A Giant Among Men

I really like this comic tribute to Neil Armstrong. I posted it on Facebook last year when he passed away, and was reminded of it today.

The Oatmeal: Running

I really enjoy reading the comics on The Oatmeal. They can be very poignant and hilarious at the same time, and on one level or another they always seem to resonate. Recently he published his comic on running. I am not a runner. I have no aspiration of running a marathon. I would like to finish a 5K in under 30 minutes. I figure this is a nice goal, something within reach. So to read his comic about why he runs really made sense to me, although on a smaller, 1/10 scale.

Sticks and Stones

This xkcd comic says so much about my childhood...

http://xkcd.com/1216/

xkcd: Click and Drag

I read xkcd every Monday, Wednesday and Friday as part of my morning routine. Last Wednesday he had his Click and Drag comic. This was an amazingly poignant and inventive comic where you could actually click and drag the bottom panel to see more of the image. And boy was there a lot of image! After quite some time of my day, I was pretty sure I had seen it all. My sister Kelly confirmed this by linking to a complete zoomable image of the bottom panel. I considered trying to do this myself, so I'm thankful someone more tech savvy did it first.

My daily online routine

I have a few website that I go to each day at work. Firefox has an add-on called Morning Coffee that I highly recommend. It keeps up with the sites you visit on particular days and each day you load your morning coffee and it opens all your tabs for you.

Groupon and Living Social are daily tabs that I check because you never know when you might stumble across a great deal. I also check Indexed every weekday.

xkcd updates on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

On Monday, I also read The Chapel Chronicles, a webcomic written and drawn by a teenage girl. It has such wit and humor. Her talent is remarkable. Also on Monday, I go to the Richland County Freegal website for my three free songs each week. The library is contracted with Sony and you can download three songs a week with your library card. That turns out to be 15 free cds worth of music a year.

Tuesday is an odd day. Some of the sites that update weekly are loaded on Tuesday because it is a slower day at work. That is when I check on Axe Cop, The Guild, The Conjurers, and The Zombie Years.

Friday is Bearmageddon day, a webcomic done by the artist who draws Axe Cop. Nothing like ending the week with mutant bears rebelling against mankind.

My breakfast reading includes the following comics: Overboard, Non Sequitur, Dog Eat Doug, Lio, Mutts, and Simon's Cat, (and Foxtrot on Sundays).

It's all about starting your day off right. I used to have a bookmark folder with each site in it that I would load each day, but the Morning Coffee add-on does make it much easier. Now if I only drank coffee...

On my watch list

I need to remember July 20 for this comic... I really don't buy comic books any more, but this was THE TEAM -- the group that started the Sandman and helped redefine comic books. That was my golden age of comics, although in comics terms it was probably a silver or bronze age. Still, I'd like to see what they put together.

They're getting the band back together

The creative team behind the original Sandman series, Neil Gaiman, Sam Kieth and Mike Dringenberg are doing a story in Hero Comics 2011 coming out in June. I don't really buy comics anymore. I won Tori Amos' Comic Book Tattoo a while back at a silent charity auction but really haven't had the time to sit down and enjoy it. I wanted to get Axe Cop's mini-series, but missed it so I'm waiting for the trade paperback/graphic novel version. But I may have to pick up Hero. I've always enjoyed Sam Kieth's work, and I think that Mike Dringenberg complements him so well, And well, Neil Gaiman goes without saying. So I borrowed a frame of this preview image for my desktop wallpaper for right now. No better reminder than that to make sure I pick this one up.

Funny comic

This one is just too funny...

Because I'm a geek...

...I find this really interesting.

Axe Cop

I just may have a new favorite super hero -- Axe Cop! The stories are from the mind of a five-year-old and put together and illustrated by his 30-year-old big brother/comic book artist.

Last comic book post for a while...

...before I over-geek this blog. Back in my comic book buying days I bought issues one and two of Big Numbers, a comic by Alan Moore with art by Bill Sinkiewicz. Well, issue three never came out and it just kind of disappeared. I always wondered what happened to the series. Apparently a different artist took over the project and after doing the art decided not to release it. Well, I found a site where someone actually found photocopies of the third, unreleased issue on eBay, bought them, and with Alan Moore's permission, scanned them in and posted them. It's kind of cool to see the unreleased issue, although it has been so long that I have no idea what the storyline was or anything, only that it was an odd size and that they were going to add a little color each issue until the final issue was full color. Interesting concept. It's unfortunate that the whole thing never came together.

[And I promise something cooler next post ... like roller derby pictures or plants from the yard.]

Drawing Superheroes

This is a very cool series of three videos showing six different comic book artists drawing superheroes. You don't have to be a comic book fan to appreciate their skills. I just love watching people create like this. I remember as a kid watching Bob Ross all the time (happy strokes). This is just like watching Bob Ross except the subjects have big muscles. Personally I think it is very interesting to compare the free style of Joe Kubert (drawing ManBat in the second half of video one) and Bill Sienkiewicz (one of my favorite artists back in my comic book days, drawing Elektra in the second half of video two) to the careful style of Dave Gibbons (drawing Watchmen's Dr. Manhattan in the first half of video three).

Video One
Video Two
Video Three

Oh, and while I'm linking to videos, here's a old computer parts using beeps and buzzes to play Bohemian Rhapsody.

Why I don't Twitter

I made my first Twitter post, linking to a comic* that explains why I don't Twitter (and avoid Facebook). I must limit the sources of addictive internet outlets I expose myself to for fear of dissolving into a blog of internet obsession.

*This is Non Sequitur from Wednesday, February 18, 2009, in case you read this after today.

Effort to save Superman's house

I'm a comic book geek, and a book geek in general, and I have an appreciation for the history of where pop culture and Americana comes from, so I think this is a very interesting effort going on. An author recently went to visit the house of Jerry Siegel, one of the Superman creators, and found a very sad house in a very bad state of disrepair. So the Siegel & Shuster Society is now working to raise money to repair the house (for the current residents) and eventually buy the house when it comes up for sale. Superman wasn't really one of my favorites, but I think this is a worthy cause. (I will say, though, with all the talent backing this effort, you'd think they'd have better t-shirts to buy to support the cause. Maybe they're in the making...)

Chiropractic comic

I thought this Non Sequitur was very funny. It has been one of my favorite comic strips for a long time.


Click on the comic if you have trouble reading it and it will show up bigger.

(This image will most likely disappear in about a week or two...)

Nerd Alert

Jeni got a kick out of Lio from last Tuesday... I think her favorite was "Yoda Rules" on the side of the car.