2006 – if you can´t think of a compliment, don´t bother making something up.

2007 will be; better writing; more writing;

Also, less adjectives.

Hugs + cuddles.

*Boom*

Digital affection; link hentai; whom did I love online 2006?

Precocious Curmudgeon – The newest kid on my blog-roll. David Welsh has the best taste in comics of every person that is not me; and he knows how to write about them.

Comics 212 – Thoughtful, funny, essential. Plus, the best article about Peter Parker´s penis, ever. He should blog daily.

BeaucoupKevin – I think Kevin Church is pissing acid. He´s got bite and he knows decent music when he sees it (heh).
I´m hoping he will be the one person able to explain to me why, apart from historical reasons, I should like Jack Kirby. How about it Mr. Church?

Comics Worth Reading – Johanna Draper Carlson´s blog is one of the first blogs I ever read, and stuck with. A meta-enabled multi-thematical comicsblogging octopus;
The reviews tend to run a bit on the tame side, but I´ll put that down to personal decency.)

Speaking of which; are there any essential, or just plain good, blogs written by female people, that someone who is not into superheroes would want to read? (Sorry Ragnell, sorry Kalinara)

Jog – The Blog – Jog, could you please think of my ADHD? I mean, holy fuck, some of those posts are longer than books I´ve read? Unfortunately he also does some of the most in-depth, sophisticated blogging about comics around. So I got to… keep… reading…

¡Journalista! – Everything you need to know about everything comics and related, everyday. It´s The Beat for grown-ups.

Indie Spinner Rack – The only podcast I´m currently listening to. Covering Small Press, Mini-Comics and pretty much everything else without capes, those guys are a) funny, b) enthusiastic and c) always looking for something new.

Armagideon Time – The end to all MP3 blogging; with a selection ranging from Synth-Pop to Punk, to Blues, Soundtracks and back. But, he´s not just dumping these to hog and grab and rot on some nerd´s harddrive, he´s putting care into this, choosing tracks to fit a theme, a mood, a story. It´s like the asynchronous version of the best radio program ever.

Reality check:

Climate Change Blog – So,Civil War sucked? How about getting some perspective back into your silly little lifes?

…

No, I didn´t forget Mad Ink Beard – Derik Badman´s the grumpy sage of comics blogging. So there.

Following up the Manga / Manhwa list with the best of the rest; this time in no particular order; this time a lote more terse;

The Best of Dinosaur Comics: 2003-2005 AD Working from an ultra limited set-up, Ryan North is a genius, a philosopher, a sophist and a ladies man. Check: Dinosaur Comics.

Double Yellow Lines Gray Horses notwithstanding, my Hope Larson pick for 2006 is her story from this split mini with JP Coovert. A quiet story of life and death, chance and destiny.

Falling Sky The most level-headed, calm look at the end of the world this side of 28 Days Later. Check: Falling Sky.

Mattie and Dodi & The Beast Mother Sign #1 of what is wrong with comics right now: Eleonor Davis not having a bookdeal already. Finding the extraordinary in the mundane and the ordinary in the supernatural. Check: Little House Comics

Out Of Water Boy meets dolphin; a beautiful fable of friendship and doing what it takes. More at Matthew Bernier´s site.

Truth Serum A romantic fatalist´s look at relationships which happens to involve superheroes. Review here.

DMZ Brian Wood at the top of his form. Discarding the pamphlet nature of his earlier Channel Zero books; activist spirit molded by storyteller qualities.

Strange Girl Theology seminar on speed; beautiful blast of blasphemy; Remender does it right.

Fun Home Think your most favorite person from your most favorite college class telling the story of her life. A masterfully crafted story of coming to terms with a withdrawn parent, scattered with literary allusions.

Little Star Andi Watson pulls off another great little story. A father´s coming to terms with his being a father. I´ve been reading this during my own first year of being a father so it means all the more to me.

The Ticking Beautiful, haunting coming of age story. The drawings as repulsively beautiful as ever, the storytelling subued, personal and poignant.

Finder As long as Finder is published it will be on my best of the year lists. Intelligent, character-driven science fiction. It doesn´t get much better than this.

Castle Waiting Linda Medley´s long running, charming fantasy series. A fairytale with brains and heart.

Rose and Isabel Beautiful book(s) applying the Amazon myth to a Civil War setting; haunting, gripping, fluid. Check: Rose and Isabel

A Late Freeze A strangely detached, wordless tale of finding, losing; the warmth of family and the coldness of loss. Review here.

Shenzhen Guy Delisle´s laconic account of his working stay in China. All the beautiful drawings that Pjongyang had, but minus most of the annyoing hypocrisy.

