Optical Sloth

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…

New review for A Working City by Nick Soucek and let’s see if I can put together five reviews this week. It’s been a while with all the scanner drama…

New review for Brain Dead Phylum #1 by Kyle Nolan. The scanner isn’t new, but it’s an older one that a friend didn’t want and it appears to work OK. Keep an eye on those samples and let me know if they look like crap, OK? Assuming this thing doesn’t explode too I’ll be back to a full week of reviews next week, with one up over the weekend too if all goes well.

New review for Late One Night by Brad W. Foster, another comic that’s also available in the store and a clear indication that I still don’t have a new scanner. Still, I’m as sick of writing about it as you are of reading it, so it ends this week one way or another. Apparently a scanner is not going to fall out of the sky all by itself and solve my problem…

New review for Herman the Manatee Gets Hit By A Boat Volume 1 by Jason Viola. If you were wondering, no, the scanner is not working, I just took a couple of images off Jason’s site. I hate doing that, so you should buy his comic to assuage my guilt. The bottom line is that tomorrow is going to be a day of looking around for a decent scanner. What fun!

New review today for Cheetahs Never Win! #3 by Steve Reeder, and I think this is it for the new batch of scanned images. Tomorrow I’ll try to get the stupid thing working again and will either A. be successful B. not be successful and buy a new scanner or C. not be successful and give up the comic reviewing business for a life in a cabin somewhere. Check tomorrow to see what happened!

New review for Monkey Squad One Annual #1 by Doug Michel. There was no update yesterday because of connection problems, as I’m not allowed to have just one thing go wrong with my computer at any given time. Those should all be fixed now, he says nervously…

New review for The Gods Must Be Bastards by Rob Jackson. Ah, it’s nice not having to fight with this miserable scanner for a few days…

New review for Yo! Burbalino #4 by Greg Farrell. Sure, I missed the weekend update, but at least there will be a new update every day this week barring my hands falling off, so that’s a good thing, right?