And The Nominees Are...

Furious and frequent rounds of electronic slaps on backs are what took up a great deal of my afternoon yesterday after Shelly Bond sent out the list of Nominees for this year's Eisner Comic Industry Award. Our boy Jack has collected no less than THREE nods, one of which is for Best New Series! The Fables team DOMINATES the selections!AGAIN!
I counted at least EIGHT nods to the title. Wow...
Follow the title of this entry as it's linked to Bill Willingham's Fables Forum entry with the list of nominations and comments.
Can I get a "whoo-hoo"?

It's BRIAN BOLLAND!

God, I've had to keep my frickin'mouth shut for months about this. No more.
The incredibly talented James Jean will be phasing out his comic contributions in the coming months. Apparently FABLES will be the final title he works for. We're all sad to see James leave because his talent really help forge the series. I counted myself very fortunate to have him as cover artist on JACK OF FABLES for the past year. Alas...
But, I can't tell you how excited I am to have Brian Bolland, a bona fide legend in the industry (and a personal favorite of mine) joining the JoF team! First let me apologize to BB for all the times that I've said BRIAN PHUCKING BOLLAND! over the past few months. Just a bit of excitement :~)
Here's the first cover by BB, hot off the solicitation page at Newsarama (thanks guys).
Yeah, this is gonna kick some ass.

Carefree, But Still Wearing Pants

I squirmed and complained but I still ended up going on a trip to Arizona. Not to that shit-hole Phoenix or even that armpit Scottsdale...but to CAREFREE (insert ohs! and ahs! here).
I have to admit that besides being an awesome place to hide bodies or to get abducted by ass-fixated extra-terrestrials, the desert is really nice. I was surprised at how much life there is. At night the aroma from the desert bloom is so intense that you would think that you were standing among beds of flowers (with bodies hidden under them, craftily).
Birdsong, flowers! Goddamn if I wasn't going to get this far fucking West and this out-of-doors without shooting something! FUCK!
I had hoped that the issuing of a six-shooter was still standard practice; there are fucking rattlers and scorpions, you know!
That's why the garden at E's parents house has gravel paths; rattlers hate gravel. They're probably not to fond of .40 lead slugs from a double-action Smith and Wesson either.
The trip was fine. I did get to go into a pretentiously upscale retailer that featureed some very nice collectibles having to do with the West.
The landscape is fantastic and alien.
Sure you have to dodge the occasional golf cart (the place is essentially a thriving, multi-millionaired Necropolis), but better that than rattlesnakes, no?


This is as much as I could capture with my camera of the Javelina (havalina) meandering by the front door as E and I went for a morning walk. If they had let me strap that fuckin' Navy Colt on like I wanted to, this fucker would have been lunch (not really, they're kinda cute and really smelly).

We arrived at the house in pitch dark, so this view was a surprise to wake up to. That big fuckin' rock in the distance has a raptor sitting on it. Birds were everywhere; hawks, mourning doves, those gray robin-lookin' bastards. The pool was too cold to get into even though it was in the 90's while I was there; it was still only March.



This is the rockpile that the community gets it's name from, "The Boulders". Those little box-like things at the base of the pile are very large houses! "Fuck!", you say? Fuck, indeed...