Sudden Gravity Cross Emergency Room with the X-Files; amplify by coolness factor 3; and have Greg Ruth draw it with a ballpoint pen. This must be one of my favorite comic books ever and I´m eternally grateful to Dark Horse for finally collecting it in bookform.

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Apparent white-spots in this list: Curses by Kevin Huizenga (whom I love since I got his first Supermonsters) and Rob Walton´s Ragmop (have we been waiting ten years for this now? Less? More?) which I haven´t read so far, but I know I will love. It´d break my heart to leave them out.

Chiming in on the controversy surrounding Publisher´s Weekly Top Ten Manga and Manhwa for 2006 list – yeah, man, it´s a top ten list, what´d you expect? – since I´m a sucker for lists, and 2006 was the year that I got into manga, like, heavily – I thought, it could be fun to do one of these myself. So here goes.

The best Manga of 2006 – if I´d have any say in it:

15. Heads I´m not even sure I should put this in here, as so far it´s nice, but hasn´t surpassed “promising” status. Keigo Higashino adapting his own book into comic format: a young man is shot while trying to save a little girl, getting his brains blown out, quite literally – his only chance for survival being an experimental brain transplant. Shortly after he starts to notice changes in his behaviour; things start to happen, or don´t they?
This could potentially be very interesting or extremely trite. It´s wait and see for “Heads”.

14. Mail Housui Yamazaki´s solo title as opposed to only doing art chores on Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service – which Diamond stubbornly refuses to ship to Germany – consisting of short horror vignettes. A great book full of spooky little stories. There´s something missing though, preventing it from being higher on my list; something… tying all of these episodes together; something which is hinted at, but never really explored. Quit the teasing already.

13. Aishiteruze Baby What can I say, my son is 17 months now so I´m susceptible to everything baby.

12. Old Boy Two volumes in this is so far quite quiet; and enjoyable at that. I think later volumes will crank up the drama, so it might or might not be higher on 2007´s list.

11. Homunculus More headfuck (see 15.); man gets hole drilled in head and starts having strange visions; effectively seeing mental defects as physical distortions; think bodies warped out of shape, giant robots, rotating heads; that kinda stuff. The second volume lost some of the atmosphere of the first one and it´s gonna be interesting to see where this one is heading.

10. Dragon Head I recently finished the whole run of this one and for everyone thinking “what the fuck is going to happen in that tunnel for 10 books”, it gets a WHOLE lot better once they get out of the tunnel. Post-apocalyptic drama (and I sense a trend emerging here) with stunning artwork.

9. Ibara no ? (King Of Thorns) I don´t think annyone is publishing this in english right now (?); more post-ap stuff: after the outbreak of mysterious disease, Medusa, which will effectively turn you to stone (and I´m simplyfiying here) in a matter of hours, some hundred people are chosen to go into cold sleep until a cure is found. They awake; the world as we know it is gone; most people get eaten by monsters right away; hubris and conspiracy, a Danzig lookalike; people turning into bird monsters; the token mystery girl; art at times a bit too muddled; and a heroine almost too annoying in her self-doubts at times; something for everyone I´d say.

[Edit] Right after posting this list I found King Of Thorn announced on the Tokyopop site for a June 2007 release. [/Edit]

8. Planetes Quiet character drama for a change. Very subtle, very touching on life´s grand questions. This should probably be higher on this list, but I´m only good at making lists, not at ranking stuff accordingly.

7. Drifting Classroom “The Lord Of The Flies on amphetamines” reads one of the back-covers and that couldn´t be more true. More post-ap of the high-pitched kind.

6. Lady Snowblood Reading this, billed as “Tarantino´s inspiration for Kill Bill”, just shows what a hack Tarantino is. A tale of a woman doomed from birth, life´s sole purpose being revenge on men responsible for destroying her mother. Brilliant.

5. Monster What starts as a riff on the tried and tested innocent fugitive theme, turns into an intense suspense thriller pickled with questions about revenge, redemption, morality and the essence of humanity; never afraid to get side tracked, Urasawa moves like a whirlwind through his plotlines dangling from several lose ends at a time and yet manages to tie (almost) everything together in a meaningful way by the end of volume 18.

4. Death Note So far I´m two volumes in, and I´m really impressed. This is one book that´s always two steps ahead of the reader.

3. 20th Century Boys Urasawa´s follow up (?) to Monster has all of his trademark elements, heroes on the run, the overpowering opponent, the multi-plotline and character juggling; and again it works. And people tell me that Pluto is even better!?

2. Barefoot Gen Hiroshima as seen through a child´s eyes. An unfiltered account, showing the hilarity, the absurdity, the sheer senselessness and horror of war. This book is a punch in the gut, and it needs to be shoved into the hands of as many people as possible.

1. Eden I´m gonna quote myself on this one here: “A philosophical, bloody as hell, post-apocalyptic fairytale.” Probably the most heartfelt cynicism in bookform around.

