Optical Sloth

New review today for Nine Short Works by Jon Allen, and I’d have more but the computer is freaking out so much that I’m a little shocked that the review managed to get posted. Time to run every anti-viral thing I have and hope for the best…

New review for Stranger Two Stranger #1 by R. Hendricks. Sorry for the late and decidedly singular update, but I had a maintenance guy working on my apartment for a few hours to repair the damage from the leaking roof yesterday. In case you were wondering, yes, of course it started leaking directly over my bookcase. Why would it ever leak anywhere else?

New review for Blammo #7 by Noah Van Sciver, and I’m clearly going to need to ease back into this reviewing thing. I’m going to let Blammo sit at the top of the page over the weekend, then the goal is to do double reviews during at least half of the upcoming week. Happy weekend y’all!

New reviews today for Oh My! Comix by Dexter Cockburn and Robots Are People, Too #2 edited by Greg Vondruska and featuring gaggles of comics folks. What a relief to be able to just talk about comics again…

Yes, an actual update. The scanner is working again even though the computer isn’t (it’s a long story and I’m sick of updates about technical stuff here), so there’s a new review today for Double Dip #1 by Tom Cherry & Dale Martin. Double reviews should start tomorrow assuming that this very old and feeble computer holds up long enough for me to buy another one that’s slightly less old and feeble. As for last month, let’s just call May an unplanned vacation and leave it at that. I was also more or less ignoring e-mails last month, so if you sent me something I’ll be digging through those soon too. Hooray for comics!

So the third scanner came a few days ago and gave me the same error message as the first two. I finally wised up enough to try the scanner on a different computer and, sure enough, it’s all the fault of my current computer. Canon sent me a helpful list of suggestions to fix it, none of them worked, and now I’m waiting for another response. At this point I’m all for sending the scanner back, getting a refund and starting over with an entirely new brand/model, not because of Canon (they’ve been helpful overall, although I wish their first instinct wasn’t just to send a scanner back if it didn’t work on the first try), but because my computer, no matter what model, consistently fails me. How did I end up with a website again? Oh yeah, there was a lack of this sort of website around when I started almost ten years ago. Anyway, sorry it’s been almost a month between updates, and the way things are going I’m just going to buy another scanner and be done with it. When that happens the reviews are going to come in chunks, as I’ve been keeping the rambling bottled up for almost a month, so your patience will be rewarded eventually.

So it turns out that the replacement scanner had the exact same problem as the original scanner. Who would have thought? Certainly not the fine people at Canon. I was going to post an update about this yesterday, when the replacement scanner arrived, but I figured a string of expletives wouldn’t be very useful to anybody. Today I can tell you much more calmly that ANOTHER replacement scanner is on the way, so if this one works things will be back to normal at some point next week. This is assuming that anybody even still looks at this site, as I am well aware of the short attention span of the public at large. Still, if you are reading this, my offer to ship any comic orders out the same day that I get them still stands, as this unplanned vacation is going to continue for at least a few more days. For whatever it’s worth, I am clearing out my schedule so that I have plenty of time for comics when I do get a working scanner…

So I finally figured out what’s wrong with my scanner, and it’s a hardware problem. Luckily I just bought it so Canon is happy to send a replacement scanner, but that means no updates until at least early next week, and that’s assuming that their delivery system is actually as quick as they say it is. My apologies again, here’s hoping that I’ve built up enough credibility over almost 10 years of rambling about comics that you know I’ll be back as soon as possible. In the meantime, hey, I am still selling comics, so you could just buy some of them to fill the void. This extra free time means that I’ll be able to ship them out probably the day that you order them at the moment…

The good news is that I got the scanner today. The bad news, naturally, is that it doesn’t seem to work. If anybody out there has experience with the Canon LIDE 110, send me an e-mail and maybe we can fix it. It tells me to unlock it then plug it back in, but that doesn’t work (neither does restarting the computer), and according to Google I’m the only person in the world with this problem. Tomorrow I’ll call some tech help if I have to, but after bashing my head against a wall for the last hour or so I’m just going to call it a day. This is why I can’t have nice things…

I couldn’t find the scanner I was looking for in town, so to the internets I went! A scanner is on the way and should be here by the start of next week, at which point I’ll be doing double updates for a bit to cut through this mound of comics. In the meantime, pick a letter of the alphabet and go to the “reviews by author” section. Click on all of the reviews for an artist whose first name starts with that letter and you’re bound to find SOMETHING you haven’t seen yet, which makes it new to you….

Quick, a show of hands: who thought that this hand-me-down scanner would actually work for very long? Yep, it’s crapped out on me too and I can’t possibly get a scanner today. There’s a pile of new comics here just waiting for me to ramble about, but it’s just not the same if I can’t show pictures along with it. I’ll get an actual new scanner some time this week, until then there’s always the archives if you’re looking to kill time at work…

New review for Herman the Manatee Volume 2 by Jason Viola. Ah, I’ll bet you thought I missed another day, didn’t you? Well, now that the hockey is all done (for me at least) that’s one less excuse to do the daily updates. Will that translate into a better schedule from now on? I remain cautiously optimistic…

New review today for Buster Monster and the Roughage of July by Chris Davis. And yes, it’s the same Chris Davis who has a bunch of stuff in the store, just so you know…

New review for Inside the Slow Spiral by Jon Allen. Let’s go Hawks and Sabres! Keep my interest in the NHL playoffs going for a bit longer please…

New review for an older comic, Crass Sophisticate #16 by John Reinwald & Justin Rosenberg. Hey, if you haven’t read it it’s new to you, right?

New review for Dodo Comics #1 by Grant Thomas. Sorry about the lack of reviews this week, I’ve been feeling generally crappy so I haven’t been writing much. Wouldn’t feeling generally crappy lead to more free time and more time to write reviews? Well, sure, but um…

New review for Moe by Piotr Nowacki. All the way from Poland!

New review for Monty #1 by Kayla Escobedo. See how much easier this regular reviewing thing is with a working scanner?

New review for Monsters of MMA by Bryan G. Brown. It might technically not be out quite yet, but it will be soon, so don’t you want to read all about it?

New review for Window #8 by Dave Lapp. My project for tomorrow is to get this mound of review comics into more a pile shape and yeah, it is that bad. Just a little peek into the magical goings-on at the Optical Sloth office…