The fifth book in The City Between is now up on Kickstarter. So please grab yourself a physical copy of Shards of Reflection. It follows a new vampire as she looks for the vampire who turned her.
This is technically not in February, but it is so early in March that I’m going to bring it up now. I’ll be at Emerald City Comic Con on March 5th-8th. I’ll be at table 11120. I have been at Emerald City every year since 2011, but this will probably be my last year. Ever since Reedpop bought Emerald City, they have messed up my table. And this year they moved it away from the other comic artists and down to the basement. That combined with them publicly saying they want to move away from comics/nerd culture to compete with Spring Break/Coachella and they have been caught selling the data both exhibitors and attendees, means I should replace it with a different show. If you can’t read the article here is a relavant quote:
“We’re competing with Coachella, we’re competing with spring break and with all kinds of other big events,” says Kristina Rogers, VP, ReedPOP comics portfolio in an interview in the trade publication ICv2 earlier this week. “For us, that means expanding what pop culture means – everything from Renaissance Faires to comedy to music. Our idea is to take every cool festival you’ve gone to and bring it indoors. It’s a bit more of a ‘World’s Fair’ approach.”
“Eventually the “comic con” (that’s what the CC stands for) becomes an “everything con,” with something for fans of all aspects of pop culture, plus the added bonus of celebrity photo ops, a slightly nerdy vibe, and lots of glorious costumes.”
It’s a huge bummer that Reedpop ruined such a good convention, but I need to move on. Maybe I’ll be able to find a different con in Seattle to check out.
Until Emerald City, I’m still hosting my Saturday afternoon movie. Anyone who wants to can join by jumping into my discord. Movies play Saturday at 11 am west coast time.
- Feb 14th – Moonlight
- Feb 21st – Casablanca
- Feb 28th – Malcolm X
And as usual I’m streaming 3 times a week.
- Tuesday at 7pm – 10pm PST – Art times
- Wednesday at 7pm – 9pm PST – Art times
- Sunday at 8pm – 10pm PST – Baldur’s Gate 3
Join me on my twitch! If you haven’t joined, I usually end up talking to a friend about tv or movies while drawing.
Most of this month I was building the kickstarter page. I got bookplates for sale as an add on. I’m gonna sketch on them and sign them, so took me a bit to come up with a nice design that still left room for sketches. I’m happy with how they turned out.
his month I’m mostly gonna focus on getting my stock ready for con season starting up. And making sure I’m ahead on Glass Diamonds.
I’m also reviewing the submissions for Iron Circus’s newest anthology Lie Machine. It is about propaganda and manufactured consent. I’m the main editor on it and did the first pass on all the submissions this weekend. Spike and I will make the final call later this month. There are already some cool stories from people, so I think this will end up a rad book.
My Saturday afternoon movies this month were started with Rob Reiner movies I hadn’t seen before. The best of which was When Harry Met Sally. I had it on my to watch list for awhile. Broey Deshanel’s video on the Anatomy of a Rom Com bumped it to higher up on the list. It lived up it’s reputation. I especially liked Harry and Sally’s friends that end up together.
The other movies I watched didn’t live up to what I had heard about them. I watched This is Spinal Tap, which my main comment on is I think references to it spoiled all the really good jokes. I think stone hedge prop gag and the bad album covers were the only ones that hadn’t been spoiled for me.
Next was Stand By Me which I thought was just okay. While the main character had good arc acknowledging his grief, the other boys’ stories felt incomplete. Like River Phoenix’s character is dealing with people assuming he’s no good like his parents, but that doesn’t get much resolution. And it also felt like the other two boys could have been cut from the movie without much changing. On stream I talked to my pal Joe about how they also don’t really like the movie. Both of us kinda agreed that the movie Now and Then is similar but better job giving the whole friend group an arc and development.
And this last one will probably make a lot of my readers mad. I saw the movie Akira for the first time and was mostly frustrated. I had been putting off seeing it because I have read the manga. Pretty much every time I’ve seen an anime movie that is based off a manga series, I’ve been frustrated with the movie because I can’t stop thinking about how it is just scratching the surface of what makes the manga great. I don’t mind adaptions changing stuff, it is just the movies that are kinda summaries of something deeper leaves me feeling unsatisfied. While the Akira movie is beautifully animated and the sound design is top notch, I couldn’t stop thinking about the manga. As you can see above, I chatted with my pal Kory Bing about it.
I am really liking A Knight in the Seven Kingdoms. Last year I listened to the audiobook and thought the smaller scale combined with the stories being episodic would make it easier to adapt to tv. So I was cautiously optimistic when I saw the trailer. The first few episodes exceeded my expectation. The casting is excellent. Dunk and Egg both have great chemistry. The actor playing Dunk really sells how sincere and kind he is. And Lyonel Baratheon in particular steals the show. It also had me thinking part of why the show works is because it isn’t afraid to be silly. I think a lot of recent fantasy and science fiction shows/movies have been held back by trying not to look dumb. I also like that even smaller details are helping reinforce its themes. The third episode has a great bit where Dunk and Egg talk about a dirty song and what seems like a joke turns into a point that the subject of the song used the little she had to become great (like what Dunk will do).
While my HBO is turned back on to watch A Knight in the Seven Kingdoms, I also got caught up on Hacks and The Righteous Gem Stones. The latter is a show I really enjoy but don’t have a whole lot to say. But I love Hacks because it is rare that women get to be as messy and terrible as the leads in this show. It is also the only show that correctly pronounces my hometown Waltham, MA.
Fallout Season 2 ended strong, but I still think the big picture isn’t quite coming together. I like each episode on it’s own, but there were things like a supermutant cameo that didn’t go anywhere and the Brotherhood of Steel didn’t amount to much. I do wish they would have some of the good factions like Followers of the Apocalypse or Jacobstown. The show makes the point that Caesar’s Legion is much worse than the NCR, but Lucy’s arguement about their being some good people out there is weakened by leaving out the people trying to do good without the corruption problems of the NCR.
That it for this month. Thanks again for your support. And before I go, here’s a duck dressed as Leazel from Baldur’s Gate 3. Meredith McClaren sent it to me. It’s in reference to a Laezel’s voice actress reading out a Baldur’s Gate shit post.