—————————————————

So Eden comes in ahead of Barefoot Gen? Yeah, well… there is really no point in arguing this, but; while I do believe Barefoot Gen to be the more important book, Eden, as a reading experience, is the more rewarding; touching on much of the same themes as Barefoot Gen, but much less morally clear cut, treading much more ambiguous, or better, dangerous grounds. Where Barefoot Gen shows what it takes to regain humanity in the face of unspeakable horror, Eden shows the consequences of losing it.

Ultimately Barefoot Gen, as a personal account, is much more dire, more gripping, while Eden, as an ensemble piece, is allowed to explore and discuss morality in greater depth and that, to me, makes the ever so slight difference.

And what´s missing? Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service probably, but since Diamond doesn´t ship it to Germany, I have come into the possession of volume 1 only recently (Amazon doesn´t seem to have any problems selling it to me) and haven´t read it so far; Anne Freaks, but here the ending totally ruined the whole book for me, so it´s off this list. Also Gantz – I tore through scanlations of all 237 chapters in a single day. Now, could someone please publish this in a language I can understand, so I can, you know, buy it?

As for Manwha – which is the Korean equivalent to Manga (for those of you wondering) – while I have watched a ton of Korean films lately, I didn´t read a whole lot of Korean books. Apart from the excellent psych-murder drama Redrum 327 I´ve only been dabbling around with XS but I didn´t find much to enjoy in it. (It´s a high-pitched action / cyberpunk thingy, but by volume two there was not even a hint of a story, let alone interesting characters, so I dropped that one)

Codehunters is a bold piece of CG animation directed by Stateless Films´ Ben Hibon and animated by Axis Animation; juggling ideas, characters and atmosphere; maintaining the tension but also giving nothing, really nothing, away; alternating bursts of cool and beautiful with balls as big as New Haven; equal parts Firefly and Bilal.

Initially conceived and produced for MTV Asia´s 2006 music awards, there was talking and thinking of expanding it into a longer format, but if this actually happens will remain to be seen.

Until then it´s just a tasty bit of nothing.

And, hey! So that´s what the Stupid Stupid Rat Creatures did after the end of Bone.

»

Just in time for the holidays; clothy bliss from Portland Studios; (though I wish the guy was throwin´ a macbook; that´d really make it perfect…)

$10 each, look / think / buy » Portland Studios Store

So this is it for the Godfather of Soul then?

“Get uppa, get on up” indeed…

A fighter; a lover; and one mean performer – I think I´ll remember him more for what he was than for what he did; coz musically we weren´t on the same page of the big ol´ book of sound.

But this man; he was one motherlovin´ badass; a man that made mistakes, sure, but also a man that never gave up; a man that lived his life, his music, to the max;

So here´s the most badass way to honour him I can think of; descending into one of the darkest corners of euro-techno and experiencing first-hand that he truly is in a better place now.

Because, you know, he knew that he was great…

[Update: Yes, there is always a lower low; and the lowest low is always from Holland...]

I don´t usually do these kind of “new strip up” postings, but honestly, I don´t care if it takes a freaking holiday season to get a new Jellaby to my screen… IT´S A NEW JELLABY! REJOICE!!

(we´re waiting for the BOOK here, so hurry up Kean, please)

The Secret Friend Society » Jellaby (Season´s Greetings)

When Santa fails to make an appearance, Cecil and Britches – a sock monkey and a wooden donkey – decide to take matters into their own hands paws hooves whatevs…

A nostalgic, charming and, dare I say, just plain lovely little stop-motion animation by Paul Corrigan.

Cecil and Britches » No Santa Today

An idea is born; and fights and struggles; and runs for its life. Enter: Giants, Demons + a naked Fairy Godmother floating in a bubble.

If nothing else: A fabulous piece of eyecandy; at least; indeed;

Curiosity Group » Don´t Die Ding

Haha.

Actually, it´s pretty embarrassing.

The post two posts down from this one promising “service as usual” is dated 27.10.2006; that´s a loooong time ago.

But sometimes, reality interfering has the same effect as mom catching you masturbating; you just can´t get into the mood again afterwards.

My digital mind went limp.

The funny thing is, my analogue mind (I do most of my draft writing on actual paper still) worked just as well as ever; the only problem being the transition from ink to bytes.

The great divide. (Semiotics Bruckheimer-style)

Silly, no?

But then, rethinking plans; priorities even (and no, it´s not the new year´s resolutions already); think of writing not as a gift, as a blessing. Think of writing as a duty.

Try hard work for a change; ixnay on inspiration, baby.

And off again, into the great public urinal of the blogging world; where everybody watches everybody pee.

(picture © the inimitable remark)

(and no, I don´t like the horrid band, I like Andrew Sachs; but thanks for asking.)