Optical Sloth

New review for one more old comic, this time Famous Bus Rides #1 by Colin Upton.  I’m going to try and find some new minis this weekend, but I’m heading to Champaign and the pickings are always a little slim in that area.  Wish me luck…

New review for The Most Powerful Gate by Tom Hart, a 24 hour comic from 15 years ago.

New review for another old mini, The Magic Whistle #2 (mini comics edition) from Sam Henderson.  Ah, memory lane.  I am quite possibly spending a bit too much time there lately, but what with the moves and a lack of new comics, there are certainly worse places to be.

New review for a book that’s available in the online store:Syndication, edited by Nik Havert.  Or at least put out by him, that part isn’t entirely clear.  This is another one of those books that should have been in the store ages ago, but either never made it in or was somehow erased during one of the site upgrades.  I’m going with the second option, because otherwise I would have to consider myself a complete moron for missing this one for so long…

New review for an almost new comic (as opposed to all the old minis I’ve been posting lately), Robot 13 #1 by Thomas Hall & Daniel Bradford.

Sorry about the weekend absence, I had a nasty virus on my computer and finally got rid of it only to discover another one that I can’t get rid of.  Ah, the joys of owning a computer.  New review today for an old but wonderful mini comic, Double Cross #15 by Tony Consiglio.

New review for yet another old mini (1998 this time), James Kochalka Superstar #11.  For you kids out there who don’t know, that was the name of the mini James Kochalka did for years before he went to all graphic novels all the time.  Or I missed a step, that’s entirely possible.

New review for another oldie, coincidentally also from 1994: Boom Boom #4 by Dave Lasky.

New review for Jape #3 by Sean Bieri, another of those old minis I keep bringing up.  As always, I could also review your new comic, if you wanted to send it my way…

New review for a new book: Daucus Carota by Brandon Berry.

New review for a new comic: Crass Sophisticate #25 by Josh Reinwald & Justin Rosenberg.  See, I do still occasionally post updates on Sundays!

New review for a new comic!  It’s Baltic Comics Magazine #5: After Snowfall by various (mostly) Latvian artists, in which I finally abandon the giant Various pages that are on this site for something a bit simpler.

New review for a real oldie, this time Self-Portrait Comic #1 by Colin Upton.  I’ve only gotten positive feedback for my digging through the archives, so I’m assuming that this is useful and at least mildly informative to you, the reader.  If you hate it you might want to let me know…

New review for another old mini, this time the practically flawless Love Looks Left by Tom Hart.

New review for a very old mini, King Cat Classix Volume 1 by John Porcellino.  Who does a guy have to punch to get a complete King Cat collection one of these days?

Technically it’s not a new review today, although I did update the Onsmith page with a working website.  Why does that count as a real review?  Because over the weekend I did inventory for the store and added a count for everything, meaning that when you order things now there is no chance of it being out of stock.  The site keeps track of that now, not lazy old me, so when something is out of stock it won’t let you order it.  Anyway, while I was doing that I found a couple of books that inexplicably weren’t listed in the store, and Gag-Hag (edited by Onsmith) was one of them.  I don’t usually talk up the books on the site news page, but it’s an anthology from 2004 with some dirty, dirty humor featuring Ivan Brunetti, Chris Cilla, John Hankiewicz, David King, Ted May, Onsmith, Johnny Ryan, Bryce Somerville and Dan Zettwoch.  For all I know this is out of print by now, especially with that pile of talent involved, but lucky for you I dug up some copies.  Not sure why this wasn’t on the page before, as I know I sold at least one copy of this, but that error has been fixed.

New review for another old mini, this time Unshaven Chi #2/Get Bent #6 by Ben Steckler.  This where I had a reminder about that one new thing about the site I’m not technically supposed to mention, so forget that I edited out that thing that I can’t talk about.  However, I should ask again if anybody out there is interested in advertising on the site.  Let me know and I’ll be happy to tell you all the secrets stats of the site that would make you love to advertise here.

New review for The Final Curtain by Scott Mills, another of the old minis that I keep reviewing because I don’t seem to be getting as many new comics for review these days.  Hey everybody, I’m settled for the month!  Send your comics, the new address is up and everything!  Even if somehow the postal service eats your comics for a whole month and they don’t get here until I move again, this is where my parents live, so the chances of them forwarding any books that come here to me are pretty good.

New review for Robot 13 #3 by Thomas Hall & Daniel Bradford, which isn’t out quite yet but I got a sneak preview because I am awesome so there!  You may have noticed that there’s an ad on the site.  Please click on it as often as you’d like, as there is no simpler, cheaper way to support what I’m doing here.  Between that, the store and the projected rental project I’m hoping to make this little site into a modest living, which would give me more time and resources to talk about comics, so everybody wins!  If you run a little comics company (or a little comic) and would like to advertise here (there will be no pop-ups or those stupid things where something flies across the screen while you’re trying to read), contact me at whitey@opticalsloth.  Then I’ll tell you all about the traffic here (which I’ve been told is pretty good for a small press comics site) and we can figure out rates and all that nonsense.

UPDATE: After reading the fine prints for the ads it seems I’m not supposed to mention them.  Pay no attention to the ads!  But do still contact me if you’d like to advertise on this site.

New review for Smoo! #2 by Simon M., as the unintentional abbreviated name review week continues (and most likely ends, going back to the regular programming).  Oh, and both of the last two reviews were for new books, as I understand that gets confusing lately.  Question for any programming types: do any of you have knowledge of the Netflix setup for their queue system?  I’m looking to do something like that for my rental idea but I keep running into (the computer version of) brick walls.  It seems like an odd thing for anybody reading this to know, but hey, I’ve asked odder questions and gotten answers.  whitey@opticalsloth.com is the place to go for any knowledge of this sort of thing, or a simple way to do it that I haven’t thought of yet.