Shoot... so hard getting back on the horse when i've been away. To recap the last ten days.

MoCCA. good. Sales were down a little from last year, but hey … the crowd was steady, the vibe was groovy, and we were in New York, so that's o.k.

Good times at the Top Shelf booth. We had Alex Robinson, Tony Consiglio (whose 110Per¢ debuted), Lilli Carre (Tales of Woodsman Pete debut), Rob Venditti, Andy Runton, Jeremy Tinder, Chris Duffy (from Nickelodeon) pimping Grampa & Julie, the aforementioned Liz Prine and Aaron Renier, and of course, Papa Chris.

Publisher's Weekly wrote:
"...Lilli Carré was in Top Shelf's booth to sign the biggest debut of the show, Tales of Woodsman Pete…and they sold 125 copies of it over the weekend." (Subscription required, i think.)

Saw lot's of friends, partied pretty hard (the Barcade party by Sparkplug fucked me right up), played foosball at the Fantagraphics party, ate some lame and some great grub. Walked a lot. Rode the subway more times than i can count.

Stayed two nights at Aaron Renier's pad in Brooklyn (as did Liz Prince, in from Boston), and my last night at Gregory Benton's beautiful place on the Upper West Side.

I visited a plethora of bitchin' comics shops (Rocketship, Forbidden Planet and Jim Hanley's) and bookstores (The Strand and Virgin Megastore), and amazingly only spent $30!! I'm shocked and amazed. (The big ticket item, volume 2 of The Times of Botchan manga reprint, by Jiro Taniguchi [author of The Walking Man] and published by Potent/Fanfare.)

Meanwhile, once again my amigo Gary Butler asked me a couple geeky questions recently, and i thought the communique worthy yet again some bloggity fun.

***********************************************

On Jun 16, 2006, at 11:25 AM, Gary Butler wrote:
I am not a fan of Grell's writing at all. I enjoyed LONGBOW HUNTERS at the time that he did it, and felt that it evinced a (dare I say) maturation in his style. But I can't say that it aged well at all. (Still own it, mind.)

Brett responds:
As i mentioned in an earlier email, when i was 15 i was a HUGE fan of Warlord, but i just never liked his superhero stuff. In fact, i hated it. I'd totally lost it for him with Sable (The assassin who moonlights as a children's book author? What the fu.?), and never even picked up on Longbow Hunters when it came out. (Although i bought it a few years ago after i'd read a seemingly enlightened review of it, on how much deeper it runs than it's credited for. Bullshit. I sat down to read this thing and literally couldn't get past the first 10 or 15 pages. Just horrible stuff.)

Gary Butler wrote:
You a CONAN fan at all? Me, not so much. Never read the Howard. Hated the Arnold movies. Never got into the Marvel stuff. I have the entire Dark Horse run and have read maybe a third of it; it's clearly top-notch stuff, but consistently fails to make me want to immerse myself, so I have to figure that Conan's just not m'man...

Brett responds:
HUGE Conan fan, starting with the paperbacks with the Frazetta (and a few Boris) covers when i was but a wee lad. Those were great, especially the visceral writing of Howard himself. Hated the Conan movie... yeah, like this wimpy kid was forced into slave labor pushing this wheel around for ten years, and now he's a freakishly buff fighting machine... god that's so lame.

Anyway, i LOVED the long Marvel run by Roy Thomas and John Busceme (inked by Ernie Chan). Really beautifully drawn and well written fantasy. In fact, it's some of the tiny amount of fantasy i have in my library at all. The Dark Horse reprints of these are awesome, and well worth picking up. All the way through the first ten volumes. (And up until they reach issue #100, after which the magic flame burned out and quality plummeted.)

If you try any more Conan ever, go straight to the source and read the originals by Robert E. Howard.

Gary Butler wrote:
Now, early Cerebus, *there's* a charcter...

Brett responds:
Waaaay late on this bandwagon, and at about the time i was about to dive in, he launched his screed against womankind (i think it was called Reads?), and now i have no desire to ever read Cerebus.

***********************************************