:: planetoïd ::

PENCILS AND INK. AND A BIT MORE.

1. the bi-monthly Warren Ellis thread. today : Warren Ellis ! (ladies & gentlemen, applause)
guess what ? a few news from one of today's top writers, the one and only (yeah i know, pretty predictable for those of you who read these lines quite often...) Warren Ellis.
i wanna say that Orbiter, his (nearly) last masterpiece, is one of the best things i'd read this year. the art from Colleen Doran show that the artist got some evolution in her way of working, and the Ellis guy told us a story who will make you cry, all of you cosmos-fanatics... Also, for those of you speaking french, Gino did a great review of The Authority, on friday, may the 16, on his coooool blog, Mars Hotel.
"ORBITER burned through a little under 1500 reordered copies in the first few days after release. In that time, the West Coast of America didn't even have ORBITER, due to a distribution fuck-up.
ORBITER got a B in ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY."
oh yeah, also : you can find another Warren Ellis interview at Slashdot.

2. Trondheim Export. trust it.
still from the Fantagraphics bunch of rampaging press, french fave Lewis Trondheim's got some more stuff published in english : Nimrod #7 (probably some excerpts from "Approximativement", one of his better works).
"Ever wonder what it's like to sit in on an editorial meeting at L'Association, the French publishing house Lewis Trondheim co-owns? Well, we never had either, but it's actually pretty damned amusing, as Trondheim depicts one in this ish, especially when one devolves into a drunken tussle with a toilet brush, as this one does. Also, little Lewis discovers the joys and pitfalls of thievery, older Lewis battles the bulge, and French legend Moebius makes a cameo." (source : Fantagraphics)
pretty cool advertising for this stuff...

3. Wearing the Horns.
on the comics front, some news from the up and coming Dave Cockrum-related-stuff, the awaited Wearing The Horns from writer Clifford Meth.
from the writer himself :
"Just back after a 5-year haitus, folks. Forgive the intrusion, but lots of new places and people to connect with.
My new illustrated novella WEARING THE HORNS (Aardwolf Publishing) with Dave Cockrum (illos) & Frank Brunner (cover) will be available soon. We are hungry for reviews. All suggestions (and potential reviewers!) are welcome. Please contact me : thecliffordmethod@yahoo.com "

4. some shit about the 2003 Free ComicBook Day.
still on the comics front, i would like to get some echoes or feedbacks about your Free ComicBook Day, for those of you who lived it. how it works, how sad was your usual retailer, which title you found, and so on... basically, whatever.
call me jealous, but since this "don't you know that us 'mericans don't give a fuck about UN or whatever, let's fight" times, it was the first time i envy my favorites united states residents for having such a cool opportunity : bring some comics home for FREE.
and as wrote Paul Ewert in one of his post to the Small Press Comics mailing-list, "Remember the best price you can get is free". eh eh eh.

5. Welcome to Jacob Cooper, and Congrats to Julie & Dave.
recently having his first child, let's hope that Dave Cooper, the huge artist will save some times for keep up our pleasure...
right now, Weasel's Eddy Table Doll is available, ("Based on the character from Dave's WEASEL, Eddy is housed in a fancy box that acts as a sort of diorama, complete with paper stand-up characters in the scene's foreground! And of interest to Weasel readers:
the two-page comic strip on the back of the box is actually a direct continuation of the final Eddy Table story from Weasel #5.
but it won't make us glad after the baaaad thing : Weasel #6 (overbite, paintings & drawings of mostly pillowy girls), the hardcover art book featuring plenty of Cooper's paintings (and with some words from HBO's Mr Show's own David Cross), is already sold out.
what ? what about mine ? fuck. i'm still waiting for it, as for Ripple, the collection of the first ish of Weasel.

6. for the British Jews who don't like Joe Sacco : fuck -let's keep it clear- you.
"The Board of Deputies of British Jews has demanded that the Waterstones chain in the United Kingdom stop selling Palestine by cartoonist Joe Sacco, claiming that "book contains numerous references to Jews in general and not just to Israelis. The tone of these references is quite unacceptable."
Waterstones, to their credit, in turn has said that it operates a non-censorship policy and will not honor the request.
(source : Fantagraphics)
Palestine if just one the best comics ever. period.

...
...uh....
...and, hum....
...i wanted to wait a few weeks before posting this. the proof that Ellis is a fuckin brilliant guy. posting this at the time he posted it on his Bad Signal mailing-list had to be felt as "anti-american" (which should be a shame, of course, eh eh eh), so i decided to post it only now, which is, i must admit, maybe worse. :) anyway.
(Ellis wrote about the media jumping on the Jessica Whatever death while the hum, "Shock And Awe and Let's Fuck'em" scenario...)

"BBC: "...brave Jessica, wrapped in the Stars And Stripes, the symbol of her freedom..."
CNN: "...next: a pretty prisoner of war."

Oh, and eleven other people may have been found there. But they appear not to have been passably cute white girls, so fuck 'em.
Kaveh Golestan, an important documentarian and photographer working with BBC correspondent Jim Muir and producer Stuart Young, died in Iraq yesterday.
But BBC News 24 were covering the arrival of the plane carrying Brave Jessica in Germany, and BBCi fucked up the webpage with his obit.
Dan Curtis Johnson thinks Brave Jessica will have her Playboy shoot by July. I personally think we'll see her next on American Idol.

Colin Powell, reduced to a bagman now his Doctrine of "overwhelming force" has been discarded in favour of Shock And Awe (which didn't actually work, as even the inventor of the doctrine has commented) and putting marines on starvation rations into streetfighting scenarios, has apparently successfully bribed Turkey. This may forestall what looked like an imminent military coup, as allowed by their weird state constitution.

Elsewhere, Japan's looking to arm up, because Kim Jong Il scares the crap out of them. Ror. Kim Jong Il scares the crap out of everyone, and the snapshots of life in North Korea are nothing short of surreal. Japan, on the other hand, has been a post-imperialist nation for a very long time, dissolved into a fascinating mess of near-Victorian social confusion and pop culture run riot.
Takeshi Kitano runs a TV freak show roughly entitled, "Japan, This Is Where You Went Wrong."
And Robert Mugabe is comparing himself fondly to Hitler. Which should come as no surprise to anyone who saw him grow That Moustache some years back.

How can you not want to write about the world?"