"Please." If you haven't checked in here in a few days, I've moved the blog over to my main website, PARKERSPACE. It's something like 73% more nifty, according to studies. And if you have absolutely nothing else to write about and want to post an entry on your own blog, you could do me a solid and mention the move. We'll all be happier over there.

That Von Trapp Family number is dedicated to the beloved Mystifying Oracle, which we now must leave to drift around at the mercy of the internet tide, until it's buried in the sediment forever. As promised, I'm finally folding the blog into my main website, PARKERSPACE.com so the site will actually be updated frequently again. Though I knew a blog was a keen thing to have three years ago, (just two years behind everyone else!) I didn't realize it would emerge victorious as the web paradigm. But it has, and thanks to Steven Gettis's steely resolve at beating a WordPress theme silly, I now have a hybrid home site and weblog. You'll remember him from his massive collection of literary figures drawn by comics luminaries. Which is the most revealing site online about cartoonists, because you can tell who reads and who doesn't.

I know what a pain it is to make changes to the blogroll, but I hope you'll do it for me- I've had Parkerspace for seven years now, so it's really unlikely the blog will make another rail hop. And those of you who have been nice enough to link both sites can trim it to one. I'm finally actually using the visual metaphor appropriate for the name, with old science book art that portrayed the future as it was supposed to turn out. Soon I'll have the covers column at left clickable for the respective publisher pages, and some of the other categories will be live within a week or so. That's how Mystifying Oracle (named for my lap-drawing Ouija board, see very first post) will live on, as the Newsletter you can join the mailing list for. Maybe I'll get up the gumption to write the "About" section tomorrow, and try to use it to trick people into filling in my Wikipedia entry for me.

Those of you who have switched locations- should I do referrer posts for a while?

Finally, we have official corroboration on a phenomena that has vexed my drawing friends and I for a decade. For me this began at Artamus Studios years ago whenever Chuck Wojtkiewicz would break out his set of ellipses and circle templates (which he kindly lent me all the time!) and the room would fill with a cheese smell. We puzzled over this many a day.

Flash forward to the present and Mercury Studio (with no S!) when Steve Lieber broke out his fairly new set of ALVIN templates. Wham! The smell is back. Much speculation ensues again. Finally Steve decided to write the Alvin company and ask them.

And they answered! Go read the correspondence at the Mercury Blog. "We know this is not a prank."

Time to talk Spidey and the Fantastic Four.Yep. And I ain't a-stoppin' there. This one's with Dave Richards who did such a great job on the Agents of Atlas articles at COMIC BOOK RESOURCES.