Work Journal 2/9

Good day overall, though I'm very tired and red-eyed. Got to the gym, got some new comics...Wrote pages 2 and 6 of Superunknown #2. Maybe it's odd to write out of sequence, especially as the scene begun on page two extends another couple pages, but whatever. Felt right. My method for the past couple comics written is to generally attack the easier pages first and save the more complex ones for later--stuff with high emotional content, complex storytelling, etc. Page 2, and indeed, page 1, has some people vomiting, among other things. Mostly in the background, which is where I like to vomit. I like to start the book off with vomiting so that I'm a step ahead of the reader's own gag reflex, then he feels like a copycat, or that I have amazing emetic power. Okay, never mind all that.

On ADD's recommendation, I ordered COMIC ART #6 and #7 last week and received them today. Read all of #7 tonight, much of it over dinner and on the stationary bike. Wonderful magazine with excellent production, though I was surprised how quickly it read for $9. The $9.95 Comics Journal lasts for hours and hours, though there's not as many glossy color pages, admittedly. The pieces on Harvey Kurtzman were touching but sad, the latter partly because of Kurtzman's terrible mistake in leaving MAD Magazine just as it was becoming a huge sensation to start the slick but quickly cancelled TRUMP with Hefner's dough, and partly because the lavishly reproduced sketches for Kurtzman's proposed humor piece on Freudian automobile designs aren't funny. Not sure we needed three or four versions of the "Hately-Vicious" warrior car.

www.jaypinkerton.com is the funny chap who brought us the hilarious and dark Spider-Man comic strip remixes (funny captions replacing the original drek--the lettering's perfect), and you should check out his site. His essays are good, too.