Target Acquired

Well, I'm pretty much done with Xmas shopping for the kids. What a tremendous drag it's been. First I have some $10 coupons expiring 11/22, so I go online and 2 of the 3 toys I was going to get weren't available, and shipping on the other items is really high and unlike their sister Amazon, you can't select how it's shipped (caveat: I ordered furniture from Target.com a couple months ago and their delivery service didn't work on Saturday, requiring me to take half a day off work!). So I decided to wait for this Thanksgiving sale/free shipping on 15,000 items or whatever. Turns out none of the free shipping applied to anything I wanted. Then I open up the digital edition of their locall newspaper circular and see this Lego Knights Kingdom castle for $49, half price for a really elaborate set, which my son would love. Of course, it's not available online, so by the time I got to the local Target yesterday, they were all gone, along with the Little Mermaid carriage for my daughter. I did end up getting a ton of stuff, though, so I guess it worked out for them. It was hard to keep it reasonable when there were no super big gifts for either of them, just a few $20-$40 ones. I may save a couple of my son's presents for his b-day in February.

ALMOST started reading comics again! I got the Absolute New Frontier and it looks great, and I think SLG sent me something to review. I get my stuff through DCBS and there are some flaws with them, like I changed my address on my last two orders but they were sent to the previous address because that's what's shown on my Profile--how stupid is that? This is after emailing them ahead of time to make sure the address change was in effect. I also have a tough time remembering to get my order in every month and some sort of reminder would be great; also, the Pull List has never worked for me.

Some months ago, I alluded to a special project I was in consideration for, from a new graphic novel publisher. It's Hachette Book Group, formerly Warner Books, and they are putting together a series of three separate graphic novels, each co-written by a member of the Wu-Tang Clan rap group, specifically Method Man, Genius/GZA and Ghostface. I found an artist and wrote a three page proposal/story, each page featuring one of the guys, and I thought it came out well. It looks like they've chosen two of the three creative teams already, both of whom are writer/artists, which is more impressive to them or something. I'm still in contention for the Ghostface book but not holding my breath. It would be a good opportunity, though, and aside from the usual hiccups and some miscommunication, I have no bad feelings about it if it doesn't happen. I guess the first will come out some time early next year. At worst, I have a nice-looking proposal piece to use elsewhere.