Category: Connections

Nobody Return to Codak

April 29, 2008 /

How come everybody’s all like “ooh, Dresden Codak” and “so awesome Dresden Codak” and “put your Dresden in my Codak” and yet I’ve never heard a single mention of Nobody Scores? The only reason I found out is because its creator personally came to my table at Stumptown and I had to ask him what he did. And it’s great! Full-color, long-scrolling strips with apocalyptically gleeful jokes that never descend into self-parody or fanservice. I love transhumanism as much as the next guy (the next guy being Dresden Codak), but I also love transplanted Indiana Jones gags and runes (and, for my North Carolina crew, The Björk Dojo).

It actually reminds me a lot of Return to Sender, in visual style and whimsy, but with a less sympathetic bent. Oh, and also with like five times the archive length.

Have I even posted about my webcomic pull list in the last few years? For my own records, in secret and arcane order: Starslip Crisis, Achewood, Scary Go Round, PvP, Narbonic: Director’s Cut, xkcd, Octopus Pie, Shortpacked, Penny Arcade, Darths and Droids, Gunnerkrigg Court, Basic Instructions, Chainsaw Suit, Three Panel Soul, Thingpart, Bob the Angry Flower, A Softer World, Wonderella, and Raymondo Person and Dresden Codak whenever they’re updated. And don’t think I don’t hit Checkerboard Nightmare pretty often too. Just in case.

Day Whatever: Portland

April 25, 2008 /

I keep the Moleskine and the Micron next to my bed so I can write down story ideas I have while falling asleep, and on mornings after they usually turn out about half useful and half dumb. But even in their hastiness and abbreviation, I can almost always follow the signifying notes back to the image or twist that precipitated them.

I had two last night. One was a Chosen Ones story that I’ll probably do up for next week. The other?

“Six big diapers.”

I offer this to the world.

I live in Portland now. I had some exceedingly mild adventures in San Francisco, and took a lot of pictures that you will see sometime around 2018. Maria came to visit and that was really nice. Hugner is fine.

I’ve been in a self-imposed sweatshop lockbox all this week, trying to prepare for the big show: Stumptown Comics Fest, where I will be exhibiting with free microcomics and a six-word story completion marathon and, yes, Ommatidia, the first Anacrusis book. No, you can’t buy it online yet, not until I finish setting up the storefront. I am planning to have that up by my birthday (a week from tomorrow).

I realize that I have announced this far too late for anyone who wasn’t already planning to come to Stumptown to show up; trust me, that is all part of a strategy. Eventually I may even figure out what the strategy is. But on the off chance that there are any Anacrusis fans in the PDX, show up! There are a lot more reasons to do so than just me and my tablemates (“Cinema Sewer”).

Day 5: Arizona

April 6, 2008 /

I like “Horse with No Name” so much, and I don’t think I have it on my iPod! Which means I can’t play it over and over again tomorrow, my last day of driving through desert. So far the desert has had the pleasant effect of being very pretty. It has also had the unfortunate effects of making me drink three times as much water as usual, making me run the AC all the time, and oh yeah, being like a fucking desert.

Also, it scared Hugner, and not without reason. I had to take these pictures from a rest area without him in them. Unless… unless he was hiding somewhere!

I'll give you a clue: he IS hiding.

And not very well.

But today’s drive (the shortest of this trip) was worth it for the chance to hang out in Phoenix, which included my being the first Kentucky-friend to get a tour of the new digs of the Chinese Shao-Lin Center from its proprietors:

Kung fu happens here!

Laura Beth and Jacob.

Then they took me home, fed me delicious raw vegan “cheese” “cake,” and permitted me to indulge my gadgeteering impulses in the process of watching Love Actually. Now I am falling asleep while writing this on their couch. Tomorrow is the big push: Phoenix to SF in one day, hopefully by 8 pm. It’s not going to be easy. Hugner, better set snuggling to max.

Bilbo and Hugner.

Laura Beth and Hugner.

Day 2: Birmingham

April 3, 2008 /

Let’s out with it: in a blatant bid to grab some of that hot, sexy Starslip traffic, I am taking my new Jinxlet, Hugner, with me on the road across America. Now instead of trying awkwardly to take pictures of myself in different places, I can take pictures of the stuffed animal instead! No one has ever thought of this before.

Hugner passenging.

Hugner was delivered to Louisville, so I don’t have any pictures of him from Day 0 (Winston-Salem), but there he is the passenging position which was once my purview on Day 1. Pretty cute, right! Except after that I had to stuff him in the back so I could put my giant backpack where he is.

The next two pictures are going to seem similar, but only until I explain that Hugner has a clever defense mechanism that makes all dogs think he is a chew toy. I’m… I’m not sure how the defense works. Up top he’s with the famous Brenna, and on the bottom he’s with my friend Taylor’s dog, Lizzie.

Hugner and Brenna.

Hugner and Lizzie.

Once the trip is over I’ll put together a Flickr gallery of these, but even by tomorrow we should have a VERY SPECIAL Hugner road trip update! It’s a surprise, but I will say this: the next stop on our trip involves his home planet.

Of Texas.

Day 1: Louisville

April 2, 2008 /

You have to read “Mallory,” Leonard’s newly published short story: not because it’s good (it’s very good) but because that way you can understand all the “Mallory” references I’ve been making in the over-a-year since I got to beta read it. As someone on a road trip to California that includes visiting some of my role models, I find the story perhaps a little too pat in its publication timing. I smell retcon, Richardson.

Speaking of which, The War on Clarity has been updated, due mostly to people wanting their names put on or taken off the “Lasersharking” entry. If only that could have been posted on some kind of user-editable repository.

Space Paris has robots with moustaches

February 15, 2008 /

Look why are you not reading The Fabian Society? If what we had in Space Paris meant anything you’d read The Fabian Society every day and even on days when he (Quintus) (or possibly Henry) doesn’t update you’d be all up in his archives reading the older stuff you missed. I know I already told you to read it back in 2006, but obviously you weren’t listening, and anyway since then he’s been developing the kind of effortless grace in prose that makes me stomp around in jealous anger. I am so angry that you are not reading The Goddamn Fabian Society! What! Yes! Don’t impose your human consistency on me! We already had this fight in Space Paris!

Start with Petra, Endless Frank, Fishbowls and Ptolemy I, and if you’re not hooked by the third one you’re doing it wrong.

January 25, 2008 /

Okay, I thought I read once about an interactive fiction game that begins with a single paragraph of description, which just repeats over and over–but gradually expands and changes as you take actions. It’s a fascinating idea, but I never got around to downloading it, and now I can’t find the right google-juju to summon it again. Anyone else heard of this?

Update 1357 hrs: Kevan to the rescue, with Andrew Plotkin’s The Space Under the Window and Aisle. bloody_peasants also suggests Shade and the One Room Game Competition.