Ahh, nothing like an "awesome face" to break the mood, eh? Actually, in retrospect, it was more like the face Steve Carell made on the 40 Year Old Virgin poster. Neither of which makes LadyTank very amorous.

In other happenings that aren't likely to leave you with mental images burned into your brain ... the latest Llama Report went up last weekend. It's forty plus minutes of pure, live goodness. And by "goodness", I of course mean "rambling and ranting about weird news and nerd stuffs". I've also been able to work a little bit ahead and last night's strip was pre-loaded and posted by the database without a hitch. Of course, I still need to update the RSS feed by hand ... baby steps, baby steps. Eventually I'll have that portion ironed out as well. I could do something like a chron job, but need to ensure the strips are actually there (don't want it to fire off if I'm still working on the strip at midnight) and I want to ensure it doesn't pull ALL the most recent strips (including ones to be posted in the future), just the ones in the DB from the current date backwards. I have it coded now to do all that, just without the automation. It's still a button I have to click.

But enough with the coding hoo haa!

I was pleasantly surprised to realize that the writer of Atomic Robo is the same Brian Clevinger of 8-Bit Theatre. I thought it might have been a similar name, but nope ... it is indeed Brian. And knowing that, I am definitely seeing more of 8-Bit Brian's writing style in the book. And I mean that in the very best way too. Atomic Robo's artist, Scott Wegener, did a great interview over at The Trades and even posted a reply to Internet criticism on his own site.

I am listening to the audio book version of The Ten Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America and I realize how more matured the current comic book field seems to be lately. From a time in the 40's where there were popular, mainstream comics covering true crime tales, westerns, romance, horror, silly cartoon characters, history and more, superhero comics (while popular) were only one slice of the big comic book pie. After the big shakeup, it seems super heroes and men in tights dominated the market for decades, and still do to an extent. But in looking over my local comics rack recently I am seeing popular books based on zombies, westerns, supernatural investigators, crime and more. The (mostly) black and white independent boom of the 80's that brought us Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Grendel, The Tick and more seems to have finally bore fruit in the form of books that aren't from the "big three" finding their own place on the shelf, and big shelves at that. Not to mention more "adult" themes such as Road to Perdition, A History of Violence and other non "tights centric" graphic novels that have made the jump to the big screen.

Scott and Brian created Atomic Robo to fill a niche. They create their comics for an audience of two ... Scott and Brian. They are fortunate enough that what they want to see in comics seems to be something a lot of people want to see. I know I do. And I think we are fortunate enough to see a certain maturation in the comic book medium that allows folks to move one rack over and sample other voices and talents in the independent racks. Even superhero titles seem to be taking the deconstruction route and really developing deeper characters that are more than "sock! pow! Back to the hoosegow with you." It is a great time to be a comic book reader.

And speaking of comics, I'll be hitting the comic book convention in San Jose this weekend and will be checking out the artist alley and general feel of the place in preparation of perhaps getting a table there next year. If you see me wandering around, feel free to say hi.

I'll be the guy with the awesome face on.