Sky painting!

Today has been mostly an overcast day here in Vegas, but the good thing about that is when the clouds start clearing and does so around the time the sun sets, we get skies that look like this. Just another reminder about why this is my favorite time of the year.

This photo was taken a few minutes after the one above. I wish there was a way for people to be able to click on these photos here on my blog and see them bigger, but that doesn't seem to happen anymore. When I first started this blog in June, you used to be able to click on the photo and it see it at a larger size, but either I've been using up too much space or I'm doing something different when importing photos here (as anyone who knows me knows, I'm fairly computer illiterate).

This is the same sunset reflected in my store's front windows.

While looking at this sunset, it really looks like someone splashed paint through the sky. For some reason seeing this sunset made me think of the great documentary on artist extrordinaire Frank Frazetta, called Painting With Fire, which I highly recommend checking out.

Extraordinary signing pt. 2!

Are these people having a great time at Alternate Reality Comics closing stop of the Kevin O' Neill signing - does Galactus eat planets (a nod to last week's Simpsons with it's many great comic book geek nods that we got to share with Kevin who wanted to see Alan Moore's appearance)!?

Little Davy Smuckers Johnson told me that he wants his parents, Heather and Scott, to read Black Dossier to him at bedtime!




The guy in dreads holding a sketchbook is uber cool Brent Cooper who celebrated his birthday at the signing by getting a great Mr. Hyde sketch from Kevin!


And here we have the last few lucky people getting their Black Dossiers signed. I want to say again how gratified I am that so many people are picking up Black Dossier because like the previous two League of Extrordinary Gentleman volumes and other Alan Moore works, I know that they'll be highly entertained and enriched after their reading experiences.

Group photo before Kevin and Dawn (Kevin's girlfriend, the lovely blond on the left) continue to do the Vegas thang (they understandably wanted to do their own thang after their crazy week, especially Dawn who had never been to the U.S. before). Dawn bought these awesome red and white vinyl boots in San Francisco around the corner from Comix Experience that you can partially see in this photo (yes they do look like Wonder Woman's boots)! The guy in the photo on the left is Derrick, who owns Comic Oasis also here in Las Vegas and one of the tour stops (Derrick is an altogether great guy and has a great store).

After the signing, Kate and myself, along with my friends Joel and Joseph (who also helped me out greatly at the store during the signing), Derrick and his artist friend Charles Holbert, Joel's wife Sandra and our new friend Jennifer all had a great dinner at Toto's Mexican Restuarant. A wonderful end to a wonderful signing and wonderful day!

Extraordinary signing pt. 1!

To say that my Kevin O'Neill (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier) signing was fantastic is an understatement! Kevin wrapped up his crazy breakneck tour of the U.S. at my store (8 days, 9 citiies, 10 stores!) and still somehow had the energy to draw a sketch in everyone's book!

Michelle was the first person in line and she got an awesome Mina drawing. Note the cool 3D glasses people are wearing (included in the Black Dossier for the incredible concluding chapter) ! Jason is too cool to wear the 3D glasses (ha-ha)!
I just want to say that I have the BEST customers at my store and want to thank everyone who came out for the signing! I'd also like to thank everyone who bought Black Dossier at my store, but couldn't make the signing. Black Dossier exceeded my expectations of how well it would do, making it already one of my very best selling books in my 12 years as a comic store owner in only a week of it's release.
The signing continues! Kevin was at my store for two hours and he signed and drew for people the entire time without taking a break!




More Kevin O' Neill enthusiasts wearing their 3D glasses (don't drive with these things on kids)!








Kevin O' Neill definitely puts the "Extra" in "extraordinary"!

Happy B-Day Mother Box & Alan Moore!

Mother Box is a creation by Jack Kirby as part of his Fourth World concept (New Gods, Darkseid, Mr. Miracle, etc.) he did for DC in the 1970's. Mother Box is the name of the supercomputer that a lot of the New Gods use. I bought my Scion XB in November of 2005 and it was ready for me to pick up was November 18th, which I remember (being the huge geek that I am) because that day is Alan Moore's birthday. I've named my car Mother Box because of course, the Scion XB is shaped like a big box (and they have a lot of room which is great for when I pick up all of Wednesday's new comic day boxes from UPS).

Happy Birthday, Alan Moore! This photo of Moore is from Wikipedia, it's not him signing at my store (actually he's really reclusive and basically doesn't leave Northhampton, England).

On tonight's episode of the Simpsons, Alan Moore will be on the show as himself (except as a yellow cartoon version!) along with Art Spiegleman (Maus) and Daniel Clowes (Ghost World). The premise of this episode is that a rival hipster comic store store opens across from the Android Dungeon and those creators appear at the new shop. The Simpsons crew even flew to England to tape Alan Moore's lines, this episode should be a blast!

Black Dossier - no spoilers!

Following are my impressions of Black Dossier:

I started reading The Black Dossier last night and planned to stay up all night to finish it, but after about three hours I was getting increasingly tired and couldn't focus on what was going on. So I spent about three more hours finishing The Black Dossier this morning. I wanted to read this as soon as I could because as many of those reading this blog know, I'm a huge Alan Moore fan (also insanely jealous of people who got the book before me last week - I'm looking at you Jason H!) and I wanted to partake in discussions about the book that are already taking place on the internet and elsewhere.

Heidi MacDonald in her online column, The Beat (which she does in connection with Publisher's Weekly), described The Black Dossier as "dense and delightful." Dictionary.com defines the word dense as: "intense; extreme or difficult to understand or follow because of being closely packed with ideas or complexities of style." I think Black Dossier encompasses both of these definitions because while reading it was enjoyable, at the same time it is definitely not a book that one can read without using much of their grey matter and is as far removed from being a conventional graphic novel as can be imagined.

