Optical Sloth

New review for 3-D Pete’s Star Babe Invasion Comics Summer 2011 by Mike Fisher, who maybe needs to come up with a slightly less clunky title. Maybe I’ll get some reviews up over the weekend, or maybe I’ll just relax like the rest of America. We’ll see!

New review for Second Chances by Matt Sundstrom. Any roofers in the Champaign area looking for work? You should come to my house during the day and help out these people working here. It’s pretty clear that they’re in no hurry about finishing, so in theory you could really milk this job…

New review for Revelations #1 by Louise Cochran-Mason & Barry Southworth. How long is it this after-flu “feeling better but still exhausted for no reason” crap supposed to last anyway? Blech.

New review for Silent V #4 by Kyle Baddeley. Still messed up from this lovely weekend-killing flu bug, thanks for asking, but I dragged myself out of bed and all the way to the computer just so you guys could get your new comics fix. Yes, I am just that selfless.

New review for Weeknight Casserole by Kelly Froh, and why is it that I mainly get some variation of the flu in the summer months? It always feels vaguely wrong, outside of the obvious wrong feelings that it brings. I’ll still try to get updates together during the weekend though, as various chills  don’t keep me from writing, right?

New review for Built #1 by Brian John Mitchell & Joe Badon, happy Wednesday!

New review for Major Mishap Pushes the Panic Button! by Jerry Goebert & Christopher Durant. In case anybody out there is looking for a convention to attend this weekend, it turns out that it’s FLUKE time again in Athens Georgia. The last one I went to was held in a bar, which should be mandatory for these things, and it’s a blast if you’re looking for great new comics, various performers and bands.

New review for The Collyer Brothers by Emi Gennis, and I just downloaded over 30 images to this computer (using the still very stupid process I’m stuck with in regards to this scanner), so any lack of reviews over the next couple of weeks will be due purely to my laziness/malaise/suddenly broken again computer. Not that it’s broken yet, but I’m well aware of my luck with these stupid things.

New review for Monty #2 by Kayla Escobedo. Go outside and play, it seems to be a very nice day.

New review for Herman the Manatee #3 by Jason Viola. Hey look at that, an update with no complaining about anything from me!

New review today for Blackguard #3 by various international folks. Sorry about the review gaps, I had an actual weekend for once so no time for comics. I’ll try to make up for it during the week, he says one more time with his fingers crossed…

Two new reviews today for Vigilant #1 by Brian John Mitchell & PB Kain and Crocus by Whit Taylor. Sorry about the lack of updates yesterday, I was trying to fix a virus that has the lovely side effect of making most of my Google links go to a misdirected site. It still isn’t fixed after running every malware/antiviral thing I could think of, so if anybody else has gone through this hassle and fixed it I’d love to hear from you.

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…