Optical Sloth

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.

New review for Odd Jobs #1 by Eric H., and I haven’t vanished completely.  Sorry about the lack of updates over the weekend, but I did manage to update a few things: that is my actual home address on the right (so send your comics now!), the stupid double shipping charge for comics ordered is gone, and even tinier things have been addressed.  There are bound to be a few big changes over the next few weeks, so if you’re one of those people who is terrified of change of all kinds then you might want to just come back in a 3-6 weeks when everything is settled.

New review for another very old book, this time Deep Girl #1 by Ariel Bordeaux.  I haven’t looked at her page here in ages, and saw that I promised a real review for No Love Lost years and years ago.  Maybe I will get around to that one of these days, but it’s funny to see how often I did that and then forgot all about it.  Well, funny to me anyway…

New review for another oldie, this time From The Curve #7 by Rob Ullman.  I’m doing a bunch of reviews before I move at the start of the month and this is one of them, so I’m just going on faith that the world is still going to be here by Wednesday.

New review for one more old comic, this time Jape #1 by Sean Bieri.  If anybody out there knows of a place to actually buy any of these old minis that I keep mentioning, I’d love to hear about it.  For the time being, consider it a preview of the rental program that is coming soon, at least assuming that at least some of the people who made these comics would be OK with it…

New review for yet another old comic, this time Double Cross #12 by Tony Consiglio.  Like I’ve said, at the very least this exercise in nostalgia has let me update the contact information for a lot of pages that have been dormant for far too long.  Now if I could only find an easy place to order these oldies, if such a place exists…

New review for another old comic: Boom Boom #2 (mini comic version, not the full sized series) by Dave Lasky.  You should really hop in that time machine and check it out.

New review for Crass Sophisticate #23 by Josh Reinwald & Justin Rosenberg and yes, this is another new comic.  Have I mentioned that if anybody in Columbus needs a computer desk, couch, chairs or a table that they should probably contact me?  Probably a bit late for that by now…

New review for My Cat is Satan by Edgar Castro, and it’s also newly available in the store.  Reviews may start getting dicey around here soon, as I have to be out of here by the end of the month.  The plan is to get a few prepped and ready to go before I leave (as now that I’m reviewing old stuff too I’m not at a loss for material), but we’ll see how it goes.

New review for The Pyramid by Kenan Rubenstein, a newish comic, not one of the many oldies I’ve been posting lately.  As I keep flipping back and forth in time, I feel it necessary to keep pointing it out.  Or maybe I’m just trying to get in the mood for the last season of Lost…

New review for another very old mini comic, as this time its The Ditch The River The Sea The Snake by Tom Hart.  Hey, even if you don’t like these old reviews (I’ve been having a blast), at least I’m finally updating some of the contact information for these people.  Tom’s page has had a dead website listed for ages, but no longer!

New review for another old comic, You’re Young It’s Dark Your Bladder’s Full by Colin Upton, who should have had his own page on this site years and years ago.

The great comics dust-off of ’10 continues, as the new review today is for Magic Whistle #1 by Sam Henderson.  The mini comic, not the one put out by Alternative books, because I really have been reading these things that long.

New review for Hoax #2 by Karl Kressbach and all sorts of other people, and it’s available in the store if you’re interested.  I was also able to locate a website for Brad Johnson, the review for the comic from 1983 posted on Thursday (thanks Gabrielle!), so if you’d like to read some free comics from the man, you should go back to his page and click on that website link.

New review for the oldest mini comic yet: Itchy Scaly #2 by Brad Johnson.  And if you have any contact info for Brad Johnson, I would love to see it.  This was made in 1983, back in the good old days when Reagan beat communism up with his bare hands and there were no Transformers in the world.  It did make me think of something that I’m not sure how to deal with in regards to the comic rental idea: how do I compensate people that I either can’t locate or who may well be dead?  The general idea is to compensate every creator (who wants it) around $.04 per rental.  But one of the main ideas behind this rental thing was exposing people to books they wouldn’t otherwise be able to see, and this certainly qualifies.  Would you say that I shouldn’t rent this without express permission?  Say it’s OK because the comic is probably older than most of you are?  Rent it and just pay the man if he ever hears about it?  I’d love to get some opinions on this, because it’s a problem that will come up again and again, especially when you consider all the people who make comics for a few years and just disappear.   Thoughts?

New review for The Regular Man #5 by Dina Kelberman, which you can get for free if you’re one of the next three people to order comics from my store.  You will also, as I’ve mentioned, be helping my back out with my upcoming move, as every little bit of weight I’m not lugging around helps.

New review for another old comic, this time Supermonster #7 by Kevin Huizenga.  These are the types of comics, in case it isn’t obvious enough, that I hope to have available in this rental system I’m putting together.

New review of an old mini comic again, this time Memory Palace of Rocket by Scott Mills.  I’ll make the request again: I’m moving at the end of the month, so if you want to send me comics for review or order some from the store, it’s better to do both of those things sooner rather than later.  I’ll still be able to fill orders, but February looks like a couch-squatting, house-sitting kind of a month before I find a new permanent home in early March.