Black Dossier is a graphic novel in the purest definition of graphic novel. It does have sequential passages that read like a "normal" comic or graphic novel and has pictorial content that is "graphic" (and not of a violent nature), but it also reads like a complex novel in which the reader has to put elements together to grasp the big picture. Black Dossier is over 200 pages, but it also has many pages of "just" prose that are important parts of the story and are entertaining in their own right as Moore writes sequences ala Shakespeare and prose in the beat poetry style popular in the 1950's and early 1960's. Alan Moore has said in an interview that Black Dossier started as a source book, but added that all source books are crap, so while Black Dossier is a sorce book of sorts cataloging various Leagues throught history (and from France and Germany), it has a narrative structure, albeit a pretty unique narrative structure (should we expect anything less from Alan Moore?).

I could go on and on one talking about specific sections of The Black Dossier that I enjoyed, but for now I just want to single out Moore's chapter towards the end which he writes in the beat poetry style as amongst my favorite (and I think it helps if you actually read that section outloud to better grasp what he's doing and saying) as well as the 3-D concluding chapter (cool glasses included), which besides being fantastic visually (as is the eclectic art by Kevin O'Neill throughout the book), has great ideas that are great ideas onto themselves, not just as means for the conclusion. I hope that anyone who reads this entry isn't intimidated by how long I've said it takes to read Black Dossier or when people describe it as dense, because ultimately I believe that everyone who reads Black Dossier will upon finishing feel like they've been part of a great journey.

Dossier in 2 days and...

Only two more days until the long awaited League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Black Dossier is released! Black Dossier is a 208 page hardcover book with an all new story exploring League of Extraordinary Gentlemen groups throughout history with Mina Harker and Allan Quartermain as our travel guides. This book will have a 3-D conclusion (glasses included) that's supposed to take 3-D to new places, a naughty Tijiuna bible, and is surely going to be the writerly (is that a word!?) and visual treat of the year! Sorry to be such a hype-monster!

In related Black Dossier news, I'm happy to report that I'll be one of the store hosts for artist Kevin O'Neill's crazy 8 days, 9 cities, and 10 store tour of the United States (he's from England)! Kevin's tour starts this Wednesday in New York City when the book debuts and ends at my store one week later (so we'll have gotten a chance to read it before his visit). Kevin will be at my store next Wednesday, Nov. 21st, from 5-7pm (he'll be at Comic Oasis here in Las Vegas from 2-4pm for those of you who live out that way and find that to be a better time and I'll vouch that Comic Oasis is one of the other good comic stores in Vegas). I hope everyone who's enjoyed previous Leagues (and the new one) come out and lavish ego strokes upon Kevin, because artists work in a mostly isolated environment and they do appreciate feedback (and he'll be happy to sign any of your books). Kevin O'Neill's other character that he's most known for is Marshall Law, an even more extreme version of Judge Dredd and a dark satire of superhero comics that will be getting a huge collection from Top Shelf next year (also the company that will be publishing future League of Extraordinary Gentlemens).

Sweeney Todd

Friday night, Cristina (one of my best friends) and myself went to the Las Vegas Academy prduction of Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. The Las Vegas Academy is a Las Vegas high school that is art-centric and all the students that attend have to audition before being accepted as a student. Another of my best friends, Kim, recently transferred as a biology teacher to Las Vegas Academy and she knew that I liked musicals so she lined me up with tickets to the big show - and quite the big show it was!

Prior to seeing this production of Sweeney Todd, I knew little of the story, with my first introduction to it being in a great comic book horror anthology called Taboo. In Taboo #6 (1992) there was an insert of a comic adaptation that Neil Gaiman and artist Michael Zulli were going to do. Taboo closed up shop before the comic adaptation of Sweeney Todd happened and for whatever reason Gaiman and Zulli never took their idea to do this story as a comic anywhere else, which is really a shame because it's a great story and would have been greatly suited to their talents.

Sweeney Todd started as a penny dreadful (kind of like the pulps in the early part of the 1900's) in England by Thomas Priest in 1846 and has since seen many incarnations, most notably as a musical on Broadway in 2005 with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim (that went on to win several Tonys) and as an upcoming movie by Tim Burton, with Johnny Depp as Sweeney. Having just watched the trailer, it looks great visually (as most Burton movies do), but I'm a little concerned that it's not going to be as much of a musical as I'd like it to be.

Sweeney Todd, as performed by the Las Vegas Academy, was / is very much a musical, with the characters breaking out into songs almost from beginning to end as means of telling the story. I was blown away with the fact that this was a high school production and I even joked to Kim that these are just older actors posing as high school students. The singing, music, acting, sets, costumes, and overall production values were top notch and I'm still amazed that these students could put on a production of this caliber and also attend their classes. The theatre itself is also impressive, especially with it's huge orchestra pit that I didn't even know existed until Kim showed me during intermission (I thought the music was recorded)! Sweeney Todd was played by Philip Cerza, who was great and I half jokingly told Kim that he would make a great Wolverine (probably due to the way his hair was styled).

Basically Sweeney Todd is about what its subtitle suggests: "The Demon Barber of Fleet Street", a dark, sometimes comedic tale of a serial killer barber (it takes place in the late 1800's), so it's a perfect vehicle for a Tim Burton production, but I'd recommend if you're able to at any point to catch a live musical production of Sweeney Todd. I especially liked one of the songs that advocates / celebrates cannibilism and one of my favorite lines in Sweeney Todd is: "The history of the world is to eat or be eaten."