Optical Sloth

New review for It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time #2 by Trevor Waurechen, happy weekend everybody!

New review today for The Casebook of Elijah Snugs #2 by Sal Sciandra. Hey, do you make comics and live outside of the U.S.? If so, get in touch with me. I’m getting another one of my brilliant ideas that always seem to peter out before completion.

New review for Strange Growths #16 by Jenny Zervakis. Am I still too young to want to move to one of the states where winter isn’t always this lousy? Probably so.

New review for DemonDust #18/19 by Bernie McGovern. I’ll probably be able to put together a regular week of reviews, but considering how that has gone the last few times I thought that was the case maybe you’d better not count on it. But I’ll try!

New review today for Lucy the Octopus: Better in Small Doses by Richy Chandler.

New review for Brain Food #18 by Mike Toft. Hey, I’ve already mentioned here that nobody in the Columbus area should rent from Arbors of Watermark, right? Just checking. They’re awful. That pretentious name should have tipped me off, but I went with them anyway.

New review today for Big Brute by Brian Leonard, and I’ll try one more time to put up a full week’s worth a reviews. I’m also going to start a project I’ve been dreading: going through my store inventory. The hard drive on my old computer crashed about a year ago, and of course it had all that information on it, so it’ll be interesting putting all that information back together again. But hey, at least when you order comics after the next month or so you can be sure that the item will be in stock, unlike the crapshoot ordering has turned into recently…

New review today for An Afternoon in Ueno by Graeme McNee. I may or may not get time to put up a review tomorrow, so don’t be terribly offended if I miss it. Oh, and since it’s impossible to leave the house without being reminded of it, the holiday season is basically already here. Why not buy some comics for your friends and loved ones? Why not buy them from me because I have plenty of them? Just a thought. I’m going to go through and remove the comics that are out of stock this weekend, so in theory everything will then be up to date. Still, it’s always a good idea to pick a few alternates just in case…

New review today for Wuzzgutt by Jon Lawrence. Still getting back in the routine here, but hey, first time I’ve had two reviews in two days in awhile…

New review for Open Bar by Trevor Waurechen, and this site should be back to normal now, or whatever that usually means around here. As to my idea last week about some kind of a Xeric Grant substitute that I could put together, well, the silence was deafening, so I don’t think that will be happening. Not sure what I was expecting there. “Sure, I have thousands of dollars to give away for grants to people to publish books that I don’t even know!” Eh, in a perfect world. But if you’re a rich person who likes comics, this means that it’s on you to find some way to replace that grant. Make it happen!

Remember when I mentioned that work might make reviews sporadic for a few weeks? Well, it is, and it’s even more sporadic than I thought. Things should be back to normal next week, and I may or may not manage to get a review up tomorrow (but probably not). But hey, this gives me a chance to ask all of you about something that’s been buzzing in the back of my head. Remember the Xeric grants? Remember how those ended last year? Or, if you haven’t heard about it: those ended last year. Anyway, I’ve been trying to come up with some way to put together at least a partial replacement for them. Obviously I wouldn’t be able to come close to replacing the dollar amount, but was kind of wondering if getting $20,000-30,000 a year from Kickstarter and maybe a few fundraisers would be possible. This would mean grants to 4-6 people instead of double digits like Xeric usually did, but at least it’s a start. So my question to you guys is: ya wanna? I could contact the groups who gave money to Xeric on a regular basis, maybe find a few (hundred) more people willing to donate a little cash, and at least there would be one avenue open for people who need financial help getting their book published. I’m mostly just looking for opinions now. Who out there thinks this is plausible? Utterly ridiculous? Write me and tell me why either way. Did you get a Xeric grant in the past? If so, write me and tell me about the experience. How much money you got, whether it was enough or too much (not that I’m expecting many responses in that last regard), what could have been improved, your general impressions, everything. I’d probably have to take a month or two off work to put this together and run it, so I’d have to ask for a donation for those months too. I work at a place where my taking a month or two off wouldn’t be that big of a deal (provided they weren’t months with electi0ns in them), but the idea of asking donations to cover my life for that time might be off-putting to people, and maybe a tacky thing to even ask. This is where your opinions come in! Finally, I guess there’s the chance that I’d just take the pile of money and move to a tropical island or something, so this is where I’d have to hope that my 12+ years of doing this have built up at least a little credibility for me. So yeah, send me your thoughts. If this strikes too many of you as ridiculous/fantastical/impossible, I’ll give up before I get started. If it seems remotely plausible, well, my understanding is that Kickstarter donations only really count if you meet your goal, and if that’s true I don’t see any reason not to at least give it a shot. Write me!

New review today for Jason Part 2 by Bonesteel. I’ve mentioned a few times here that I work at the local Board of Elections, so when my reviewing gets even more sporadic around the end of October/start of November, well, that’s why. Even the little elections take a lot of work on our end. I’ll still get reviews up as much as possible, but it will likely stay sporadic through next week.

New review for Nervenkrank #1 by Katherine Wirick. Happy weekend everybody!

New review today for God Is Disappointed In You by Mark Russell & Shannon Wheeler. Sorry about the lack of reviews, it’s been a mess of a week. Another one tomorrow probably?

New review for the last issue of Lackluster World (#7) by Eric Adams. Finally! On my end, not his. He put the finale out a couple of years ago…

New review today for Sockford #1 by Russell Ihrig. For those of you who play as many of those Lego game on your gaming consoles as I do, be advised that Lego Marvel is coming out next week.

New review for Cat-Stronauts in Space! by Drew Brockington. Since “cat-stronauts” is not a real word (yet), I’ll go with Drew’s spelling.

Hey, I remembered Top Shelf Tuesday this week! New review for Heck by Zander Cannon.

New review today for Alamo Value Plus #1 by Rusty Jordan. Hey, I forgot to put this stupid little update-indicating-that-there’s-an-update-that-you-can-all-see-anyway after the previous review. Maybe I should cut it out entirely? Only post it when I have something to say outside of the review? But then what constitutes “having something to say”? That seems like it’s asking for trouble….

New review today for Politics of a Twig by Maryanne Rose Papke. And I forgot about Top Shelf Tuesdays again, so I’ll have to review one of those books later in the week. Just in case you need to know every little thought that flies through my head, but hey, that’s what the internet is for, right?