PORNSTAR, especially since just like the band they have a star where the A should be. Now that's just bad taste, but what's morally bereft is that they're obviously aiming this at teens who want to look like they're drinking a malt liquor, the way they Schlitzify the design of the can. I just saw some kids on the train the other day acting with it, acting like they had a grownup drink. The company is based in Las Vegas, shocking I know. I can't get beyond all that cheese factor to actually buy the drink and try it, but if it tastes anything like Red Bull, I'd rather go drink some algae water out of a dirty aquarium.

Beverage Week says Thumbs Down to ROCKSTAR.

Not a new Fountains of Wayne song, but MEXICAN COKE is something I hold high hopes for. I mentioned already how much I avoid things sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, which is hard in this country since nearly everything is. If you'd like to feel like you've stumbled upon a full-on, Archer-Daniels Midland conspiracy, start looking at the ingredients of everything in your grocery cart and see how it gets in things where you just don't want to imagine an ear of corn floating in that product. It's generally accepted that this sweetener in beverages is what makes America a fat country, and I maintain that the stuff just makes me feel logy. And damn, people pour this crap on their pancakes like it's okay. They still extract syrup from Maple trees, just look harder for it. And contrary to supermarket evidence, there is still such a thing as cane sugar.

I don't know when we suddenly switched everything to corn sweetener, but one of my favorite conspiracy theories is the one that the whole New Coke fiasco was really just a cover to make the switch, that Classic Coke is where it began with a nice break in time so no one would have any Old Coke to compare it to. I can tell it doesn't taste like the drink of my youth, and it's not some psychological effect of the little green bottle. But now I'm optimistic. Apparently lots of people buy from local tiendas to get Coke made in Mexico, where they use ol'-school sugar instead. I'll admit, I haven't tried it yet, but maybe by this weekend. I'm still not going to suddenly get back into soft drinks, but for pure nostalgia it would be cool to taste something closer to the drink I enjoyed while reading comics in my Dad's store as a boy. I'll post again on the matter when I get a bottle.

Beverage Week possibly salutes MEXICAN COKE.

Now we've had blender technology in this country for almost a century, and we had watermelons since before that. So how come I had to go to Mexico before I tasted this perfect drink? It's so refreshing it feels like you're pouring LIFE in your mouth. And in a sense you are, because watermelon has freakish quantities of lycopenes in it, which is a strong antioxidant. Which means it fights the Free Radicals that age the hell out of you, and heart disease to boot. The Mexicans seem to be adding "sugar" to get the drink just right. We'll talk more about Mexico and their superior choice of sugar tomorrow. In recent years restaurants here seem to finally be getting on board the watermelon drink train, but as a cousin to the aforementioned Arnold Palmer. I just had a watermelon lemonade the other day. That was good, but they need to just commit and make the best juice the planet has known.

Beverage Week salutes WATERMELON JUICE.

First, if you go over to The Pulse, you can read a short bit about the upcoming Marvel Monster story I worked on. Go ahead, I'll wait. Now...




It wasn't until 1999 that I'd learned of the concept of combining lemonade and iced tea to make the refreshing beverage more popularly known as an Arnold Palmer. I don't know whether the famed golf pro actually invented or popularized his namesake drink, but it seems like something you would enjoy a glass of while riding around in a propane-driven cart. They now have an "official" endorsed version of the drink in a can, but I'd stay away from that, as it probably is sweetened with corn syrup. I'll save my corn syrup rant for a couple of days.

Beverage Week salutes the Arnold Palmer!

We're almost at the end of this Red Cross auction, thanks to everyone who passed the link around, and thanks of course the bidders. I'll probably do other auctions with sites better set up for bidding, and now we can get back to talking about unimportant things on this blog. To show my commitment to this being an inconsequential place, I will spend the rest of the week talking about beverages.

Thanks to Westfield's Roger Ash for the scan of a sketch I did him back in 2003.

As I mentioned down the blog my story in Dark Horse's THE ESCAPIST is coming out soon, and it seems fitting to use pages from that for any Katrina Relief auctioning. What I'll do is put up the pages here and you can bid in the Comments section or by email to me, and after a week I'll declare that winner, and give the person a studio address to mail a check made out to the American Red Cross which I'll send on as I send out the page. I may be putting up a page also in other places like the Bendis Board Auction to see where I'm getting to the people who want to donate this way. Also go check out Mike Wieringo's BLACK CAT piece on eBay that he's donating proceeds from, which hopefully they won't take down.

They took Mike's auction piece down. Check out Mike's blog and he'll probably tell where it will go up next.

Here's what the actual page looks like, below, from my story, "The Escapist at the Royal Festival of Magic."

I'm just about done writing this, and the excellent Reilly Brown is drawing like mad on it now. If you like inspirational Holiday comics where the villain is Santa, may I direct your preordering attention to...






MARVEL HOLIDAY SPECIAL 2005

Written by JEFF PARKER,

MIKE CAREY & SHAENON GARRITY

Penciled by REILLY BROWN,

MIKE PERKINS & ROGER LANGRIDGE

Cover by STUART IMMONEN

It’s that time of year again (or at least it will be when these books come out), and we’ve thrown out the rulebook to deliver the wildest set of holiday stories you’ll find anywhere! It’s a party with the New Avengers as they battle Ultron— programmed to think he’s Santa!?! That’s courtesy Jeff Parker (Interman, Marvel Adventures Fantastic Four) and hot newcomer Reilly Brown! Then Mike Carey (Ultimate Fantastic Four, Hellblazer) joins Mike Perkins (Spellbinders, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) to take the Fantastic Four on a wild ride! Finally, webcomics superstar Shaenon Garrity (Narbonic) joins indy comics legend Roger Langridge (Fred the Clown, Marvel Monsters: Fin Fang Four) for just the sort of insanity they’re known for!

48 PGS./ALL AGES ...$3.99